INTRO
TONY: Welcome back to the podcast. Now today, it feels like we're all trying to hit a moving target. Technology changes overnight. AI is reshaping entire industries. Teams are navigating uncertainty. Entrepreneurs are being asked to make decisions faster than ever, while still trying to protect culture, relationships, and their own well-being.
Years ago, resilience became one of those words everybody talked about. The idea was simple: when life knocks you down, you bounce back. But what if bouncing back isn't enough anymore? Because many of us don't want to go back—we want to move forward. It's a different world today.
Today's guest says the goal isn't simply resilience. It's something she calls Evolvability—the ability to adapt, grow, and become stronger through change rather than just survive it. She spent years helping leaders and organizations understand the science behind adaptability, emotional intelligence, and human behavior. But what makes her perspective especially powerful is that it wasn't built only in boardrooms or research studies. It came through real-life challenges—raising a child with significant needs, personal struggles, and navigating situations where life simply didn't go according to plan.
And I think that's why this conversation matters. Because entrepreneurs don't just deal with changing markets. We deal with changing people, changing customers, changing teams, and changing versions of ourselves. If you've ever felt overwhelmed, stuck, exhausted, or like the world keeps moving faster than you're ready for—and I think that's all of us—this conversation is worth listening to. Let's get into it. Let's bring her on. Hi, Anne. Welcome back to The Tony D'Urso Show.
ANNE: Hey, Tony. Great to be here.
TONY: You were on the show about six years ago. It was a stimulating conversation. I'm so glad to have you back for round two. This time we're going to learn how to grow through change. As some of the audience are new since the last time, can you take us back for a moment and tell us what led you into helping people grow through change?



INTERVIEW – PART 1 (BACKSTORY: WHEN LIFE GOES SIDEWAYS)
ANNE: Well, the book subtitle is Growing Forward When Life Goes Sideways. And that's what happened to me—my life went completely sideways.
I've always been very goal oriented. I had a plan: graduate, get my master's, start a career, have a child—all the things. And when I had my son Evan, everything flew out the window. He was inconsolable, angry, and aggressive. Doctors told me they'd never seen anything like it when he was three. He actually tried to kill me with a pair of scissors. By the time he was four, he was on his first antipsychotic. Our life with Evan has been filled with hospitalizations, residential treatment centers, and group homes.
And in the middle of all of it, I got sick. I ended up with a tumor in my salivary gland that left me with partial facial paralysis. Fortunately it came back, but I didn't know that at the time.
I was practicing all of the tools to build resilience and bounce back. But what I realized is that bouncing back is survival—it's not growth. And given the landscape of the world we live in, whether you're an entrepreneur, a leader, a team member, a parent, or a part of a household, the ability to adapt and navigate change is one of the most important skills you can build right now.
TONY: I can see how you've had to take what comes and figure out how to deal with it. Were you already working in this space?
ANNE: I had studied organizational communication, and I was already a speaker and trainer—talking about things like communication, leadership, and sales. I didn't realize my own personal journey was going to lead me down the road of research that I've been on, and I've learned so much. I want to help people not have to recreate the wheel.
TONY: I'm thinking with this—people just want to adapt, deal with it, or bounce back. But you took all of this to grow forward. It's a shift in thinking. And I'm thinking of entrepreneurs and business owners facing the same—when the playing field changes, you can't do things the old way. You have to grow through it.
ANNE: And there's always been change. There will always be change. Our mental health, our physical health, and not just surviving but thriving requires that we learn the skills to do it. You're not just born adaptable—we're actually wired against change. So these are not skills you're naturally granted. They have to be practiced. And fortunately, they are learnable.
TONY: You know, I was thinking about something. We don't think of adaptability as a skill. Yet when you look at what you've been through—whatever's going on in your business, your family, your employees' lives—we all have our stories. But I've never looked at being able to adapt as a skill. What's your superpower? I can adapt.
ANNE: Think about it like this. Whether you're starting a business or have your own business—by the year twenty-forty, thirty percent of the skills we use now will be obsolete. The groundwork for adapting to those new skills is learning how to adjust to change without fearing it or fighting it, but doing so in a way that maintains some semblance of control.
