Valerie Alexander: 0:01

It's a win for the employer to focus on the employee's happiness. They get much better outcomes. One of the things I wish we would do. Oh, I wish every CEO in the country would just stop thinking about Wall Street, stop thinking about investors, stop thinking about the people who are juggling with your stock price. Just focus on your employees. Your employees will take care of your customers and when your customers are taking care of your business will do better, and you know what that will make Wall Street happy.

Porter: 0:32

Alrighty folks, welcome back to Transacting Value, where we're encouraging dialogue from different perspectives to unite over shared values. Our theme for season four is intrinsic values, so what your character is doing when you look yourself in the mirror. Now, if you're new to the podcast, welcome, and if you're a continuing listener, welcome back. Today we're talking our September core values of bravery, courage and patriotism with author Speaker and all things focal point of SpeakHappiness.com, Valerie Alexander. Valerie is committed to expanding happiness and inclusion in all communities. She's a globally recognized speaker on the topics of happiness in the workplace, the advancement of women and unconscious bias, and her TED Talk, how to Outsmart your Own Unconscious Bias, has been viewed over half a million times. Folks, without further ado, I'm Porter, I'm your host and this is Transacting Value. Valerie, how are you doing? Porter? I'm excited to be here. I appreciate it. There's a lot of things, I think, that take up our work day or, in this case, the middle of your afternoon, but I appreciate you making some time so we can talk a little bit.

Valerie Alexander: 1:39

It's always good to stop and have conversations around the ideas that sort of plague. All of us almost Everyone I know wants unity in the country. The most people I know are just good people and it's really hard to see that we have this crazy divisiveness happening around topics that we all really are much more connected about than we think. So I'm happy to have this conversation. This is sort of it's funny. You said the middle of my work day. This is my work, so this is just something else on the work schedule.

Porter: 2:11

Well, that makes it pretty convenient, you know. It's interesting too, though you brought up that point about unity. I think, of all the topics a lot of people have in common or in my opinion, everybody has in common is having a value system or making decisions based off of, or in alignment with, a value system. But it's not usually that exciting, right, because everybody experiences it or you just don't think about it. So it sort of breeds its own complacency and conversation, and people look for things that are more exciting, to listen to, things that are going to give I don't know a little bit more social currency or a little bit more entertainment, value or something. And outside of what, maybe a high school civics class and this podcast, there aren't many other pointed conversations talking about value systems. So here's an opportunity that it gives us also, aside from just decompression from, maybe, your regular workplace schedules. For the majority of the millennials and even some of the Gen Zers that are listening to this podcast, you can have both right. You can have a pretty solid conversation about values and character development and actually learn something. That's entertaining too. Here's where I'd like to get started as far as this conversation goes For everybody who's new to the podcast. Valerie and I are talking on a video call, so, valerie, nobody else can see you right now. So for a little bit of relationship building who are you, where are you from and what sort of things have shaped your perspective?

Valerie Alexander: 3:35

I was born at the Army War College, so, born into the military, my dad was doing intelligence during the Vietnam War and then he went from there to work for IBM and so we moved every year when I was growing up until my parents divorced and after that I wound up in Indiana, in a small town called New Albany, Indiana, which was not the most open-minded and friendly to all identities kind of place. I left there when I was 17. I went to college in San Antonio, texas, at Trinity, and then I went to law school and graduate school at Berkeley, and then I started practicing law in the Silicon Valley right at the height of the internet boom the first time, right when people still didn't know what the word internet meant. I was working in it and that was great, and so I went very quickly from law to venture capital to investment banking. I became the executive at an internet startup company and then my mom got sick. She had a brain tumor and I was done Silicon Valley. I was just everything about it and I could see the bubble about to burst. The writing was on the wall. People were investing in nothingness. My startup that I was the vice president of business development for was not going anywhere, and so I just chucked it all. I sold my house, I sold my car, I gave away all my furniture with two suitcases and my dog, I got on a plane. I went back to Indiana. I took care of my mom for a year and that was great. That was probably one of the best years of my life and in fact I am leaving on Friday to go back to see my mom again. So that was 23 years ago. She's still with us. She's still, I can't say, healthy, but she's still striving Today.

Porter: 5:11

Yeah.

