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Lucas Root: Patty, thank you so much for joining me. I’m really excited. So, for everybody who wasn’t there in the green room before, we were talking about how you and I have actually rescheduled this this recording already once. If you don’t mind, I’d like To summarize the story a little bit, because I think it’s an awesome one.

Patty Block: Of course, that’s fine.

Lucas Root: So, you were actually introduced to me by [00:01:00] somebody I admire very much. And you and I have had, what, three, maybe four, really good, deep, long conversations before this one. And I just have enjoyed getting to know you so much. When we scheduled this, I was really excited, of course, to have this conversation and to share you with my audience.

And then you rescheduled with me the first time, and you reached out, and you just said, you know, listen, I’m really low energy right now, and you know, I don’t think that’s gonna make for a great recording, and I agree. And, you know, the reason I want to highlight this is because from a, from an elements of community perspective, what you did was really credible.

You, you you established, let’s say your value set. And really decided how you want to show up. This is Common Heart. How you want to show up, how you want to do the work that [00:02:00] you’re doing inside the community. Right now it’s a community of two, you and I. And you said, I want to show up and do the work that we’re going to do together with pride and honor and love.

And you didn’t use those words, but that’s what I heard. And I was like, that, you know what? I love that. So, thank you. Would you like to tell the audience a little bit more about yourself now that they already love you?

Patty Block: You bet. And thank you for those kind words. So I’m Patty Block. I focus on helping women business owners who are experts in their fields, and I’m helping them do several things. One is grow their business. Primarily from revenue, because most of the women that I work with do not want big, complex companies, but they do want to generate more revenue with less stress.

So that’s often where we start. I’m also teaching them sales strategies. And one of the things that I recognized many years ago is that the sales [00:03:00] programs that I was taking were not working for me. And I thought, of course, you know, I thought, well, that’s just me. It’s not working for me, or I must not be doing this right.

And then I started talking with some of my colleagues, also women, business owners who said, Oh, I did that program. It doesn’t work for me either and quickly realized these were programs developed by men for men, and they didn’t understand how women think and function differently. So I developed my own programs to help women, both with pricing for value in particular and for how you can develop your sales process in a way that feels very authentic.

And over the course of time, as I’ve worked with more and more women, business owners, I’ve also been focused on helping women position their company for their exit. Whether that means selling their company or closing the doors or [00:04:00] something in between.

And one of the challenges is, in my opinion, as women, especially if you’re in your 40s, 50s, 60s, you may not have been raised to be a breadwinner and you probably weren’t raised to build a company to sell it. And so that is very, it feels very foreign to us. And we aren’t planning ahead. So it’s very common that when we are ready to stop working, we end up closing the doors.

The problem is that a lot of your wealth is tied up in your business.

And by closing the doors, you’re not going to realize that. So I believe that wealth and business success in the hands of women. society as a whole. And that is the foundation upon all of the work that I do. It really is about empowerment, about choices and about setting the stage for what you want to happen in your business, not [00:05:00] just what you think should happen. .

Lucas Root: I like it. I think everybody has trouble pricing for value.

Patty Block: Well, I’ll share with you when I was growing up, my mom. I made these fabulous cookies. The whole house smelled good. It was warm. The cookies were gooey. And all my life, I watched my mom eat the broken cookies. But it wasn’t until I was a teenager that I even thought to ask her, why do you only eat the broken cookies?

Do they taste better? And she laughed and said, no, I eat the broken cookies so you can have the whole ones. And several years ago, as I was struggling to put words around this really pervasive pattern that I had seen in the decades that I’ve worked with women, I remembered that memory came rushing back to me of mom eating the broken cookies.

And I realized that’s what we’re doing as women. We’re bringing that spirit of self sacrifice. Into our businesses. [00:06:00] And what that looks like is we tend to undervalue ourselves. Then we underprice our services and then we over deliver for our clients. So our profit goes poof. We tend to do this over and over.

So it’s very difficult to build a profitable company. And it’s what I call the broken cookie effect. So I have dedicated myself to helping women beat the broken cookie effect. And that is done through those several pieces of pricing for value, having an effective sales process, and then the capstone is really about effective communication.

And I wrote a whole book about that because it is so critical. It doesn’t matter if you price for value, if you’re not confident in how you talk about it. And if you’re not attracting the right people and by right, I mean, right for you, right? [00:07:00] Who’s the right person that you want to work with that, you know, you’re furthering your purpose.

