Welcome to Mindshift Power podcast, a show for teenagers and the adults who work with them, where we have raw and honest conversations. I'm your host, Fatima Bey, the mind shifter. And welcome. Today we have with us Ann B Montgomery. She is from Phoenix, Arizona, and this woman has had multiple careers.

And that's exactly what we're gonna talk about today. She's also the author of several fictional books. She's a very fascinating woman. I'm sure you all will agree with me by the end of this conversation. She does not fit into any standard typical box, which is something I love about her.

So how are you doing today, Anne? I'm great. And I'm excited to be here. Thank you for inviting me. I'm really glad we met.

We had such an amazing conversation off air. So tell us about the different career paths you have taken in life. I initially was a sports reporter and sportscaster, and that was very rare because it was back in the seventies that I announced I wanted to be a sportscaster, caster and everybody laughed at me. Because there's simply women didn't do that kind of thing back then. It's not like now.

So I did eventually become one. But my path there was kind of strange because I became a sports official. I officiated football, baseball, ice hockey, soccer, and basketball. And I would go into do that for forty years. The reason I did it was sports did you just name?

Five. Five main team spectator sports. Because I I came before Title IX. I was in high school before, you know, girls had equal opportunities to participate in activities. So I didn't know that much.

I grew up I was an ice skater growing up, and I loved ice hockey. Like today, I would never have been an ice dancer, I would have played hockey. I would have really liked that. But they didn't let girls play hockey back then. So that was the one sport I knew really well.

But football, baseball, soccer, basketball, not so much. So I I sort of accidentally fell into ice hockey officiating, you know, little kids, amateur official. And I decided that if if I wanted to be a competent sportscaster, I needed to understand the rest of the games equally as well. So I went on a five year mission basically to officiate though those five main team spectator sports. And, I believe that some forward thinking news director would give me a shot, and that's exactly what happened.

Oh. I got a job in Columbus, Georgia that led to one in Rochester, New York, one here in Phoenix. And then I went to ESPN where I, anchored SportsCenter. And, then I What year was that? That was '90 to '92.

That was still a big deal for women to be around ESPN back then. It was huge. Wasn't any fun, however. All the other TV stations, I had some very nice men who I worked with. But at ESPN, it was very adversarial.

They they had women because the law said they had to have women. Mhmm. But they treated they they treated us like crap. I mean, the few women in the newsroom, you know, we were kinda jokes to most of them. And that really frustrated me because, like, I know sports really well.

They hired me to know sports really well, and then they acted like I didn't I didn't know sports. I mentioned that because I we're we're talking to a teen audience who's growing up in a different world than you did. Yes. And they don't understand how, I think most of them don't really get how pioneering that was for you at the time. That was a really big freaking deal.

Well, there there were very few women. And if they we were scattered around the country, so none of us had any contact with each other. So I had there was not there wasn't any moral support. Mhmm. You know, the idea is you wanna be in this business.

You you you better not cry. You know, that kind of thing. And then I was I was pushing 40. I was about 36, like, 37 at that time. And, they released me, and I couldn't get a job anywhere in the country because I was pushing 40.

And the idea is, the the target audience for sports and television is 18 to 34 year old males. And so once you're 35, you're not pretty enough to be in front of a camera anymore. I came back to Phoenix. I ended up being the studio host for the Phoenix Suns for two years, which was fun, but it was part time. It was only during the NBA season.

Mhmm. And then I couldn't get a job anywhere in television. And I did quite a bit of feeling sorry for me. I I couldn't understand how I could work for five TV stations and suddenly not be qualified anymore. Well, I understood why.

I mean, I didn't look like I did when I was 30. Yeah. So, and young ladies don't seem to get that either. They're like, Well, that's not fair. I'm like, Well, that's not fair.

It's never going to be fair. And as much as I wanted to cry about it, there was nothing I could do. And it's ironic that I came back to Phoenix, and I couldn't get a job doing anything. And I had to pull out my officiating equipment again, and I went from anchoring ESPN, the network, to, officiating Pop Warner, football, and Little League. And I was embarrassed.

