Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hi Gorgeous. Welcome to episode number 166 with the amazing ‘Powerhouse Connector’ Lisa Patrick, who is back on the show today.

Lisa Patrick [0:11]
Hi, this is Lisa Patrick and you’re listening to Heart Sells! Podcast with Christine Schlonski. Enjoy.

Christine Schlonski [0:18]
Well, I can’t wait and dive into this conversation with Lisa because we will be learning what a BFD is and why she needed it and how you can have one too. Also, we are going to talk about networking like crazy. How this is going to help you in your business. What a debt for Lisa? How you can get ideas of being a better networker no matter if you are an introvert or an extrovert that you really can have fun while networking and having your business thrive. Lisa Patrick is a highly sought after business development specialist and a successful serial entrepreneur. She is known is a ‘Powerhouse Connector’ and she has an impressive client portfolio of leading influencers, personal expert brands and companies such as Grant Cardone, Tom Hopkins, and Sharon Lechter. So make sure you take some notes, and just have fun with us in the next episode. Well, I am so excited to have you back, Lisa. And thank you so much for joining again.

Lisa Patrick [1:25]
Again, thank you for the opportunity, Christine.

Christine Schlonski [1:28]
I’m so excited. You have a book coming out. You’re going to talk about that as well. That sounds amazing. And yeah, probably need to pre-order soon. Also, you kind of finished our last interview something that was so interesting so where can people find you?

Lisa Patrick [1:49]
So they can find me at https://www.lisapatrick.ca/ or using my social media handle @LisaPatrickBFD.

Christine Schlonski [2:00]
So now everybody’s wondering since the last episode what BFD might stand for.

Lisa Patrick [2:06]
Yes. So I have a little story to tell you. So several years ago, I was sitting in a restaurant with two lovely ladies. And we were talking about education. And one of the ladies had her, you know, her doctorate in chemical engineering, and the other one was a CPA with a master’s and working on her Ph.D. and so forth. And so then they asked me, “What abbreviations do you have behind your name?”, and so I sat for a moment and I thought, “Well, BFD (Big F*ck Deal).” And we all burst out laughing because I don’t have any abbreviations, although I’m educated. I think that nobody else knows about me but I am a BFD in my world. And so that’s when the BFD started, so I think that everybody should have BFD as their initials.

Christine Schlonski [2:57]
Yeah. I love it because I’ve seen it over and over again. I mean, I highly value education. And definitely education has helped me to be where I am today. So no excuse about not having an education. But once you can combine what you have learned, like in real life, with street smart education, you don’t need another certificate. If you provide value to the marketplace, you’re good.

Lisa Patrick [3:28]
I think education serves a purpose. Now, I know that if I had a brain surgeon on my head, I would want him to have a very good education.

Christine Schlonski [3:39]
Yes.

Lisa Patrick [3:40]
However, I don’t know that we need a level of education. You know, we’ve been taught that you know, as soon as we graduate from school, we have to go to university or we have to go to college. And, you know, that’s old school thinking as far as I’m concerned. Do I believe that we still need an education? Absolutely. I think the way that we consumer knowledge is changing. And it’s rapidly changing. And the fact, I have twin daughters, and they’re 14 right now. And we’re talking about their education, and what are they going to do when they graduate and so forth. I think today we’re so very, very lucky because we have access to all kinds of knowledge. And I think the best knowledge is the world experience knowledge, learning from those experts, who’ve walked and made mistakes and have failures and had success stories, and we can learn from them, how much faster our career in a fulfilled life we’d have. And that’s really the purpose behind edge learning is. What are those internal and external skills that accompany when you do have to take a core competency from a post-collegiate? What are those other skills that we can acquire and we should be always learning always, should you ever stop

Christine Schlonski [5:00]
I believe life is about learning. There’s no, you always, if you don’t learn, you don’t grow. If you don’t grow then basically like anything in nature that doesn’t grow like dies.

Lisa Patrick [5:14]
Exactly. Yeah. And I’m writing a book right now. And the gentleman that I’m writing the book with is Jim Cathcart and Jim Cathcart wrote the book called The Acorn Principle, and The Acorn Principle really is about what’s the fastest and easiest way to grow. It really comes from your natural abilities and when you invest in yourself with your natural abilities, you need to nurture those abilities and as you nurture them, you know, you grow an acorn and you know, a tree an oak tree started with from an acorn and grew into this massive tree. And so you know, Jim and I are writing about you know, how to phone find opportunity, and Network Like Crazy is what the book is called. That’s really where the more you network the more opportunity you get the more you nurture yourself, the better and more fulfilled of a life you’re going to have.