Valerie Alexander: 5:13

So when she got fully better and I was ready to get back to my life, I wasn't going back to the Silicon Valley, partly because, well clearly, when I left, it fell apart. The bubble burst very shortly after my departure Not that had anything to do with it, but there was nothing to go back to. So I instead moved to Hollywood and I started making movies. And I gave myself two years to make money as a filmmaker and a year and 10 months later I was sitting in Joel Schumacher's living room Selling a script and I had a very fun, very exciting career as a screenwriter for a while. But I wrote that script for Joel Schumacher and it never got made. And then I my next job was writing a movie for Catherine Zeta-Jones. That never got made. And then I was creating a TV series for Ice Cube. That never got made. And then my union went on strike, which we're on right now as we record this. Hopefully, by the time this is broadcast, the union is no longer on strike, but the writer's union is on strike as we're recording this. So everything comes full, full. Everything repeats in history. But during the strike I started writing books. I wrote a book about happiness. I wrote a book about success. I wrote a book about the advancement of women in the workplace, and then I started getting asked to speak on the topics of my books and that was wonderful and I really enjoyed speaking. And then, in 2016, I started a tech company. Again, I went back to my high tech, the Silicon Valley startup roots. I started a tech company that built communication tools to help people communicate better with the people they love, and it was wonderful. And for we went through all the ups and downs of being a tech company. We were in the process of being acquired by a company that they didn't survive their own downturn, I guess, is the best way to put it so we weren't acquired and we just went away. That happened in 2019, and then the pandemic in 2020 and then COVID. So it was a lot of ups and downs, but one of the best things that happened when I was the CEO of my tech company, I was asked to give a TED Talk on being a female CEO over 40 at a startup, and that TED Talk is how to outsmart your own unconscious bias, and it's gotten a lot of attention around the world. It's used in classrooms Every once in a while. On LinkedIn, a dozen kids from the same high school or from the same college will suddenly link to me. I'm like, oh, they played my Ted talk in your class. Then, as a result of that, I did a lot of deep dive into the brain science behind bias, into equity and inclusion. I got some certifications in culture and equity and inclusion. I have really enjoyed the last two years getting to work with really some of the largest corporations in the world several Fortune 100 companies on both equity and inclusion, which matters deeply to me, and on corporate culture and happiness in the workplace. That's the part that I'm really gravitating towards focusing on a lot more for a variety of reasons, one of which is there are so many exceptional service providers in the equity and inclusion space. I just don't see as many people gravitating towards improving corporate culture and creating happier workplaces. Happy workplaces that's the greatest cost-cutting hacks there is. If your workforce is happy, you're going to save hundreds of millions of dollars. I wish the largest companies in the world would realize this. I'm moving more towards that as I grow in my career.

Porter: 8:47

What a wild story, and all just in the last decade.

Valerie Alexander: 8:51

Really in the last two decades.

Porter: 8:54

I mean that doesn't decrease the impact though.

Valerie Alexander: 8:58

Life for me is a party with a lot of hors d'oeuvres.

Porter: 9:01

There you go. Yeah, sometimes you just got to take samples and you appreciate them when you get them.

Valerie Alexander: 9:07

It might be great, the sample might be great, but that doesn't mean that's the only thing you're ever going to want to try.

Porter: 9:12

Oh man, Personal growth is such a complicated thing, but I'll tell you. When it comes to snacks, I 100 percent agree with you.

Valerie Alexander: 9:21

Great.

Porter: 9:22

Yeah, no, but seriously, there's a lot of stuff you just brought up and to try to succinctly unpack it, this is where I like to start Taking all of that, tabling it for one second, shaping your perspective to this point in your life, accounting for all of those variables, all the people you've worked with successful projects not a successful projects moving throughout the country, and then obviously, all the life stressors that come with all of those things. I think it's important to understand that we can't run from our problems and challenges and difficulties. We can ignore them for a little bit, we can delay their impact a little bit until we're ready to process, but we can't ignore them forever Because, like you said, it's circular. More often than not, this race, I think, is humans that we start running with ourselves or maybe in competition with anybody else. If you kick up enough dust, you forget that tracks a circle. But it is all the time, yeah, and so, to set the foundation for a little bit more clarity in this conversation, this is a segment of the show called.

Valerie Alexander: 10:26

Developing Character.

