Victoria Petrovsky: 0:06

Welcome to the startup of human potential. We're your co hosts.

Clifton Smith: 0:10

I'm Clifton

Victoria Petrovsky: 0:12

and I'm Victoria

Clifton Smith: 0:14

and together we are Faces of the Future. Faces of the Future is a startup studio with a personal development platform at the intersection of consciousness connection, innovation, and well being. We're excited to have you listen in on today's episode.

Victoria Petrovsky: 0:31

Yeah, and today we're joined by Sharí Alexander. She's an incredible communication strategist, speaker, and author. She specializes in helping industry experts, elevate their influence, and specializes in presence driven marketing. Her clients she's worked with come from diverse industries, everything including Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurs, high profile individuals. Her work has been featured in three best selling books. Along with media outlets including Entrepreneur, Reuters, and USA Today, and ultimately she helps industry experts become more persuasive in their professional interactions. We're so excited to have you here, Sharí. Welcome.

Shari Alexander: 1:11

Thank you. Thank you for the invitation and opportunity.

Clifton Smith: 1:16

Absolutely. And in short, your bio just says you're badass.

Shari Alexander: 1:24

You know, I tried going with that and it didn't quite communicate everything I was hoping for so I added a few more words, but thank you. I appreciate the compliment.

Victoria Petrovsky: 1:33

Yeah, definitely. So it's a privilege and honor to have you here, Sharí. And just out of curiosity, if you could catch our audience members up to how you came to be interested with Language and influence and marketing in general.

Shari Alexander: 1:50

Sure. So, I think it was one part necessity and one part curiosity. I, fortunately, I consider it fortunately, came across some Tony Robbins work when I was a teenager. And as most people know, Tony's work is based off of a lot of neurolinguistic programming teachings. So then I fell down that rabbit hole for a number of years and was just fascinated by essentially the end conclusion is language is our interface code that we use with one another. It's arguably a uniquely human trait while of course other animals do communicate, doesn't seem like they have language as we know it and how we use it. Once you gain some sort of mastery over language, although I personally don't believe you'll ever get mastery over it, but it is a continuous practice just like a yoga practice or meditation practice. There is no finish line. There is no trophy, but life gets better when you keep doing it. And so when you focus on your language, it's not only does it help you connect better with others, have others. understand you more often, so then you feel heard, you feel seen, that's all wonderful. But in return, you understand others, they feel seen, they feel heard, which is wonderful. And cherry on top, If you can start to communicate with yourself and use this interface to better put labels to experiences or emotions or difficult concepts. If you can put something tangible in the form of letters and words, magic starts to happen. This is what we are given in our current, corporeal brains. And so let's use it to the best of our ability. And yet, because it's a skill that we all have had since arguably the age of two, we take it for granted. We have so many grooves that we have dug in and pathways and autopilot and habits. And so it does take a lot to bring a different type of awareness to one's language. And you are developing different types of habits when you're contemplating how to use it more intentionally and consciously and what does that mean and what does that look like? And it's, it's just fascinating all around. So that was the curiosity. The necessity was quite honestly I did not grow up in a I didn't grow up with a lot of means and so I had to figure out ways to essentially negotiate to get things that I wanted to do or achieve because I could not compensate monetarily. And so I had to figure out, well, what's important to this person? What are they wanting to accomplish? How can I do that? How can I communicate that? When pretty much most means are taken away, even relationships or resources, if you have some gift of gab, you can maintain, you can retain those things, you can get those things back. So I just think it's a very powerful tool that we overlook. And I consider myself very fortunate to be a conduit for bringing awareness to it for the folks I work with.

Victoria Petrovsky: 5:28

Amazing. Wow. So much in, in what you just said. First of all, when you're describing language, I was also hearing that astuteness for emotional intelligence, for how to use it, how to read the person, understand what's important to them, that can help both People come to some sort of win win and then when you're sharing about About not growing up with a lot of means and having to rely on the gift of gab like whoa What a huge life skill set to cultivate at a time of necessity at a younger age. That's really helping you create more influence in the world and something that Clifton and I talk about a lot is that abundance isn't just money It's also opportunities which get unlocked networking is a huge form of abundance and through language That's one way of making that happen for you, you know outside of financial means

Shari Alexander: 6:21

yeah, there's so many tricky words in our In our entrepreneurial journeys are success driven journeys. What does success mean to you? What does it look like to you? What is abundance? What is one that kind of gets to me is satisfied. I hear a lot of, hustle entrepreneurs talk about, I'm never satisfied. And I'm like, bro, that's a terrible way to exist. To never experience satisfaction to never feel contentment. Oh my gosh. Those are beautifully peaceful feelings that you're denying yourself because you think, oh, if I have that. then that will negate or stall or stop these other things that I'm reaching for. And so there's some tricky words that, especially in an entrepreneurial journey or any leadership journey, kind of need some unraveling and rebuilding. Depending on the person and situation.

Clifton Smith: 7:22

Wow. I love that. And you also presence the self talk, right? Communication that we say to ourselves. Cause we listen to that more than probably anything else out there. And so what are some of the most powerful lessons you've learned along your way around presencing this self talk and how you've been able to influence someone's self talk?

