Are you great at your job but still feel locked outside the C-suite?
Welcome back to Speak Up, the podcast for high-performing introverts, including you, social introverts where we reveal the charisma and communication secrets of A-listers so that you get the recognition and the opportunities you have earned.
I am your host, Laura Camacho, your magical executive presence coach, godmother, and strategist.
And by the end of today's episode, you will know the valuable concept of command presence and how to embody that instantly, even in high stress situations.
How to shift from outstanding execution to key strategic leader using nonverbal communication and mindset.
And our guest Dre's framework for raising your performance floor so that results and growth become inevitable.
Hi, Dre.
It is so good to see you again.
As I mentioned to Dre, I'll tell the audience he's one of two people that's been asked back to come on the podcast.
Not because I don't like everybody.
If you ask me my favorite, it's like asking my favorite child.
But Dre's message really stuck with me, helped me, so i'm bringing him back to help you guys, and this episode is the start of the new year and i think you can get some tips to really have the most successful year you have back.
So welcome.
I'm excited to be here again.
Thanks for having me on.
For those of you if you don't remember Dre, that was a couple of years ago or a year and a half that he was on.
He's an overachiever like many of you.
He didn't just do one TEDx talk.
He's done at least four.
And he's like not just two or three books, but like 35 books.
So I invite anybody to outperform Dre Baldwin.
But I know one of your talks was about confidence.
And that's a topic we're interested in.
I want you to spell out what is the career value of confidence?
Like, why is it so important?
Because everybody listening is super competent.
They know how to do their job.
Excellent.
They are counted on as that go-to person in their company.
So why do they need more confidence when speaking about their work?
It's because 85% of communication is nonverbal or most communication is not what you say.
It's not even what you do.
It's how you say it, how you do it.
And all the other communication is happening around the things that you say and do on a a basic level.
Some people understand as if they've studied anything on communication.
Subconscious mind controls 85 of all communication is happening both within us and externally with others.
And people make a judgment about you, usually within the first three to 10 seconds of engaging with you.
So anybody who publishes content, let's say on the internet video content all the platforms say it.
You got three seconds to get somebody's attention or they're going to scroll to the next video.
It's the same thing that human beings do.
That's the reason why the algorithm tells you that, because that's exactly how human beings make decisions.
You got about three seconds.
And in that three seconds, people craft a story about you in their minds very quickly.
And that story is based on their frame of reference, their past.
Do you remind them of something that they've experienced before?
Have they experienced you before where their state is?
And they craft a story about you based on how you present yourself just in that three seconds.
Then when you speak or you actually do something, all they do is take the story they already had and it just multiplies what they already thought.
Now, if what you say or do conflicts with the story that they came up with, or now, there's conflict in their own brain and they tend to push away from conflict because they don't want to deal with trying to figure out.
Why is there incongruence?
My story said this and the person did that.
But when the story is congruent, you present yourself as confident in three seconds and then you speak and you confirm that confidence.
It multiplies it by 10x.
So all it does is make that story much bigger in their minds.
So what?
Anyone who is competent, who is listening to this?
The reason why you want to have that confidence?
Because it takes the same competence that you already have that you can prove, and it multiplies it by 10 in the eyes of anybody who beholds your competence.
So, instead of you having to continually prove yourself to move yourself up, the confidence just is a force multiplier of that competence that you already know you have.
It reminds me I just got an email from a client today, this afternoon, on a presentation that I helped her prepare for it, where she was presenting her plan for 2026.
And she had done it the year before to the CEO and he had grilled her and she was not happy with her performance.
And this year she was much more prepared and had learned the things that she needed to know.
And then it turns out that the CEO this year didn't ask many questions.
In fact, he did more of the talking.
And my reaction was, yeah, because he felt that she was confident in her plan.
So he didn't feel the need to drill down and to question her, because he felt that she was so much more confident by that body language.
What are the signs that people pick up on to say oh, Laura knows what she's talking about, or no, she doesn't.
Great question.
Well, first easy example of everyone.
Think of a police officer.
We see a police officer on duty.
First of all, you never see a police officer with a dirty uniform.
Their shoes are always shine, their clothes and uniform is always pressed.
That's number one.
So what you wear does matter.
Now, they say the clothes make the man.
I disagree.
I think the man makes the clothes, but the clothes do matter.
So, again, think of a cop.
Never seen one with a dirty uniform.
Secondly, never see a police officer looking down when there are people around.
When a police officer is around civilians, the officer is looking and scanning the room or the space they're in.
