I was in midtown Manhattan in my TV training studio, my presentation skills training studio right across from Bryant Park one day, and I had a group of people at one of my public workshops. One of them was a woman who had been a political operative. She had some low level positions in campaigns in the Clinton administration, wanted to become a pundit came to the media training course. put the camera on her after a few questions. She started talking for about 10 seconds all of a sudden stopped, looked down, stepped back. I can't do this.
Practically in tears. She just seemed overwhelmed. And I had a little bitty camera and there were only a few people in the room. She was nervous. She was uncomfortable. And was frankly not very good at it.
But I encourage you to come on. Let's do it one more time. Let's do it. Again. We can on doing it again and again, she even came back for follow up training. And before you know it, occasionally she was a guest commentator on the CNN MSNBC is the fox news channels of the world, the major TV news networks in the United States, based in New York City.
She occasionally would get along and then she got better, she got more comfortable. She got on even more, and then more often. And then one of the major news networks in fact, the top rated News Network, hired her as a professional analyst. So every single time she went on the air she was paid. And after a while, she was actually hosting in prime time substitute hosting for some of the biggest names in the business. And she was on that network for a decade.
She since moved on to other major networks and continues to have column books the whole bit cheese of major major pundit. And it's simply because she decided she wanted to. No one initially anointed her. No one says, Oh, we want to hire you as a TV network. Here's a bunch of money go get trained. She decided herself, that she didn't want to just be behind the scenes, work in the back rooms, be the behind the scenes operator.
She wanted to have a voice on national affairs. She wanted to speak out, and she took action. And it didn't matter that she wasn't very good at the beginning. She just she kept at it and add it got professional training for me. Others critique learned as she went and worked her way up the media chain. She did it.
You could too. So why do I tell that story again, there's this sense so many people have that when you see someone on TV, some famous pundit, some famous talking head that they're just naturally fantastic. They've been that way their whole life. They were the coolest kid in middle school and always articulate. No. This is something people can learn at virtually any age.
So that's why tell that story