Shari Alexander: 7:46

Dude, self influence is just so fascinating and it comes in all different forms, therapy coaching, reading, journaling for me, journaling and morning pages practices was just eye opening. Once I stayed consistent with, for those who aren't familiar, morning pages was coined by Julia Cameron. I'm pretty sure Julia is the right first name, pretty sure. But the artist's way. And it's where you do stream of consciousness writing in the mornings, the pen does not stop, the keyboard doesn't stop typing. You just type whatever and let whatever comes to you flow out. And usually the first seven minutes are awkward and terrible and cringy. And then all of a sudden, just something comes through you and aha moments reveal themselves because you're interfacing with. with language in a much more tangible way. You're actually seeing and hearing the, that inner voice. And one small tweak to what you said, Clifton, just cause I'm going to be that person right now. But you said we listen to ourself talk more than anything. And I'd argue we hear it more than anything. We rarely listen to it because when we listen to it, then that means you're actually being present. To hear those words and okay, what does that mean? And you're critically thinking about it. And so yeah, the self influence is a never ending journey. But one of the beautiful things I think comes from it is whenever you do, and I'll use the kind of common phrase these days, but whenever you do the work, air quotes, the work hopefully in your journey, You discover a lot more compassion for yourself. You see a lot more shades of yourself. And through that, you have much more compassion to others and see the different shades of others as well. And to me, I think that's. That's ultimately where I hope we land as a species someday is we're all in this together. And sometimes we're not even at the moment, sometimes we're not even in it together with ourselves. We're fighting ourselves and it's tough. It's tricky. It's the human condition.

Victoria Petrovsky: 10:10

Yeah, it's hard to be in it with other people if you're not even in it with yourself.

Shari Alexander: 10:14

Yeah, it's not a fun ride.

Victoria Petrovsky: 10:19

Yeah, and what you said earlier about being a conduit for language, that morning pages stream of consciousness flow really just sounds like it helps the language flow through to you easily.

Shari Alexander: 10:32

Yeah. It doesn't feel easy, right? It's still work. Yeah. You still gotta show up and risk sounding like an idiot to yourself for a while. Sometimes it's the whole entry, you're just like, well, that was pointless. But the point is to show up and then to reflect and then just clarity comes from that process. When you're putting those words on paper or on the computer. They stay there versus when you're not, when you don't give yourself that conduit, that direction, that focus, those things are just bouncing around. They're just bouncing from one part of your skull to the other. And until you give it an outlet, they will continue to. And then they can't change. They can't morph which means you're not changing and you find yourself in those patterns.

Victoria Petrovsky: 11:21

Cool. Yeah, it's like a Alchemizing thoughts into words putting them down onto your page freeing up kind of mental RAM. Yeah headspace

Shari Alexander: 11:32

Taking out the trash every morning. Take out the trash. That's exactly what it is yeah, cool, and there's been I wish I could think of like specifics here of literature, but Many philosophers have discussed that giving a name to something means you have power over it. Your parents give you a name. There is inherent power in that. When you give a name to a feeling or experience that is, Difficult for you. You then claim power to it. It's the most common one is Harry Potter, right? The those that are afraid to say Voldemort. Yeah, well, he has power over you. But when you say the name you claim a bit more power. And you can call things whatever you need or want. Like for me I struggled with the term success for a while because what everybody else was saying success looked like wasn't necessarily what I aspired for. So what do I want to be successful or do I want to be something else? Or, and so you kind of play with your own words. And I know that that's something that you guys do as well as you're claiming. Different types of language and hoping that it sinks into society and that's what we got to do is things that were that are okay to say today may not be okay to say tomorrow, just as things that used to be okay to say 50 years ago aren't really okay to say now like it changes and that's okay that's what we do.

Victoria Petrovsky: 12:59

Yeah, yeah, what you're describing, Clifton and I call your total life of joy, what somebody's total life of joy or definition of success is, is different from person to person. So we really want to, especially when we first start working with clients, define what that is for you. Use words, naming, language, put some constructs around it, and then understand how it makes you feel that version of success versus somebody else's kind of societal programming version of success.

Shari Alexander: 13:28

Yeah. And it's a funny thing that we do. Negativity bias is such a tricky thing for people to really recognize within themselves. I speak on stages and I have to hit this one head on is I explained to them that you are wired to look for threats. That is what has kept you alive. That's what's kept your ancestors alive to look for threats. Therefore, your brain is wired to think about, ruminate about, be aware of, send feelers out for threats, the things you don't want. And it's fascinating that no matter how intelligent you are, no matter how successful you are, Chances are when you're sitting down with me in a first coaching session, I assume it's the same with you guys and you ask them the simple question, what do you want? And they reply with, well, I'm tired of dealing with such and such, and I really sick of blah, blah, blah. And I really don't want to deal with this anymore. It's like, it's not what I asked. And so it is a process for anybody to come up with the language to say, what do I want? Because inherently, not only is that. Not the negative thing that you're wired to look for, but it's a double whammy because now you're vulnerable. Now you have to own up to a thing that you wish for. Yeah. And run the risk that you may not get it. You may not achieve it. So now it's extra scary just to say what you want. I mean, in relationships, right? How difficult is it to make a request to a partner? I wish that you would I would like if you, like, oh. No, I'd rather tell you to stop doing a thing, because that's safer for me. Would you please stop? Like, that's so much safer for me. It's not safer for you, but it's safer for me to say, would you please stop? Then, I really wish or I need something from you. That's so much more vulnerable.