They're looking at every single person who goes by and they're making themselves visible.
They don't mind that you see them.
And if you look at the cop and they look at you, they're going to hold that eye contact.
They're not going to break it.
So they are not afraid of the eye contact and eye contact is contact.
It's communication, even if nothing gets it.
Third, if you approach a police officer, or a police officer approaches, you notice that they always turn their torso, their shoulders, towards you.
Police officers never turned away from you.
They turn directly towards you.
They are paying complete attention to you, looking you in your eyes while you're talking.
Fourth, they are the ones who ask the questions.
You answer the questions.
The person who's asking the questions controls the conversation.
The person answering the questions is subordinate in the conversation.
Think of a witness on the stand in court.
The lawyer controls the conversation, because you have to answer what they ask and they hold the frame.
The person asking the questions controls the frame.
The person controlling the frame is the person in power.
Next, you never see a police officer just looking down at their phone in public around other people.
Because as soon as you look down and you tilt your head down, your presence completely disappears.
You almost disappear from the room when you look down.
Everybody who's listened to this has been out in public and you saw a person walking looking down at their phone.
They almost walked into you.
Their peripheral vision shows they're about to walk into someone.
They walk around you and they never even look up to see who they were about to walk into.
Right, right, right.
When you look down at your phone, you completely disappear from the environment.
It's almost as if you're not there.
Very point of having police in places oftentimes is for deterrence.
They want you to know that they're there so that you don't do any bad things.
Right, right, right.
I was on a show, maybe about two, three months ago, or with a guy who actually used to be a police officer.
And he asked me a question.
He said, what's something someone can do in the next 10 seconds to be confident?
And I said put your shoulders back, your head up, your eyes up, make eye contact with every person you come across.
And I said to him right after that, I said, hey, you used to be a police officer.
Don't they train cops to do that?
He said, yes.
It's called command presence.
Oh, my gosh.
And I knew it.
As soon as I said it, I thought to myself every time I see a police officer doing that, and he had told me he had been a cop.
So that's why I was asking the question.
He said, yes, command presence.
It's literally a thing they teach you in the police academy.
And I know it's something that they teach, because every time I've seen a police officer, they always do it.
And that energy can be transmuted.
That energy is transmuted and communicated between people.
And you don't have to be a police officer.
I'm not one.
You don't have to have a badge or a gun.
You can create the same energy in other people just by the way you carry yourself.
And as I gave you, all of those are nonverbal.
I love what you said about not looking at your phone.
I've even heard you should not have the phone on the table, but it should be out of sight.
Would you agree to that?
I do agree to it because it shows that you're giving complete attention to whomever you're with or whomever you're around, or it shows you're completely present and aware, even if you're by yourself.
So what I tell people Laura, is next time you're at the train station or in the airport standing at the gate, what does everybody do so that they get to the gate?
Okay, the flight's not boarding for another 25 minutes.
Everyone automatically pulls their phone up.
Yes, yes.
Unless you're with another person, you might talk to them.
But if you're by yourself, first thing a person does when they're idle in public, if they have no one to talk to is they pull their phone out.
Almost guaranteed.
So I tell people that we have a program.
We call it the Power Presence.
And I tell people one thing you can do to increase your presence without speaking is to stop taking your phone out in public.
Simple as that.
When you're out in public, don't take out your phone.
Doesn't mean don't use the phone.
I have a phone.
I use it all the time.
Right.
If I'm out in public, when I'm at the park with my son, I keep my phone away.
I might listen to something in my AirPod while he's running around playing, but I don't have my phone out.
I'm present.
My eyes are up.
I can see.
I had someone come up to me, maybe this is about a year ago, actually.
My son was playing in the indoor play yard and this older woman came up to me and she said and there's all these kids playing right.
All the kids are milling about and the parents are standing around the perimeter watching.
And she came up to me and said I just want to commend you because you're the only adult over here who's not on the phone.
And everybody else is on their phone.
And you're noticing, you're paying attention, you're watching your kid.
I have a young child.
My child's only three years old.
And one thing I noticed whenever I'm out, where kids his age are there and parents are always there.
Everybody's on their phone.
They're not even watching their own kids.
Yeah, and that's such a terrible example for the children.
I just worry so much about these two-year-olds who know how to use an iPhone.
Yeah, exactly.
The thing is, when you're confident...
It changes how people respond to you.
And then that is what can feed your own confidence.
But you have to be the one to start it, right?
Yes.
And confidence starts with what you say to yourself about you.
Then it becomes who you are.