Christine Schlonski [6:10]
Yeah, totally. And it doesn’t matter if you’re an introvert or an extrovert it’s all about the people in your life you never. I think Arnold Schwarzenegger said that he said, “There’s no such thing as the self-made millionaire.”

Lisa Patrick [6:25]
No.

Christine Schlonski [6:25]
You always have people supporting you, connecting you, helping you grow and only from there you can reach that goal.

Lisa Patrick [6:35]
Yeah, imagine when you first graduate from college or out of high school and you don’t have a network and so you are limited in your opportunities because you don’t have relationships to build from and grow from and, and nurture those natural abilities and the more you network, that’s why we say network like crazy. You’re going to have opportunities from those relationships. I mean, that’s where all my opportunities have arisen from, is recognizing a gap in the market and having the relationships to fill those gaps and help support clients as they grow as well.

Christine Schlonski [7:14]
Yeah, I think that’s where the value of the relationship comes from as well. When you really again, take that look from yourself, like, where are you and you ask the question, How can I support the other person? How do they need or want to be treated, and you put that focus on them? That’s where the magic happens.

Lisa Patrick [7:36]
I 100% agree. It’s funny, I always at one of the questions. Another question that I always ask when I’m networking or meeting somebody new is, “Is following your passion, great advice, or bad advice?” And it’s a great starter question to ask because you find out what their passion is. If you can fuel somebody’s passion, you’re gonna have a long term client.

Christine Schlonski [8:00]
Oh, yes, yeah. What a great question. I need to write that down.

Lisa Patrick [8:06]
It’s in my 25 questions.

Christine Schlonski [8:08]
Yeah, we gotta put a link in as well to your book so people can pick that up. Because networking like crazy that will give you all the opportunity in life because you don’t do it by yourself and you’re hopefully not stranded on an island all by yourself. Not bringing your boats.

Lisa Patrick [8:28]
With no boats.

Christine Schlonski [8:29]
Go back to episode one with Lisa. I learned something in episode one. I would bring a boat next time. I love nice weather beaches. Maybe I would like to stay on the island for a little.

Lisa Patrick [8:49]
It’s funny because when Jim and I were researching what we were going to write about, I went to Google like everybody else does you go to Google. I researched the keywords, how to find opportunities. Then I researched the words, network like crazy. How to find opportunity was read, it was searched, those words were searched 1.9 billion times every 50 seconds on the internet.

Christine Schlonski [9:20]
Whoa!

Lisa Patrick [9:21]
That’s crazy. Now you know that changes from every 50 seconds the amount but not by much. Network like crazy was was something like 600 million times every 50 seconds. Clearly, those are two problems that people are having to solve.

Christine Schlonski [9:41]
And clearly the book is going to be a best seller.

Lisa Patrick [9:45]
God, I hope so because it’s been a lot of work.

Christine Schlonski [9:47]
That solves two problems. Two challenges people have.

Lisa Patrick [9:52]
It’s been a lot of work. Jim is an amazing human being. If you’re listening, please go look at his TEDx, how to believe in yourself. It’s one of the top TEDx episodes or videos, however, they say. He’s an amazing man. He’s over in China right now speaking to hundreds of thousands of people about how to believe in themselves.

Christine Schlonski [10:21]
That’s so essential especially when you are an entrepreneur, you have to believe in yourself.

Yes.

You have to learn how to believe in yourself because if you don’t do it, your clients are not going to do it.

Lisa Patrick [10:35]
I don’t know about you, Christine. But you know, it’s a challenge every day. Some days I wake up and I don’t believe in myself and I’m, my fears set in and you get scared and it doesn’t matter how successful you are. Richard Branson gets scared. He talks about his fears. But you have to learn a way to, 1.) I like to say I compartmentalize things. Or use your fear is your fuel to push forward, you’ve got to keep moving forward, no matter what. I mean, you have roadblocks along the way. We all face them. They all have challenges. But you have to find a way to keep moving forward.

Christine Schlonski [11:16]
Yeah, totally. There’s a saying like, “When you move through hell, keep moving.”

Lisa Patrick [11:21]
Exactly. Run. Don’t walk, run!

Christine Schlonski [11:25]
I think it’s one step at a time. It comes probably back to what you would say ask better questions. If you don’t, if you wake up that day, and you don’t feel like you are the strong superwoman, which obviously happens, like ask yourself a better question like, “What could I do today to get into the state? Who could I support that they give me this amazing feedback that’s going to pick me up from my pity party?”