And that you’re attracting those people. So it’s a combination of pieces that fit together. And in the book, the structure that I use is called the snap system. And it’s based on the idea of the ginger snap and the broken cookie effect.

Lucas Root: Yeah. That’s awesome. Wow. The broken cookie effect. That makes so much sense. yOu know, it’s funny. I think you’re, I think you’re probably right. Obviously, you have way more experience in that than I do. What’s interesting is that when women learn about how to be excellent salespeople, they’re better.

tHe, you know, I pay a lot of attention to the stats around this on the Dow right now. Only 8 percent of CEOs are women. thOse 8 percent of [00:08:00] CEOs who are women outperform their male counterparts by 30%, which is an enormous number.

Patty Block: Is. And that’s really an, it’s an interesting statistic.

Lucas Root: yeah I consider it interesting. We’ll tie it back to your hidden advantage. The thing knocking you on the shoulder there in a second. But, yeah. When I hear numbers like that, if I were a board member, I’d be fighting to hire female CEOs as hard as I could, you know, I think that’s a number that’s worth pursuing with nearly reckless abandon.

Obviously, no board member is allowed to ever use words like reckless abandon but seriously, like 30%, like, we need that whoever it is whoever the we is, we need that. And so it seems like, we. Women come into this sales environment with the broken cookie effect as a part of their basic culture.

Like their internal basic culture, because everybody’s taught that. And then the [00:09:00] ones who learn through it either they learn from you or however they, you know, maybe they break their own broken cookie effect just by working in industry and they become super power women.

Patty Block: One of my clients had asked me if we ever get over, if we ever truly beat the broken cookie effect. And what I’ve seen over time is we don’t. It is so deep seated. In how we’re raised, especially as girls and women. So I saw this firsthand when I put together a group called the revenue roundtable.

And we, it was based on the curriculum of value driven pricing, which is my signature program. So everyone took the program. We worked through and we applied it in their business inside the revenue roundtable. All of that was great for the first. Three months, let’s say people were bringing in more money.

They were feeling much more confident. They felt like they had kind of [00:10:00] cracked the code of how to price and talk about this and how to be more effective with their prospective clients. And it was really great. And then people started coming to the round table with. More questions like, you know, this isn’t a unique circumstance and I’m wondering if what I’ve put together really applies here and they start to doubt themselves and that there’s that nagging voice in their head that is Worried so their anxiety goes up.

They feel less confident. They give what I call invisible discounts. So the prospect doesn’t even know they’re getting a discount. But in your own mind, you’re thinking, you know, this is a special client. I really want them to come on board. So I’m going to give them a 20 percent discount. They don’t need to know that, but it’ll make me feel better.

And that’s the kind of head trash that comes back [00:11:00] and haunts us. So. Then in the round table, we started working through that. So I want to stress, it’s really a process of shifting the paradigm as opposed to let’s fix it and forget it because it really doesn’t work that way. And that’s true of anything that you deeply believe. You’re not going to change that belief overnight, but you have the potential to change it over time. I

Lucas Root: Thank you for the work you’re doing.

Patty Block: love the work I do. Absolutely love it.

Lucas Root: Now, tell me more about the book.

Patty Block: So your hidden advantage, this book was inside me for a long time. And I had people asking me, have you written a book? Is there a book I can read? And I think I kept putting it off because. First of all, I was busy and I’m also the single mom of three, [00:12:00] now young adult children. So I really had my hands full.

And I also believe that a book that is a work that has been in your head and your heart for a long time is born when it’s ready to be born. And with that thinking, that’s how I developed Your Hidden Advantage. And the concept there is. Using the broken cookie effect as a framework and the SNAP system, which stands for stop believing the myths, narrow your focus, assess your value, and practice your power.

Those four pieces come together in this framework so that you are generating more revenue with less stress, you’re attracting your right fit clients, and you will feel so much more confident. In how you’re talking about yourself, your business, your pricing, your team, and that confident reflects. [00:13:00] In every prospect that you’re speaking with and also helps you evaluate which people you really do want to work with and who might be better off working with someone else. And so it’s that whole concept. Now what I didn’t anticipate was that your hidden advantage would be part memoir and part business book. And that’s because I, you know, I have to say. Unless it’s really cut and dried as a business book, I think a lot of times the author pours themselves into it. And I know I did, and it took me about two years to write the book and then of course to get it published.