I didn't wanna see anybody I knew. Again, I'm I felt very sorry for me, like, poor me. My poor sad life. And, I was, married at the time. My husband was an alcoholic, and that was very difficult.

And people kept telling me that I should be a teacher because I'd spent so many years officiating kids' sports. And, I kept saying, no. No. No. I don't wanna be a teacher.

And then when I was 42, I had no prospects, and I went back to college. And, I became a teacher and I ended up teaching in a title one school here in Phoenix, the most inner city school in our state. And I learned a lot from my students. I ended up teaching for twenty years. When I got there, I thought, oh, I'll just teach a year or two and I'll find another job in TV.

But I ended up teaching twenty years, and the vast majority of my students lived in poverty. And they had all the societal issues that go with poverty, you know, drug and alcohol abuse, neglect, foster care, homelessness. And, and they taught me what a brat I was and how I complained about stuff that was so unimportant. And, I learned a lot from my students. It wasn't easy, and I'll say this, here I was a sportscaster, I was, I went on to, I was also a print reporter for a while, and I was a referee and an umpire, but teaching was the hardest job I ever had.

Wow. Why is that? I can make me do anything. You know? I can say, get up this morning, and you're gonna spend four hours editing this this manuscript, which I just spent the last week editing a manuscript.

So I had to get up every day and I had to, you know, get this done. I had seven days to get it done. So I can make me do that. But to make a bunch of teenagers do it, to say, this is important that you do this, it's very hard and it's frustrating. And I went barreling into that school like I had all the answers.

I was in the business. I had kids who wanted to be journalists. I had kids who wanted to be in television. So I was a hard ass. Like, if you're late, you can't be late.

I said, they'd come in five minutes late to class. I go, you can't be late. Well, I'm only five minutes late. I said, look, when I was in TV, if I was one second late on the set, I'm gonna be fired. And one day, my whole class got up and walked out.

A little girl stood up and she said, we don't need you. And granted, I was giving them a hard time because they didn't do their show very well. They made a lot of mistakes. They didn't meet their deadline. So I was hammering them pretty hard, and they all left.

And I stood in the front of the room and I cried. And, I I'm not one to get upset publicly, but I did. And another teacher took me aside later, and she goes, have you ever considered being nicer? I said, nicer? The world is not nice.

Newsrooms are not nice. Football fields are not nice. You do your job, and you don't let them see you cry. And she said, these are children. You should be nicer.

And I have spent the rest of my life trying to be nicer. I really have. Wow. So it sounds like you're you you went through an experience that ended up teaching you a lesson. Absolutely.

And and the one day that sticks in my mind, there was a young man who was late every morning. And so I finally dragged him outside, and I said, you can't do this. You'll never have a job. You'll never hold a job. You have to be on time in the world.

And he looked at his feet shoes and they said, miss Montgomery, I'm so sorry, but I slept on my uncle's couch last night, and I I I didn't know how to get here on the bus. It was a different bus. And he said, I never know where I'm gonna sleep at night. And I this light bulb went off and went, this child is homeless. I'm yelling at a homeless kid for being a couple minutes late to class.

And that that's the moment that I turned, that I went, okay. I have to get to know each one of my kids individually. I have to try to discern what they're going through in their lives outside of school. Because let's face it, do they care if they have a test if they're hungry? Right.

Do they care if they have a test if mom's being beaten up by dad? Yep. You know, do they care if they just got put in their foster home? Mhmm. So I had I had to do a lot of changing.

Being a hard ass wasn't cutting it. And not that I let them not that I let them slide all the time. I mean, I I still held high standards for them, but I tried to understand why sometimes, you know, school was not the most important thing in their life. And that's that's a powerful that's a powerful piece of your story right there. You know, a lot of people would be put in that situation and they would just be a hard ass on staying the same way for their own prideful reasons.

Instead of saying I like to tell you I changed instantly, but I didn't. I mean, it was No. But that's okay. But but that's okay because that's normal. People who change instantly, I'm suspect because most changes are not instant, not the real ones.

