FHTH Ep 240 - The REAL Reason I Swear So Much

If you've ever wondered (because why wouldn't you?!) the REAL reason behind my love affair with swearing…

Then you're in for a treat.

I don't want to spoil the episode for you, so go ahead and tune in.

That’s an order from your Finnish mama.????

Xo,
Sari

“Most of humanity is fucking asleep. We compare ourselves to other people, to other trial lawyers in this industry, and then we conform to what we see. Then we start living lives that are boring and purposeless. I want to change the world. And in order to do that, I need your help. And in order for you to change the world, you need to disrupt shit. That means bucking the system. That means taking big risks. That means going all in with storytelling, feeling your feelings, getting emotional, being totally and completely authentically you.”
sari de la motte

EPISODE 240 TRANSCRIPTION

Well, hello, hello, hello. I am so excited to be here and talking about the real reason why I swear so much. But before I do that, I wanted to just give a shout-out. Someone was reading from Hostage Hero for the first time and they posted about it in Facebook and one of my friends then tagged me in that post. And then all these other people were like, "Oh my God, I love her." Well, I just want to say I love you too, and I would love you more if you would actually go and review this podcast and/or the book. But you know, there's room for improvement.

Today, we're talking about why I swear so much for the real reason I swear so much.

Swearing is my thing, y'all. I mean, the name of my website is, Sari Swears, sariswears.com. People send me stuff all the time. We're talking about swearing, and they're sending me F-word, ornaments from my tree, or T-shirts that say motherfucker, or all the things and I love it all. I love every last piece of it.

Part of the reason why this happened is when we went through our rebrand process a couple years ago, one of the first things that our marketing company did was interview several of our current clients and find out what they loved. And they said things like the trial skills, voir dire, and all the things, but it came up enough, this whole, "Well, she swears so much too". They came back to me and they were like, "I don't know. What do you think? Should we play with this?" And they kind of presented it as, "Sari Swears." I swear a lot. But I also swear that it doesn't have to be so hard. I swear that you don't have to worry about your verdict. I swear you can have a better life. And I thought, that's clever. I like it.

The marketing started sending things my way of things that they wrote in my voice. And by the way, I still write a lot of that, but as we've grown bigger, the Thursday Love Notes… And if you're not on my list to get my Thursday Love Notes, that's when I send you a note about something totally fucking random that we're just going to talk about that week. It rarely has anything to do with trial and it's just the stupidest shit. It's just a way for us to have some levity in our day on Thursday. You can go to our website, sariswears.com and sign up for those emails at the bottom of the page. I don't think it says Love Notes, but just "Sign up for our emails." That's whatever it says down there. I should really go look and see. But I write those. That's all me.

But our marketing team writes in my voice, they would send me things and they would be like, "Fucking shit. Fuck. Fucker. Motherfucker. Fucking that shit." And I would have to say, "Okay, wait a minute. I don't actually swear that much." I mean, don't get me wrong. I love swearing, it's so much fun. But that's not why I swear. I swear for a reason, a particular reason. And no, it's not because the entire world is a dumpster fire. And yes, it is a dumpster fire. That's not why I do it. Are you ready for it?

The reason that I swear, is for one reason only. I'm not supposed to.

Professionals aren't supposed to swear. And women in particular aren't supposed just swear. And I don't mean that I do it just because I'm not supposed to, even though I love doing things I'm not supposed to. That's kind of my personality in a nutshell.

I do it because it's disruptive.

So here's how Kevin got into coaching. Kevin raised our daughter by himself. No, he didn't. I'm joking. But when we got together, I was six years older than him and we didn't want kids right away, but then when we started talking about having kids, I was building my career and I was like, "Okay, well what do we do with said kid?" And he's like, "I'll raise it." I'm like, "Okay." And then I got pregnant twice and miscarried twice. And then the third time was a charm. And I delivered Elena at the riped age of 43 as I talked about in my Manifesting podcast a couple weeks ago.

So, Kevin was stay-at-home dad for the first three years of her life. And as she was then going to go into preschool on year four, he started to think about what he wanted to do. He had worked as a chef for many years, but he was kind of done with that and didn't want to go back into kitchens. And so around this time we were having what we call studios, Voir Dire studios, Opening Statement studios. Shout out to the OGs that either came to those or remember those. And we were in a condo in the downtown Portland area that we owned, that we ran our business out of. We didn't live there, it was literally just for our business. The back room was this room that had two TV screens. One was a view of the jury, one was a view of the attorney. The front room was where we did our mock juries. The middle room was the tech room, the control room. That's where Kevin was managing the cameras remotely and making sure that everything was going correctly.