Then it radiates outward from you.
Other people pick up on that energy, that you appear confident because you're not performing confidence.
You actually are.
They pick up on that and say, OK, this person seems confident.
Unconsciously, they make that decision.
So they deal with you as if you're a confident person.
And all that does is reinforce what you already told yourself.
So it becomes a self-fulfilling cycle.
It works the exact same way when you're not confident, though.
You're not confident.
People pick up on that you're not confident and they treat you as if you're not.
And then it becomes self-fulfilling.
So that's why you want to start it off the right way.
And that starts on the inside, with the person in the mirror and the bathroom, before you leave the house.
But isn't it domain specific?
Because the people that are listening, they're the best at what they do.
Whatever their profession is whether it's AI building or marketing or finance they're tremendously confident in the quality of their work and the timeliness of And that has led to some of them not everybody listening, but I know a lot of you listening.
You know that you're the go-to person in your company.
And yet your boss, instead of promoting you, is like, oh, I like having this person.
I can just give him or her more and more and more.
And he or she does it, does it well.
I don't have to worry about it.
But I don't promote them because it's too comfortable for me to have them there to be my execution person, my doer, rather than a leader.
And then maybe not everybody is cut out to be a leader.
What would you say?
I say, well, both things are true.
There are some people who are not cut out to be leaders and they are best to be in not necessarily subordinate, but in executioner positions, where they are the person who executes and gets things done, but they're not necessarily the leader who can lead others who get things done.
And if you want to be in that leadership position, then it's two things.
Number one.
Even though we're talking about nonverbal communication here, it doesn't mean you don't talk.
If you want to get into a leadership position and you feel like you're not looked at as one of those people, then go to the person who has that power and say hey, I want to get into a leadership position.
What do I need to do?
What do I need to show?
What are you seeing in him or her who did get promoted that you're not seeing in me that did not get promoted?
Or am I not even on the radar?
Do I not have the right credentials yet?
Ask the question and get the information.
Just the fact that you're asking Yes.
Put you in a higher level position because you're verbalizing it instead of sitting there and hoping to get chosen.
Right.
A lot of people do in their whole careers.
Then they get mad.
And nobody even knew that you were upset because nobody knew you wanted the job.
Exactly.
I hope everybody should rewind that.
Go back 30 seconds and hear that again.
That's so true. so speaking up and actually letting people know you want the position and now they are looking at you like okay this person wants a position let's let's take a look at them now let's now i'm going to pay attention to you before i wasn't even noticing and the other thing is when it comes to leadership it is the way you carry yourself and is the way that other people see you so yes you can be the person that your superior at work maybe is handing you a bunch of work you're getting it done and they appreciate your execution At the same time though, if you're going to be looked at as a leader, then the leader for the future who gets the title, you need to be leading where you currently are.
So are other people in your position at your same level, do they look at you as a leader?
Do they see you as a competent person?
Do they see you as a person who, when they have a challenge before they go to the balls, they just run over to your desk and see if you can answer the question?
And now internally, there becomes this just say, in a groundswell of confidence from everyone around, that this person is obviously the leader.
This person is kind of the alpha without the title.
And when you have that, then it almost becomes inevitable that you're going to elevate to a leadership position, whether you do it where you are or you're going to have to go to another company to get the title.
But it's inevitable.
That is going to happen because everyone is looking at you as a leader, even if you don't have the boss title.
The leader and a boss are two different things.
So, Dre, you're a performance guy.
You know, you come from the world of professional sports and you've built up this tremendous company.
What would you advise to everybody?
Say two or three things that we can do to make this year at work our best year.
Number one, get intentional about raising that bar.
So when somebody says they want to raise the bar on the year, the first thing they can do is not do what most people default to when they're trying to get better.
When most people try to get better and go to a higher level, what they do is they try to raise the ceiling or raise the roof.
So let's say somebody made a hundred thousand dollars last year.
They want to make more money.
They want to make $200,000.
So they just set a higher peak goal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's nothing wrong with having that goal, but I would also suggest you do something different, which is set a higher floor when you're trying to raise the standard or trying to raise your level of performance.
What you want to do is raise the standard, not raise the peak.
The standard is the lowest minimum common denominator.
What is the minimum acceptable amount of what we're going to do?
So if you made 100k last year, now you say it's unacceptable for me to make less than 100k ever again.
So now you set a new floor That raises the standards.
Anytime you want to raise the level of any organization, you can't just raise the goals, because not everybody's going to reach the goal, no matter how hard they try.