You know, you could fake it as a change. Yeah. I know. Surface change real instantly, but the real changes, they tend to go a little deeper and take a little longer. You know, because you have to unlearn things.

It did. And I I I wanted I I was I I kept telling myself it was for them that I was a hard ass, that I wanted them to be successful. I didn't want them to fail in life. And if they did, it was my fault. And I had to let that go a little bit.

Well, I also when you were talking, I was thinking, well, you came from a male dominated, arena that was very misogynistic. Yes. So you're used to the testosterone around you going be better or else. Right. Exactly.

Exactly. So you brought that with you because that's what you were used to. Mhmm. And then you had to unlearn that, you know, and that's a lesson for life for all of us. I went from newsrooms dominated by men, sports fields dominated by men, to teaching dominated by women.

And I felt like a fish outboard. Complete flip flop. Yeah. Oh, I've never been around so many women. Yeah.

No. I get that. I get that. Yeah. I worked with women most of my life and then I ran a all male dorm.

Right. You were. And it complete flip around, but it was good experience. So it made me more balanced, I think. Now I wanna talk about something that we had talked about off air that I think is a very important part of your story.

And folks listening, we are not gonna talk about all of Anne's story because we'd be here for sixteen hours. So we're only narrowing down the parts that we could talk about today because this woman is extremely fascinating, has a wealth of experience and wisdom. But you had a hindrance growing up. I'm thinking you're talking about dyslexia. Right?

Yes. Yes. And when I was young, you know, like life, you know, nobody cared to give women any extra chances of anything that nobody nobody knew the word dyslexia, or if they did, no one talked about it. Right. So I didn't know, and I was the dumb one in the family.

I had parent both my parents had college degrees, and, my brother and sister were both smart, and I wasn't. And they just told me I was stupid and lazy. And I got whipped for getting a d. And, I I didn't know it was wrong, but I hated to read. And everybody in my family loved to read.

My parents read two newspapers every day. My brothers and sis brother and sister loved to read novels and things. I wanted nothing to do with books. Wasn't until I was teaching, and I didn't have enough kids in my journalism classes. So my school said, look.

If you wanna still teach here, you have to become a reading specialist. I said, a reading specialist? I said, I would be a fraud. And they sent me I had to go back and take 15 credits to become a reading specialist because most of our students did not read at grade level. And I learned the word dyslexia.

And I'm like, oh my god. That's me. That is so me. I still make the same mistakes I did back then, but I know which ones they are now. I have right and left issues.

When I'm stressed, I sometimes don't know which shoe goes on which foot. It's weird things like that. Dyslexia is just not words. It's also I'm a nightmare of words. Oh, I didn't know that.

Okay. Yeah. I because once I learned about it, I studied it because I went I knew this was me. But, you know, they didn't say those things. They didn't say you had a reading disability as a kid.

They just said you didn't try hard enough. So the day I stood in front of my reading class, I literally felt like a fraud. But here's what I learned. I I told them. I said, you know what?

I have dyslexia. Now granted, there's, like, levels one to 10. Some people will never read, and I clearly have worked my way through my issues. But I said, if I can learn to to read and enjoy reading, so can you. And some of those kids nodded and went, oh, okay.

Here's a teacher who's saying she didn't start out reading very well either. So maybe there's a chance for me. And so Well, not only that, but you had to read a prompter. You're on TV anchoring Oh, god. I know.

Center. You had to read a prompt every day. And the And so when you told me that, I'm like, wow. Yeah. Well, I had to read it, but I wrote what it said.

So I knew what it said. But the problem was the scores because I was a sports reporter. So when you had the the Phoenix Suns winning one twenty eight to to to one twenty six over the LA Lakers, I would screw them up. I would turn them around. And I didn't even know I did it till my news director called me and he goes, what are you doing?

Why do you keep screwing up the sport the scores? And then I went, ah. So then I had to type the scores out in words, then I wouldn't mess them up. But when you're on deadline, that's real hard to do, you know, to type them all out in in words. I wanna take a moment and break from talking to you to talk to the audience because I I just feel the need to say this.

