Amanda Louder: So happy to have my friend Sheri Brasier on the podcast today. Sheri, will you introduce yourself for my audience?

Sheri Brasier: Yes. Hi. Thank you for having me today. I am Sheri Brasier and I am a life and style coach. So basically I’m a life coach, just like a regular life coach, but I empower women to have great style and it’s mostly around self-confidence because the way that you dress reflects how you feel on the inside, and a really easy hack is to get dressed for the way you want to feel. So I do wardrobe styling and life coaching and it’s a good time. 

Amanda: So fun. And she has really great taste. So, I love being around Sheri. 

Sheri: Thank you. 

Amanda: Okay, so we threw around a lot of different ideas of what we wanted to talk about today, but I think you kind of hit the nail on the head that when we wanna feel a certain way, sometimes we need to dress the part first. So tell me what you’ve found in your work around that. 

Sheri: Well, mostly I have asked my clients, what do my clothes say about me? Because we all make judgments about people. That’s what our brains do. We’re designed to make judgments about people. And our clothes and the way that we feel about ourselves tells other people how we feel about ourselves. And so I always, I often will ask my clients, what do your clothes in your outfit say about who you are? And sometimes that stings a little because they don’t want people to think that they don’t care about themselves because they’re in their sweats or they’re in their joggers in a hoodie you know, whatever and whatever. 

Amanda: There’s nothing wrong with those, right? 

Sheri: Right. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. Right? But it’s in, I always tell my clients, what activity are you dressing for? Are you dressing to be lounging around on a Saturday cleaning your house and you’re gonna be, you know, with your hair pulled back and you’re cleaning your house and you’re doing the things, or you’re gardening or you’re mowing the lawn, or you’re doing whatever you’re doing. Are you dressed for that occasion versus are you dressed to go to the grocery store on a Tuesday and you’re gonna see somebody at the grocery store? Do you want to be dressed in your cleaning clothes or whatever. Not that I don’t ever go to the grocery store on a day that I clean. Because I forgot that I don’t have anymore cleaner or whatever. Like there’s always the exceptions, but I dress for how I want to feel that day. And even when I’m cleaning, I still wanna feel productive. And I still wanna feel like I’m going to be organizing and getting things done, and I’ve just always thought when I get myself dressed, I want to feel confident in myself for whatever it is I’m doing. Not that I’m all dolled up when I’m getting, when I’m cleaning, but how often am I cleaning my house? Like, how much of the time does that really take of my life? Not very much really. 

Amanda: Yeah. But you think about like these young moms who are home with their little kids all day. Maybe they’re being, you know, spit up on or whatever, like how are they supposed to dress when they’re being spit up on all day? You’re not gonna wanna wear clothes that make you feel so good and then have your kid throw up all over it. 

Sheri: Right. Mm-hmm. for sure. And when I had little babies. Now just a side note, I have two boys. My last two boys are seven months apart, so I had two babies – 

Amanda: Wait, what? 

Sheri: -seven months apart. 

Amanda: Oh my gosh. 

Sheri: Yeah. So I have. 

Amanda: One’s a preemie.

Sheri: No. 

Amanda: Or adopted. 

Sheri: Adopted. Mm-hmm. .

Amanda::  Oh, okay. See I have two, my two youngest are also seven months apart. 

Sheri: Oh, really? 

Amanda: Blended. Yes. And it’s one from each of us. . 

Sheri: Yes. So we had two, two boys, four years apart. They’re four years apart and just had some struggles with infertility and all the things. And that led us to adopting and we adopted our third little boy. And when he was five days old, we found out that I was pregnant with our last little baby. 

Amanda: Oh my goodness. 

