Sasha Stair is a magnetic and dynamic leader in mortgage fintech, an executive coach, keynote speaker, and a 3x international best-selling author. Sasha brings 20 years of experience across multiple industries and roles, offering a breadth and depth of knowledge to help companies transform, grow, and sustain at any stage in their lifecycle. Her passion for growing conscious leaders has helped companies stay focused on people first as they operate through the ever-changing work environment.
In her debut solo #1 best-selling book, The Inside Job: Master the World Within to Lead the Future of Corporate, entrepreneur and author icon, Keith Ferrazzi notes that, “Sasha offers a clear and witty guide for corporate leaders to positively influence teams, and organizations to achieve massive results.” The Inside Job is a philosophy, to lead from the inside out. The book captures this essence along with tangible practices to help leaders focus on strengthening their human skills, setting the tone for how they lead teams and organizations.
Sasha's passion for helping people and companies grow extends beyond her work into volunteer engagements, most notably speaking at SDSU and other cause-based nonprofits on sexual violence prevention and her role on the Customer Success Advisory Board at UC Irvine. Sasha has a B.A. in Marketing & Communications from San Diego State University.
“You can control how you choose to show up and evaluate what you can control. And there's so much power in that.”
- Sasha Stair
Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of the Insight interviews. I have a really, really special guest today that I can't, you know, in fact, I can't wait so much, I'm just going to introduce the guest. Sasha Stair, say hello to the Insight Interview world.
Hello, Insight Interview world.
There you go. This is the one and only Sasha Stair. I really can't wait to dive into your story because it's so unique and where you've come from, and there are times when after hearing someone's story and I just can't wait to get it out there as best I can in our little world. And I think even just recently, listening to you caused me to ask myself some really good questions, which, by the way, Sasha, that's what the whole insight interview thing's about.
I love it. Well, kind words of you to share and I'm excited to be here.
Okay, so you have all those questions I sent you?
Of course I do.
I really try to say that with a straight face. Well, because I think I try to tell the audience, like, we don't do that. I've just always felt like these interviews are just, to me, when I listen to podcasts and I do, the ones that seem more organic are just the ones that are more listenable for me.
100%.
So, on purpose, I mean, if you really want transparency, I asked you to do this yesterday, right?
True. You did. Yeah. I remember your exact words. I've got something crazy in mind for you. What do you think about maybe getting on a podcast, like tomorrow?
And you were kind enough to do it. So anyway, the extemporaneous and organic nature of our time today will be by default because we have nothing else. How's that?
I think it's everything. I love it. I'm excited. Let's do it.
All right. Well, we dive in, in our show a lot and we get to know people, and also because from the work that we do, Sasha, we know that we are better thinkers and we'll have more insights when our brains are in what neuroscientists call a toward state, that we're moving towards something, right? And so, we start these shows intentionally, by asking a question, partly because for you and me, it puts you and me in a toward state, but also because the listeners, hopefully they can hear this and they themselves can get in this towards state with us. And so, here's the question. Today, where you are, where you're sitting, what are you grateful for?
Oh, I love that question. I actually do a gratitude practice every morning and write down three things that I am grateful for, and I'm actually forgetting legitimately what I wrote down this morning because it's been a few hours, but I want to go back and look and just see. Oh, yeah. So, I wrote down this morning., so I'll share all three of them and I'll pick one to lean into. The stoic. I have been reading so much on stoicism recently, and I just can't get enough. You're going to laugh at this one. Eye masks. I put on depuffing eye masks every morning and then fireplaces. I live in Arizona, but people think it's always warm and sunny here. It's not. It was 30 degrees this morning. It was cold. And so, I had the fireplace going and that was just nice. So, I'm going to go with the fireplace because that just feels cozy and warm.
No, go with eye masks. Come on. Eye masks. Eye masks.
"I've got self-care rituals. I feel like you've got to have your different rituals. I have my morning ritual in general that allows me to put myself up for review, as stoics would say, to reflect and also to lean into planning for my day. I do some reading, some journaling, but while I'm doing that, why not have a little self-care? So, I've got my eye mask on, so I don't look like I didn't sleep last night, or I'm a vampire that never sleeps. So, that's part of my ritual."
I'm being partly facetious about the eye mask thing. There might be some people listening, going, God, they might write to you and go, which one do you use? But a gratitude practice if you do it daily, it's really interesting. I mean, we're talking 365 times a year, unless you want to come every single day and go, I'm grateful for my family and for my friends and for this, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But I think we begin to realize, and I think you would say this like, there's so much more. Like, we miss some of the little things, and that's why I thought eye masks were cool. Like, that's great because we should be grateful for the little things.