Our brain is wonderful and amazing, but it doesn't care if we're happy. Your brain's number one job is to keep you alive. To do that, it's always scanning the environment for anything it perceives as a threat—whether that's an email or a tiger charging at you. To the brain, uncertainty feels incredibly threatening. There's even research showing your brain would rather have an outcome it doesn't like than one it doesn't know.
We all have this propensity toward the negative, because positive experiences are not going to help us survive. So your brain magnifies negative experiences and uncertainty. Anytime your brain is uncertain, it defaults to a state of threat protection and hypervigilance—more skeptical, more critical, less likely to collaborate and communicate effectively. Being able to shift the way your brain responds to stress isn't just a skill that helps you in business. It's a skill that will help you enjoy your life more.
TONY: While you're saying this, I was thinking about something a little fresh on my mind. Growing up, products didn't break down. They lasted a long, long time. I remember having to stitch holes in my socks. Back then, things just worked. And I remember the first time I ran into a product that didn't work—how weird! Why would somebody sell something that breaks? And today, I don't know what the percentage is—forty, fifty, sixty percent of products seem to break down, made to break down so you keep buying more. We're forced to adapt. You can't go back to how it used to be. You have to live with what you're dealt.
ANNE: That sounds like common sense, but it's not common practice. We spend a lot of energy being frustrated that things aren't the way we want them to be. That energy keeps us from adapting and makes us miserable. I'm not suggesting you have to love change, but it's a skill set to understand how you react to it, how you navigate it, and how you bring other people along for the ride.
If you own a business and you're supporting a team, you're creating the culture. Seventy percent of the team's emotional state and energy is driven by the leader. So this isn't only important from a behavioral perspective—it's important from a performance and profitability perspective. If you can't adapt, you're going to get left behind.
I started my business in twenty-eleven. The landscape for speakers, trainers, authors, facilitators, and content creators is wildly different now. Someone said to me recently, "Aren't you glad you're later in your career so you don't have to learn the new things?" And I thought—I'm fifty-one. I still have so much time left. If I don't adapt, I get left behind.
TONY: And that's Anne Grady. You can learn more about Anne, her books, speaking, and training at AnneGradyGroup.com. That's A-N-N-E G-R-A-D-Y Group dot com.
Anne just said something really important. She called adaptability a skill—not a personality trait, not something you're simply born with. And I don't think enough entrepreneurs look at it that way. Right now we're living through one of the fastest periods of business change that most of us have ever experienced. The people who continue to succeed aren't necessarily the ones who predict every change—they're the ones who adapt to it faster. They don't waste energy wishing things would go back to the way they used to be. They focus on what's in front of them, what they can control, and what they can build next. Growing forward, not simply bouncing back—because bouncing back tries to recreate yesterday, while growing forward prepares you for tomorrow.

SPONSOR BREAK – ODOO
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And now back to Anne. Before the break, she was explaining why adaptability isn't something we're simply born with—it's a skill we can strengthen. Now we're going to build on that by adding another concept every entrepreneur and leader needs to understand.

INTERVIEW – PART 2 (EMOTIONAL APTITUDE: THE EMOTIONAL THERMOSTAT)
TONY: Now we've talked about adaptability and growing forward instead of bouncing back. You have a term called emotional aptitude. What is that?
ANNE: It's your capacity to understand yourself, and to read, recognize, and respond to emotions so that you can be intentional about the way you move through your life. Think of yourself as an emotional thermostat. A thermostat takes its own temperature, recognizes the temperature of the room, and then regulates and responds.
Change is not just a logistical process—it's an emotional one. Change doesn't fail because the spreadsheet was wrong or we weren't technically capable. It fails because people aren't ready for the change or aren't willing to embrace it. Leaders spend so much time on spreadsheets and data and charts, making sure people understand the change. But that's not where the gap is. The gap is in helping people be a positive part of the process. Recognizing your own blind spots, recognizing how other people perceive you, meeting people where they are, making people feel seen and supported and safe—and then managing the enormous amount of stress and anxiety people are experiencing. All of those skills together create emotional aptitude.