Absolutely. If you don’t know anything about yourself, go to your network and ask them. As I was trying to figure out, I’m coming out with my new brand and everything in the end, I was really trying to hone my message and get a better understanding of how people perceive you. Because it’s one thing for you to perceive yourself. But it’s a completely other people, you know, and you have to go to the people that are really genuinely going, to be honest with you, and tell you the truth. That’s the only way that you grow and get better. You have to really find the courage to keep moving forward.

Yeah, I think that’s, that’s super important for everything you do because everything passes at some point. You gotta grow because when if you don’t grow, you don’t have those challenges. If you prefer that, that’s fine, too. I think life is about growth about experiencing and, obviously failure is part of it. Do I like it? Well, probably not in the moment, but when I look back a couple of months later, I probably see what I’ve learned from it and how it helped me to become that better version of myself.

Lisa Patrick [13:11]
I always tell my daughters, and like I was saying in our first episode, so if you’re just tuning in, I have twin daughters, and I always tell them, “If you’re not failing, you’re not learning. And I expect you to fail. If you don’t fail. There’s a problem.” You’re not trying, you’re not pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, you’re not experiencing life if you’re not failing. It doesn’t matter, if you fail, you can fail 1000 times. It matters what you do next. That’s what matters. It’s not the failure. It’s how do you move forward. How do you make that next step? How do you keep moving? How do you pivot? How do you make the changes necessary? How do you work on those strategies to move forward and it’s really important, failure is a failure. We all experience it. If you’re failing at something right now and you’re listening, that’s okay. Just figure out how to move forward. That’s more important.

Christine Schlonski [14:09]
Yeah, totally. So do you remember like one of your biggest failures that have then turned into an opportunity or something that really supported you along the way?

Lisa Patrick [14:23]
Yeah, let me begin, let me roll off the toilet paper. I have many different failures I’ve had, I think the biggest thing was finding, I failed in one of my businesses and learning what could I take from that failure and add value to the clients that I currently had. When I figured that out because if you’re really good with your clients and you have good relationships with your clients, and you’re always adding value, you’re authentic. Please, if you’re listening, be accountable. If you make a mistake in your business, it’s okay. The biggest mistake you can make is not admitting that you made the mistake. So admit that you made the mistake and how are you going to fix it and how are you going to add value with your client based on that mistake. That’s really the golden ticket, I think. Early in life, we’re taught to be perfect in the white picket fence and don’t make any mistakes and don’t fail at things, always be successful. One of the things that, I have great parents who were entrepreneurs, and it comes from a farm andI’m an only child, and one of the things that they taught me was, be accountable. When you tell people that you’ve made mistakes, and you admit and you’re accountable to them, people will understand and they will work with you. But you have to be accountable to those mistakes

Christine Schlonski [15:54]
Yeah, that’s a huge step. That’s probably something that doesn’t come easy.

Lisa Patrick [16:00]
It isn’t easy. I was told, my dad said to me once, “The toughest conversations are the ones that you’re probably should have.”

Christine Schlonski [16:10]
Yep, that stuff that doesn’t feel good.

Lisa Patrick [16:14]
No, it doesn’t. But you’re going to feel a lot better afterward.

Christine Schlonski [16:17]
Yeah, totally agree. Do you remember what the very first thing was that you ever sold in your life?

Lisa Patrick [16:27]
I do. I sold the truck accessories. RV parts from a wholesaler, that was the very first and I’m talking about a crash course in sales. Talk about a crash course and not being icky sleazy, slimy in a man dominated world. And I was good at it. I sold a lot of accessories, let me tell you, but I approached it differently. And I think men and women sell differently. I think we’re just as good, but I think we just sell differently. That was the very first thing that I ever sold.

Christine Schlonski [17:07]
Wow, how did it feel when you made that first deal or transaction or exchange — ?

Lisa Patrick [17:14]
Great! Because I meant I got money because back in, I’m not going to say how many years ago but several years ago, I was paid by myself so it’s the only way I was paid. So I had to make sales to live

Christine Schlonski [17:32]
Yeah, I think it’s such an amazing feeling when you had that first success. When you really learn that whatever you offer added value to someone when you understand how the whole sales thing works. So when you went in business for yourself, and when you had to kind of have your own products, was it different from the sales perspective?

Lisa Patrick [18:01]
Oh, so different. I had a private investigation company. I had to cold call because we didn’t have the internet. We didn’t have a cell phone, well, we have a cell phone, but it was a flip phone. It wasn’t. He had a phone book and you looked up people with the phone book. We had internet but it was snailing that up. Because it was the telephone line. I had to do cold call sales. That’s where I really learned the art of cold calling. I did knock on a lot of doors and get a lot of no’s before I got a yes. And I made a game of it. How many noses can I get today? Because if I got 50 nose, that means I was 51 steps closer to a yes.

