Start With A Win - Start with the Give-Me Shots with Marney Andes

Episode Date: March 24, 2021

Our guest on this episode of the Start With A Win podcast is Marney Andes, a learning and development executive coach, consultant, and author. She attributes her success to her humble beginnings and the lessons she learned from her father on a rural Nebraska farm. In her new book, “Start with the Give-Me Shots,” Marney outlines eight of the core lessons that her father taught her, which she has found herself recalling and sharing with others throughout her life. Her father passed away in 2012. Marney was motivated to write this book to allow his legacy to live on while sharing his message of intentionality and simplicity in relationships and community.Marney discusses two of the lessons from the book on this episode of the podcast. Lesson 2 is “start with the give-me shots,” which underlines the importance of focusing on the basics and practicing them every day. This kind of intentional practice will make those things come naturally, so they are always ready when you need to call on them. This practice is much more impactful than wasting time on the things that don’t matter. Lesson 8 is “what have you done for the good of the community today?” Marney’s father used this question as a conversation starter because he loved connecting with people on more than just a surface level. As Marney has become an adult herself, she has come to appreciate the power of that question and the self-reflection it encourages. Marney says it is helpful to ask these questions as a part of this reflection: What happened today? What do I think and feel about it? What do I want to do about it?“Start with the Give-Me Shots” will be available on Amazon starting March 23, 2021, so check it out there to learn the other six core lessons.Connect with Marney:https://www.marneyandes.com/ Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/ https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ Leave us a voicemail:888-581-4430

Every day is filled with choices. You're here because you're choosing to start with a win. Get ready to be inspired, learn something new, and connect with the win nation. Coming to you from Denver, Colorado, Adam Conto, CEO of Remax here with Start With A Win. Producer Mark, how you doing, buddy? I'm doing so good. Awesome. You know, I'm super excited about today because we have a great author and local friend of ours on the show today, Marnie Andes. Marnie, how you doing?

Doing great. How are you, Adam? Doing fantastic. I mean, you have a really interesting background, really interesting life, and you just wrote a book. So congratulations on that. It's coming out here later on in March, March 23rd. Yes, thank you. This is exciting. Are you excited about your book coming out? I am excited. In fact, I was telling a friend the other day, this felt like it was so far off in the distance. And then all of a sudden I'm like, it is here. It is coming. So I'm really excited about it. Yes.

That is awesome. So for our audience, Marnie grew up on a farm outside of Wallace, which is a small town in Western Nebraska. I think Marnie's a Husker, right? Of course I am. I'm wearing my red headset just for my Huskers. There you go. I love it. So today, Marnie is a successful learning and development executive coach and corporate consultant and an entrepreneur, of course, and also a former educator and collegiate basketball player. You go, girl. That's awesome. Thank you. So you attribute most of your success to your dad.

And he was a farmer, I would assume, right? He was. Farmer and a rancher because we raised cattle as well. Oh, nice. In Nebraska, obviously. Yes. So did you guys have like corn and wheat and stuff like that? Yeah, primarily corn and wheat.

And then we raised purebred Angus cattle. Oh, nice. You guys ate pretty good at your farm, didn't you? We did. In fact, I'm sure it would pain my dad beyond measure if he knew how much fish and chicken I eat these days. I still eat beef. But yes, was I born and raised on Nebraska beef? Absolutely.

Right on. I mean, heart of America right there. That's awesome. So you, you learned eight core lessons from your dad that that's the foundation for your book, which is called start with the, give me shots, eight homegrown lessons for business and life. And once again, it launches March 23rd. So everybody gets your, uh, your Amazon orders ready to go or wherever we'll ask you where we can find that here later on in the show. But, um, you know, first of all, congratulations on this. I mean, this is, it's a huge undertaking to write a book. Um, you've, you've done a lot in,

in your life and business sports, you know, obviously growing up on a farm, which is really a great adventure in and of itself. I think more people should have that experience personally. I think so too. Why was writing a book important to you? Well, writing this book was incredibly important to me. I've always had aspirations of writing a book, but I don't think there was anything that quite struck me as that interesting. And I'm all I've always been that person. I'm a, what I would call is just an inquisitive person. I love to learn. And if it's not interesting to me,

I'm not going to write a book about it. And what struck me probably over the last decade was that I was through my corporate work, through my friendships, through all of my relationships, really every engagement I had with really anyone in my life, I was always recalling the lessons that I learned from my dad. And I learned far more than just the eight core lessons that are in this book, of course. My dad was a really robust personality, deep voice, big guy. He was just the person that everyone loved to just sit and visit with. And he could visit for hours. I've always been told that I have the gift of gab from my father and I look like my mother. So I have the best traits of both of them, which is awesome. And, you know, my mother taught me a lot, too.