Victoria Petrovsky: 15:40

Yeah. I completely agree. Everything you said just Resonates with me Sharí. It's like yeah, I don't want this or this to happen xyz or I grew up with this And it's all the old story And it's like that part of your brain the reticular activating system That looks for evidence of threats of survival instincts coming into play. So what we do is we help people retrain that reticular activating system to look for their ideal version of success, their total life of joy, and see how it shows up in their reality over and over again. And it's such a tool. It like takes time. It's a toolkit. It's a practice, like you said, never ending, just like meditation, just like yoga. And yeah,

Clifton Smith: 16:24

it's actually an addiction. It's a chemical addiction because when you share these stories your body's producing the same chemicals. Even if you say you don't want it, you're still running the story and visualizing it as it's actually happening. Yeah, so now we're talking about the addiction to certain emotions and you know that can lead to actual organ issues and whatnot. But ultimately, you know what you're doing when you're reprogramming yourself is you're cleansing yourself of certain addictions. And it's fascinating to see and that's why our transformational work takes time because you're repatterning yourself, you're breaking addictions, you're creating new ones. Yeah. And so I really love how you talk about the ownership, once you're able to name it, you're able to control it. And from a quantum perspective, you're observing it, so you're changing it from a wave function into a particle. You're actually bringing it into this dimension that you can work on, and when we went through a lot of our consciousness training through the Vedic sciences. It just seemed like a vocabulary lesson because they had different terminologies for nuances of human behavior, human interactions. And so that's why the opportunity to claim certain terminology is so powerful. And Sharí, I know you've had. Your own experience and your own success, claiming ownership over certain terms and terminology. I would love to, to hear some of those terms that you've coined and really taken ownership of.

Shari Alexander: 17:56

Sure. I assume you're talking about the influential vibes. Is that the word? The vibes, the presence based marketing.

Clifton Smith: 18:01

Marketing. We started using that and everyone is resonating with that. And I think, it just goes towards the topic of you just have a really strong pulse of where we are as a culture, as a society, and would love to just open up that can of worms and explore.

Shari Alexander: 18:20

Yeah, sure. So real quick, before I jump into that, I want to give your listeners a really easy, simple tool that they can do use when they catch themselves saying'don't wants' versus'do wants' so simple and easy, but it's a quick exercise that forces you to Consider the alternatives. And whenever you find yourself saying the don't wants, write them down. What do you not want to experience? Just go to town, have fun, write all the frustrations, all the hates, all the things. And then, that's one column. And then on the other side of the column, write just the opposite. What is the opposite of this? And... Just that little that little question because we understand juxtaposition really well. We understand opposites really well and Then you're taking away the feeling of it of'well, what do you want?' It's not hitting it directly on like that question does instead. It's a side door to it of like, okay well, what's the opposite of that and now It's a cerebral answer, but we're getting to the heart of the matter. So I just wanted to share that super simple tool that's deceptively simple, but very powerful. Yeah thanks for thanks.

Victoria Petrovsky: 19:34

I just want to pause because I love that because some people like when you hit the nail on the head and you're like, just blunt and go into it's like, Whoa, I feel exposed. Like you said. Yeah. Communicating from the heart, but, like you get to the heart of the matter, but you use the intellectual approach because a lot of the people we work with are more on the intellectual side and we help them tune into that inner voice to that heart intelligence. So I really love that exercise and thank you for gifting it to us in our audience.

Shari Alexander: 20:04

Yeah. Yeah. So terms that I have laid claim to, thanks for putting it that way. Sorry if there's this, apparently I got a fly in the office folks. I apologize for all listeners, but he's wanting to be in the show today.

Victoria Petrovsky: 20:16

If I could be a fly on the wall in this conversation.

Shari Alexander: 20:19

Literally. Yeah. He got reincarnated and he's like, I need to learn this for my next life. Yes. Okay. So yeah, I'd say, so the recent term that this is my kind of post COVID laying claim to something, putting a stake in a ground of like this, this is the thing that I do. This is my jam. This is, these are my gifts. And I struggled for a while in describing my services because when you talk about, oh, I specialize in communication strategy, well, that can look a lot of different ways. That can be sales, that can be marketing, that can be copywriting, that can be leadership. And truth be told, I do and have done all of those things. But as you guys know, that's a terrible marketing strategy to be like, I do everything that's not helping you. So. My once I did an analysis of my clients over the years and weighted my favorite clients over the years, an interesting thing revealed itself and all of my clients start off with speaking, meaning they seek stages, they seek platforms for them to speak on, to speak at in order to build their brand, to have some brand building. It's a form of their marketing. It's an arm of their sales processes. There's a bunch of different ways that they can look at it. But my like ideal clients, they're not, Speaking as their business, meaning they're not wanting to be paid professional speakers who speak in order to get another paid gig in order to get another paid gig. That's not their strategy. Their strategy is to get on the right stages on the right platforms in front of the right audiences. Give them value. communicate something that is actionable, tangible, valuable to the audience. And then because that message is so magnetic to the ideal client, then relationships start to happen that after they speak, people start to reach out and they're able to call it networking, relationship building, whatever you like, magic starts to happen. And I just found it interesting that all of my, longstanding and quite frankly, my favorite clients had this branch in their marketing and sales strategy, whether it was speaking at associations, speaking at conferences, speaking at in different companies, hosting workshops, webinars. Podcasts also count. Yeah. I was trying to figure out, well, what do I call this? It's not event marketing because when you say that people think, Oh, you're promoting an event. You're looking for sponsors to pay for your event and you're trying to get butts in seats. So that didn't work. And it took me a number of months and then it just hit me. It was like, Oh, it's presence driven marketing. You are choosing to be present. And show up and give your literal voice to your audience members, not ones and zeros of code on social platforms. And we can get into, to that part of things, but that's my little corner of the world is those who seek to maximize opportunities and learn how to scale presence driven approaches. And so that encompasses. events that encompasses virtual meetings, and of course, sales leadership, all the things. And there's some interesting kind of myths out there when it comes to presence driven marketing, because online, on your feed every day, all of those gurus are saying how scalable online strategies are, and you gotta do online marketing, and Some of my most successful clients have like little to no online presence. They have, you got, you have a different gift. You have something that. You can maximize that the folks sitting behind their computers with the ones and zeros don't have that they don't even have an inkling of that. And that's okay. They're rocking their thing. They have a different modality of communicating. But for those of us that can work magic through human connection, we are inundated with a message. That Oh, you got to do the algorithmic approach. You got to please the algorithms. You got to do online, online, online. And it's for whatever reason, I don't entirely understand it, but we fall into thinking, Oh, I got to do that. And oftentimes it's at a sacrifice. of the gifts that you actually have because you're buying into a narrative that, oh, my presence driven approaches are not scalable. That's not true. But people just don't know it and they don't see it because it's not in their feed because the presence driven folks are out in the real world having real conversations with people that you're not seeing at all, but it doesn't mean it's not happening. And so there's some education that kind of. I hope to share with the world. Yeah, I love that you mentioned podcasts in there. Because, I'd like to think that podcasts kind of flow more naturally for myself and for Clifton. It almost is like a simulation of us doing a session with a client. Yeah. Like on Zoom. It's the same kind of thing. We're recording it this time and we're letting more people into the conversation to connect with us, with our words, with our presence. Yeah. Absolutely. And it's, and thanks to technology, that is a scalable pathway for you to leverage your presence. And the beautiful thing about podcasts and so many other formats is it can look a lot of different ways. It's just, what are you comfortable with? What risks are you willing to take? Because sometimes people, we've all done it, right? And we start something new and we google and look up like what is the best format for blah, blah, blah. How do I optimize? And next thing you know, we're all, we're all in the same boxes, but it's the people that. maybe understand the box, but then break out of the box that now we're ultimately elevating the art form. We're evolving the art form. So that's another thing, especially when it comes to events and stuff is just a lot of my clients are brainwashed by their industry of what a presentation should look like what a podcast should look like, and it's not like we gotta blow the walls off the thing, but we can make just a few little tweaks to make it not look like everybody else, to make you look more like you, and that's the fun part.