Porter: 10:27

Developing Character. I asked you two questions, both from your perspective and for everybody listening. If you're new to the podcast, Valerie, as in-depth and vulnerable as you would like to be, it's totally up to you. The two questions this first question all about personal values. What were some of your values growing up?

Valerie Alexander: 10:46

This is so funny. I just had this conversation with my husband this morning over breakfast. We were talking, we were at a party for Fourth of July and there were some classmates of his from his college class who he remembered and they didn't remember him and that's the first time that's ever happened to him and we were having this whole conversation around who remembers you and who do you remember? And I had a girl I went to high school with, reached out to me on Facebook maybe two years ago and she was from a very poor family and we were also pretty poor, but there's degrees of poor, right, sure, yeah, and she reminded me. She said I just wanted to let you know. I will never forget that the only reason I got to go to senior prom is because you gave me one of your dresses, and that always meant the world to me because I had gone to my junior prom and I had a dress for that, and so I have different dress for the senior prom, and so I gave her my dress from junior prom and I had no memory of this. I had no recollection of having done that and I remember this girl, but I don't remember doing that. And I was talking to my husband about that and he said that's because generosity is your baseline. He's like that's because it doesn't even occur to you that giving away something of yours that you're not using anymore, that someone else needs or wants, is actually an act of doing something of kindness. And I think probably my core value is spreading the wealth is sharing. I can't fathom hoarding. You're never, ever gonna see me with a $5,000 purse ever. You're never gonna see me with a $1,000 purse. If I have $1,000 to spend on a purse, at most, very most, I might spend $100 on a purse and then $900 is going to some charity or some cause or to help somebody out who can't pay their bills, like I can't. That's my value system. The core is I also I'm quite frugal, so I will save money as much as possible and I try to spread that to other people too. If I see like a way to get something for free, I will share it with my friends and say use this, try this. To the point where some people find that off. You know they make fun of it a little bit and I've actually had to cut some friends out of my life because they. I grew up both Jewish and Catholic, my mom's Irish Catholic, my dad's Russian Jew. My mom is where I get all my frugality from. The Irish Catholics can sure teach you how to save your money or pinch a penny in, much more than the Jewish side of my family ever did. But I had former friends who equated my frugality with me being Jewish and I would. I had to shut those people out of my life right away. So I would say my core value is making sure everybody's taken care of. I couldn't be at a table where that table's full of food and there's another table with no food and say, well, we have ours, like I, just that's. I could just never be that. So that's making sure I've been with. Seeing care of is probably the number one core value. And then just not ever judging anyone on a core identity and not ever allowing anyone else to judge me on a core identity is probably the second big one.

Porter: 13:49

Growing up or at present, or both At present, for sure Grow.

Valerie Alexander: 13:53

Definitely the making sure everybody had some. Something was since childhood, since three years old. If I had a donut and someone else didn't have a donut, I broke my donut and half and gave it to them. I don't know where that came from, but that's always been who I was, so my whole life. But the owning my identities and not letting people diminish me because of them and much, much, much more importantly, taking away my own implicit biases but much more shortcut beliefs is the best way to put it the taking away my own shortcut beliefs around people because they're of a certain social class or of a certain race or of a certain nationality. That took a lot of work. That has taken work throughout my entire adult life to be the person who sees individual as an individual and to not reduce them to a single identity. But I will share with you that when I still can't get over as people who were born wealthy, I just have some judgments there that I just can't. I can't lose If everything was given to you from birth.

Porter: 14:55

I fair. Fair, but you're talking about in this case at least, you're talking about money, right, but I think there's a lot to be said for missing out I don't want to say missing out a lack of awareness around the struggle you're also born into. Already, folks stay tight and we'll be right back on Transacting Value. In this case at least, you're talking about money, right, but I think there's a lot to be said for missing out I don't want to say missing out a lack of awareness around the struggle you're also born into. And I don't mean like a privileged struggle, I mean it's like I grew up on the streets. You don't know what I came from, right or why I didn't grow up on the streets, but my family paved the roads. Or I didn't grow up on the streets, I didn't deal with the construction, but I certainly drove on them every day, and with no AC Right. Everybody's got a thing. But your perspective and how you view the world, at least in the beginning, I think a lot of that is caught and then taught. Whatever it is maybe it's money management as an example, or how you treat other people as another example, and then anywhere in between on that scale, you still pick it up from who surrounds you. So there might be plenty of wealthy people, wealthy parents, families, whatever that donate 80% of their wealth to charity and are philanthropists. One thing you brought up though not explicitly just to counter your points, but one thing that you brought up was about, let's call it, pattern recognition, right? This removing bias around people. I think earlier on I don't know centuries, I'm guessing people relied on what they saw for safety in an environment, and I think now, maybe not necessarily with spears and tigers, everywhere we go or wherever environment, that would make sense, but we're still looking for safety in an environment. Otherwise, there wouldn't be groups on Facebook, there wouldn't be spaces on Twitter, there wouldn't be all these other things where we can come together and try to share some of these experiences. And I assume, as a screenwriter, you have to rely on some of these patterns and biases to effectively create depth in your characters, though right, or at least relatability in your characters.