Christine Schlonski [18:51]
Yeah, totally agree. Yeah, that’s an amazing book by Andrea Waltz and her husband Richard Fenton, Go for No! Yes is the Destination. Yes is how you get there. It’s good when you make that game and you really challenge yourself because then you lose the fear around this scary thing that you can’t really grasp. It’s rejection, but it’s not, they don’t reject you as a person. It’s not a fit for whatever you offer at that moment.

Lisa Patrick [19:23]
Exactly. That’s just such a valuable golden nugget right there, that you said. You might not have asked the right questions, you might have the right product or the service, but you didn’t ask the right questions to figure out whether or not you could accommodate what you have to fit with a need. It’s very, very important back to that, and I always say, one of the greatest things that Tom taught me was that it might be no right now. Or yes, actually might not be a yes. There we go.

Christine Schlonski [19:59]
Well, no means not now for me. I think that’s what we talked about then the first episode comes in so handy was a follow-up.

Lisa Patrick [20:10]
Yeah, a simple thank you note goes a long way. I just ordered a whole other stack of thank you notes. Today is the day where we get everything via email and electronic and messages and messenger and, you know, goes on and on and on. And not very often, I mean, even Christmas cards, you know, you get all these Christmas cards in the mail and now nobody. I think I might have got two Christmas cards last year. The art of the thank you note in the mail is coming back because how wonderful it is to go to the mailbox, the old fashioned way and open it up and get an actual thank you note, handwritten, not electronic

Christine Schlonski [20:54]
Yeah, not the bill.

Lisa Patrick [20:56]
Not the bill and those even come electronically.

Christine Schlonski [21:01]
Well for me, I think it’s 50-50, 50 in the mail and 50 via e-mail, but yeah, it’s nice to get something else in the mail besides bills or. Awesome

Lisa Patrick [21:16]
And a great way to leverage too because you get the thank you note and I received a thank you note here just a couple of weeks ago from a good friend and colleague and anyways, I had sent her some business her way and it’s a great way to say, “Look, I got a thank you note, #thankyounote from at someone, it’s a great way to share on social as well.

Christine Schlonski [21:40]
Oh, yeah. Wonderful. That’s a great point. What would be like some parting advice or piece of guidance you want to leave the listeners with?

Lisa Patrick [21:57]
You have to invest in yourself continually and the only way that you’re going to have a more fulfilled life is if you commit to investing in yourself because nobody else is going to do it for you, whether that’s reading 10 minutes a day, listening to a podcast, writing your own novel, whatever it happens to be, it’s still investing in yourself. And you have to continually do it consistently every day.

Christine Schlonski [22:25]
Yeah, so that means you have to take action.

Lisa Patrick [22:29]
Absolutely. You know what, you can have the best idea in the world, but if you don’t execute on it, nobody’s gonna know about it.

Christine Schlonski [22:36]
Yeah, totally. Well, thank you so so much, Lisa. I loved our conversations. And yeah, I can’t wait for your amazing book to come out. I want to send the people to your page, https://www.lisapatrick.ca/ And all the links, what we talked about, your book, your wonderful questions, everything is going to be in the show notes. And yeah, Thank you so, so much for sharing your wisdom with us today.

Lisa Patrick [23:04]
Well, thank you for the opportunity. I’ll leave your viewers and your listeners with the parting word of, “Invest in yourself.”

Christine Schlonski [23:14]
Thank you. I hope you had as much fun as I did in this episode with Lisa Patrick, and you know what a BFD is, why you need it and how you can get your communication on to the next level. I’m very excited about her upcoming book, Network Like Crazy and I think Lisa taught us why networking is so important in this episode as well in Episode 165. If you want to go deeper, hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/. Find the podcast tab, find these episodes 165, 166. All the links that are leading to Lisa are just one click away so you can connect and as soon as the book is out, Network Like Crazy, there will be a link as well, so you can get your personal copy. I’m looking very much forward to getting this book into my hand. If you are interested in even learning more from Lisa for free, I’m happy to invite you to the Heart-Centered Lead Generation Summit athttps://christineschlonski.com/hclgs-registration/ where you can sign up for a free pass. And Lisa is one of the amazing teachers who is teaching on heart-centered lead generation, how to find your next client with ease. And also all the different tactics and strategies you can apply from paid to organic to mix lead generation strategies, as well as partnerships. So hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/ you will find that there or just sign up at the https://christineschlonski.com/hclgs-registration/ Thank you so much for being here. I’m so excited to have you on the next episode that will be variety Friday and the amazing guest for next week is waiting for you to share more knowledge. Have a wonderful day, wherever you are in this beautiful world and I’m saying bye for now.