Sheri: So my pregnancies are hard.  I’m really sick and all the things. So with our last one, our last pregnancy, I had a brand new baby that we had adopted. So yeah, we were bonding and doing all the things that you do with a newborn adopted baby. And I was pregnant and sick and doing all the things. And I was certainly not dressed the way that I dress now in those days. There were several years where I didn’t wear jewelry because I had two babies that were pulling my earrings out of my ears and pulling the necklaces off, and, you know, bracelets caught on all the things, and I just didn’t wear a lot of accessories when my babies were little. Yeah. And so I made sure that the clothes, the shirt that I was wearing wasn’t just a t-shirt, it was something that was a little bit nicer. I call them beyond basics when I‘m in my group, I call them beyond basics. So it’s a t-shirt with a little ruffle or, it’s a t-shirt with, you know, a neckline that has some, you know, lattice lacing or something like that. That’s just gives it a little bit leveled up. And they’re all, all of my clothes in those days came from Walmart, honestly. Because if they were just gonna be spit up on then I wasn’t gonna spend a lot of money 

Amanda: But Walmart has cute clothes 

Sheri: They do.

Amanda: And like beyond just boxy t-shirts. 

Sheri: Mm-hmm, they have really good beyond basics. I tell all of my clients, if you need beyond basics, Old Navy has really good beyond basics. And Walmart and Target have really good beyond basics and you can feel like you have a little bit of style for not a lot of money, and you don’t have to worry about taking it to the dry cleaners and, you know 

Amanda: Right.

Sheri:  All of those things. 

Amanda: So, so we’re not talking about like, you have to dress super high end, spend lots of money.  But just a little bit beyond a basic t-shirt. I remember actually one of my favorite skirts and a skirt that every time I wore it, I got so many compliments on, came from Walmart.

Sheri:  Yeah. I have a sweater. 

Amanda: Right. And the only reason I got rid of it, the only reason I got rid of it is cuz it was way too big . .

Sheri:  Mm-hmm. I have a sweater right now that every time I wear it, people will come across the room to tell me how cute it is. I literally got it at Walmart. 

Amanda: I love it. 

Sheri: So it’s not hard to find clothes that look nice.  It just takes a little bit of, I think it takes a little bit of knowledge about what works for your body and what you like for your style. And then where to find those things and to what shops. What stores do I shop at to find those things? 

Amanda: Yeah. So one of the reasons why I wanted to do this podcast with you is because I’ve noticed some things with some of my clients that they don’t put in a lot of effort, which is fine if that’s what they want, but it does affect the way that they feel about themselves. And I had a client years ago that was really struggling in all areas of her life, and she said, I came to a realization from working with you because like I’m dressed up every day now.

Sheri: Me too. 

Amanda: Really. I mean, yesterday, so the day before we’re recording this, I didn’t have any clients. I didn’t have a single thing on my calendar, which never happens. right? I still took a shower. I put my hair up in a cute top knot, right? But like I was still, and I was totally comfortable in some joggers and a cute sweater. But like I wasn’t just like in my pajamas all day, or in my sweats all day just because that’s how I know I feel good about myself. But she said that she had so much judgment, this client, about women who were high maintenance, that in an effort to not be high maintenance and to be low maintenance, she actually became no maintenance . And when she started working with me, like she’s like, went and got her hair done and she started buying a few beyond basic clothes, right?  And it totally changed how she felt about herself. and the way that, you know, she showed up for herself and like you could just see that her countenance was different and happier. Now, I’m sure it had a lot to do with the mindset work that we were doing, right?  But just by putting in a little bit of effort she started feeling better about herself.

Sheri:  And I see it all the time. Another little side note, I have been a hairstylist for 27 years, so what I start with is do your hair. You can wear whatever clothes you have on, but if you have your hair done, you just look like you cared about yourself that day.

And it doesn’t have to be curled all up like you’re going to church or like you’re going out on a date or, you know, a cute little intentional top knot with some things pulled, little hairs pulled out around your face or whatever is something better than just, you know, pulling it back in a hat or which, although I do wear hats all the time, I do wear hats. But they’re intentional, right?  