Valerie Alexander: 17:50

To go back a little further what you're saying. Our brain takes instant shortcuts. This is what my TED talk is about. This is the brain science behind bias. And you're right, we had to know instantaneously who was in the group and who was in the out group. Back when tribes just killed each other for their resources, you had to know instantly if somebody walking towards you was not in your tribe, because if they weren't, and they were there to literally kill you and take your food. And so our brain still has that reaction to someone who is not in our tribe. We go into fight or flight long before our prefrontal cortex makes the decision to say, oh no, this person is might be just like me, or this is a potential friend, or I shouldn't be making judgments too late. Cortisol is racing through your bloodstream, your muscles are tensing, you're ready to attack and protect your food, and so those are the things we actually have to actively fight to overcome. The funny thing is you said about it being a screenwriter is screenwriters who are doing it right now, in 2023, who are doing getting it right, are the ones who are stopping themselves from saying, oh, my character is black, I'll make her a single mom. That follows into a stereotype that actually doesn't create that interesting a character. And these are the things that not only in good screenwriting do you have to create depth of character by saying what would this person's lived experience be? How can I make it different, what would it be like to be this person in this environment? And then tweak it a little to make that more interesting, give them a greater depth. But also we are now blissfully I am happy about this, although it keeps back pedaling back, lashing on it, but we're at a point where even as a small microcosm of the audience aren't tolerating it as much. Your audience is looking at the content you're creating and saying I'm sorry, why could every woman in your movie be replaced with a sexy lamp? And it doesn't change the story. And so I hope that our new cultural awareness is pushing screenwriting farther. I'm not seeing it as much as I would like. I still see filmed content all the time where every woman she's either a mom type character or a whore, and it's like, wow, can we have female characters who have depth and points of view and agency over their own actions? And I'm trying to remember just on movie like that, and I was so disappointed.

Porter: 20:16

Shrek Fiona actually, yeah, she took her identity more authentically. Yeah, for sure.

Valerie Alexander: 20:23

But more importantly, she has agency. Yeah, she's making decisions that affect the outcome of another character's story, right?

Porter: 20:31

Well, that is a better word, yeah.

Valerie Alexander: 20:33

Yeah, now that brought it up, you're going to notice it and maybe I'm cursing you. You will notice how many times you're watching a movie or TV show and you're like, wow, none of the female characters in this have been granted the right to make a decision that hasn't effect on anyone else's story.

