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SagePresence: ‘Master the Role You Were Born to Play’
by Jackie Flaherty P
ete Machalek was finishing film school just in time to help Dean Hy-
ers raise financing for a Warner Broth- ers movie. They thought they were getting into the entertainment business, but stumbled into the spy business, which inspired a corporate training
company. That St. Paul-based company, SagePresence, has been responsible for coaching more than $3 billion in win- ning competitive sales presentations. “SagePresence began with what
I thought was a prank phone call,” re- calls Hyers, who hung up. “When some
guy calls you saying he’s a government agent setting up a spy school, claiming he wants you to teach acting to covert agents, you’d hang up on him too!” Fortunately for Hyers and Mach- alek, the person called back. Eventu- ally, it all led to a bestselling business book for presenters and a new way of coaching and training. Their approach applies secrets used by film stars and government undercover agents to stand out when they want to, blend in when they don’t and win people over no mat- ter what the pressure. “We faced our own ‘make-or-break moment’ the day we walked onto the Federal Law Enforcement Training Cen- ter grounds in Georgia,” recalls Mach- alek. “We were operating on some pretty soft logic and theoretical ideas when we signed onto teaching agents to manage their fear when someone puts a gun to their heads. They were betting their lives on our ideas, and it worked.” The SagePresence method com- bines the simple power of storytelling with time-tested performance skills to help people organize their thoughts and deliver them authentically and confi- dently despite high stakes. Their meth- ods, they explain, inherently promote emotional intelligence by embracing feelings instead of burying them. “We tend to balance the yin and the yang of presence to develop a full spectrum of masculine and feminine qualities,” says Machalek.
Adds Hyers, “SagePresence strives to bring tangibility to soft skills and re- lease untapped power out of emotions. The world is so yang. It has a mascu- line emphasis on winning, competing, action and conquest. SagePresence is more yin, helping people be who they need to be, and feel what they need to feel to create chemistry with their audi- ence.” SagePresence promotes reading people better, aligning feelings with words and inspiring results genuinely, he says. The spy school campus was a modest, tin Quonset hut, and on the ar- mored car ride to get there they passed off-road cars chasing each other in fields and a mock-riot within a mock- city erected for training purposes. Out- side rang the sound of constant gunfire. Hyers and Machalek were briefed on
14 NA Twin Cities Edition
natwincities.com
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