But when I came to a point in my life and just really reflected on, you know, what had brought me success in my life, what had helped me navigate changes in a career and what had helped me navigate making some really hard decisions in my life, I really came back to a lot of these core principles that my dad had taught me. And so first and foremost, I think for me, it was, I'm already teaching this to other people. And I'm doing it haphazardly. What if I actually sat down and tried to come up with what sort of the essence of what these are together, but then also sort of what would be the order that I would tell people that these lessons of how to navigate them themselves, you know, what it would mean to them, those kinds of things. But, you know, I would be remiss if I didn't say that one of the other reasons I wrote it was,

you know, quite simply just to honor my dad. And I talk about that in the book, for sure. Certainly in the conclusion, people will see that. But he just had such a influence on people. And I didn't know that until after he passed away in 2012. I'd always watched him have a great influence on people in our community and everyone he met, my friends later on in life that didn't grow up with me and Wallace. They just always loved my dad. And when he was gone, it just felt like there was something else to do to help his legacy continue to live on. That, that is a really cool backstory. And he sounds like an amazing human being. Um, can you give us, you know, before we start zooming in on these, these key principles

that he taught you in life, can you give us kind of a high-level overview of the book? Give us a flyover of, he's built this culture into you and into your family. And it just, this is why America is great. This is why you became the human being that you did because of that influence, things like that. If somebody says, what is the book about? Give us a quick fly over that, then we'll dig into a few of these principles. For me, the book is really about a life of intentionality. And quite frankly, that we can, in fact, simplify. You know, we, I grew up in very humble beginnings. I grew up in a very, you know, if for lack of a better term, simple community. I mean, there were, you know, we, I grew up in very humble beginnings. I grew up in a very, you know, if for lack of a better term, simple community. And so it was such a simple life, but so incredibly fulfilling. And I think after living in Denver for about, now it's almost 22 years, I have found that I think people are making it more complicated than it needs to be.

The sense of community is something that is still an opportunity for all of us. We can still have it. We just have to slow down and actually intentionally invest in it. And that's what, if nothing else, that this book really does ask you to do as a reader. It says, here's some guiding questions. Here's some thoughts. Here's some stories you'll probably find yourself in, even if you didn't grow up on a farm. Maybe you grew up, you know, on the East Coast. You'll find yourself or you'll recall other stories of your own childhood and realize, I can still do what I do today.

I can still have the things I want, but I could slow down and find fulfillment in my life. And that's sort of the essence of the book. I think one thing I would just add, Adam, to this, and I was thinking about it, knowing we were having our conversation today. My dad was really, really special, and so was my mom. And the fact that even though we grew up in this tiny town, it's about 350 people is what the population has been for probably the last 40 to 50 years. And I don't ever recall a time where I ever felt like I couldn't do something. I don't even know if my mom and dad said, you can do anything you want. It wasn't like that. It was

just the environment that they modeled, the expectations that they had of us, the things that they shared with us. It was that you can do whatever you want. So now it's a time to sort of say, all right, done a lot of things. I've seen a lot of things. I know people are sort of in that life themselves too, and it's okay to slow down and actually enjoy what you have. Oh, huge, huge lessons there. I hope everybody really took a lot out of that. What you just said, like I did. I mean, this is interesting. And what you're saying here plays more into life now than I think it did a year or two ago. Because we've had this time to sit down the past year and reflect on all the different changes and pressures and overwhelm and fear and all this other stuff going on in our lives. And I love how you've just taken a step back and said, well,

here's what really matters. I mean, that's, that's really cool. So let's, let's dive into this a little bit. Lesson two in the book is the title as well. I mean, first of all, we all want to know why the title, but give us, give us some information on lesson two, which is start with the give me shots. Right. It was, well, it was so interesting because after I went through all eight of the lessons, my publisher and I were talking about what would be the right title for the book. Of course, this is, you know, it's my new, it's my first book. I'm trying to figure out, you know, what, what are all the steps in the process of doing this? And it, I just could not get away from it. Because one, the story is incredibly vivid. I can still remember it. I can smell the smells around me. I can feel what the

weather was like outside. And I'm going to tell you that this was probably just the story that I've told so many times. I mean, this is a story that I have told when talking about what we need to do from a strategic direction with our CEO. I mean, these are the kinds of stories that I have shared with some of the top executive leaders that I have supported and that I have been asked to, you know, organize and lead the learning and development function for them. And so it's just one I always come back to. And so really what it comes down to is that I know you mentioned at the beginning for the audience, I was a collegiate basketball player. I played sports growing up. I played any sport that we had in Wallace, which wasn't like a ton of variety. And I always tell people,

if everybody didn't go out for the sports, we probably didn't have enough people for the team. So it was required. You kind of needed to go out for sports. But I played volleyball. I played basketball. I ran track because I had to run track. My track coach will absolutely love hearing that, although he knows it, too, because he coached me. But basketball became my sport. going out on our driveway one fall afternoon and just heaving the basketball from, I don't know, all parts of the court, three point line mostly. And, you know, I was only making a shot here or