It’s all about being intentional about what you’re doing. And I have a lot of thoughts around the high maintenance comment because, okay. I would consider myself high maintenance. I don’t know if I necessarily call myself high maintenance or I just know that other people look at a person that looks like me and would say that I’m high maintenance because I always have my hair done. I always have my makeup on. I always have, you know, clothes on, whatever, but when I was growing up, my mom was very simple, but she worked at a bank and she was a professional. She was a manager of a bank. And she taught me that you don’t leave the house unless you have your hair done and your makeup on. And clean clothes and what that meant for her. She had a pixie all her life. I always knew my mom with a pixie haircut, so it took her all of 10 minutes to do her hair. But it was styled and cute. And she wore base makeup, like a foundation. And she didn’t have a lot of eyebrows, so she would pencil in a little bit of eyebrows and mascara. That is all she ever wore. And that’s all she ever taught me to do was just mascara and I have really red cheeks, so blend in your cheeks. And that’s it. I just wore mascara through high school. That’s all I ever wore. But my hair was always done, whatever that meant to me and I always had clean clothes on. And those were pretty much like your basics. And I have elevated that as I’ve gotten into the profession that I’m in. 

With being a hair stylist and then now being a fashion stylist. But you know, I’ve kind of taken that to a little bit of a higher level, I guess you could say. Maybe. But the basics are still the same. You put your makeup on, you do your hair, and you wear clean clothes, not yesterday’s clothes. But clean clothes. And I think most everybody can do that at a pretty basic level.  And feel better about themselves. That’s what it comes down to. 

Amanda: Yeah. So I kind of grew up with the same kind of mom but it wasn’t, it was never about us and how we felt about ourselves. It was how we were presenting to the world. So it came about other people and what they thought of us. Rather than what we thought of ourselves and making sure that we, and so I wanna make that distinction because I mean, yes, people are gonna judge you, right? But are you doing it for other people or are you doing it for yourself?

Because, so growing up, I mean, I went to church with my hair shellacked to my head. There could not be a hair out of place ever because of what it meant to other people if they judged us. And what it meant to my mother, but, I understand that’s her own issues, but for me, my sister still, she’s like, you’re so high maintenance. I’m like, I am and I’m proud of it because I feel better about myself and I would say I’m actually high maintenance so that I can be low maintenance. Like, I get my hair done so that it’s easy. I mean, I don’t spend a lot of time on my hair. I curl my hair once a week. I wash my hair once a week, right? Or if it’s flat ironed, I might have to do a little touch up after having my hair in a top knot at night or else it strangles me. Right. But it’s just a quick flat iron. Like, I literally have my hair done in usually less than five minutes. With lashes. I get lash extensions. 

Sheri: I know, I do too, because it’s so that I can be low maintenance. 

Amanda: I went hiking with my husband and our dog the other day, and I literally put on a tinted moisturizer and that was it because of the lashes. Right. And I still look like I’m done up and fine. So I do high maintenance so I can be low maintenance

Sheri: I tell people that all the time. I tell, that’s what I tell people. My husband and I just had this conversation about the money, I guess, quote unquote, that I spend on myself, meaning my maintenance of myself. And that includes, I have nails, I have eyelashes. I do my own hair cause I’m a hairstylist, so that kind of doesn’t count. But I do do my hair. Yes, I do have my eyebrows microbladed because they’re really super blonde.  And I want to be able to have some color there. So I did have my eyebrows microbladed about 10 years ago, so it’s lasted that long. And it literally takes me a half an hour to 45 minutes in the morning to get made like this. Like, your listeners can’t see, but if you follow me on Instagram, you’ll see it takes me about 45 minutes to get all dressed and hair and makeup and the whole thing because I do those things maintenance wise, so that I don’t have to spend all the time in the morning every day. 

Amanda: Oh. And I would say it probably takes me maybe 20, maybe. Just because of the things that I do. Right? Yeah. So, okay. So we wanna feel more confidence. So we need to dress and create, you know, do ourselves up so that we can feel the way we want to. Right? Let’s transition this into the bedroom. 

Sheri: I was hoping that you would go there. 

Amanda: Hey, so what do we need to do in the bedroom to feel confident and be dressed for success?

Sheri: Okay. So I have lots of thoughts about this and especially since you and I have been in conversations, you know?  I was like, you know what? I have some things that I could offer. 