Victoria Petrovsky: 27:12

Yeah, I love what you said, and I'm curious, how else would you scale presence in what you can share with our audience?

Shari Alexander: 27:21

Yeah first of all, If you're doing live events, that is, that's an investment, that's an investment both monetarily and it's a big investment time and energy wise. So you have to start with the right audiences. You have to choose the right platforms and create a program that speaks and resonates with them. I think where a lot of people feel like. When they try to go speak at associations or different local organizations if they're just starting out they don't get the traction that they're seeking and they don't quite realize, well, that's not the right audience. That's not the right fit. And that is more of a risk than, throwing something up against the wall social media wise. It's perhaps less time, but people also spend years and years and years and years and years of doing that stuff and don't get the results. So you tell me which one's a waste of time. I don't know. So you want to start with the right audience, then ideally you have a setup where you're recording that you get the direct audio. It's a little techie, but you want to get some direct audio. You can get it from the meeting planner directly. You want to have a video set up these days. Your phones are great. Your friends phones are great. There's cheap options out there. And then all you have to do is hand it over to an outsourced person or teammate and say, slice and dice and make a thing. And now that's scalable. And that was you being in your awesomeness and now you get to repurpose it. So that's great. Much less time on your part than creating content every hour on the hour. And then other routes are have a good CRM folks have a good CRM and plan for your CRM like put in the same amount of effort of how many people are you wanting to touch base with on a regular basis, who are your a contacts, your B contacts, your C contacts, how often are you updating that? So many of my clients get a good amount of work through referrals, but they never asked themselves. How do we turn this to 11? How do we dial this up? How can we be more intentional about this? They keep looking for a new well when they haven't done, they haven't dug nearly as much as they can on their current well, and they don't have processes in place to ask for referrals. They've just gotten fortunate that the referrals come in, but. How can you be more intentional with that? So that's another route that they're just like, Oh my gosh, I had no idea. I'm like, yeah, because you were distracted by the shiny things. And I get it. Me too. We've all done it. So that's another one. Obviously webinars and podcasts are great. They got scalable factors more and more these days with shorts being so popular. Mailer campaigns, folks. Well, that's not so much presence driven, is it? To me, it's like an in between. It just feels more tangible than an email, right? So, I kind of have a soft spot in my heart for direct mail campaigns, because they tie in well with events. If you send a mailer before an event, people remember you, they've, oh, and it's, if some, especially if it's something kind of interesting and tangible, not just a letter with like, hey, I look forward to seeing you there. No, like, but, Put a little creativity and effort to it. Now you've started building rapport before you even showed up. So yeah, so those are some beginner's notes.

Victoria Petrovsky: 30:50

Yeah, love those notes. And from what you said for the presents pieces, like your gift is to be present. And then there's other teammates that can step in whose strong suit is doing the social media things, the ones and zeros, more like the algorithm, the trends and what's the new box that people are fitting in.

Shari Alexander: 31:10

Yeah. And for those that are for those that have a business that they're further along, they got a good team of full time employees. That's when I step in and start to. teach and coach the team members of. So a lot of successful businesses get to where they are because the founder or CEO is naturally charismatic and articulate. And so they've been rocking and rolling events and showing up and they've been the mouthpiece for a while, but they're at a point where they don't want to do that anymore. And they know they need to let go of those reins. So now it's a different type of process of. Okay. How do we coach and train your sales team, your team members to be copies of you in a way to where they're dialed into the message, but they are still authentically themselves. They're not trying to do an imitation of you because that's never going to work. So then it's a different way of scaling presence is you empower your team. to deliver that message. You empower your team to be present and share that message. And so that's kind of like the next levels.

Victoria Petrovsky: 32:25

I know who I'm going to be forwarding this podcast to, I have a few clients in mind. I'm not going to name any names.

Clifton Smith: 32:34

Wow, that's incredible, Sharí, and just maybe for a second, can we brag about you, these words that you share, that you're not just, some modern day TikToker, like you've been in this industry for years. How did you maybe just help our audience, understand the depth of research and experience you've had in this space?