What would happen is, is one attorney would come out at a time, they would do their… And we had six at a time, now we do three and it's called Trial Lab, but it's much more expensive. But they would do their presentation, whether that was conduct voir dire or opening statement. And then I would tell them, "While the jurors are writing out their feedback forms, I don't want you to go back into the back room and chat it up with the other attorneys. I want you just to wait because I'm going to call you back out and we're going to do some coaching in front of the jury. So go ahead and go into that middle room and hang with Kevin for just a minute."

This is how we ran these things. And it started to happen that at the end of the studio the next day when we were talking about how everything went and saying our goodbyes, a lot of the attorneys started saying things like, "What I really loved about this experience was the comfort room." And I'd say, "What the hell is the comfort room?" And they'd say, "Well, you know. When you go back in that room with Kevin after you've done your presentation and you feel bad about it, and then he's in there going, 'Dude, that was a hard group,' or, 'Wow, you did really great or whatever,' and he makes you feel better. Don't you guys design it that way?" And I was like, "Oh, hell the fuck. No, I didn't design it that way. Kevin shouldn't even be talking to you." No, I was joking. He can talk to them.

So suffice it to say that I brought this up when Kevin was looking at what to do for his next journey, and he's like, "Really? Me as a coach?" I said, "Just go do the first coaches' weekend. There's six classes. You have to do all kinds of things to become a coach." I said, "Just go to the first one and see if you like it." And he did. And he is now our lead mindset coach. He always has a wait list. He is one of the most gifted coaches that was ever born. But Kevin's coaching is going to wrap you up in a blanket, kiss you all over your forehead and tell you, you are the greatest thing that mama ever born into the world and you're going to leave and you're just going to feel like just magical.

That is not Sari's coaching style. He's laughing right now because he knows it's true. Sari's coaching style is you're going to require therapy after you have coaching with Sari. Kevin's shaking his head. But no, that's actually a true thing. In my mastermind group where I take three attorneys for a year… Well, not a year, nine months, they work with me exclusively.

Before I take them, I say, "You have to be willing to go to therapy if we together, deem it necessary because oftentimes when people go through this program, it utterly and absolutely blows up their lives." And what I mean by that is in a good way, they leave their partner and go start their own law firm, or they decide to get a divorce or they decide to finally propose or whatever.

But I am what Kevin calls the Calling Forth Queen, right? I'm like, "Let's make change in your life." It's never change that I want to make. It's change that they say they want to make and I call them to do it.

Now, I don't do this just for fun. And by the way, it takes all kinds of coaching. Some people would not do well with my coaching at all, and other people would not do well with Kevin's coaching and a variety of other coaches. But the reality is, and I'm speaking now to my own coaching style, my teaching style, and my speaking style, which y'all know already from listening to this podcast, is that we have all been conditioned. This is particularly true for women, to be proper, to do the right thing. Those of you, all of you trial lawyers, this industry has said there is one way to be a trial lawyer and this is the way that it is. And by the way, that changes depending on who you're listening to. And you're going to the CLE and you're hearing all of the war stories and you're like, "Oh my God, how am I supposed to pick what the right way is?"

Most of humanity is fucking asleep. We compare ourselves to other people, to other trial lawyers in this industry, and then we conform to what we see. And then we start living lives that are boring and purposeless. I want to change the world. And in order to do that, I need your help. And in order for you to change the world, you need to disrupt shit.

Not actual shit because that would be smelly and gross, but you need to get out there and disrupt things in the world. That means bucking the system.

That means taking big risks. That means going all in with storytelling, feeling your feelings. Turns out that's something that you all struggle with. Getting emotional, being totally and completely authentically you. All the things you are not supposed to do because they're risky, because they could cost you.

So I swear a little or even a lot more than I actually do in my non-work life because I'm not supposed to. Because if I swear, if I build a method that is based on love instead of fear, if I refuse to stay quiet when called out, which I am consistently called out, basically if I do the things countless of people have told me throughout the years would cost me my career and I do those things and I not only live to tell the tale I thrive, then you can too. Because what I do is small in comparison to what you do. I don't even to compare them. It's the one little thing I can do to swing out to show you that you can swing out because I love the F word, but I don't love it half as much as I love you. I mean that.

But if you read my emails, listen to my podcast, and you marvel at my potty mouth, just know I do it in service to a larger goal. And that is to help you not be afraid, to inspire you to get out there and disrupt. The state of the world right now, we need disruptors more than ever. So go out there and fuck some shit up. And that is an order from your finish fucking mama. Love you. Talk soon.

Have you ever wished that you knew what the jury was thinking? Well, grab a pen and paper because I'm about to give you instant access to a free training I created for plaintiff trial attorneys called Three Powerful Strategies to Help You Read a Juror's Mind. It's going to help you to understand what the jury is thinking, so you'll feel confident to trust them and yourself in the courtroom.

Ready for the address? Go to sariswears.com/jury. Enjoy.