Porter: 20:47

Well, so that's the sexy lamp analogy I wanted to jump on real quick. Let me just clarify this for anybody listening I have zero design taste, okay, so this has nothing to do with aesthetics, it's strictly the analogy you just brought up. Though, right, if you can replace any or all, I guess, of the characters in a script, a show, a book, fill in the blank here, where you're creating a character arc with an inanimate object of any kind, then it really doesn't matter how you personify it. It could be anybody. It's the depth that makes the difference. And when we're talking about I guess you could call it human experience, I think what's cool is everybody's experiencing the same things, just from a different perspective. It's like the what was that movie Maybe it was Denzel Washington vantage point or something like that where it was like this one murder attempt, I think, and then it got retold from a few different perspectives, but it was all the same scene for the whole movie. Snatch is sort of another example, and I think when we're thinking through, okay, how do we portray or how do we build relationships and relevance to characters and stories we create or in groups where we find ourselves maybe assimilating or growing into throughout our lives. We don't always have to stand on the similar experiences with that group. Sometimes the similar experiences just as being a human involve that degree of depth. Alrighty folks, stay tight and we'll be right back on Transacting Value. Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to George Washington in 1787 that agriculture is our wisest pursuit because it will, in the end, contribute most to wealth, good morals and happiness. Did you know that, even at a nearly $1 billion valuation, farmers markets nationwide still authentically serve their local markets as direct to consumer farm fresh models of freedom, self-reliance and teamwork? At the Keystone Farmers Market in Odessa, florida, those same ideals also cultivate an agritourism experience preserving the old ways of wholesome, family-oriented, sustainable growth of produce and people For premium quality produce at affordable prices, opportunities for the kiddos to feed the baby cows or to simply wander the garden and watch your future meals grow. Visit Keystone Farmers Market on Facebook or come by in person to 12615 Tarbon Springs Road, keystone Farmers Market the place with the boiled peanuts. We don't always have to stand on the similar experiences with that group. Sometimes the similar experiences just as being a human involve that degree of depth. Emotions for example, being frustrated and angry and sad and happy doesn't have to be relegated to any particular experience. I think what that might do, though. What do you think about? Well, you were on stage. You talked to an audience. It was a live audience for your TED Talk. When you're on stage, you've got to build that relationship with the audience. That's just part of oration and rhetoric, I guess. How do you build that relationship when you don't know everybody's backgrounds? What did you stand on?

Valerie Alexander: 23:54

The TED Talk you'll see opens with a little bit of a mind trick with the audience, where I take them on a little bit of a journey and then upend it. For them it's a big eye-opener, it's a big awakening moment. And then they're suddenly leaning in because they realize they got caught up in this too and they now have to pay attention to what just happened. When I'm speaking about happiness in the workplace, when I'm speaking about the advancement of women and I guide a lot of other speakers this is, I guess, when it goes back to the whole helping and generosity. I've never charged anyone for helping them arrange a talk. I can't imagine doing that. I would feel very weird. But I help a lot of other speakers get their talks in shape, especially TED Talks. The one tip I always give speakers and it's true, whether you're on a stage or whether you're just at a party sharing a story you want to transport your listener to that moment in your life. That is the reason you're telling the story as soon as you do that, as soon as you can transport somebody, and so that's why you don't start your story about, I don't know, getting mistaken for a celebrity in a restaurant. Doesn't start with you getting dressed to go to the restaurant and getting in your car because you're not transporting people to that moment. When I talk about happiness in the workplace, I open with a slide of the restaurant in San Antonio, texas, where I was a waitress and I say this is the Hilton Palacio del Rio. These are the busiest 16 tables on the property. The Hilton saves money by having these 16 tables be serviced by two waitresses and a busboy, which makes it impossible to give great service. I would know, because one sweltering summer in San Antonio, texas, I was one of those waitresses. As soon as I say that, people are suddenly like wait, what? Then? I continue with the story of hearing the hotel One night that was so miserable. I won't go into the details. There was some awful decision making at leadership level that made it literally impossible for me to serve the tables I was supposed to be servicing. Everybody was having a terrible time. I was having a terrible time, our diners were. I was getting stiffed on checks. It was a nightmare because of this policy decision that when my manager, who knew I was right and they were wrong, said to the hotel assistant manager if we do this, valerie's not going to be very happy. His response was why should I care if some waitress is happy?

Porter: 26:27

There's moments like that where you've got to weigh out do I need my livelihood or my self-respect more? I think it counts for a lot when you're selling it to people. Though let me back up, I guess for anybody new to the podcast, I'm active duty in the Marine Corps and I spent most of my time in the infantry, where now my role is essentially instructing Marines and some sailors on occasion how to better communicate, based on my experiences in the infantry training deployments. Whatever for some of their deployments and some of their training and these opportunities, that's where a lot of my perspective is coming from. Valerie, when we talk about points like this, we consider it more of like a benefits methodology, where you more deliberately think through what's the benefit to somebody else If I say something this way? How do I bring them around to my perspective and my point of view? Had that manager responded differently, I assume there would have been a better or at least a different outcome. When I assume you have to consider this for unconscious bias as well, how do you view this concept?