Shari Alexander: 32:55

Oh, yeah. I've fallen down so many rabbit holes. Like I mentioned before, started off with a fascination of NLP, then went and did a number of classes and certifications on body language, because anytime you say you're a communication coach, for whatever reason, the next thing people say is like, oh, like body language and stuff? Yeah. It's like, I get it. I get it there because there's that famous. Although pseudo statistic of X percentage of what you say is tone and body language and only this seven or three percent is your words. There's a little bit of truth to that, but it's also not a super solid stat. And so anyway I guess the chronology of it is as the story goes shortly after I graduated college, I walked out of that university with a theater degree and instantly felt unemployable. I was like, what did I just do? Why did I make this decision? Because I I had a trip to New York where I had an aha moment of like, I don't think I really want to do this. Like just the reality of that life didn't hit me until basically a month before graduation. So that was existential crisis number one and was trying to figure out what I was going to do was job hunting, hoping to find something ended up landing a PR gig for a national nonprofit. And within the first six weeks of being on the job, I landed them the largest client that they had seen in over five years. And it was a client that they told me not to go after. It was Lowe's Home Improvement Stores. They said, no, we've tried them. Don't worry about it. And For whatever is inside of me that I was like, don't tell me not to do something.

Victoria Petrovsky: 34:47

I'll do the opposite juxtaposition.

Shari Alexander: 34:50

Watch me. And so I landed this deal and that created this buzz in my office nationally in different regions of Oh, if you need help with your presentations, go to Sharí. She's got that dialed in because she's a theater major. And so lo and behold,

Clifton Smith: 35:09

One second, Sharí How is it that those two connect? How do you have your presentation dialed in as a theater major?

Shari Alexander: 35:16

Well, right. Yeah. It's certainly, I'm sure there's plenty of theater majors who can't do a pitch, right? For whatever reason, I just had skills and probably read a bunch of nerdy books and that, but that's how they framed it was, oh, because she's a theater girl. And because she landed this deal, go talk to her. And,

Clifton Smith: 35:36

So maybe you have a mastery over theater and presentation is kind of like a theater.

Victoria Petrovsky: 35:43

Charisma.

Clifton Smith: 35:44

Charisma.

Shari Alexander: 35:45

It's all the things. It's all the things. It's storytelling. It's presence. Yeah. It's beginning, middle, and end. It's character. It's hero's journey. It's when you're pitching, you're making either your investor or your end user a hero of some kind. Like all of this stuff I took for granted just because I was reading nerdy books that interested me. And I just thought everybody knew this stuff. I would say of all the classes. That made the biggest impact for me in my life. It was voice and movement one. So when you're an actor, if you're a classically trained that they start you off, not with scripts, not with productions, anything like that. They start you off with your body. There's a famous anecdote out there that on stage a man was, was on stage in, in a scene and he had all this tension from the scene and he was holding a glass and he didn't realize how much tension he had in his body and he shattered the glass because he was in character. Well, you as an actor need to have, you need to You need to be in the moment, but you also need to have command over your own body because you can't shatter a glass in your hand every night. That's dangerous and dumb. And so when you're classically trained, they teach you relaxation. They teach you how to use your voice. Because there's a lot of bad habits that we have with our voice, whether things like voice creep, which is, Yes, enunciation, so that way people in the back hear what you're saying but as Americans especially and females will have like voice creak. So they'll talk in it and it's like, oh, oh yeah, okay, that, that's a lack of breath. That is, your vocal cords aren't getting enough fuel of breath. Also bad posture can really mess with your voice. And when you're an actor, your voice is a big part of your instrument. So that class like tuned me into my body more than anything else ever before. And. And when you're in that class, especially nowadays, people are familiar with this concept with the book. The body keeps the score, but when you start to relax parts of your body and put your body in different postures, all of a sudden you have emotions that you didn't expect. And you explore these things as an actor. So, yeah. Anyway I'm in

Clifton Smith: 38:19

That's beautiful. Not just anyway. Sharí. It's a whole slew of knowledge. And sometimes we find that when it's someone's natural expression of who they are, or whether they were trained in a major that not necessarily relates to their career directly, that there is a lot of wisdom that, that might not be recognized, but going to an Ivy league business school, one of the best things that ever happened to me was taking improv comedy. That, that was the single most powerful thing I did in business school. And I could see it not just transform myself, but all of my classmates because it was such a unique skill and different way of viewing things. Yeah. So I just want to shout out to your performing arts degree that there's potency in the business world for all of that.

Shari Alexander: 39:11

Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Finish the thought. No, I was just going to say it's fascinating how we, this is a little bit of a tangent thought, but when I've had recently is we call certain things soft skills and because we call them soft skills, there's. Inherently diminishing value placed on that or diminished value placed on that. And it's like, but when you understand the quote unquote soft skills, then you start to understand the human condition. Then you understand why humans behave that they do the ways that they do. Then you understand why we choose the leaders that we do, why we follow the people that we do. Then you understand why certain people get in power the way that they do. It's just, is it really that soft? It feels pretty, feels pretty important.

Victoria Petrovsky: 40:07

It's just subtle maybe. And it speaks to our subconscious and we don't even know that we're influenced by it. There's something you said a little while earlier that I'm Pondering still. So you mentioned that the statistic for Visual and body language isn't that strong and then we just went on this caveat talking about like theatrical performance and posture and like holding tension in your body and you know with the trend in social media and even podcasts going more to video You know, because if it's just audio, people can just listen on Spotify or whatever, but people want to see the video. They want to see the emoting. They want to see a lot of the nonverbal exchanges that are happening. Like Sharí is nodding her head. I'm nodding my head.