One of the most powerful things you can do is start checking in with yourself. How are you showing up to your meeting, your living room, and your conversation? What mood are you bringing into the room and how is it impacting the people around you? Emotions are neurobiological and they're contagious. One spark of calm can take a whole room down a notch. But walk into a room as a leader anxious and stressed—that spreads like wildfire too. The first step is being aware of how you show up.
Then it's recognizing that we're all doing the best we can. One of Evan's therapists taught us something early on that changed the way I approach all my relationships. It's a simple saying: if they could do better, they would. We read into intent. Somebody snaps at us in a meeting, somebody doesn't send an email on time, and we tell ourselves a story—they don't care, they're not on board. When in reality, you have no idea what's going on under someone's roof.
I was on stages speaking for Google, Lockheed Martin, and the Department of Defense, and at home I couldn't get out of bed. I was overwhelmed. I had been physically, mentally, and emotionally abused. A lot of people have a lot going on. Your ability to empathize and recognize that is a huge part of emotional aptitude.
TONY: I've been in corporate for three decades and I'm no stranger to bosses flying off the handle. Back then we called it wigging out. You talked about the person being able to check in with themselves, to control themselves. But I don't think people that lose it see it coming. I don't think they're aware that it's an issue. And you talked about the boss coming into the room—if the boss is happy, everyone smiles; if the boss is sad or mad, everyone gets sad or mad. Like tuning forks—if you hit one, it resonates with all the others. How can people really control themselves? How does neuroscience fit into this?
ANNE: They're called blind spots. Everyone has parts of their personality or approach that other people see but they don't. They're not always glaring flaws—sometimes they're just good intentions getting lost in translation. You might think you're hilarious; someone else might see it as obnoxious. You might see yourself as shy; it comes across as aloof.
One of the first things you want to do is uncover those blind spots. Most of us ask for feedback, but when we get it, we're very quick to justify and defend. "Sometimes you come on a little strong." "No, it's just because I'm really passionate about this topic." Nobody wants to give feedback to someone who justifies and defends their behavior, so it becomes easy not to give it at all.
Here's a simple twist that makes you thirty-four percent more likely to get really actionable feedback—and it builds trust and improves the relationship. Ask for advice instead of feedback. "Can you give me one piece of advice for how to communicate better in our weekly meeting?" "Could you give me one piece of advice for how to lead you more effectively?" You don't have to follow the advice, but people feel valued when you ask, and you're more likely to get something accurate.
My grandmother used to say: if enough people tell you the same thing, there's probably some truth to it.
Regulating emotions is hard because most of us don't realize they're neurobiological—they happen in a split second. We make decisions emotionally and then support them logically. Your intellect gets you hired. Your ability to regulate yourself is what gets you promoted. And ninety percent of the time, high-performing leaders and business owners are very strong in their ability to regulate.
TONY: You mentioned you want to explain the difference between stress, worry, and anxiety and how we manage each. I'd love to hear that.
ANNE: One in three people will have an anxiety disorder within their lifetime—it's almost as common as owning a dog. And we use the terms loosely, but there are real differences.
Stress is the physical part. Worry is the cognitive part. Anxiety is the combination of both. And interestingly, most of our anxiety comes because we think it's bad and we try to avoid it. When we try not to feel something, we magnify it. Numbing or escaping only intensifies how you feel and how long you feel it. Recognizing it is far more powerful.
Stress is your body's physical response to pressure—often an artificially imposed deadline or somewhere you have to be. What we tend to do is try to think our way out of it. But you can't think your way out of a physical problem. You have to feel your way out. Pay attention to what your tongue is doing. Feel your shoulders. Splash cold water on your face. Hold an ice cube. Anything physical that interrupts the loop.
Worry is the cognitive side—an intrusive thought. You can't control the thought popping up, but you can control whether you dwell on it. Just because you have a thought doesn't mean you need to give it a microphone. Eighty percent of your thoughts are negative. Nearly all of them—ninety-five percent or more—are repetitive. We view our thoughts and feelings as facts, when in reality they're nothing more than electrical impulses and signals.