There's somebody out there listening right now who has an issue. It may not be dyslexia. It may be something else, and you're not understanding things the way everybody else around you is, and you're being told you're stupid. They're wrong. You're not stupid.

You just need to figure out what it is and how to work with it just like Anne did. I really wanna make sure that we speak to to somebody out there who's totally identifying with everything you're saying and going, oh, maybe there's not something wrong with me. Because I I've seen it way too often where kids are told usually by family or close people to them, not usually by the schools, that they're stupid because they don't get things the same way everybody else around them gets. We don't all we're not all built the same. As much as people try to pull it be politically correct and teach that, that's bullshit.

We're not all built the same. We're not. And so if you're listening out there, just just know that try to find someone, seek out someone who can actually help you to figure out how to solve the problem instead of telling you that you're stupid because that's not a solution and you're probably not stupid. But And there are a lot here's the thing I learned when I became a reading specialist that there are a lot of reasons kids kids don't read well. Learning dis disabilities are certainly some of them, but sometimes it's that they don't have proper hearing or their vision is not good or their English as a language or they grew up in a home where there wasn't a pencil or a crayon or a newspaper or a book.

So all the kids had different issues, but but I I learned when when I was gonna go to college, my brother I'm packing to go to college freshman year. And, my brother stepped in the room. He goes, you won't make it till Christmas. He said, you'll flunk out your semester. You're too stupid to go to college.

And he bet me $20 that I would flunk out of college that semester. Can I go back in time and punch him in the face? Oh, no. We gotta hear you. Is that not allowed?

Because now I have more degrees on my wall. Don't commit violence people. I was joking. I'm like, I got more degrees. They're mine.

And there's, oh, you only have one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There. Yeah, I would have rather been hit by a truck than lose that bat. But what I learned at college, the semester of college is very difficult because you're on your own.

There's nobody to say come in at night. There's nobody to say don't go to that party. And I learned I couldn't stay up all night. I learned that, had a complete quiet when I studied. I could only read for about forty five minutes before I, I lost track of what I was doing.

I had to eat right, and I never, I never cut class. I, well, actually I gave myself the right to miss one class, each class once a semester. But I had to have a really good reason. Okay. So I almost never cut class.

I and I did that my entire college career because I knew if I didn't, I wouldn't survive. If I couldn't pull an all nighter, my brain won't do that. So I think the idea of when you're teaching kids to read is to find out what works for them. And there's different strategies for everybody. I figured mine out before I even knew I had dyslexia just because I was too stubborn to fail.

And I love that you were too stubborn to fail because you I wouldn't be talking to you right now if you were honestly. But But I wanna note something that I'm here. It's something I'm hearing from everything you're saying. Instead of wallowing in a label of dyslexia, and even before you knew we had it, just instead of wallowing in, oh, I have this problem, so I'm not going to try. You figured out a solution to the problem instead of sitting under it because and sometimes people do that and they're like, well, you're special ed, so, you know, you're too stupid to do anything else.

Don't even try. And they may not say those words, say it in those exact words, but they'll say an attitude. And and I think it's important that people hear that the one of the reasons you have been successful is because you made it a point to figure out a solution to the problem. Even though you didn't fully understand the problem, you just did what you could from where you were. And that is what we should all be doing.

I will say that I was very fortunate that, there were parts of my education, that they're trying to take away now, like art, theater, and, you know, drama and music and those kinds of things that I was really good at. So that even though I went to school and I I sucked at chemistry and math and languages, for some reason, languages are very difficult for dyslexic people, to learn a foreign language. And so I struggled in all those, but I was great in music. I was great in speech. I was great in theater.

So, those things gave me confidence. Those things made me realize I can do other things just because I'm not great in the classroom. I I can be successful at other things, and I was an ice skater. So I had other outlets, and that's why it so upsets me when when school districts go, we don't need sports. We don't need we don't need art.

We don't need all these other things. Kids just need the basics. That's not true. I had so many students who hated school, and I would sit them down and say, what do you where do you see yourself in ten years? How what do you and and the question is, you know, you ask kids, what do you wanna what do you wanna be when you grow up?