Shari Alexander: 40:53

Yeah. And so to be clear, it's, that's just one of those examples of some of the common stats that gets thrown around that people don't necessarily know. The background of or have all the information. I mean, it's common. Any field has this, right? Another one that I have to bring awareness to for folks is the power postures that was popularized by Amy Cuddy and her Ted talk, which I, when that came out, I was like, this is amazing. So. Yeah. The general thesis there was when you take on a power posture, like you stand like Wonder Woman or Superman or something for a certain time and you have great posture, supposedly that was supposed to change your neurochemistry. There's supposed to be, I think like your testosterone is supposed to go up a little bit or serotonin was doing something. I can't remember all the specifics. And it was super, it was like the most popular TED talk at the time for like three years running or something. Well, lo and behold nobody can recreate those experiments. So it's not very scientific because science is, you are able to replicate the thing. And also one of the co creators of that study was like, yeah, it turns out, I'm not putting my name on this moving forward kind of a thing. So all I, all that's to say there's a lot of anchor stats and things that people will hold on to and believe. And that's can be fine. Placebo effect is a real freaking deal for sure. But the, when people say oh, we take in 70 percent as body language or whatever. It's like, yeah, that's kind of not what that stat was saying, but there are some things that we do know is we are able to. So first of all, lie detection is very common, commonly asked, and I went down the lie detection rabbit hole and basically discovered, oh yeah, oh, it's fascinating. But the end conclusion is, it's a coin toss. Like even the best interrogators in the world like sometimes they would hit a, it's like 60 percent accuracy, which isn't all that super great. It was basically a coin toss. But we do, we are able to detect lies a smidge better when we're only listening to the audio with video. And nowadays there are some things that we can do when you speed up video, you start to notice. Micro expressions or tells or whatever you want to call them. So if you have a bunch of tools, you can dial in that lie detection if you are able to review recordings and stuff. But obviously the average person doesn't have access to that. And I work with the average people. So it just wasn't It wasn't a corner that I was wanting to pursue, but got a lot of knowledge for sure around it.

Victoria Petrovsky: 43:52

Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So the postures that you're speaking of, that's to exude more of a false sense of confidence while you're, the power poses.

Shari Alexander: 44:02

Yeah. So basically the claims that were made. Are not able to be replicated, but that's not to say like most of us are sitting in chairs most days. And we're hunched over. And so our breathing is already constricted and limited because our diaphragms aren't able to move more freely. And then that affects your voice. And so for sure, like Taking on a power pose ultimately is like a breath pose, right? Because now you're oxygenating your body much better. So, all of these things have overlaps and and all of them are tools, right? Just because it's This tool doesn't work for this situation doesn't mean that the tool is bad. Just means you're using the wrong tool.

Victoria Petrovsky: 44:48

Mm hmm Yeah one of the first things Tony Robbins has you do is get up and move your body get your state up do The ego skew or dance or

Shari Alexander: 44:56

well, he does a lot He does a lot with audio cues and sound he does a lot with lighting that a lot of people don't really notice He knows the whole smorgasbord of options and uses them. This man has been doing it for decades and if anything, like when I went to my first Tony Robbins event, I just felt like I was watching, essentially brainwashing in motion, but in a fascinating kind of way. Right? Yeah. Oh, okay. This is, this is how it's done. Gotcha.

Victoria Petrovsky: 45:26

Yeah, I feel you on that. I can feel when people are using NLP, like Dr. Joe Dispenza uses it a lot as well. And I'm like, I'm being programmed, but I'm opting in because this is for my highest good. And this aligns with my intention.

Shari Alexander: 45:39

Yeah. And I like that opting in because ultimately when you're wanting to be influential that's the goal is to get others to opt in. You're not trying to force a perspective on others. You're trying to invite others. And when they opt in. Through their own free will then that's just so much more powerful than coercion or manipulation or any of those others.

Victoria Petrovsky: 46:08

There's another piece about body language that I'm still curious about. It's like the kind of the embodiment of the words that you're expressing as you're saying them because if you're speaking something but you yourself hasn't fully embodied it or it hasn't really landed that you even believe with conviction what you're saying. Do you know what I mean?

Shari Alexander: 46:26

Yeah.Yeah. That's an interesting one because so that there's plenty of acting techniques and acting games that we'll play. And so that's one of them is how do you in present, how do you embody joy. How do you embody anger? How do you embody, name a thing? And it all looks goofy and silly, but lo and behold, you're doing something pretty powerful for yourself. And so that's a true. So if I were coaching somebody that I feel like the words that they're saying, they're not embodying, then it's a little bit of investigation process that I go through to figure out what's going on. So do we just have the wrong message? And sometimes the message that they're sharing is the safe message and what they're really wanting to say is behind that. And it's my job to empower them and give them the confidence to say the message that they're, that they actually want to show up and say. And do so, this is the game that I'm in, and do so in a way that gets them more business.. Right, like at the end of the day that's what I'm hired for, is how do we communicate a message that brings in more business? That's a fun puzzle for me to solve. While also making sure that the person delivering that message is authentic and aligned and empowered and all of that good stuff.

Victoria Petrovsky: 47:58

And confident too, I'm hearing.

