- 2 days ago
What if the key to leadership wasn’t more caution, but more optimism? In this episode of Ten Minute Talks, Sasha Stair, CMO of Xactus sits down with Allison LaForgia to unpack why optimism isn’t naive, it’s a competitive advantage.
Sasha shares how developing emotional intelligence, embracing setbacks and investing in people can transform leadership outcomes. Stair reflects on the pivotal moments that shaped her career, from a nonprofit to executive leadership, and explains why diverse thinking and “whole brain” teams are critical for innovation.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:11From Las Vegas, Nevada, I'm Allison LaForgia and today I have Sasha Stare, the CMO of Zactus,
00:19a four times number one best-selling author. She's a member of the Exceptional Women's
00:23Alliance. She's a writer, fintech leader, industry advocate, a self-styled builder of relationships,
00:30a dog mom, and one of my favorite things about you, author of The Monday Magic. Sasha,
00:36thank you for joining me today. Allison, it's my honor. So let's start with your origin story.
00:41How did you get into mortgage? So interestingly enough, I have a father and a stepfather.
00:47Unfortunately, both of them have passed away at this point, but they were in the housing industry
00:50on the building side. And growing up in that space, I promised myself I would never go anywhere near
00:56housing. And then about halfway through my career, I was working as an executive director of a nonprofit.
01:03Unfortunately, that nonprofit failed. But one of my board members said, hey, I have a friend who runs
01:09really C Technologies and is looking for a chief of staff. I think you'd be great. Would you be
01:13interested? And I said, I don't know anything about mortgage, but sure, let's go find out. And
01:19he took a chance on me. His name is Dan Segorka. He's well known in the industry and took me
01:24under
01:24his wing and taught me so much about mortgage and the business. And it just took off from there.
01:30And that company then got bought by Black Knight, correct? Yeah.
01:34So then you just stayed. They managed to keep you. They did. Yeah. So technically it was started by,
01:42I want to say, Land America and Fidelity back in the day, like Land America doesn't exist anymore.
01:46But Fidelity was a Bill Foley company. So we kind of like blended back into the Foley family
01:51as they introduced Black Knight. But yes, they were able to keep me. And then I transitioned a few
01:57times into different roles, but it worked out great. Now, you have been recognized as a leader
02:02and mentor in the industry. What responsibility do you think women in senior leadership roles have
02:09today in shaping the next generation of talent? Yeah, I love that question. And honestly, I think
02:16even though it's important for women, I'm the type of person that believes that we're all in this
02:21together and we have to walk hand in hand. And so really for anyone, it's critical for us to look
02:28at ensuring that we have the right balance of leadership at the top. Our leadership team recently
02:35went through an exercise with a facilitator and we took personality tests and it showed from one
02:41spectrum to the other, we make a whole brain. And so literally every personality on our executive team
02:47is different in some mannerism, but she had never seen an executive team that diverse.
02:52But what I love about it is that it creates a lot of interesting dialogues that force us to really
03:01challenge each other in really important ways. And I think it's really important that we look at how do
03:05we lift other women and other leaders up into the organizations that we are running to ensure that we
03:11have that balanced outlook. It's not going to be a one-size-fits-all in mortgage,
03:16so why should it be a one-size-fits-all in our leadership teams? And so I think it's really
03:20important for women that are in positions of power to look at how are you balancing your team
03:26and then how are you looking to build the next leaders. And that just requires a lot of investment,
03:31right? People are humans and there's a lot of psychology, including business, behind that.
03:36And so really focusing in on that and making a commitment and dedication to that and bringing people
03:41up with you is key. You are somebody who truly owns that. And I didn't tell Sasha I was going
03:48to say this,
03:48so we're going to pivot into this question. But you, when we talk about content, you are one of the
03:56only people that I talk to so regularly who brags about people when they're not in the room and never
04:02know that you say it. And I think that's so important because it clearly demonstrates your
04:09ability as a leader, how you mentor other people in the industry. And I wanted to dig in there a
04:16little bit to see how your experiences as an advisor, speaker, author have influenced the way that you
04:23approach leadership and decision-making. Yeah. Gosh, what a question.