With worry, one approach is simply recognizing: do I want to keep having this thought? If not, distract yourself and move on. But even more effective is a worry window—a dedicated ten-minute window where you tell your brain it can worry about everything it wants to worry about, just not right after you wake up or right before bed. When the timer goes off, if the next worry comes, put it on a piece of paper—it's tomorrow's problem. You're training your brain that it's okay to think about these things, but you get to direct when you do it so it's not emotionally hijacking you throughout the day.
TONY: Very interesting. I've never even thought of this as an issue or a problem.
ANNE: Anne just introduced a concept I don't hear discussed nearly enough—emotional aptitude. We've spent years talking about emotional intelligence, but Anne takes it one step further. It's not simply understanding emotions—it's learning how to intentionally respond to them. And I think that's becoming one of the biggest competitive advantages in business today.
Artificial intelligence can analyze data, summarize reports, generate marketing ideas, and even help write code. But it still can't replace wisdom. It can't replace character. It can't replace empathy. And it certainly can't replace a leader who knows how to bring calm into a room when everyone else feels overwhelmed.
When markets become uncertain, when employees become anxious, when customers become nervous, people don't simply follow the smartest person in the room. They follow the leader who creates confidence.

SPONSOR BREAK – SHOPIFY
TONY: So many people listening right now have an idea for a business. Maybe you've been thinking about it for months or even years. The challenge isn't usually the idea—it's figuring out where to start. That's why I like Shopify. It gives you everything you need to launch from day one without having to piece together a bunch of different tools.
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That's why millions of businesses—from brand new startups to some of the biggest names in the world—trust Shopify to power their online stores. All you need is the idea. Shopify handles the rest. Start your free trial at Shopify.com/Tony. That's S-H-O-P-I-F-Y dot com slash T-O-N-Y.
And now back to Anne Grady. Before the break, Anne introduced the idea of emotional aptitude, why leaders influence the emotional climate of everyone around them, and why understanding stress, worry, and anxiety may be one of the most important leadership skills you can develop. Now let's build on that with the full EVOLVE framework.

INTERVIEW – PART 3 (THE EVOLVE FRAMEWORK: E FOR EMOTIONAL APTITUDE)
TONY: Is emotional aptitude the entire framework, or is there more? I want to make sure we go through all the points clearly.
ANNE: That's the E. Evolve is an acronym. So the E is Emotional Aptitude—which we've covered. Let's go through the rest.

INTERVIEW – PART 4 (V FOR VALUES: THE LENS FOR EVERY DECISION)
ANNE: The V is Values. This is so important for everyone—parents, leaders, business owners. What we tend to do is get stressed out over decisions and problems and expectations. Your values actually serve as a filter or a lens for all of that.
If you're working with a team—whether that's your family or your workplace—decide which values will guide your decisions and behavior. What are the top three to five things that will frame how you treat each other? That could be profitability, but it could also be integrity, respect, family, faith, health, growth, or achievement. Have everyone jot down their most important values, put them all on a whiteboard, and everybody votes on their top three. Those top values don't diminish the others—they just show what's most important collectively. Then define those values behaviorally. It's great to say you value integrity, but what does that actually look like at the end of a quarter when you're exhausted and don't know if you can make payroll?
I'll give you a personal example. My hardest decision was when Evan was fifteen—whether to send him two thousand miles away to live in Idaho at a therapeutic boarding school. On one hand, he wasn't getting better at home. He was getting worse. We weren't safe. He wasn't safe. On the other side, I felt like maybe if I were just a better mom, found a better doctor, a different medication, or were more consistent, he would be okay. I couldn't figure out what to do.
Values serve as a lens for that kind of decision. The question isn't just do I do X or Y—it's which value do I want guiding this choice, and which choice reflects it? In our case, the value was family. Which choice reflected that? Ultimately, getting Evan the help he needs no matter what it costs. In hindsight, that decision saved his life—and ours.