Shari Alexander: 48:00

Yeah, yeah. And in their own way, I was recently approached by a company for me to coach their sales team and some of their leadership and they opened up by saying that, and I'm not going to name this company, but they said, yeah, we tried XYZ company a few years ago and it damn near broke everybody. And I said, what do you mean? And they said, this program taught just such old fashioned approaches. To speaking, they taught the, the steepling your, your hands and they taught that you're supposed to gesture this way and stand this way and your cadence should be this way. And yeah, when you're trying to smush somebody into a mold that they don't fit in, of course, that's going to be unpleasant. It's a very old school way of thinking about this. Nowadays, and this is one of the many gifts of the internet, but nowadays we see so much quote unquote live real world people. We see, we know what authenticity looks like for the most part. We're more easily able to spot it than falsehoods and false presence and like putting on airs. And the beautiful thing about that is it has expanded. the spectrum of what persuasive communication can look like. You can't tell me that Elon Musk is a good public speaker. He's not classically speaking. And yet, clearly he is an influential person. Clearly he has his own skill sets that he's able to utilize. And a lot of stuff is working in his favor, sure. But as a coach, One, I'm looking for, is there a message behind the message that we're really wanting to share? And then the second is, are you trying to be a version of a speaker that you think you should be? And then I break down those beliefs and let them I give them tools and allow them, give them permission in a way to be more themselves on stage because your idiosyncrasies and your quirks, trying to hide those is going to feel really awkward to you in the audience, but leaning into those. And amplifying a few consciously and intentionally, that's, that's kind of the definition of charisma is somebody being themselves their real selves, because that's intriguing. That's interesting. We don't get to see that too often. Yeah. So that's another thing when I see that misalignment The question is are you trying to be something else right now because you don't gotta.

Victoria Petrovsky: 50:53

And how do you see the misalignment or how do you find that message behind the message? Is it an intuitive gift? It's your years of experience? All of the above?

Shari Alexander: 51:03

Yeah, you could say that. I do my best to break things into components so that way I'm telling my brain what to look for so I remember my checklist of things. It is tone of voice. In the lie detection world, one of the best universal kind of aha tools is the concept of norming. So you want to norm the person that you're trying to suss out if they're telling the truth or not. So norming means what is their baseline as a, when they're telling the truth in their everyday life, what does that look like? And then when you're doing lie detection, you're looking for variations of that or something gets a little enhanced or drops down or you're looking for variations. So in a similar way, that's what I do with my clients is when I sense a tone that goes slower, deeper, darker. I get curious when I hear excitement and I physically see them lean in and the speed picks up a little bit, then I know something's, clicking for them or it's making them nervous or, again, it, it requires more investigation. But that's what I'm looking for is the variations of when they talk about this, they seem really happy and fine, but when they talk about this, it goes into a different. Yeah. Space, heart space, body space, any of those and then we just kind of have a chat about it.

Victoria Petrovsky: 52:36

Yeah. So cool. Clifton

Clifton Smith: 52:39

and I just want a presence with your level of training. You don't just have a chat about it. You have a sophisticated way of exploring it. That might seem organic. And help maybe bring the vulnerability and authenticity up, but there, there's some deep work that you're doing with them. And I myself have experienced Sharí's magic of helping me get behind the message that I was trying to present so I can speak from experience. And really what I'd love to say as we shift to the final part of our podcast is that Sharí's journey has been one. That has led her to this moment of presence of presence based marketing of all the components of posture of tonality of cadence of presence, all the things that you could define and break down into what does it mean to be present, had an exploration and deep dives into all with the game as you call of how does it bring more money or more clients, more business. And so I'd love to just hear how you came about understanding where society is with the, it seems like an unmet need for presence, especially coming out of the COVID period. Can you share with our listeners sort of how. You observe that and where you feel it's going that has led you to put this stake in the ground.

Shari Alexander: 54:11

Yeah. Yeah. Obviously COVID was a big shift for everybody in all kinds of ways. And I've always. Been in the meetings space. Mm-hmm. I, when I broke out on my own and started my business, I started by speaking for free at associations and giving presentations. And then I would get clients from that and then they would refer the next ones and I'd speak again. And and I really took that world for granted. And even before Covid was. Going to fewer and fewer events because I was like, I got a good enough network and I don't know. I got tired of being a jet setter. I just got burnt out from all the travel and everything and then COVID hit and the rug got pulled out from us. And all of those things just went away. And I think I know many of us have had a similar experience of realizing how much we undervalued that. Before, being in a room together and those intangible energy shifts and values that we can gain from it. And so I, I do think in this moment there is a lot more value and gravitas given to events, big, small, whatever it looks like, big retreats to little gatherings. And I think that that's a beautiful and wonderful thing. And I just want to be a part of that conversation of encouraging that form of connection. And again, I'm not saying don't do the online stuff. Of course you got to do the online stuff. Just intentionally choose how much of a percentage of energy you want to give that to that. When maybe you've got a whole bunch of, beautiful things to mine that don't involve online. So I'm happy to see that we're giving it more value again. I'm happy to see events coming back. I'm happy to see. Connections that were lost being remade. I am curious, of course, looking into the future. We've got AI doing its thing. We've got virtual reality and augmented reality around the corner and what's that going to look like? And who knows those timelines when they'll be more available to the masses. And so, My hope and the message and mission I hope to contribute to is Finding opportunities and leaning in to us coming together physically. And if we can't do it physically, then semi physically, with recorded video and stuff and not the avatars of ourselves. Yeah. I know progress is gonna happen. The future's gonna get here and all of that's fine. I don't think there's much point in being scared about it, but rather to be more. intentional about shaping that culture that is changing. And yeah, I don't know what, 20, 30 years is going to look like or more, but it's just lovely to see people talking to people in real time again. And just that there's something beautiful about that in our humanity that I think we lost and are very. thankful to get it back.

Victoria Petrovsky: 57:52

Yeah, Clifton and I just experienced firsthand what you're describing. We were just at the Breathe convention in Las Vegas, which is all around emerging tech, and it was like AI, metaverse, like digital, virtual, everything, right? This is the NFT and the swag bag, and people loved our booth because we just had a rejuvenation station with vibro acoustic therapy beds, incredible people facilitating awesome connections, and we got a lot out of it. Like you're describing, met many new contacts, good for the CRM, some are evolving to be clients and you're just, you build that know, like, and trust score quickly when you drop into such presence.