04:29I, it goes back to why I wrote the book, which I know you're going to ask me about later
04:33and we'll
04:33talk about, but honestly, leadership is about emotional intelligence, probably more than almost
04:39anything else. And the more emotionally intelligent I can be, whether I'm on stage, whether I'm sitting
04:45here with you, whether I'm in a meeting with a client or prospect, whether I'm in a meeting with my
04:49team, the better off everyone is. And so I think what I've learned over the years is to use that
04:56emotional intelligence to my advantage, to be more mindful, to be more intentional,
05:02to be more self-aware. So that way I'm extremely thoughtful on how I approach things. Now I'm a
05:07human, I am fallible and I make mistakes like everyone else, but I catch myself faster than I
05:12used to. So if I catch myself saying something about a person, which isn't maybe necessarily the
05:17best thing to say because I'm judging a situation and I go, Oh shoot, there's that human moment.
05:22I'll pull back and I am not scared of apologizing, uh, whether in public or in private, depending on
05:28the situation, because I think it's just that ownership, that extreme ownership is so critical
05:33in leadership. Throughout your career, you've operated at the intersection of business, technology,
05:37and strategy. And I feel like that comes across so clearly. So I have to ask you how that cross
05:44-functional
05:45exposure has informed the way that you build and lead teams. Yeah. So I love that I had the
05:52cross-functional exposure now, but back in the day, I thought there was something wrong with me
05:56because I was so used to watching everyone do the vertical path in their career. And I thought,
06:01Oh my gosh, I'm not picking a lane and staying in it. And I'm never going to make it right.
06:06So to speak,
06:06whatever we think make it is in our twenties. Right. And now I look back and I know that I'm
06:11far more
06:12diverse and far more valuable as an asset to the team because I had that cross-functional experience.
06:18So when I think about building teams and being a good leader, I look at doing that for them as
06:23well
06:23and offering them opportunities. We actually have somebody on our team right now that is stepping out
06:28of his traditional role to help with go to market. And that's giving him an opportunity to learn and
06:33see if that's an area he might enjoy. But I think the more that you play in different areas
06:38and really allow yourself to be more open-minded, the more you think out of the box, you see around
06:44corners, you think more strategically. And so it's been critical, not just in my own evolution as a
06:50leader, but also as I think about how do I create those opportunities for my team members so that they
06:55can continue to not just think out of the box and be strategic thinkers, but also consider other
07:00alternatives in their career as they continue to move forward. You do this in a really interesting
07:04capacity in the Monday Magic. The Monday Magic is a newsletter that Sasha writes on LinkedIn.
07:10Subscribe to it. It comes out on Monday. It's fantastic. It's one of my favorite parts in the
07:15beginning of the week. But this week's Monday Magic talked about if you can overthink the worst,
07:22why can't you overthink the best? And that maybe optimism isn't naive. Maybe it's a strategic
07:28advantage. So talk me through a little bit about how you got there when you went to think about this
07:34week's edition of the Monday Magic. Okay. So I'm going to give this a little bit of my secret sauce.
07:40Spoiler alert. On the weekends, I go through Pinterest looking for quotes. I swear to God,
07:47that's where, and I read a lot of books and sometimes I'll see quotes in a book and I'll pull
07:51that aside and earmark it for a Monday Magic. But traditionally on a Saturday morning or Sunday morning
07:57with a cup of coffee, I'm just scrolling through Pinterest looking for inspirational quotes.