So the concept here is using stories from my past or my experience. To help the reader understand how that can be applied in a business setting and very much like the broken cookie [00:14:00] effect, starting with a story about my mom and her spirit of self sacrifice. Using other stories throughout the book, which I think, of course, makes it more interesting, but also more accessible and I’ve gotten very good feedback on the book.

There are also a series of exercises in the book that you can download and work through those. And then if you’d like and want more help with that, then I have the value driven pricing program and painless selling to ideal buyers. And all of those are hybrid programs where there’s once a month coaching.

So all of that fits together. And it also allows me to shift so that my private consulting is focused on the women who want to exit their company. [00:15:00] Silence.

Lucas Root: machines. We’ll take every single thing and we’ll make meaning out of it, which is awesome, because it means we’re great storytellers.

It also means that we’re susceptible to things like the broken cookie effect. And here’s part of the reason why. So somebody will listen to this story and say, yeah, I get it, but also like. That wasn’t a sacrifice. That’s what they’re hearing in their head. That wasn’t a sacrifice. You might not even hear this like, actually, consciously.

That might be a subconscious narrative that you’re saying. So those of you who are listening right now, and you’re saying to yourself, well, that wasn’t a sacrifice. She still got the cookie, and it’s true. It’s true, she still got the cookie. But it’s a baseline, foundational behavioral pattern. And what we do, again, as meaning making machines, is we take this [00:16:00] foundational behavioral pattern.

So she ate the broken cookies, and left the whole cookies for other people. And then the other people that come in and interact with this gift that she has made for you, and for the rest of your family, and your guests, and whatever. They have Appreciation for eating the cookie. Now, let’s be honest. They also would have appreciated eating a broken cookie.

But that’s not the way her internal narrative is working. Her internal narrative is saying, Oh, they got the whole cookie because I ate the broken cookie, and they’re happy because they got the whole cookie because I ate the broken cookie. This is the meaning making machine that we do inside our heads.

Every single one of us, me included. Men, women, children, adults. And we create these foundational behavioral patterns and we take those into other things, which is, again, amazing work, we’re incredible with how we’re able to leverage a skill set that works, let’s say 80 percent as well in this other circumstance.

It’s what [00:17:00] we do. And so we’ll say, okay, now I’m selling a thing and I know that the broken cookie effect works, right? I know. Cause I made the meaning from the story of watching people eat the whole cookies and having appreciation and joy. I know that if I do the same thing over here in this other thing, I’m selling a product or I’m building a business or I’m selling my services.

It’s going to work here too. And you know what it does work. Until you run out. Until you personally don’t have more of yourself to give. Until eating the broken cookies results in you not having anything on your plate anymore because you’re giving everything away. And that’s when it breaks. And it breaks for everybody.

Men and women. This isn’t special. All of the people who engage in this particular behavior. Will all eventually break. And, I love it. And I think you’re [00:18:00] probably right. I think women are probably more susceptible to that than men.

Patty Block: Well, and here’s the thing. So you’re right on target in terms of what the eventual effect is. So I’m not saying be selfish. I’m not saying you always have to put yourself first, right? That’s not at all what I’m saying. What I’m saying is there needs to be a balance.

Lucas Root: yeah, I mean the first aid effect is the other side of this. If you don’t take care of yourself, you cannot take care of other people.

Patty Block: Exactly. And what happens is we are so worried about everyone else getting the whole cookie, like our staff, our clients, our families, that we end up living on crumbs. And a lot of what I, the dynamic that I kept seeing over and over, I still see is when your pricing is not appropriate and not really about the value that you’re bringing.

Then you’re constantly scrambling [00:19:00] and your business does not have to be a burden. The idea of a business should

Lucas Root: of us went into business for the burden. Like, that’s not what we were.

Patty Block: exactly. We went into business to be our own boss, to enjoy some freedom, to, in my case, I experienced a great deal of joy in my business and

Lucas Root: Offer a service that you love.

Patty Block: exactly, and help people that I care deeply about. So all of those things are positives, but when we’re scrambling to pay the bills. It does not feel positive.

And we keep thinking we’re doing something wrong. You’re not doing anything wrong. You’re doing the best you can do. But that’s also why I take my role as an educator so seriously, because I can teach you how to do this differently. So your business is not a burden and you’re building real business value.

So if, and when [00:20:00] you want to sell your business. You actually have something to sell and something that someone else is going to value. So all of those elements fit together to bring you more freedom and joy in your business. But a lot of women don’t know how to get there. A lot of business owners don’t know how to get there.