there and I was chasing the ball all over the farmyard. And my dad, who was no joke, probably a hundred yards away, down by the far pins feeding the calves, was just yelling at me. And pretty soon I could just hear, Marn, start with the give me shots. And I'd heard him say it before. And I knew I needed to stop and do that. And so I go in to talk more about the story, which is pretty cute with my dad because, and cute's probably not the right term because my dad was just a really upfront and honest and incredibly to-the-point guy. But his whole point was if players focused on the give-me shots, the shots that were like two feet from the basket on both sides and right in front of it, if they did that, it would be so ingrained in them.

It would be so natural that they would, one, hone their best shot. They'd rarely miss when they were that close to the basket. And it set them up for success to go further away from the basket to make those shots. I mean, that was the premise of that lesson. And I took that to heart in basketball. So my dad told me that every single day I needed to start with 100 shots on each side and at the front of the basket. And once I did those 300 shots, then I could move out and shoot anywhere else I wanted to. And I took that to heart.

And in doing so, you know, I do tell folks in the book, I mean, I ended up holding a record at the time when I left high school of one of the all-time leading girl scorers in Nebraska basketball history because of that. And I absolutely believe it was because my dad taught me those fundamentals. It wasn't because I was shooting three-point shots and making, you know, eight out of 15 of them. I was shooting really close shots of the basket and I was rarely missing. And so I attribute so much of that to what we do here in life, which is, I think there's a lot of emphasis on all of us looking at our weaknesses, the things that we don't do very well. And while those are important, I know we want to work on certain things. I think what people are really missing is that thing that makes them really,

really good, the fundamentals that make them good at what they do, their craft, the fundamentals that makes an organization really successful. What are those? And are you practicing them every day so much so that they are just natural for everybody that works in the organization? They're natural for you personally in how you contribute to your own career. And if you did that, that would probably catapult you even further than if you were just looking at what you weren't doing well. And so I walk people through that. I think it's just a really important lesson. Because I think about myself, I mean, and Adam, you might be in a situation like this, too, where you might think,

hey, maybe I'm good at XYZ. And maybe I'm the best at who maybe I work with in my small circle on those things. And everybody recognizes that I'm really good at that. But that's not your excuse to say I don't work on that. That's actually more of the reason why you have to work on it all the time so that you are crisp and have those skills always ready to roll whenever you actually have to call on them. So that's it premise the the start with the give me shots But I, the story of how it came to be is really just my dad's, his term. That was his term. Give me shots. That I'll tell you there, everybody, I hope they're taking notes on this because this is an incredibly powerful success principle here. I don't even need to hear the rest of the lessons because this one is just amazingly powerful. But the, tell you, get really good at very few things.

And when you look at professional athletes, you're right, 100%. That's what they do. They get so good at the basics that the rest of it is icing on the cake because you're nailing the basics. And that's what, you know, too many people get distracted trying to get fancy in life instead of, you know, getting really good at the basics, be a good human, get hyper-focused on the things that matter the most. Like, you know, look at any sport. Those are the big money shots right there. That's where people choke and you know, they get

lucky every now and then with those long shots or whatever, but these are the big money shots that people are dependent on where they choke. And that's like, you know, you see the end of a baseball game or whatever, it's just, just get a man on base and then one more base and then one more base. It's the, the, the gimme shots in life. You're, you're right. So, I mean, your dad's brilliant when, you know, he gets it. Right. I think he did. I mean, my dad, you know, he grew up in the Western, we didn't actually grow up in Wallace. He grew up in, um, a small town called Paxton, which was only 35 miles away. But, you know, my dad was raised around, uh, military, but he was raised with farmers.

I mean, they, you know, he had uncles, his father himself actually served in the wars, but most of all of them came back to actually farm. And, you know, he had uncles you know, Nebraska, Midwestern America, those values are incredibly important. And when I've talked with folks, like I said, actually, the woman that wrote the foreword for my book, Hails from the East Coast, her name is Lynn Gangone. And Dr. Gangone, I met, you know, years ago when she was a dean at DU. But, you know, she's a Brooklyn girl through and through. And when she read this, she's like, this is, I can apply these. These are lessons that are

true for all of us. These are humanistic lessons. I love that. And I want to jump into one more of the lessons here on the show. And that is, this one means a ton to me. Our organization, Remax, is about community. So this really touches my heart. I love all the lessons, frankly. These are fantastic. They're very good business principles, very good life principles. But lesson eight is, what have you done for the good of the community today? And I'd love for you to unpack that a little bit from your perspective,

your father's perspective. And how should our listeners look at that? He asked almost everyone when he would see them. In fact, my husband was sharing with me this weekend how he recalled that being a question that my dad had asked of him when they first met. So for my dad, I think it was a little bit of a conversation starter, if you will. What have you done for the good of the community today? And when he would ask me that question, and most times before he actually passed away, I would call him every night on my way home from work. And that's how our conversation would start. And it was always about really just reflecting. And I don't know that my dad actually knew that, Adam. I think he really was just trying to get people to talk because my dad loved to get people to talk about their lives.