In business, I've been growth oriented and achievement oriented my entire career. A couple of summers ago I had double fusion back surgery. I was told I have degenerative disc disease and that walking could eventually become a problem. I wanted to know: which value do I want guiding how I build my business and my life right now? Instead of achievement, I chose alignment. I make decisions for my business that are in alignment with the life I want to live. I now live on a twenty-acre ranch with donkeys, cows, and peace—a way of life. My evolution was choosing alignment instead of achievement.
TONY: I like that a lot. And nature is so therapeutic. I live on a good-sized property as well. I think that environment with animals and trees—there's something to it.
ANNE: Nature is very therapeutic. And it all started because I did not want to go camping. I had no desire to sleep in a tent and squat next to a tree—none. But friends pressured me, and my husband said, "Come on, your friends want to spend your birthday with you." I had never just sat in nature for a full weekend without touching my phone. And I was kicking myself that it took me till my forties to figure out how healing that was.
Even if you're in a city environment, getting out for a quick walk, getting sunlight, and taking a few deep breaths is incredibly important. Just having greenery in your office helps. There's so much power in such simplicity. Even taking your shoes off and walking on the grass calms your entire nervous system. But we think we don't have time for it. Well, the reason you can't is the reason you should.

INTERVIEW – PART 5 (O FOR OPTIMIZATION: TIME, ENERGY & THE PHONE)
ANNE: We've become addicted to busyness, which is why the third pillar is how to optimize your time, energy, and attention. We're in a chronic state of busyness, almost to the point where we don't know what to do in the absence of it. When we feel an activity vacuum, we reach for our phone and swipe, tap, click, scroll social media, and check email. It's like having a small slot machine in your pocket—and it is quietly destroying our ability to regulate and focus.
Eighty percent of working adults check their phone within the first few minutes of waking up. It is the fastest way to hijack your emotional ability to regulate, your brain's ability to focus, your quality of decision-making, your ability to solve problems. Before you've even had your first sip of coffee, you've relinquished control and flooded your system with neurochemicals that make it almost impossible to think clearly, rationally, creatively, and innovatively.
If you want to change your life, don't sleep with your phone on your nightstand. Even if it's on Do Not Disturb, even if it's off—research shows it's still impacting you. Sleep with it in a different room. Go thirty minutes without it in the morning and right before bed. That small shift will make a huge difference.
TONY: Totally agree. I keep my phone literally at the other side of the house all the time. Even if it's on airplane mode, different apps still transmit. And just having it on the table when you're in a meeting makes you less regulated, less focused, and less engaged.
ANNE: Just having it face down next to you has an impact. I'm not suggesting you be device free—what I'm suggesting is that you pay attention to how much it drives your behavior out of habit. Recognizing that gives you power.
And if it's hard to do an hour without it—do a digital detox. No devices, no screens, no social, no news. Give yourself an hour a day without it and pay attention to how you feel after. If you're jonesing for it, that's just a sign your brain is craving those neurochemicals—the dopamine and serotonin and cortisol and adrenaline generated from this little five-inch piece of hardware with no pulse, that we give more time and attention than the people in our lives.
TONY: Strong. Just an hour a day. I absolutely recommend as much as you can because being away from it genuinely doesn't change your life negatively—it changes it positively.
ANNE: And email apnea is a real thing. You can see a name in your inbox and not read the message, but your brain still magnifies a threat response to it. If you've ever stopped breathing when you saw a certain name in your inbox, that's a jolt of cortisol and adrenaline. At night, it prevents deep sleep, creates more anxiety, and impacts your health. Even just glancing at the inbox is enough to trigger that neurochemical response that jacks up stress levels and destroys peace.

INTERVIEW – PART 6 (L FOR LEADERSHIP & V FOR VERSATILITY: LABELS & GROWTH MINDSET)
TONY: Let's move to the next letter.
ANNE: It's V for Versatility. But I want to mention L for Leadership first—bringing people along for the ride, influencing behavior by showing up deliberately. And then Versatility is the ability to shift behavior based on what the situation calls for.
