Day 141: Pat Sutton

February 18, 2010 at 12:01 am, Category: Featured, Inspiration

“If you’ve got a garden that you need to fix, you don’t go out there and scan across the whole garden and think ‘Oh my God, where do I start?’  You just look at the tiny corner of the garden, you say ‘Right, this little bit I’m going to do today.’  So you dig that corner up, plant your little plants, make it look pretty, go in, have a cup of tea and say ‘Tomorrow I’m going to do that little bit …’”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Pat, for agreeing to be part of the Project today, and before we go into the interview, can you introduce yourself?

Pat Sutton: Yes.  Hi.  I’m Pat Sutton, and I’m an internet marketing specialist, and I have my own personal official blog which is called the Internet Marketing and Personal Development blog, and I also run a number of women’s networks and blogging sites for women.

Toni: Well thank you.  And Pat, thinking about inspiration and the work that you do or even personally, who do you inspire and how do you do that?

Pat: Well, again, I like to inspire women to do more with their lives.  I talk at a lot of women’s events and lunches, and one of the things that I do say to them is that women are not very good at blowing their own trumpets.  And in this world that we have now where we all have to interact with each other and people buy from people, and with all the networking that we need to do, it’s really important to actually have a strong sort of profile and be proud of your profile.

And also, you need that verbal business card.  You need to be able to stand up and say exactly what it is that you do and why you do it and I think, you know, women aren’t very good at doing those sort of things, and that’s probably why I like to inspire people to do that.

Also, obviously I believe in positive thinking and the power of attraction and all these things, and I think that if you go out there with the right attitude then you will do better.  Things don’t just come knocking at your door.  If you’re not going out to find it, don’t be just thinking that you are going to be able to sit in front of your telly and that suddenly an opportunity is going to appear.

You’ve got to be out there.  You’ve got to get out of your comfort zone.  But at the end of the day, I like to inspire people to believe in themselves so that they can make things work and make their businesses work.

Toni: When you work with people in this way and helping people to believe in themselves and to stay positive and to blow their own trumpet, as you say, can you just give an example of how you do that, how you help another woman believe in herself?

Pat: Well, first of all, obviously everybody’s got a skill that they do.  I mean, a woman who has brought children up and the children have got a life of their own.  These women tend to be feeling that they’ve suddenly gone down in everybody’s expectations of them because they’ve got these … they’ve done their bit, you know, but it isn’t like that.  I mean, I’ve got two grandchildren, and my daughter is 30-odd — I’m not going to say how old — and she comes to me for things all the time, and I help her with her life; I inspire her all the time.

So, you know, you’ve got to see yourself differently.  You’ve got to not allow people to put you into a niche where, you know, because you’re a certain age, because you’ve had a family, that everything’s got to stop now, and I think that’s so important.  A lot of women do take a lot … find it very difficult to get back into that life, and obviously if they’re an entrepreneur it’s a big step but, you know, it’s great.

Toni: When you do this type of work, what do you do to help explore their potential?

Pat: Well, I’ve got my women’s peer network, and we do try to do some kind of events and we try to set up things like webinars and those like that; and I like to get them to get involved and to make them sort of see what they have to offer, and it’s amazing how they’ve always got something to offer.  They’ve always got a skill that they’re really good at, but it’s just making them see that and making them have the confidence to tell others about it.

Also with my blogging site, it takes a bit of coaching and coaxing to get women to actually open up and write a blog that they actually want other people to read, but once they did it then they’re back doing more and more and more.  It’s just giving them that push.  And the potential is there, but it’s just making them see what’s going to happen – what’s the worst that’s going to happen?  Give it a go.  You know, you’re just going to get better and better.

Toni: Oh, that’s great.  Pat, what do you need to be inspired?

Pat: Well, I’m a little bit of, I suppose, sort of … I believe in psychic ability.  I really, really follow people like John Edwards and – I don’t follow them; obviously I don’t go there because he’s in America anyway and I’m based in the UK — but I follow them on the television and read their books and things.  But I think that that inspiration for me and my business, I think, is Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, people like that. I love listening to their audios in the car and I just, when I’m driving, especially on long journeys, I’ll go through CD after CD.  Much to my partner’s sort of dismay because he sort of gets a bit fed up, but I love listening to them in the car …

Toni: Can you …

Pat: And I find that …

Toni: Oh, I’m so sorry to interrupt you; I want to make sure that people can hear because a lot of people learn from people like you and what inspires you.  You mentioned two names.  You mentioned Tony Robbins and who was the second person?

Pat: Jim Rohn.

Toni: Okay, thank you.

Pat: Jim Rohn – he died I think about a month ago, so sad, but he’s probably the most fantastic speaker.  The ideas he had were fantastic, and I think his books and his CDs are fantastic.  He’s really somebody to follow.

Toni: Okay, and so what inspires you are people who are motivational speakers, and you had touched on people that also have the psychic abilities.  It’s interesting; can you help us understand how those two help to inspire you?  One is motivational speakers, but the other one is with the psychic abilities.  How do those two connect and inspire you?