Well, I give them three questions to answer, to answer that question. What do you like to do? What are you good at? And what will someone pay you to do? Right.

Because we spend far, far too much of our lives working to do jobs we don't like. Oh, yes. Yeah. I've had I was a maid. I cleaned other people's toilets.

I knew I didn't wanna do that for the rest of my life. Mhmm. Okay? So each kid, I would say they'd say, well, I really wanna play the guitar, and I would march them down to the the guitar teacher. I have a student who would like to play the guitar because of that one thing makes that kid come to school, just like football.

It's not just making them come to school. It's waking up a passion. When you wake up a passion in a person, it motivates other areas of their lives. They now have hope for themselves. They now have something to work towards.

But if all you're doing is shoving information down the throat and forcing them to do things, there's no passion, they're dead. And so they have no reason There's nothing to look forward to all day until Exactly. You gotta give them that even if it's football practice or marching band or they're gonna be in a debate. You know? All those things make it important to be there.

I never cut school because I didn't wanna miss the classes I really loved. So I am very grateful. I grew up in a time when music and theater and all those things were were expected to be in the curriculum. Now so many schools are trying to pull those away. I'm like, how are you gonna give kids hope for anything?

No. I I agree. Now I wanna ask you about your your books. So you write fiction books. And what I found fascinating is where you get your material from for these fiction books.

Tell the audience because that that really is the that really brings this the whole conversation together and what this this this, episode is about. let me say that what what I don't write about is sports. And people are always shocked. You know? They're like, well, you must write sports books.

I'm like, nope. Not at all. I write about societal issues. I have books about post traumatic stress. I have I have children in cult religious cults.

I have, domestic violence, rape. And where did I get these ideas? I I had students who dealt with these kinds of issues all the time. I can't tell you how many young ladies I had who were raped by family members, And nobody cared. They protect the boys.

Way too common. Yeah. They protect the men and the girls are dispensable. And that broke my heart. So I wrote a story about a serial rapist.

And a woman trying you know, she doesn't know who he is. She and, she she's a rape survivor. But this all came from dealing with my students. My last couple years teaching, I ran a support group for kids that, you know, some had been abused, some had parents in prison, some were foster kids. And and, you know, many of these issues ended up being themes in my books.

That's fascinating. Now with that, the your experiences, You before you wrote your book, you had a lot of life experiences. Did you think that they had a lot of value before you start putting them into books? No. I didn't.

You know, I never wrong? And were you wrong? No. No. Because as I told you, I thought being a sportscaster was the most important thing on the planet.

I thought sports were the end all and be all. Now I barely pay attention to sports. Yeah. I do watch NFL on Sunday sometimes, but mostly, I don't care anymore about that. And maybe if I hadn't been a teacher, I wouldn't have shifted to things that seem to be more important.

And, you know, I I was with those kids every day, and it was very hard to weave the the problems they were dealing with at school. That's why I'm not there. I I would adopt every single child. They would I would be the old lady in the shoe with 95 kids, and I raise them all, and and they would all have great careers. I have I have four children, and they all they all were my former students, and and two of them were my legal foster kids.

And that would have certainly, I never would have been a mother if I hadn't become a teacher. I I couldn't have any children of my own. And I I despaired about that for a while. And then I got over it, and, then I got a call from a kid who was in foster care who's one of my students, and I ended up becoming a foster mom. And, so I have four, who are two were legal foster kids, two to call me mom.

And, I'm a grandma now. So I have a six year old grandson because my oldest boy has a a a son. And I think that I think that is awesome. It would be difficult for me not to adopt every child. Well, honestly, I I got to the point where I it just it's so overwhelming.

I I have a great deal of respect for the social workers that I worked with in my school. Mhmm. Because they what they dealt with every day, I don't know how they went home. I mean, how how how do you leave a kid? And often they didn't.

They'd be there late at night trying to help a kid who was homeless or battered or something. So, yeah, it it was very it was a it again, the most difficult job I've ever had. Now some of some of what you just discussed, including this, bits and pieces of that have ended up in your fictional stories. But I wanna I wanna round back to what I was asking before about before you started writing the books, you did not realize, you did not yet realize that all of your experiences actually had great value. I well, I some of them did.