Valerie Alexander: 27:26

I have to share with you. I have actually never had somebody ask me that in that way. Had the hotel assistant manager if, instead of saying what he said, if he had come to me and said I am so sorry you're in this situation, there is nothing we can do about it, please let's get through this night and we'll make it up to you some other time. If he had said that, I would have been employed there at the end of the night, which I was not at the end of that. But I'm very appreciative of that perspective. I love couching in the benefit what is going to be the benefit to the other person of how I communicate this. What is the benefit to me, because that is the work I do in workplace happiness. I had a CEO say to me once all the problems I have on my plate and I got to worry about whether my people are happy and I said, no, just the ones you want to keep.

Porter: 28:15

There you go.

Valerie Alexander: 28:18

And we have an epidemic in this country. I have a phrase I'm trademarking, called accidental managers. We have an epidemic of accidental managers. We put people in charge of other people without making sure they have any of the skills to do it, or we put them in charge of other people without even acknowledging they're in charge of other people.

Porter: 28:35

I have an example. I have a doctor.

Valerie Alexander: 28:38

Doctors never think of themselves as managers. In one surgery, how many people answer to a single doctor?

Porter: 28:45

Oh, I don't know.

Valerie Alexander: 28:46

That doctor has never gotten any managerial treatment.

Porter: 28:49

Yeah, yeah.

Valerie Alexander: 28:51

So it's a crazy. It's crazy that we don't think of an engineer as a manager. We don't think of a. I did an event at a university once where I was training their faculty and staff on happiness and I asked who in the room is a manager? And only a dozen people raised their hands and there were these chemistry professors at a research university and I said, oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't realize. None of you has a lab. And they were very offended. They were like we all have labs. What do you mean? One of them had a lab that had 30 people in it. Like I said, you have 30 people working in a lab and you don't see yourself as a manager. It's insane, yeah, so when I talk about happiness in the workplace, it's not foosball tables or free lunch or any of that garbage. It's how do you speak to the people who's buying you need?

Porter: 29:33

All right, folks, sit tight, we'll be right back on Transacting Value. Alrighty folks, here at Transacting Value, we write and produce all the material for our podcast in-house game perspective alongside you, our listeners, and exchange vulnerability and dialogue with our contributors every Monday morning. But for distribution, buzzsprout's a platform to use. You want to know how popular you are in Europe or how Apple is a preferred platform to stream your interviews? Buzzsprout can do that. You want to stream on multiple players through an RSS or custom feed, or even have references and resources to take your podcast's professionalism, authenticity and presence to a wider audience. Buzzsprout can do that too. Here's how. Start with some gear that you already have in a quiet space. If you want to upgrade, buzzsprout has tons of guides to help you find the right equipment at the right price. Buzzsprout gets your show listed in every major podcast platform. You'll get a great looking podcast website, audio players that you can drop into other websites, detailed analytics to see how people are listening, tools to promote your episodes and more. Podcasting isn't hard when you have the right partners. The team at Buzzsprout is passionate about helping you succeed. Join over 100,000 podcasters already using Buzzsprout to get their message out to the world Plus following the link in the show notes lets Buzzsprout know we sent you. Gets you a $20 credit if you sign up for a paid plan and helps support our show. You want more value for your values. How can do that too.

Valerie Alexander: 31:05

When I talk about happiness in the workplace, it's not foosball tables or free lunch or any of that garbage. It's how do you speak to the people who's buy-in you need when we're talking about the work you do. There are only three things that matter in how much we love our jobs. There's only three things that matter. Do we get a sense of accomplishment from doing it, which is the same as saying do we feel like we're putting our skills to their use? Do we feel like we're making a difference in the world? If you get a sense of accomplishment from your job, that is just about all. You need to love that job to go back every day. One of the reasons I hated being a waitress at the Hilton is because they made me feel like I was bad at it every day. The other thing we need is autonomy. Nobody wants to be told how to do every single part of their job once they already know how to do it. People want to be creative in how they do their job. If there is a method of doing something and you have come up with a little shortcut or a little way of doing it or something that's just more convenient or comfortable for you, you want the freedom to be able to do that, especially if it doesn't cause any worse outcome at the end. Then people want acknowledgement. I call it triple A. You call triple A when your car breaks down. Call triple A when your company breaks down. Make sure everybody who answers to you gets a sense of accomplishment, has autonomy and gets your acknowledgement that they're doing their job well. If you do those three things, you have the army marching into battle with you. You have your team following you into battle because they feel like there's a purpose to what they're doing and that they are an integral part of that purpose. They feel that their understanding of their role is respected and their views are believed. They feel like someone sees them doing it. If you can give someone those three things, you are going to have a loyal, unstoppable, highly successful team.