Pat: Because I do believe that there is something about your psyche that makes you do things.  I firmly believe in positive thinking and that it can make your life change.  I think that … I’ll tell you a story.  When I first split up from my husband years ago and he sort of went astray, if you like, and we ended up splitting up, and I was a single parent and I had to go and find work.

I went to work for a kitchen company and it … we designed kitchens and sold kitchens.  It was direct selling, knocking on people’s doors, and it was commission only, but I firmly believed that I was going to make loads of money at this.  So I joined the company and I ended up pairing up with another lady who also was a single parent, and we got on well so we decided to partner and go and do it together.  So we were given a pile of addresses right across the other side of the UK and Wales, right down in the bottom of Wales, and we spent two days traveling around there and we actually knocked on people’s doors.  We were given all these addresses, and we were told that they wanted kitchens.

We went and we sold kitchens, and we came back with quite a few signups and deposits.  The whole office was absolutely amazed, because what had happened was because we were both these sort of little young rookies, these two girls who had just joined up and didn’t even have the courage to go and sell on our own, we had to do it as a couple, and they gave us what they called the “No Hopers” – the people that had written in or had phoned in who they had no hope of ever getting them to buy a kitchen.  And yet we’d gone there total rookies not knowing that they were “no-hopers,” thinking that these people were waiting with baited breath for us to knock on their door and sell them a kitchen, and we sold the kitchens.

And of course, once we found out that they were these “no-hopers,” then we didn’t sell again to another “no-hoper.”  All we were interested in were the good ones, the good leads.  I believe that was absolutely categorically because we went there thinking that these people wanted our products, and we were there and they were waiting for us, and they were desperate to buy and we sold, and we absolutely sold them with no trouble.  That is a perfect example of doing something that you believed was going to happen, even though everybody else thought that there was no way it would happen.

Toni: That’s really interesting, too, and you know the other people obviously were storytelling, weren’t they?

Pat: Exactly.

Toni: You know, you didn’t have that story so you were able to … in your mind they were going to buy.  In the other people’s mind, they were telling a story and you had the facts; they had the story – that’s awesome!  That’s really awesome and the power of positive thinking.

Pat: That’s right.

Toni: Do you find yourself reaching for tools or technology methodologies, Pat, that when you need to be filled up a bit, you need to be inspired, are there things that you tend to reach for on a consistent basis?

Pat: Well yeah, I do.  As I am a blogger and I write a lot of blogs, I also read a lot of blogs, and I think that I’ve improved in time by reading other people’s blogs.  I obviously do read a lot of books.  I’ve got a massive collection of books.  I think that, yes, you’ve just got to keep on going.  It’s not something that you can just say “All right, I’ve read that book, I’m going to go and do this now.”  You have to stay motivated.

I also believe in not living in the past or in the future, living now, you know, thinking of what you’re doing now.  All right, you’ve got to see what you want, you’ve got to see yourself in that future and, of course, if you don’t see yourself in that great place in there, you’ve got nothing to work towards.  But by the same token, you’ve got to live for now.  You’ve got to think of what happens now.

I believe there’s also another philosophy that I’ve always followed and that’s the slight edge, where you just do that little thing.  You don’t look at the big picture.  If you’ve got a garden that you need to fix, you don’t go out there and scan across the whole garden and think “Oh my God, where do I start?”  You just look at the tiny corner of the garden, you say “Right, this little bit I’m going to do today.”  So you dig that corner up, plant your little plants, make it look pretty, go in, have a cup of tea and say “Tomorrow I’m going to do that little bit,” and don’t stand and scan the whole garden and get overwhelmed by it.

Toni: Oh, what a great piece of advice.  The final question, Pat, for you is what do you need to explore your own potential?

Pat: I need to always feel worthy.  I need to feel that people do listen to what I have to say, but I also need to be able to listen to other people.  When I do something, I need to have it succeed, and if doesn’t I will keep on and on and on until I make it succeed.  Obviously, I believe in positive thinking, so when I think to myself “Can I do this?” and then I see myself doing it, and then I will do it and I will not give up until I do it, and that’s probably how I actually improve myself.

Toni: I would imagine that that mentality that you have and that will and tenacity that you demonstrate also comes across when you’re working with these women in business as well.

Pat: Of course.  That’s so important that they can free their own potential and that they can, you know, go through it with that and have that in their mind’s eye what they can do and just go for it.

Toni: Pat, you have been absolutely wonderful in this interview, and the nuggets of information that you have given are going to give people pause and something to think about.  We will also include links to your blogs and a way for people to read a little but more about you and get to know maybe some of the women in your network.  So thank you so very much  for taking the time out of your busy schedule to be a part of this Project.  We really appreciate it.

Pat: Oh, that’s fine.  I really enjoyed it.

Toni: Thank you, Pat.  It was a pleasure to meet you.  Take care.

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For more information about Pat Sutton:  www.NicheMediaMarketing.co.uk

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