But when you raise the standard, what happens is you set a baseline level of performance that no one can come below.
The higher and higher your baseline is, the higher level of your whole organization, because no one can be below the baseline.
Not everybody's going to reach the goal, but no one can be below the baseline or they get kicked out.
That's just the rule.
Okay, let's say working out what you mentioned earlier.
Mm-hmm.
It's a minimum.
I have to go to the gym at least five times a week.
It's a minimum.
I have to make at least five outbound calls every single day I'm in office.
It's a minimum.
I have to shake at least 10 hands every time I go to a networking event.
When you set those baseline minimums.
Now your standards get higher, because if you're doing just that minimum every single time, there's a certain level of output that comes with that.
So that's the number one thing is raising the floor.
Instead of trying to raise the peak, instead of trying to raise the ceiling, raise the floor.
I mentioned also getting intentional.
Getting intentional is getting all your goals actually written down and asking yourself breaking them down.
What do I have to do in order to achieve them?
But then the more important question, who do I need to be?
The intentional part is about who do I need to be as a person?
And this is a hard question for most people because it's easy to talk about what you need to do.
Now, it doesn't mean it's easy to actually do it, but it's easy to talk about.
So if I say I want to make more sales next year.
Okay.
What I had to do, make this many prospects, make this many calls, this many closes.
Everyone understands that question is what type of person do you need to be?
And the reason why that question matters so much is because if you're going to a new level and doing something different, then that means the things you're doing will be different.
And it also means the person who you are probably has to change on some level, because the person who you are now, If that was the person who could do the things you want to do next year, then you would already be that person.
You would already be doing.
So since you haven't done it yet, that means something about you fundamentally must transform.
It doesn't mean the entirety of your character needs to change, but something about the way that you see yourself and the way the world is seeing you in turn must change in order for you to go to a higher level in this upcoming year.
And the way that change happens is by changing, as we talked about, the subconscious.
85% of your thoughts and actions are controlled by the subconscious mind, not the conscious mind.
So the conscious mind is you processing what I'm saying right now.
Everybody, 15% of your mind is conscious thoughts.
85% is subconscious.
So when the conscious and the subconscious are in conflict, which one's going to win?
Always the subconscious.
And it is a known scientific fact of human psychology that a person cannot behave in a way that is incongruent with the way that they subconsciously see themselves for an extended period of time.
So you have to change the subconscious.
There are only three ways to reprogram the subconscious mind.
Repetition, which is the same things over and over and over again.
Some people call this auto-suggestion, affirmations, telling yourself things over and over again.
The second way is immersion.
So think of being immersed in water when you're underwater.
Immersion is when you're in an environment where you have no other option but to think and behave a certain way.
For example, the military, you're immersed.
A person thinks they think I can't get up early in the morning.
I don't like making my bed.
Well, get in the military.
You will wake up early in the morning.
You will make a bed.
You don't have a choice.
Yep.
And the third way is emotionalization.
Emotionalization is when you experience something that's so emotionally imprinting that it can make a permanent change on you, even with one exposure.
So everyone who's listening to this can think of at least one thing that's happened in your life.
It only happened one time, but it was so emotionally impactful that it changed you forever.
And only happened once.
So repetition can take a long time because you do it over and over and over again.
It's more logical.
Immersion can happen.
In a medium period of time, an emotionalization can make changes in you immediately.
So ideally, you want to try to implement all three.
You can invoke all three.
Immerse yourself, repeat it and have some emotional tie to what you're doing, because emotions drive action.
Logic justifies actions.
We use logic to justify what we do, but emotion moves us to actually do it.
Can you give an example of how of emotionalization?
When I think of things that have affected me, it's been emotionally that changed me.
It was like usually something bad that threw me off.
And I'm like, I'll never put up with that again.
But it usually is something bad because negative emotions tend to drive action faster than positive.
Oh, OK.
Well, there you go.
Simply because of our survival instinct.
Negative emotions tell us that our life may be in danger and you'll do anything to avoid losing, but you won't do anything to gain win.
It's the same way that somebody will fight harder to not lose 1000 than they will fight to win 1000.
Yeah, that's right.
The fear of loss.
That's true.
Now you're asking if there's a way to engineer it.
But before I get to that, I'll say that Even if you don't try to engineer it, you're going to have these experiences anyway because something's going to happen.
That's true.
Something's going to happen.
Yes.
Everybody in life eventually passes away or we all have family members and friends.
Somebody's going to pass away.
Yeah.