So first of all, think about, and your listeners know that your thoughts create your feelings and what you think about yourself is gonna show up in how you act. And if you think about if you’re the lower desire partner, let’s just say you’re the lower desire partner, but you want to create desire for yourself. There are so many things you can do to create desire, but probably nobody has thought about what you wear and the clothing that you put on your body at nine in the morning to create desire for when you go to bed at night. So if we can think about what is going to make me feel desire by what I wear on my body, it could be lingerie. If that is for you, like it could be, maybe you’re gonna wear lingerie today. You know, maybe that’s what you’re gonna put on. Whatever it is for you. It doesn’t-like I don’t have any rules. I prefer strategies rather than rules. I’m not a rule follower. I kind of rebel against rules . So I prefer the word strategy. So what’s your strategy to create some desire? You’re gonna use your thoughts. Obviously you’re gonna think things, but if you’re like me, I’m a busy mom. I have all the things going on, and it’s not a natural thing for me to think of desirable thoughts all day long if I’m the lower desire partner. Right? 

Amanda: Right. 

Sheri: So that’s one thing you can try to do for yourself is to think desirable thoughts. 

But I think that putting clothes on your body that make you feel desirable, I look in the mirror and I have on whatever clothes I have on, and I feel desirable.  And that is gonna help you out in the daily menage, or whatever that’s going on in your mind. When you catch the glimpse of yourself in the rearview mirror, or you catch a glimpse of yourself in the store window, or you’re walking by your mirror or whatever, and you have intentionally put on an outfit that helps you feel desirable. Then all day long, you’re kind of inputting that in your mind about being desirable, and that’s going to create desire, and then you decide when it’s time, whether you put on lingerie or whether you don’t, or whatever things that you do. But you’re going to have more desire built up in yourself when you get to that point. That if you, then, if you don’t, and I say, why not help a sister out? . Help yourself out by deciding what to put on in the morning and how to put yourself together in a way that helps you feel desirable, because that’s what it’s about. When you wanna create desire. It’s, do you feel desirable? And for me, my mom taught me the, you know, never go out without your makeup on and whatever. Because you respect yourself. That’s the message that she gave to me as her daughter. Respect. Respect yourself. Yes, and respect yourself enough to put yourself together that when you go out into the world, you’re going to show up that way. And it’s, that’s the message that we want to send to ourselves, is I’m going to put myself together in a way, that I feel desirable if that’s what you want, or that I just feel like I respect myself. That’s what it comes down to, and I think that so many of my clients hadn’t really ever even thought of it in that way. They’re like, I guess I never really asked myself if I respected myself when I got up in the morning and got dressed. 

Amanda: Yeah, absolutely.

Sheri:  I just didn’t. No one ever asked me that, but now that you say that, I wonder, you know what, if I do respect myself, I’m gonna choose some different things. And it doesn’t mean that I didn’t respect myself before, just means I hadn’t really been conscious of that. I hadn’t really asked myself that question. That’s okay. There’s so many things in life that I just didn’t know to ask myself. Right? But I asked myself that question, I probably would’ve gotten a different answer.

Amanda:  I know. It’s so, I think we’ve talked about, and people on the podcast have heard me talk about how transformational the boudoir photography part of my retreats are. These women and many women who aren’t putting a lot of effort into themselves on a daily basis, go get their hair done, get their makeup done, put on something that makes them feel beautiful or sexy. Right? Or even if they don’t, they’re like, okay, I’m gonna at least try. But then they have other people telling them how beautiful and sexy they are and they actually start to believe it when they can see it. Like they can see it in the camera. The photographer’s telling them how gorgeous they are. We do a slideshow Saturday night that people have the option to put some photos in and we’re all whooping and hollering about how beautiful and sexy everybody is.  And it changes their perception of themselves. They’re still them. They’re still them. But you know, one of the reasons we do coaching is to become a higher version of ourselves, a better version of ourselves, not to become someone who we’re not. 

Sheri: Yes, for sure, 

Amanda: But to become a better version of ourselves and can we put a little bit of effort in to help us become the best versions of ourselves inside and out.

Sheri: That leads me into my story, I guess you could say, of becoming a style coach. And I have been, I have struggled with my weight my whole life, and so I’ve had a lot of self-defeating thoughts about my body and about myself, and about my worth for a really long time. I bought diet pills with babysitting money when I was 13. Does that just not make you wanna sob your eyes out? 

Amanda: That’s so sad.