Porter: 32:59

That's got to be a mutual loyalty too, though it goes both ways. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, I think. But having, let's say, the opportunity to increase loyalty, decrease turnover, decrease attrition in a workplace environment, you obviously have to back your employees and support them, sort of like what you just brought up, but the buy-in has to be there. The incentivized atmosphere has to be there for the employees as well. There's a quote you brought up. I think that fits this pretty well. You said that dollars are worth less than hours. Yes, I say that a lot. It's great. If you have the opportunity to I don't know offer somebody a pay raise, why not couple that with paid time off instead of just increased money? I look at it like this and this is one of the things that we talk about actually a lot is everybody wants not necessarily to be heard. A lot of people are more content not being in the spotlight, but they want to feel that their opinions have value. Being listened to and being heard are not necessarily the same things. Being able to have those opportunities from a managerial perspective or even more I think, a little bit in your case as a consulting opportunity, is invaluable. This is really, I guess, for the sake of time, one of the last questions I have for you. How do you convey that mindset let's just call it dollars being worth less than hours? How do you convey that to managers for appreciation and being able to convey acknowledgement? How do you instigate to educate?

Valerie Alexander: 34:26

There are irrefutable stats statistics on this about how much better you do when your employees are happy. You have lower turnover, lower absenteeism, lower workers' compensation claims, less liability if you are product defects, fewer medical malpractice issues when your employees are happy. One of the ways I convey it to management is to straight up this is better for you. You will get better outcomes. Just pay attention to this. This is all people need. I absolutely live by the. You cannot expect to get people to trade their hours for dollars because it's a limited number of hours. You have to give them something that makes filling those hours seem worth it. It's a win for the employer to focus on the employee's happiness. They get much better outcomes. One of the things I wish we would do. Ooh, I wish every CEO in the country would just stop thinking about Wall Street. Stop thinking about investors. Stop thinking about the people who are juggling with your stock price. Just focus on your employees. Your employees will take care of your customers and when your customers are taking care of, your business will do better. You know what that will make Wall Street happy. Don't start with trying to make Wall Street happy and therefore make everybody miserable in the process. We've seen this happen with Southwest Airlines in the last decade. We've seen this happen with Six Flags Entertainment in the last decade. They lost their focus on their employees and their guests or their customers, and they started focusing on Wall Street and they destroyed really valuable brands as a result. The way you get management to buy in is to just say here are the costs. Here is where you are losing out to your competition. Here is where you are losing out to your competition for better employees. Here is where the values of your company are disappearing because you don't have managers who understand. We have a department called Human Resources and somehow we only focus on the resources part of that of turning human beings into resources, and we need to focus on the human part of it. You just said something fantastic. There is a difference between being listened to and being heard. When I do corporate culture assessments, where a company will bring me in for a month, I'll spend two weeks speaking to a huge range of employees and then I'll create some reporting for that in third week, and then the fourth week is going back on site sharing all the results with management and then doing some managerial training for the people who are getting it wrong. I can't tell you how many times in those first two weeks. Literally somebody will be telling me something and I'm writing it down and I'll ask a follow up question and they will start to cry because they said I've been telling them this for the last six months or for the last 10 years and nobody's ever even understood what I was saying until now.

Porter: 37:17

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Valerie Alexander: 38:39

Literally, somebody will be telling me something and I'm writing it down and I'll ask a follow up question and they will start to cry because they said I've been telling them this for the last six months or for the last 10 years and nobody's ever even understood what I was saying until now. Please, the worst thing that can happen is we're coming to bring in someone like me, we do a corporate culture assessment, we do the managerial training and then they drop the whole thing a month later because of some ridiculous new policy or some product line that they're all focused on. I don't even know why. Once your people are listened to, then make sure they are heard, which is then make sure something changes. If somebody gives you the generosity of their candor, don't stomp all over that by second guessing what they just told you or not reacting to it at all. We watch it happen with company after company, and the only reason all these companies are still around is because other companies aren't doing it better yet.