I mean, I think my experiences made me a better teacher once I got nicer. You know, they because I have a, you know, I worked really hard to try to introduce my kids to the rest of the world. Meaning, I had 50 newspapers dropped off in my classroom every morning, and I had my kids pick up the newspaper every day and read stories that it could be the sports page. It could be whatever. And we would talk about what was happening in the world.

And I realized that my background, all the years I spent in a newsroom, I was helping to give the kids better idea of what's really out there. Yeah. Because when you live in a square mile of Blight, they they a lot of my students didn't think they'd live to be 20. So I was trying to show them that there's more than than they see every day. And I think if I hadn't been a reporter, maybe I wouldn't have been so adamant about adding that.

And I even did that with my reading students. It wasn't just my journalism students. I'm like, grab the newspapers, everybody. Let's talk about what's going on in the world. And we did.

Again, even what you just said goes back to there's value in experiences, and that's the point I'm trying to get to. Mhmm. There is there's and I'm saying that because there's teenagers and even some of the grown teenagers, which we call adults who are listening, who think that their experiences are not valuable. They think that their experiences don't mean anything. And you took your experiences and you created these stories, you know, based on the realities that you had dealt with and experiences.

And sometimes people are are listening and they think that they don't have value. They think that they don't matter. No. Yeah. I've been through some stuff in my life.

Yeah. But telling your story or taking that information or taking what you've gotten through your experiences and doing something with it may help other people. You know, you can in your case, you wrote books. In other cases, they'll start podcasts. In other cases, they will go do mentoring to to, you know, other kids.

In other cases, they'll be, you know, start teaching on certain subjects and things that they've dealt with. Whatever it is, we can all take our experiences and find how they can be valuable to help others or to do something to grow ourselves. And I, I just want to make sure that the young people listening and the adult young people listening understand that your experiences in your life that you might think are small might actually be pretty big. And they may lend to great things that you can do for others in the future. I'm so glad you mentioned that because my youngest son is autistic, and he's, he's 26 now.

He's mildly autistic, just enough to be awkward socially and some physical awkwardness. And his biological family that just threw him into foster care when his his mother committed suicide and his grandmother had a heart attack, and and no one wanted him. And, I'll never forget, they came to me when I took him in, and they said, well, he needs to apply for disability. So because he'll never hold a job. I said, what are you talking about?

I said, he just graduated from high school. We put him back in school, graduated from high school. They were all shocked that he graduated from high school. There was nothing wrong with his intellect. Autistic kids aren't necessarily not intelligent.

No. They're usually pretty intelligent. And then he went to Arizona State University. And about two years ago, he graduated. And today he works at the Veterans Administration where he deals with all the food that, the patients have to eat and does the does the food go with their medications?

And and he wants to be a diet he wants to be a dietitian. He's a nutritionist now, and he wants to be a dietitian and go go get his master's degree. And these this kid was written off by the world. He'll never be anything. So young people tend to think I'm not good enough.

I'm not, I've got this problem. Kids would always say, I can't do it. I'm ADHD. I'm like, the world doesn't care that you're ADHD. They care to figure out how to get it done.

And, my son, I couldn't be prouder of him. That's awesome. Yeah. Yes. Yes.

We the limits that we are only as limited as we tell ourselves. Yes. Because I have seen some people with some labels who were in special ed. I'm like, what are you talking about? Because I don't see special ed when I look at you.

I've seen an intelligent person who I need to teach a different way. Not the same thing as, oh, well, you're slow, so just stay in your slow lane. And I really hate it when when people push that narrative and then people will accept it. And when they don't Kids do it all the time. They think, well, that's that's that's a get out of jail card free if you know what I mean.

Yeah. My It becomes a problem. My my youngest son, I was teaching reading and he sat in front of me. I gave him the he took a reading computerized reading test, and it said he read at the college level. I'm like, go take that test again.