And so when he would ask that question, what that did was it forced me to reflect, it forced me to say to myself, what did I do today? And I, and I share with folks, this lesson that, you know, sometimes you might think you didn't do a whole lot during a day. And other times you might think you did so much, you can't even recall all of the piles of things that layered upon each other to get through the day. But when you reflect, you finally have a chance to take account of what you're doing. And that, quite frankly, could be I am really happy with what I'm doing with my life. I'm on the path I've wanted to be. I don't need more. I am really happy. And I'm going to be grateful for that.

And some of us might get at the end of the day and say, you know, I've been doing the same thing over and over and over. And it's not what I want to do anymore. So what am I going to do differently? What am I going to do about it? Do I want to do anything about it? And, and there's, there's all kinds of questions, right, that can follow that. And what I've really shared with the reader in the book, and I've continued to talk about this lesson over and over again is, if you don't take a moment, and it really can just be a moment, it does not have to be some deep meditation exercise. It doesn't need to be some incredible journaling exercise. Just take a moment and say to yourself, what happened today? What do I think and feel about it? And what do I want to do about

it? And just those simple questions really help you sort of take account, you know, what it is and what you want to do. And for me, when I finally asked my question, that question to myself again, about a year ago, actually, at this time. And I said, what am I waiting for? I just need to start writing. And so for me, it's just the question. I mean, it's just the question. I mean, it's like the question of any of the lessons really, I think, are at heart of of what we all could be doing more of is just taking time to reflect. The one thing I know, Adam, you know, community is incredibly important to you. And it is incredibly important to me. I mean, obviously, I have a nonprofit that I'm very much invested in and, and other work that I do with the community. I know you have done a ton of stuff in the community. My dad was very much someone who gave to the community as well. And if you don't take time to reflect, you see too many things passing by and you don't

see where people do have needs. And so, you know, the question can be very big or very simple if you think about it in those terms, but it was a favorite question of my dad's. And when we looked at all eight lessons and none of them had been written in question form, I still had to do it because that's exactly how he would say it to people around him. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. I'm so intrigued by that. And I'm sure everybody's dying to know what the other six lessons are. So can you tell us where we can find you and where we can find your book as it comes out? Yeah. So they can find the book on Amazon. It will launch officially on March 23rd, and they'll be able to get it there. The other thing is, I am continuing to write, I'm continuing to share ideas. Certainly, during this time period,

I have personally just wanted to connect with more people. And so there's a lot of things that I'm starting to write about is just how do we start to create this community with one another? How do we connect with one another and do it in a way that's more than, Hey, Adam, how you doing? Good. Hey, Marnie, how you doing? Great. I mean, it's more like, how are we actually going to start having some thoughtful questions and really getting to know one another. And so if they want to be part of that and just see what I'm writing about, go to marnieandys.com and sign up for my newsletter and you'll see more around those kinds of writings as well as any information and updates about my book. Awesome. Well, thank you, Marnie. And congratulations on the book, by the way, that is a huge undertaking to put your ideas together and

then sort through them and rearrange them and everything else. So kudos to you for getting your first book out for everybody to share your ideas with you because these are very powerful. Also, Marnie, I have a question I ask everybody on the show, and we love to hear the answers to these. So my question to you is, Marnie Andes, how do you start your day with a win? So the way I start my day with a win, I've always been active in my life. And I would say that I've always actually struggled with like, how do you stay active when you're like a high school basketball player, then you're collegiate player. And then you're like, I'm going through this like identity crisis of like, am I still an athlete or whatnot? I try to work out, I just try

to do something. And I've actually talked about this recently and posted about it. It's less about a routine, Adam. It's less about like I'm getting up at 5 a.m., riding my bike. It's more around I am committed every single day to moving my body. And that's how I start with a win because every day I get to go to bed

knowing I moved my body that day. Right on. Thank you so much, Marnie Andes. Everybody be sure and check out the book. Start with the give me shots. Eight homegrown lessons for business and life by Marnie Andes, inspired by her dad. So Marnie, thank you so much for being on Start With A Win. Thanks, Adam. Thanks for having me. And thank you for listening to Start With A Win. If you'd like to ask adam a question or tell us

your start with a win story give us a call and leave us a message at 888-581-4430 don't forget to go into itunes and subscribe write a review rate the show and for more great content head over to startwithawin.com you can follow adam on youtube instagram facebook and twitter and remember start with a win.