Sheri: I have always not been good enough. My body image has never been good enough. I was always fighting that. And so when I got into this profession of being a hairstylist, I had a dress code for the salon that I was working in and I had to go out and find clothes that worked for that dress code. And so it kind of made me think, get scrappy about how I was gonna put together outfits for a plus size body. 

And I think that’s really where I started learning that when I could put an outfit on my body that made me feel like I was beautiful when I looked in the mirror. When I looked in the mirror and I liked the outfit and the way it was put together, and back then I kind of thought it was a camouflage for my body because I didn’t have a very good body image.

Right? So that was how I was thinking of it. What can I do to hide my body, but still show up in a way that made me look like I was a hairstylist. That I, you know, fit into my, with my colleagues, right? And so that’s how it started. 

Obviously, that’s not where I am today, right? It’s evolved. I’ve found coaching. I have a way different image of myself now. I’ve lost a ton of weight because of it. Like, there’s just been a whole evolution. But in the beginning I was like, if I can just help myself out by putting something, an outfit on with some jewelry, do my hair, so that I could look in the mirror and like what I saw, something like, something that I saw. Then at least for my hair or my outfit or whatever it was, I could say, well, my hair looks pretty today. At least I have that going for me. 

But what it did for me was those little tiny things. At least I have my hair. At least I have that going for me, those little tiny thoughts that I was putting in my head over time, it became my hair is awesome and I have great jewelry. My hair is awesome. I have great jewelry. And look at this jacket. I have great hair, I have great jewelry. Look at this jacket, and I found these cutest jeans and it just all of a sudden started building on top of each other, building on top of each other, building on top of each other. Those little tiny little things.

When I would look in the mirror, I could at least say something nice about myself, and I feel like that’s what style does, is it helps us be able to look in the mirror and find something we like about ourselves, even if we didn’t really know that we were supposed to do that to ourselves. 

Like we didn’t really know, we don’t have a bad image of ourselves. We just didn’t know we were supposed to have any image of ourselves. Like I was in that position in a lot of things. I just didn’t know that that’s what I should do for myself. I didn’t realize the impact that it would give to me, but I feel like those are the things that really have created my own self-confidence in where I am today. 

Is the little tiny things, and that’s why when we go into the bedroom part of it, if you’re the lower desire partner, giving yourself just those little infusions of becoming beautiful to yourself. Becoming desirable to yourself, that has helped me. And it has helped my clients too. And then we can talk about having a lingerie wardrobe, which I have done for clients, because one of the things that I can do for my clients is put together style boards, digital style boards, and they are clickable links that you get the style board with a link, it’s a website, basically a little tiny mini website with a whole bunch of stuff on there with links and, and I have put together a lingerie wardrobe for a couple of my clients. They want, they’re like, I want some free stuff. Help me find some stuff that will look good on my body for my body shape, because there is, there is something to that. 

Amanda: There is. So that there absolutely is.

Sheri: That goes along with it too. 

Amanda: This has been so fun, Sheri. I love it. I love hearing your story and your transformation and what those little things can do for the rest of us. Okay, so why don’t you tell everybody where they can learn more about you and follow you? 

Sheri: Well, I’m mainly on Instagram @sheribrasier.style. I am on Facebook as well, Sheri Brasier, and then in my Instagram there’s a freebie for your clients, and it’s called Style Basics Every Woman Should Have in Their Closet. And it’s just a list of things that are basics that can help you start to make outfit formulas, everything goes together. It’s like a mix and match wardrobe kind of helps you start there, gives you some ideas of what are the basics, what are style basics. What even is that? Why should I have them? What will it do for me? So you can get that at sheribrasier.com. There’s right on the front page, there’s that freebie. And then they can follow the links on my social media if they would like to work with me and style mastery. That’s my lifetime program that is all things style coaching and wardrobe fixing and style personalities and all the fun things style. 

Amanda: So, so fun. And you have a podcast too, right? 

Sheri: I do have a podcast. It’s called Creating Unshakable Self-Confidence and it has style tips and life coaching hacks for creating self-confidence. 

Amanda: Cool. Well, thanks so much for being here with me today, Sheri. 

Sheri: Thank you for having me. It’s been a blast.