I had an experience in fourth grade. I'd just moved to Corpus Christi, Texas from Connecticut. It was my first day and the coach announced we were playing dodgeball. I got pegged in the face, all the kids laughed, and my coach said in the most nurturing possible way, "Well, Anne, athletics just aren't your thing." Now I'm in my fifties. I've never joined a sports team because of that one piece of feedback.
Part of where we get stuck is that we wear labels. I'm a math person. I'm not musical. I'm not good at blank. Your identity is not static—it's changeable. And you get to decide what you want it to be.
Think of someone you admire, whether it's a leader, a coach, or someone at your church. Write down three behaviors they demonstrate about this admirable quality. If I want to be more laid back and I have a friend who is totally laid back, I think: what does she do? She says yes to everything unless it's dangerous. She says okay instead of arguing. She smiles a lot. If I want to be more laid back, I pick one of those behaviors and practice it. That builds your ability to be versatile—you're shifting the way you see yourself. Labels are really comfortable until they become a cage.
Viewing failure and discomfort as requirements for growth is critical to embracing change. If you feel uncomfortable and view that as bad, you try to avoid it, get anxious, and fall into a repetitive cycle. As a leader, one of the greatest gifts you can give your team is normalizing discomfort. Wisdom comes from experience. Experience comes from failure. Failure is the price of admission for growth. When people are safe to make mistakes, they actually make a whole lot fewer of them.




INTERVIEW – PART 7 (E FOR EMPOWERMENT: AGENCY & THE NURSING HOME STUDY)
ANNE: And then the last letter is E for Empowerment. It's based on a single belief: that you have agency—that your choices and your actions matter.
You can't control the cards you were dealt. You can't always control the situation you're in. But you can always control something—your choice. Taking a breath before responding. Sending one email. Taking a quick walk. A collection of your choices is what creates your life. So many of us give our power away either because we think we don't deserve better—shame—or because we think somebody else is keeping us from the life we want—blame. Blame and shame keep you stuck. They're both different sides of the same powerless coin.
They did an incredible study at a nursing home. Elderly residents were divided into two groups. One had all their decisions made for them. The other group got to make daily decisions—what activities they did, whether they wanted a houseplant. Three weeks after the study, the group that had some agency experienced greater happiness, were more alert, had better energy. But what blew me away was that eighteen months after the study, that group had half the mortality rate of the other. Feeling like we have some semblance of control in our life is key to navigating anything.
You can't control the situation, but you can control your next move. You can control what you choose to focus on. You can control the boundaries you set for other people and yourself. Those are the pillars. Together, they've helped me navigate some really hard times and really hard changes. It doesn't make it easy, but it makes it clear.
TONY: Wow. That is a lot to think with. And we can find the book and more information at AnneGradyGroup.com. This is work—but it's good work. It requires sitting, pondering, comparing how you're dealing or leading versus these pillars.
ANNE: And I would say—don't compare yourself with others. That's a hallmark of a fixed mindset. Compare yourself tomorrow with who you were today. Are you making progress? It doesn't matter what other people are doing.
Someone with a fixed mindset struggles because they're worried about being judged, they don't want to look stupid, they're looking at social media wondering why other people seem to have it together. Those feelings are natural, but they keep you in a state of victimhood. The growth mindset asks: why would I waste my energy comparing myself against other people when I could be a better version of me tomorrow than I was today? Am I trying to look good or am I trying to learn? Embracing discomfort is what allows you to get better, stronger, more resilient, and more adaptable.

INTERVIEW – PART 8 (GROWING FORWARD: ONE ACTION AT A TIME)
TONY: Let's put this all together. The world is changing. AI is changing everything. So many things are happening all at once. I think today people can get into overwhelming circumstances more than they did before. It seems like we have less control—or there's an attempt to give us less control—and that brings an overload. But you're shaking your head a little. What's your take?
ANNE: That's part of the problem. We keep telling people everything is so hard right now. This is not the Great Depression. We are not in twenty-twenty when trucks were rolling down the street holding dead bodies. We're not in a time of famine. Infant mortality rates are the lowest they've ever been in history. There is so much good happening right now.