Absolutely. And it's 366 this year because we got a leap year, so we got an extra day this year. And I'm one of those people that tends to over commit, and then I push myself to do the best to keep up, but it's good. And one of my practices this year is to write down every day, where do I see and find the magic in the world? And sometimes it is very deep, meaningful conversations, and other times it is something as ordinary as an eye mask. And you're right, there's magic, and there's things to be grateful for, from the smallest things that we have available in this wonderful experiment of life to the most challenging and or most joyful things. So, I think gratitude practices are just such a great way to kick off your day.
I love that. I absolutely love that. I had a client one time come into a coaching call and tell me that everybody sucks at driving, and he was so angry. And he was telling me this happened to him and that happened to him, and I actually asked him, I was like, okay, so one of the things I'd like you to do going forward is I want you to go out for the next couple of weeks, and I want you to just catch people doing it right.
Yeah. Because we find what we look for, right?
Again, I don't doubt that some people go too fast or blow past stop signs or don't understand still to this day, a four way stop sign, supposed to go in a certain order. I get it.
Yeah.
I just want you to count people doing it right. And it was really interesting in the moment. He so wanted to lean into how everyone did it wrong, like 100% and he came back to the next session, and to your point, he came back in and he was like, yeah, it's about 95% of people do it right.
Isn’t that funny?
You said it. We focus, like, yeah, you want to go out and find people doing it wrong? You can. Or do you want to go out and focus on eye masks?
I mean, I've tried lots of eye masks, so it's a good area to focus on.
I'm just saying that there's so much stuff, plants, breath, earth. The fact that we have a pretty interesting split of hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen in the world that we can breathe. Like, we don't focus on that stuff.
No, we don't. And we all have those vices. I actually put up some index cards, which I don't think I can remember the last time I bought index cards, but I did this year to remind myself of a few things this year that I wanted to really focus in on. And one of them was stop complaining, because I notice when I go into that negative space, I go to complaining. That's my go to. And I am just tired of it. It's annoying to hear. I can hear myself complaining and I'm like, nope, we're done. So, I even put up the reminder, like legitimately a postcard in front of my face every day. So that way if I catch myself doing it, at least I have a reminder to say, no, we're not doing that anymore.
That is fantastic. All right, well, I have a new gratitude. I'm grateful for your postcards. How's that?
Perfect. I love it. You should get some.
I love it. All right, well, I want to go back to the first one you're interested in, the stoics. I am going to ask you about your story. Give us one, because whether it's Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius, any of these, what's one key thing you're learning from studying the stoics and their lifestyle and their learnings? What's one key thing that you're learning?
Gosh, that is such a loaded question. I did the stoic 21-day challenge. I'm actually in the middle of it. Obviously, we're in like day ten, and the first day they asked you to put down like choose ten principles that you want to live by this year that come from those stoic philosophies. And even though it's so simple and so obvious, and we literally just talked about this before the podcast, it's the number one on my list because I struggle with it, and I think so many do.
"And it's focus on what you can control because there's just so much that we get caught up in that is life happening. And rather than allow it to happen, notice it, observe it, be curious about it, we oftentimes, especially if it's something we didn't want to happen or we didn't expect to have happen, we want to immediately constrict and control because we fear that uncertainty, that instability, that unknown, and it's just such a human nature response to go there to try to control something that you can't. And so even though I know it and even though it's such a simple practice, it's one that I still struggle with. And so, it's nice to have that reminder to go, okay, when a situation happens, and I feel myself going into that mode of responding in a not so positive way, what about it is in my control and what's not? So, I can truly focus on what is, which we all know often most of it is the response, but there's also action that you can take after that response."
And so, it's been a really good practice in all of the ten days of 2024 thus far. But it's number one. I chose prince principles where it was like, I know I need to read these this year. I know I need to hear them and see them and there’s other ones where it's like, you should journal every day. Okay, I already do that. I already journal every day. So, I don't need to put that on a piece of paper and remind myself, but the ones that I need to hear the most, I wrote down, and that's the number one.
That is so rich. Thank you. You got me thinking as I was taking notes, as you were saying that, and I don't mean to dive too deep into this rabbit path because I got other things I want to ask you.
We could have more than one podcast.
Well, it is focusing on what you can control within your control. I love that. See, you can actually focus on- isn't that interesting? Focusing on what we can control is one of the things within our control, right?