Porter: 39:39

Sure, but actually now it's going to move a lot quicker because of tech. You talked about generosity, but that's the courage to listen and implement, that's the courage to bring up, that's trying to find ways to compensate or get around or manage your fear of potential reprisal. There's a whole other depth of things we can dive into as far as that point is concerned. Just in and of itself, that's not taught in high school. It's not taught on TikTok. Frankly, it's not brought up on social media. Let me back up it is brought up on social media and podcasts like this one. It's not brought up on social media in your regular feed. More often than not, I think it's a disservice, but it's not necessarily impossible. It's just instigating conversations like this for people to be able to pay attention to and eventually ripples travel. It happens. It just takes longer, but it's not impossible. As employees, like I said, primarily let's just say millennials or Gen Z is we're going to look for jobs, for example, out into the workforce, in whatever capacity, whatever industry, whatever employer is involved. You can identify all of these same talking points From your perspective. This is what it should be like. This is more what Wright looks like in this type of environment. I'm not seeing it. I'm either going to change it or leave. Like we said earlier, self-respect counts for a lot. Livelihood is replaceable and it's trainable and it's fixable. Rebuilding your self-respect, or just identifying what that means to you in the first place, takes a lot longer to figure out. I guess actually we're just about out of time To that point. Valerie, if people want to get more information from you about how these considerations can benefit them or how they can work better with other people communicating, I guess, primarily in a workplace type environment, but however they choose to apply these concepts, where can people go to learn more about you? Get in touch, watch your TED Talk books. What are some of these outlets?

Valerie Alexander: 41:36

The one place that has all of that is my website and it's speakhappinesscom. Speak S-P-E-A-K. Like when you speak happiness into the world. If you've got a speakhappinesscom, you can watch the TED Talk there. That's a way to outreach to me. That's where there's a little bit more of my bio. There's some links to some of the commercial and PSA campaigns that I made when I was a film director. There's a mailing list that people can get on if they want. They can get on the happiness and inclusion mailing list because we have a twice a month newsletter about creating more happiness and more inclusion in your workplace that I hope everyone listening is committed to, because you get much better outcomes if your workplace is happy and inclusive.

Porter: 42:20

We have a rule. Whenever I teach some of these classes and whenever I speak to these groups of people, we have a rule and, in my opinion, rule number one it's just don't be an asshole, that's it. You apply it how you want, but it's very closely supported by rule number two recognize what you bring to the table and then refer to rule number one. A lot of that goes a long way. I'm looking forward to jumping into your newsletter though, because, like I said, I think it's underrated and understated and undervalued. Ironically enough, happiness and inclusion and equity, I think to a certain degree, can be a little bit convoluted, but everybody gets the same share of the option to be treated like a human at absolute minimum. So at least in that regard, it's fair distribution. But I really appreciate this conversation and your time and being able to dive into some of this. We had talked earlier about a toilet paper story and we didn't get to that, and there's a couple other things that I hope, if you're interested, maybe later in the year we can follow up on as well, possibly even next season, once your schedule simmers down a little bit, but for now, thank you again. I really appreciate the topics, your vulnerability and your ability to explain it well.

Valerie Alexander: 43:29

Thank, you Absolutely pleasure. Thank you for having me. And yes, depending, we could do a whole show on feedback. When you hear from people and they say that lady, what was she saying? You and I can meet again.

Porter: 43:40

Yeah, that'd be great, but for now, for the sake of time, folks, that closes out our conversation, where we covered everything but specifically our core values for September of bravery, courage and patriotism. I also want to thank in some small way I suppose, Jill Schumacher, Catherine Zeta-Jones and everybody in Silicon Valley, this law practice, your clients, your consultants, everybody who's given you some perspective on life. Your mom for giving you opportunities to process and digest the world from a different perspective, and everybody so far for their inspiration into the way you're looking at the world, Because what you're doing, I think, has tremendous merit and not to oversell it, but a ridiculous amount of value as well. Thank you to them, to our show partners, Keystone Farmers, Market Hope and Clucker Farms, obviously Bustbrow for your distribution. Thank you, guys for that. Folks, if you're interested in joining our conversation, checking out our merchandise, we've got a member only page. Anything else on our website you can check out transactingvaluepodcastcom. You can follow along on social media and we'll continue to stream new interviews every Monday at 9 AM Eastern Standard Time on all your favorite podcasting platforms. But until next time, that was Transacting Value.