You're going to have some unexpected circumstance interrupt your life that you're going to have to deal with, whether you wanted it to happen or not.
Correct.
You're going to have some human being do something or not do something that really throws a wrench into your plans, and you're going to have to respond to it, whether you want to or not.
And any one of those situations.
This is again why we talk about the subconscious and programming your mind.
You have to be able to reimagine a circumstance or a situation, or even imagine a situation doesn't have to be real that you or anyone else has been through, and put yourself in that frame of mind as if it is happening right now, to where you can basically get yourself into state.
Tony Robbins talks about getting in state and you get yourself into that state.
I'm an athlete in sports.
We get ourselves in the state every game.
You have to get yourself in the state, usually in training as well.
And the reason that you get yourself in the state is that's the mental practice so that you can access all the physical tools.
That's the purpose of getting into that state.
And it's the same thing with human beings.
And we started off here talking about confidence.
The way I used to explain confidence.
I haven't used this metaphor in a while, but it's like having a 10 bedroom house and each one of them bedroom doors is locked and confidence is the master key.
So, when you are fully confident, you can unlock every one of those doors, and each door behind each door is one of your skills.
So your communication skill, your problem solving skill, your thinking skill, your sales skill, your relationship building skill is behind each one of those doors.
When you're fully confident, you can access every ability you have.
You lose confidence, you lose the key.
So your skills are still there, but you can't access them.
And this is when people get frustrated.
Like, I know I can do this.
Why am I not doing it?
Whenever I hear people saying that, I will hear this from athletes all the time.
It's because they would get performance anxiety.
That anxiety stripped their confidence.
And because they didn't have the confidence, they would feel frustrated, because it's one thing to lose when you know you're not capable of doing the thing.
You put me on a tennis court right now with someone who plays.
I'm going to lose because I don't know how to play.
Right.
I'm not good.
So I have no expectation.
But if you brought me on here and you started asking me questions and I was getting tongue tied and not answering the question, then I'd be frustrated.
I know I could do this.
Why am I not doing it?
Right.
That's when you have lost access to your skills.
That usually is because you haven't prepared yourself mentally for whatever that situation is going to be, or emotionally for you.
Then you just can't access, you lost the key and you're frustrated because you can't do what you know you can do.
Okay.
Well, that reminds, I have two more questions for you today to use our time wisely.
And okay.
So one is similar to what you are just saying.
I know I can do it, but I'm not doing it.
And in a lot of cases and you may be working with people that have this same issue, what I call falling off the horse
Something that they were responsible for presentation bombed.
They didn't get a job, but their peer did.
Like something happened and just...
Their trajectory, like you were talking about, don't worry about something negative happening.
You don't need to engineer it.
It will happen.
Right.
But people feel like that just knocks the wind out of their sails and they have lost momentum, or that makes them question themselves.
What do you say to help them get back in the game?
Yeah, well, the first thing is we got to debrief.
And this is what all professionals do.
So, for example, a couple of weeks ago I was talking to a coaching client of mine and he was given a presentation at work and it was on Zoom.
He recorded the presentation and I'm really coaching him on this whole concept called the power of presence.
And it's all about how you communicate.
And one of the things is removing word showers and making sure you sound smooth in conversation.
And his presentation was not that smooth.
We were listening back to it, and I told him, go play the whole conversation.
And I'm listening to it, and I'm telling him to pause every two minutes.
You see how you said that?
You see how you ended the sentence on an uptone?
You see how you're using all these word fillers?
You see how this presentation is boring as hell?
Listen to yourself.
I'm explaining it.
I'm saying it to him.
He's laughing in spite of himself because he knows that it is.
And this is what professionals do.
In sports, we do game films.
What is game film?
In football, for example, football games are on Sunday.
You know what football teams do on Monday?
They all go into the theater room and they watch the film from the game they just played.
And if you made a mistake, they call you up.
And when you did something right, they call you up.
The team got surprised by something they weren't expecting from the opponent.
Okay, now we know.
When that happens, now we know how to respond to it.
Professionals go back over their experience, win or lose, and they ask themselves...
What did we do here?
Why did this work?
Why did this not work?
What do we need to fix for next time?
Chess players, for example, I used to play chess when I was in middle school.
Every chess player, especially the really good ones, whether they win or lose a chess match, they go back over the match with their coach or their trainer and they say okay, what move could I have made here?
That would have been a better move than the one that I did.
So that's number one.
Number two, once you get the feedback from the debrief, get back into your training space.