100%, yeah. And it reframes how you're looking at a situation, and then often, because that moves us into that more rational state, as you know, our emotions start to calm down. And now we can be more pragmatic in how we approach something. And one of my other ones is, remember, you have the power to have no opinion, right? So, it's like when you take the power that you have away from someone else's hands, I often take things personal, and it's probably not personal, but I give that power away. And so, if I reframe what's in my control, that also starts to quiet the emotions, quiet the things that I would have otherwise taken personal and just look at things with more reason and pragmatism.
Oh, man, that's so good. All right. I got questions about that. But if you don't mind, and you began this story with me, like, what's your story, Sasha? You began to tell me some stuff and to the degree to which we can get some of our people hearing this and having some insights pop for them, it'd just be wonderful to- you wrote a book. The book is about something. Can you just give us a thumbnail or a backdrop of Sasha Stair. Where you came from? What's going on in your world?
Yes, I love to talk, so, let's see how good I can be at being succinct here. It feels good to say I'm a San Diego native because I love San Diego. So even though I'm living in the real desert versus the quasi desert now, I'm still Cali girl at heart. But, you know, just like all of us growing up, we have things that happen, right? So, whether it's a true hard trauma or whether it's just hardships and adversity that you face, for me personally, I went through being molested when I was a young girl and then raped as a young adult, and I also grew up with an alcoholic father. Those are not interrelated, they just, unfortunately, both happened to be in my life. And I started to tell myself a lot of stories when I was younger about not being good enough and not being worthy. I second guessed my intuition quite a bit, and ultimately, I didn't know this at the time, right? So, this is all happening in my subconscious psyche, and I'm not fully aware of it, but what tends to happen for us when we're not aware and we don't have the tools and the resources to work through whatever the trauma is, whether you were bullied, you had an illness, you lost a parent, it doesn't matter, right? There's no point in comparing, but we all do have those hardship and adversity stories that shape us. And when we don't have those tools and resources to work through them, they become the background or the foundation for how we go out and become an adult in the world. And for me personally, I went into medical device sales out of college, and it was very male dominated. In fact, the second company I worked for, I was the only female. I was getting harassed every day, not just by my colleagues, but by surgeons. And I just got to a really dark place where I was trying so hard to be everything that I wasn't, right? I didn't think I was good enough. I thought I had to be more like a man. And I love men and women. I am not one of those people that sits on top of a hill and preaches for anything other than us just working better together in and outside of the workplace, but that being said, for me, in that moment, I was really out of touch with my feminine, really out of touch with my worthiness, my value as a human, and I lost my way, and I ultimately almost took my life. And it was a significant inflection point for me for two reasons, really. One, because it was obviously so severe that I was at a point where I knew things had to change. But like you and I talked about earlier, what I didn't know then that I ultimately found out through my healing journey, was I didn't want to die, I just didn't want to keep living the life I was living. And in the moment, I didn't know what that meant. And so, the thought was, well, then just end it, because if I don't see a way out, then you just end it. And I think whether people get to that full point or whether they just have days that are really bad, or whether they go through bouts of anxiety or depression, all of us as humans can relate to that feeling of being really low, really down, not liking the person we see in the mirror and realizing something needs to change. And so, for those who know me, I'm not sure that anyone in your list will know me yet, but they will know me now, I don't put my toe in the water to see how it feels, I just dive into the deep end with the sharks and figure it out. And so, I picked up everything I could come up with, right? I went into traditional therapy, I did Al-Anon, which is the twelve-step program for loved ones of addicts, I hired a life coach, I went on spiritual retreats, I read every self-help growth book I could find, and I just immersed myself in what I consider my own spiritual journey, my own healing journey, and through the process, continued to work in corporate and just started to realize how many bad leaders we have out there, because, again, they don't have the tools and resources. They haven't worked through their traumas, their stories. And so, they come in with these overblown egos or chips on their shoulder or the great insecurities, and it just doesn't bode well for truly leaning on the purpose of leadership, which at its core is to help humans reach their potential. So, I thought, you know what? I can't be the only one that's gone through this. I can't be the only one thinking about this. I'm going to write a book. And I did, and it's called the Inside Job: Master the World Within to Lead the Future of Corporate. And one thing I noticed when I read all these other self-development books was, they left me inspired, but they didn't leave me with actions to take. And so, I was kind of left figuring out, okay, what do I do with this information? So, when I wrote the Inside Job, what I wanted to do was tell stories so that people can relate to what it is that I'm describing the emotional experience and connect with me at a deeper level. But then I immediately go into, okay, if I were to go back, would I change how it went? Would I do something different? And in some cases, the answer is yes, and I talk about that in the book. In other cases, it's no, but now, where I am, if I take a snapshot in time, and this is where I am, on the scale of how self-aware I am, how emotionally intelligent I am, how well do I handle adversity, do I have self-trust? Do I really accept myself? If I take that snapshot and I go, okay, there's a couple of areas I really want to work on, then what are the practices I can put in place to work on that so I can really exercise that muscle and build not just that mental fortitude, but also that emotional fortitude so that I can go out and just be a better version of myself as a human and as a leader? And I've done a lot of other stuff, but that's kind of the gist of the book and the storyline of how I got to where I am.