Shari Alexander: 58:31

Yeah. And to your point of people becoming clients and stuff. I get referrals from people that I haven't even worked with before, because I'm a real freaking person, you know, I'm in the room with you. You see how I show up you can tell whether you have the same checklist in your head that I do or not. It doesn't matter. You can tell. When somebody knows their stuff or when they don't, or when they're faking it or and so I'll get referrals from people that are just like, thanks. I mean, you haven't even seen me work, but that's awesome. Thank you. And so that's what I mean about there is that hidden scalability to these things that. get overlooked. And if you're not getting those results, if you're not converting 25 percent of your audience to your list or a lead magnet or a product or whatever, my clients tend, their services tend to be very high ticket. So we're not converting the audience right then and there, but we are getting them into the funnel. And if you're not getting 25 percent of the audience, then. You something's misaligned. Your message is misaligned to your audience. You're misaligned to your message. There's not strategy scaffolding in, within your message that is serving this purpose. Then that's where I come in and go to work.

Clifton Smith: 59:51

I just have to say it you don't sound like a theater major you sound like a very intentional strategic almost like left brain kind of Individual and is that how you've always been or it hasn't been this evolutionary journey? Oh,

Shari Alexander: 1:00:12

man, that's a question, Clifton. So you guys know this, but my brother's a quantum physicist and I was a theater major. So I think I grew up. This is probably way too deep for this podcast, but let's go with it.

Victoria Petrovsky: 1:00:28

We like deep, we go there.

Shari Alexander: 1:00:30

I mean, not too deep but for the tail end of this. But so I think like we talked about earlier juxtaposition and odd and opposites and things. I think with the reflection of my brother being so ridiculously smart, I knew I was smart. Like I was an honor student and stuff like I put in the effort, but it was obviously never going to be like him. And so I think I leaned into my creative side because for sure I've always been more creative. I've always been creative and had outlets and had, big Hollywood dreams at one point. My head was in the stars for, good bit and still is to this day. Just differently. And, but I do think that there is, This intellect that I probably approached theater with that I don't think I realized or appreciated at the time I was that nerdy kid who, after school, I was not going and hanging out with friends and stuff. I was going to the park and reading Shakespeare sonnets. That was fun to me. Whenever I a class was canceled or something. I didn't go out and party or no, I was in the library reading some books because that was fun to me because I've always been searching for answers. I don't know where that comes from, but I remember when I was a kid, I would go to the light, like a kid, kid. I would go to the library and go straight to the quotes books and I would search these quotes from people because I was like, okay, there's going to be an answer to life in the universe in these quotes. And so Henry David Thoreau and just anybody. But I think there is just something fun about helping left brain people, which I'm very familiar with. Thanks. Thanks to good old brother, see creative paths. to communicating their brilliance. That's some of my most, my, like my clients don't sell straightforward, easy to explain things. They sell complicated concepts, technical offerings and solutions and their buyers are not technically minded, but they need to understand it in a way to buy it. And so by just bringing theater, by bringing storytelling, analogy presentation skills, Message, strategy, like by bringing just those things to those brilliant minds that's just so much fun because there are some, there's another reason why I do what I do is there are a lot of loud voices saying nothing. And there are a lot of brilliant, intelligent people who don't know how to say what they have inside of themselves. And I consider it an honor. To help those people find their voice and give their voice to like real stuff, not. Not fakey fake stuff online like the real deal stuff.

Victoria Petrovsky: 1:03:38

Wow

Clifton Smith: 1:03:39

I get shivers with that. That's poignant and that's very pertinent to a lot of our clients and our listeners because they are unique High performing in various ways. They are bringing forth future technologies that are heart based that are presence based human base And so to have a an asset or to have someone like you in the ecosystem as someone that they could refer to when they're ready to step on stage. I know we already have several that all that you're sharing is deeply resonant with our observation and their experience. So it's been just such an incredible. Privilege and honor to share some time, some presence with you to explore communication and your own journey. And before we, we head off where's the best place for people to get in touch with you?

Shari Alexander: 1:04:35

Yeah. So my company name is elevated. I, the letter I, and so you can see everything on the website. There elevated hyphen. I. com. And for those interested in a quick learning tool or something that they can apply right away to their everyday life, you can grab my book called when your words mean business. And it's influential phrases for professional conversations. You can buy it on Amazon, ebook, paperback. If you would prefer to get a free version, you can get a free PDF as well. And within there, I break down, I think it's 17 different, very common situations that you will definitely find yourself in, in your professional career. and phrases to help you navigate those. It's a little bit of a choose your own adventure because at the end of every chapter, I say this technique works really well with this technique and this technique and this technique. So you can actually build out an influential conversation with just two or three phrases that harmoniously work well together. And I explain the techniques and why they work and give examples and stories. So it's a great pocket book to use on the fly when you need to be influential and quick.

Victoria Petrovsky: 1:05:51

Yeah. Awesome. We'll drop a link to that book below and to your website, elevated i. com. And how else can people reach out to you or follow your journey? Is there a social media platform you're most dominant on or?

Shari Alexander: 1:06:05

Yeah, LinkedIn. LinkedIn is my play, my sandbox. Definitely more happening there. If anybody would like to reach me direct, there's a contact form. Just say if you're interested in coaching, consulting or speaking or you can just do the general form and reach out to me. But yeah and LinkedIn is where I'll show up once in a while and share some things.

Victoria Petrovsky: 1:06:24

Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us, Sharí, and thank you all for tuning in and listening and sharing a bit of Presence with us. We'll talk to you all next time.