So, whether that's you need to practice your presentation again or you need to role play with your sales team,
Hey, OK, next time somebody gives you that objection, I need to talk to my wife.
What are you going to say this time?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You got tripped up on it last time.
You shouldn't get tripped up on that.
Or how do we weave an answer to the objection into the presentations that they don't bring that presentation up at the end of the sales conversation?
How do we avoid this problem from happening again?
So the biggest thing, just to put all this in a nutshell is when someone goes through a challenging situation, they want to get over it.
The first thing you have to do is not act like it didn't happen, which I find a lot of professionals do.
They want to act like it didn't happen.
They want to ignore it.
Let's go eat some ice cream.
Let's go and get over it that way by indulging our emotions.
No, let's indulge the logic and look at what actually happened.
The quicker you look at it, the quicker we can handle it so that it doesn't happen again.
Okay, I love that.
All right.
So final question is since you work with a lot of leaders, I'm sure if you were to talk to somebody and you would be able to tell whether they're a top executive or still team lead, still managing doers versus leading the company.
To help everybody listening, get clear, how do those two perspectives work?
How does the way they communicate come out to you, or what do you observe about executives that are just leading the company no matter what?
And then the people who are aspiring to reach that level?
Great question.
So the example of that, I was just giving this example this week to someone.
Let's say that Amazon was having a meeting, a board meeting, with all their top middle managers, C-suite executives, board members and all of that.
And everybody's in a room milling about talking.
And Jeff Bezos walks in and says now let's say we were watching this on video and there was no sound on the video.
Even if you didn't know who Jeff Bezos was, if I just explained to you the company and said there's a guy named Jeff Bezos, he runs the company.
I want you to tell me who he is when he walks in.
Do you think most people could point him out?
I would guess that by the body language, they would.
There you go.
Yeah.
So that's the answer.
Okay.
Because as soon as he walked in, everybody would be looking at him.
Most of the conversation would slow down.
And then everybody would be waiting to see his cue to know whether they should start talking or whether they should wait for him to say something.
They're all watching him.
If Steve Jobs walked into an Apple board meeting, you would know it was Steve Jobs.
Yeah, true.
If the president walks into a cabinet meeting, you know it's the president, even if you don't know who the president is.
It's because everybody else unconsciously calibrates to the person who's in charge and a person who is a leader.
Let's say I was outside at the Apple store.
I'm not even at your job and you're a CEO or you're the head person at your job.
And we just start idly talking because we're looking at the new iPhone.
I can tell by the way you talk if you're used to leading people or used to following people.
I can just tell by the way you carry yourself.
And by the way you speak, are you a type of person who is usually answering to people all day, or are you usually having people answer to you?
You don't just turn that on and off when you walk into or out of the office.
You can tell when someone is normally a boss and when someone's normally not.
Because they carry that with them all the time.
And you can tell someone who's on their way.
Yeah.
Being that by their body language, by their tonality, by their eye contact, by their posture, by the way they walk, by the way they hold themselves, by the way other people engage with them.
You can just tell because we give off these signals unconsciously all the time.
Or again, most people are completely unaware.
This has been so good.
So good.
Thank you so much, Dre.
We'll put your information, of course, in the show notes.
This has been, we're all going to have a better year.
I'll say to our audience, you're welcome.
And thank you Dre, for coming back.
Strategically picked Dre Baldwin to be our first interview of the 2026.
He is such a motivating but also the kind of person who gives you tools, and he is one of the few people that I have asked back to Give a second interview on the Speak Up podcast.
I really liked his performance floor concept because I think that's a great way to, you know, rewire our traditional system of setting the same goals and the same resolutions each year, instead focusing on, You know, what we will not put up with or the minimum viable product as far as our own performance is concerned.
And I love the command presence.
And right after that interview, I traveled to Morocco, as some of you know, and I practiced.
First of all, I dressed up. on that flight and I was not having my phone in my hand.
And I can't say that anything radical happened, but I definitely felt more control and less stress in this situation.
Now if you've ever walked away from a key meeting or presentation thinking I should have done better.
Why didn't I speak up when I had the chance?
Because I know so many times by the time you get it, what you want to say, the moment has passed.
I suggest that you get my executive presence scorecard.
It's a self-assessment to help you identify more specifically what's missing in your presence and help you rebuild your confidence.
If you want access to that executive presence scorecard, simply email me at hello at speakupwithlauracom.
Put the word score in the subject line and I will get it to you.
Maybe not in the first five minutes, but definitely in the first few hours.
Have a fantastic day and a great 2026 and I will catch you on the next episode.