Thank you. What a wonderful story. What an ongoing story, too, right? I got to imagine that it's not like you're done with your thing. You sound like you're still in it, right?
Yeah. Finish lines are death, and I'm in no hurry.
Yeah, exactly. I love the focus on action. I mean, you said a couple of things that really caught my attention, and one just has to do with some pragmatic ways. I mean, you're reading all these self-help books, and you're understanding all these concepts if they stay in the conceptual realm and we don't really know what to do with them, and so sounds like you really focused on there's some things that we can go do. And you made one comment that I want to just come back to. Building the, I forget the word you use it, was it the resilience? Muscle building something.
I said mental fortitude. Mental fortitude and emotional fortitude or toughness, but also, like, all of those muscles. Awareness, acceptance, emotional intelligence.
Well, building the awareness. Awareness is a big buzzword these days. And awareness, awareness, awareness, which is kind of funny, because I don't know that anyone ever masters awareness, there's always more to be aware of. But if you were going to help us with a pragmatic, tangible example of practicing a greater level of awareness, I'm a leader, I run an organization, you come in, you work with me, and you're going, okay, I mean, there's a lot we can do, and leadership is this vast field as you know, we're just going to focus on this leader's awareness. And again, I'm trying to set this up where you can offer something of tangible value to this person, but if it was just general awareness, give us a tangible example of how you might help that leader practice a higher level of awareness.
Yeah, I love that. So, there's two things that I've worked with executives on in that arena. One is more high-level general awareness to get you in the habit of just paying attention more, and then the other is a little bit more on the business side. So, I'll quickly go through both on the general awareness I love. And a lot of these concepts are not, like, novel. It's not like I came up with them or invented them. I just found them along the way, and they worked for me. But the idea of doing a somewhat meditative practice of closing off your eyes, taking a few deep breaths, getting really still, and then starting to ask yourself questions that help you tune into your senses. So, what do you hear? What do you smell? What do you taste? What do you feel? And then ultimately opening your eyes and asking, what do you see? And what I love about that practice is, and it's good if you can force yourself to take a fair amount of time and really keep answering the question until you can't think of anything else that you're hearing or tasting or smelling, right? Because it just brings us into our bodies. And I think so much of what we do today is we work outside of our bodies, right? It's like everything's happening externally, and we almost leave our bodies and leave our grounded, internal world to play outside when we really need to be playing from the inside out. And so that practice helps bring you back into your body, paying attention to your senses, and that kind of gets, again, those muscles going, and your mind built up to then prepare for. How do I start to pay attention to things in other areas of my life that are more complicated? And so, in that regard, I often tell people to use the analogy or metaphor. I don't really know which one's better suited for this one of the show, the inspector gadget, which I write about in the book, and for those who don't, I think most people know what it is, but for those who don't, right, it's like this inspector that's got this big trench coat, and he's got all these tools and his go-go gadget arm that extends, but ultimately he's supposed to solve the crime. So as a human, you're supposed to solve your awareness. You've got the tools you need. You may not always know you have the tools you need. You may fumble around trying to find the tools, but ultimately, if you focus and you practice, eventually you're going to get into the swing of it. He solves the crime; you're going to solve the awareness. And so, I ask people to say, like, hey, just take a snapshot of if it's in work, are you happy right now, right? And if you're happy, great. What makes you happy? Is it the role that you do, the clients you work with, the people you work with? And how do you show up in meetings, right? If you're happy and you're showing up in meetings, you're probably showing up inspired and inspiring, right? You're probably, as a leader, really intentional about how you're facilitating so that people can reach higher potential of growth. On the flip side, if you're more negative and you start to ask yourself that question, like, how am I showing up? Do I feel good about how I'm showing up? You might start to say, oh, wow, I've been really persnickety lately, both to my spouse and to my colleagues, right? And like, jeez, where is that stemming from? And it's kind of like being that five-year-old child that asks why a thousand times. You just have to stay curious and compassionate with yourself, especially if it's a more negative state to just keep asking why until you get to the root of it. And then you can figure out what needs to be healed or what you need to change in order to show up in the workplace or in the home or wherever with a different perspective, a different mindset. Like the example that you and I chatted about with the guy that got on the road and every driver he saw was, bad driver, bad driver. And it's like if looking for bad drivers, you're going to find bad drivers. So, you got to shift your mindset into being more curious. You've got to be honest with yourself. If you're not honest with yourself, I don't know where you're going to go from here. There's just no room for growth. And then pay attention and take note. And I think a lot of times it's hard to do it in real time when we're busy and we're racing, and so, I encourage people to take a journal with you, and even if you notice a moment where you get triggered and you don't have enough time to process, just jot down a few words that you'll remember, and then later in the day, come back to it and go, okay, why did I get triggered? What was it that triggered me? How did it feel in my body? What emotions did I experience and then start to unpack it from there? So, there's so much I could go into, but, like, high level.