But our lens is being filtered to focus on how hard everything is, and that belief is shaping our outcomes. I'm not suggesting there aren't real challenges with technology, politics, or the global economy—of course there are, there always have been. But these are no worse than some horrific periods throughout history, even if it feels that way.
I hear commencement speeches right now where speakers say, "You graduates are going out into the hardest time in history. You won't be able to afford a house." And I'm thinking—that's the reverse of a placebo effect. We're setting an expectation that things are hard, rather than getting people excited about the possibilities. You have no idea what the world will look like in five, twenty, or fifty years from now. If we focus all our energy on how scary it all is, we'll prime our brain to find exactly that. I'm not saying put rose-colored glasses on and pretend reality doesn't exist—but offset it by looking for what's right. There are a lot of those things. You can change the way your brain sees the world by what you choose to look for.
TONY: I completely agree. But the person who's feeling overwhelmed right now—what do they do? What's the best advice for that moment when the pressure comes?
ANNE: First, figure out if you're tired, hungry, or thirsty. A lot of our overwhelm comes from signals our body is sending us for those simple reasons. But if you're feeling stuck, overwhelmed, and everything feels like too much—take one action. Do one thing. Send one email. Take one deep breath. Choose one conversation. And when you've done that, choose another.
I asked my daughter once, "How do you eat an elephant?" Her response was, "Well, first you kill it and then you cook it." I thought that was a very wise answer. But it's one bite at a time. When life feels overwhelming, you can't do everything. But you can do the next thing. Take one action. That's it.

OUTRO
TONY: I like that a lot. Go out in nature, take a walk, and get a plant. One action at a time.
We covered a huge amount of ground today. We talked about the entire EVOLVE framework—Emotional Aptitude, Values, Optimization, Leadership, Versatility, and Empowerment. We talked about growing forward instead of bouncing back. Once again, this is Anne Grady, and you can find her and her book at AnneGradyGroup.com. Anne, I enjoyed this very much. It was therapeutic, and I really hope it helps a lot of people.
ANNE: Thank you so much for having me back, Tony.
TONY: Wow. That was good. I liked it.
And before we continue, I want to share something. What Anne has been talking about throughout this conversation keeps coming back to one simple idea—intentional choices. Whether it's putting your phone down, taking a walk, spending time in nature, or simply choosing how you respond instead of react, your future is shaped by the choices you make today.
The most successful entrepreneurs I've interviewed over the years aren't necessarily the busiest people—they're usually the clearest. They know exactly what they're trying to build, they know why it matters, and their decisions become easier because of it. Without clarity, it's easy to stay busy without making meaningful progress. That's one of the reasons I created the Vision Map Blueprint.
Most people have a dream. Few know how to make it happen. The Blueprint walks you through the first three foundational steps: define your vision—what are you truly trying to build? Discover your purpose—why does it matter enough to stay committed when life gets difficult? And create your long-term objective—what measurable result are you working toward over the next few years? Those questions sound simple, but most people never slow down long enough to answer them. Yet those answers influence nearly every decision you'll make.
Clarity creates momentum. Visit TonyDUrso.com/vision to download your free Vision Map Blueprint. That's Tony D-U-R-S-O dot com slash vision. Keep an eye on your inbox—I'll personally guide you through the next steps as you begin turning your vision into reality.
And thank you sincerely for being here. If today's conversation has encouraged you, please follow the show wherever you're listening. And if someone came to mind while listening, share this episode with them. One conversation, one idea, one insight can completely change the direction of someone's business or life.
Guys, if you liked this, share it with your friends. Tell them about Anne. Talk about having the odds against you—she's been through so much, yet she's done so much and become so successful despite the cards she was dealt. Please tell your friends. And wherever you're listening, follow the show. It helps to bring more amazing guests to you. All right. Let's use this and let's help you move on your journey to success. Thanks. Remember, just take action. Success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds. Sow good seeds, do good deeds. And I'll see you on the next episode.