And he came back and he, he read the level of a college freshman when he was in a freshman in high school. I called the counselors and I said, this child does not belong in my class. They said, he's autistic. He's special ed. I said, he reads at the college level.

And, they refused to move him. I'm glad they didn't because he and I developed a relationship and eventually I became his mom. So, but still, that's the attitude. Well, he he's autistic, so he couldn't possibly read. I'm like, no.

So I don't care what label you have. I mean, if I'd grown up and known I was dyslexic, maybe that wouldn't have been good. Maybe I would have given myself an excuse to fail. Honestly, I think if you had known it, you would never have gotten into newscasting because you would have said, I can't do that. Maybe not.

You know? And and and but, you know, even if not you, other people would just say, well, I can't do that because I have this label. Don't believe the hype. As I like to say, don't believe the hype. Just because someone puts a label on you doesn't mean that you have the contents.

You wouldn't understand the difference between label and content. The other thing with dyslexia, which is fascinating, is that you haven't really lost anything. It's where your neurons are connected in your brain. So I don't have the neurons that go to math and direction somehow. This isn't this is a general explanation.

But those neurons go somewhere else. Mhmm. And some of the the most talented people in history, they believe were dyslexic, like Leonardo DiBiocchi. It's not the time I've heard that. Yeah.

Yeah. That that or or people that are brilliant artists, because those extra neurons might have missed math, but they went to art. So it's not that strange to be a creator that has dyslexia. So maybe it's a gift. I don't know.

Maybe. Well, Anne, it's been challenging to not talk about 20 other things with with you and I. Even in our conversation off air, it was like, okay. We gotta go. Oh, but more blah blah blah.

Because you're they're just, we've only honestly, people, we've only touched like a drop in the bucket of stuff that she knows, and could talk about. But it's been really fascinating having you on. And number one, thank you for being a woman entrepreneur. As a woman who's a younger generation than you, I thank you because it's women like you that have made a way for the rest of us. Well, thank you.

So thank you for that and putting up with all the male BS you put up with. And and I'm really grateful that that you got, that you got canned because you became an excellent teacher and obviously made a difference in the lives of some young men. So I'm glad you got fired. Me too. But and I wouldn't change a thing.

Yeah. You know what? And and sometimes there's those things that we think is the most tragic that are the most biggest lesson ever. Exactly. Do you know?

I I I always told my students, monitor and adjust, get ready to pivot. It never goes the way you expect, but it might surprise you in a good way. And and and thank you for pointing out what people with labels yours was dyslexia. Other people's, it's special ed. It's whatever.

It's there's different ones out there. For proving that people with labels can still do a whole lot and you don't have to live under them. You can get over them if you decide that you want to. So thank you, Anne, for coming on today. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to the audience, and I hope we encourage some people today.

I believe we have. That's the goal anyways, to help build people up and and for people to hear themselves somewhere and know that they can too. Well, thank you. I really enjoyed it, and maybe we can do it again sometime. And now for a mind shifting moment.

As you heard in today's episode, Anne Montgomery is a well experienced woman with just a lot to say, and we only heard a tiny piece of it today. But with all of that experience, hopefully, the other thing that you heard was how she took bits and pieces of her experiences, the good and the bad, and used them to enhance the life of others to start a new career for herself. And I want you to know that you too can do the same for yourself. What you went through in middle school can help you in high school. What you went through in high school can help you in college.

That little job at McDonald's that you thought meant nothing actually taught you discipline. That other that other thing that you went through taught you how to be tough, taught you how to overcome. My point is there's nothing you can experience that can't be used to make a better future for yourself. There's nothing you can experience that can't be used to help others. I want to challenge you today to take a deeper dive into all the different parts of your life, especially the secret parts that you don't want anybody to know about.

And think about how that has shaped you. Think about how you can use it as fuel for your next level. Just think about it. Thank you for listening to Mindshift Power podcast. Please like and subscribe to my YouTube channel at the mind shifter.

If you have any comments, topic suggestions, or would like to be a guest on the show, please visit fatimabay.com/podcast. Remember, there's power in shifting your thinking. Tune in for next week.