Yeah, I got to have you back on show. I've got so many questions. I love that. And thank you so much for giving us the Dr. Daniel Siegel calls it. He uses a wheel of awareness to help us get in touch with our senses. And what you said there was so powerful. I don't know. I loved the inside out practice, and so I hope people get to go back and hear how you actually walked us through a little bit of how to actually do that. Close your eyes, breathe in. I just think, brilliant. Thank you.
Of course.
the other thing about being honest, you know, you and I could do an entire episode, probably a whole series of episodes, just on learning to be honest with ourselves.
Oh, yeah.
And I'm linking that, and I know we don't have a lot of time, and we got to jump off here pretty quickly, but for me, two things that I want to bring back in and just ask you a question about, and maybe you'd help us understand this, what can we control and what can't we control? It's one of the things that you're learning from the stoics and the concept of being honest. For me, what I'd like to hear you speak to, if you could, is sometimes when I get confused about what I can control and what I can't, and when I'm in the moment, quite honestly, Sasha, I think it's everything. I got this I can control this. So, it's the distinction and the honesty to be able to say, actually, no, that's not in my control. So, I don't know, when you hear that, how would you respond to that?
Again, curiosity and humility, right? If you sit down and you put all distractions aside and you give yourself the time and space to keep asking the whys until you get to the bottom of it, eventually, you're going to be able to separate what you truly do control and what you don't. And even just that process, I think we talked about this before, too, offline that thought process you can control. You can control how you choose to show up and evaluate what you can control, and there's so much power in that. I think sometimes in the moment, we get caught up in the emotional response and we don't remember either right then and there or later on to come back to it and really reflect again. Part of what I love about the stoic principles is put yourself up for a review every day. At the end of your day, like, how did you do? What could you have done better? What did you do well? Where are you still learning? Where did you become wiser? And in those moments, where did you try to control something that you couldn't? And how did you work through that and figure that out? And what is still really in your control? And how can you use that to, I think you started the call with the concept of a toward state to move forward rather than to stay stagnant or go backwards? Because when we do hold on tightly to those things we can't control, we are staying stagnant or we're looking backwards, and that front windshield is bigger than the rear view mirror for a reason.
Look at you. This is the most horrible thing I've ever had to tell one of my guests. We got to go. We got to go. Because, Sasha, I've got so many insights for myself, some evaluations that I need to do. There are so many more things as a leader that I can get better at. And frankly, if it's okay with you, we'd love to have you back on. So, I just want to thank you for your time and the willingness to step up even after this long period of time of waiting for this interview, right? Which is all of 20 hours now. Thank you.
I’m typically an impatient person. So that was pretty long.
You are fantastic. Well, thank you so much. I have so many insights here, and I'm just grateful to you for being on our show. And certainly, through the show notes, we'll make it clear how, through whatever social media to get a hold of you and reach out to you if people want to get your book, we'll make that certainly available on the show notes. And so, thank you. Thanks for all you do to make the world a better place.
Oh, you're kind. It's been my honor and pleasure. Thank you for having me.
And like we say all the time here on the show, when we end, it doesn't matter, really, even what Sasha said or what I said in these things, what matters is, what insights did you get? So, we'll walk with that question, and hopefully you can reflect back on this and continue to grow. So, thanks so much for being a part of it. And we'll see you next time here on the Insight Interviews. And boom.
---
Thanks for reading. If you got any value at all from this episode, a little nugget all the way up to some big huge insight, please do us a solid by subscribing, recommending, rating, and reviewing us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or Google. That stuff matters to us, and it allows us to continue interviewing more awesome people.