08:01And I landed on this particular one and I thought, gosh, I have been told so many times in my
08:06career
08:07when people initially get to know me that I come across as fake because I am so optimistic and they
08:13wonder, do I have any altruist or not altruistic, but rather ulterior motives? And I don't, right? Like
08:20I just am trying to be a good person and I see the good in the world and I've always
08:23been an optimistic
08:24person. And so when I saw the quote, I thought, oh my gosh, first of all, even though I'm optimistic,
08:29I know just like any other person, I go down, you know, wallow lane and like create these ridiculous
08:35narrative stories in my head around negative things and things that could go wrong. But I also know
08:40that I am, because I'm an optimist, I look for the good. I seek out the good. And so I
08:46thought, gosh,
08:47what a really cool way to flip the script and frame it as if we can so easily go down
08:52the path of fear
08:54and that negative bias, why can't we just reframe it as what are all the possibilities? And why don't
09:01I just create the craziest narratives? And when you think about it, the most interesting inventors
09:06of the world were the ones that everyone thought were a little bit mad, right? Right. And it's not
09:11saying we need all mad scientists, but maybe we need just a little dose of madness in our coffee in
09:16the
09:16morning, right? Well, I thought it was so interesting that you wrote that because I do think when we're
09:20looking through a business lens, much to your point, it can be so easy to get caught up in why
09:26ideas won't work. Yes. Or this is the problem. And it's so hard as an industry when we go to
09:33look at
09:34different improvements, how we're building a better experience to say this won't work for this reason,
09:40or we've seen this impediment before. Right. That I thought that your take on
09:45what if we leaned into, okay, this could work. What if everything did work out was such a unique
09:51take. And it's interesting because I've been in meetings and it's hard when you're the only voice
09:56in the room willing to have the courage to speak up and say, but why? Or, but why not? But
10:03it's critical
10:03that we do that because when you've got people that are looking from a risk management perspective,
10:07which is good discipline as an organization, they do often overlook that innovative side and the ideas that
10:13maybe we once thought would work and didn't at the time, but perhaps now they will.
10:17And so having the courage to speak up and just say, let's dig into that a little bit more. Let's
10:21consider just wave a magic wand. And for a minute, imagine that all those constraints are gone and
10:27we could, what would it look like? And oftentimes it's not the original idea that becomes the answer,
10:33but there's something in that thought process that pulls on a thread that ends up becoming an idea that
10:38we didn't have that now is something that we can truly explore. And so people overlook that
10:43peripheral vision of if you are more optimistic and if you go explore all these different ideas,
10:48you're allowing that innovation, you're allowing that thinking out of the box to come forward.
10:52And often that is where the true magic does come from in business.
10:56So we just talked about one of your strategic advantages, strategic advantages, having that
11:02great view of optimism. I want to talk a little bit about something that makes you Sasha Stare.
11:08And that is when you look back at your career, what experiences or experience most challenged your
11:15perspective and ultimately made you a stronger and more intentional leader?
11:21Nothing like a meaty question to end with.
11:23Right? I joke about those ones as like the fully loaded baked potato questions,
11:29because there's so much to unpack and or add to your baked potato. There's been so many experiences
11:34that have shaped me. And I think even though most don't love to talk about it, I actually,
11:42and this is me flipping the script, feel like the negative ones have shaped me more than the positive,
11:46because you learn more from the hardships, you learn more from the road rash. And, you know,
11:52some of it is just watching leaders, in my mind, lead in poor manners and ways I didn't want to.
11:58And having to take the brunt of some of that and learn from it and hope that I don't repeat
12:03those behaviors because I don't believe in them. One of them was the nonprofit that I ran that failed
12:09and having to admit that I ran a nonprofit that failed, like we had to literally disillusion it.
12:17And it was a very hard moment. And my pride took a hit. But I also learned more from how
12:23to walk away
12:24from that situation with grace, and then look back and learn from the mistakes that I as a leader had
12:29made that we as an organization had missed signals that if we would have been really leaning into and
12:34paying attention to, we might have had a better chance. And so I think those, again, hardships,
12:39road rash moments are really what shapes you. Sometimes earning your scars is a good thing.
12:46It is. And I think you should wear them with pride. Sasha, I am always grateful to have even 10
12:51minutes with you. I feel like I get a little bit smarter each time that we talk. Thank you
12:55for joining me on 10 Minute Talks. It was absolutely my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Comments