And that’s why I wrote the book and that’s why I teach what I teach and feel so deeply about it. Serving my community.

Lucas Root: Amazing. Let’s let’s take that segue and talk about your community a little. First, do you have a name?

Patty Block: Well, so I I’ve started several different groups. I have the Revenue Roundtable, which serves women that do want to evaluate and change the pricing piece and how they’re going to go about selling. And you know, selling is still often seen as a kind of a dirty word. [00:21:00] And Yet your business isn’t sustainable if you can’t help others see the value, which is really what you’re doing, especially in the sales method that I teach, that I developed because it’s about building relationships. So that is the basis and it works really well for women because we’re very good at building relationships. So there’s that baseline to start with. So, and then I’ve started other groups, one of which is really funny because I started it. They wanted to name the group, the block party. So,

Lucas Root: I love it.

Patty Block: so we call it that and it really is kind of clever and funny, but and that is another group of women, business owners, and our goal is to support each other and to help at the times when we’re feeling all that stress and worry.

Both personally and professionally and to [00:22:00] cheer each other on when we are not where we’re succeeding and we’re sometimes success feels embarrassing. Sometimes we don’t want to talk about, or it feels like we’re bragging when we talk about our successes. And yet it’s a very effective way of building value by talking about your achievements and successes.

So one of the things I talk about frequently is I’m based in Texas and we have a saying here that it’s not bragging if it’s true.

thAt’s something that I repeat often because you may feel like you’re bragging, but you can also couch it in terms that help the listener understand the value, your purpose and value.

And what you bring to others. And so that’s really what I focus on in my communities is [00:23:00] why are we here? Why are we talking about these particular topics and what do we want to accomplish? I don’t want to just talk for the sake of talking. I don’t want to analyze something just because it seems interesting.

I want there to be a result. And a positive result for everyone involved. And so that’s really a huge focus that I bring to my communities.

Lucas Root: Yeah. I love it. I think the block party is fantastic and I love that they figured like it was the community themselves that, that sort of decided that was gonna be the name. Like, nope, we’re the block party.

Patty Block: It seemed to fit. It was really funny. It’s still funny. And and again, it was their choice and, you know, it’s, and it works and it’s very memorable. So that has worked well. And and that’s the sense of community that I always like to build sometimes. So I’m a member of several other [00:24:00] communities and sometimes I get frustrated

I think there’s They’ve kind of lost their sense of purpose, and I sometimes wonder why I’m still participating and still showing up to meetings, because that underlying purpose seems to be muddied in some way.

So that’s why I’ve started several groups of my own and kept that as a main piece and often revisit with the participants. What is our purpose? Has our purpose shifted, which is fine because everything evolves, but we need to put a name to that and be clear and make sure that we’re all there for the same reasons.

Lucas Root: Yeah. I agree. IT’s an interesting, I’d see, I’ve noticed the same thing in some of the communities I’m in that the [00:25:00] purpose slips. Tell me about that a little bit more, in your experience, and then we’ll talk about it in your communities.

Patty Block: You know, what I’ve noticed is the communities where you pay to be a member,

The incentive for the person who’s coordinating those meetings is to bring in more and more members. Right. Cause there’s more and more money. And I get that completely. And that’s a very viable business model. However, as the group gets bigger, it’s much more difficult.

First of all, to know many people, right. To get to know everyone and to get to know them at the depth that I want to get to know them, not just knowing their name, but also that’s when I think the purpose tends to slip because the bigger the group gets, the more opposing ideas there are. Instead of those ideas that bring us together

There.

And then I see the groups start to fragment and have [00:26:00] specific little clicks. And I used to work in politics. I was a political consultant and a lobbyist for many years, and I left that world and I don’t want to go back. idea, tHe idea of that political system, that political approach to those kinds of groups wears me down really.

Kind of saps my energy. So I pay a lot of attention to that. So the groups that are either not charging or there is some of them that I’ve set up, I don’t charge. And the goal is for us to refer business to each other and to actively understand the value that each of us brings to our clients. And so some of those groups that remain small at like.

Eight or 10 people. Those are some of the most valuable groups I [00:27:00] belong to and where I feel as though it’s manageable, we are all, you know, it’s interesting when we think about the six points of a community that you’ve talked about, one of them is that common language. And so when we have a small group.

It’s, and of course it’s easier with a small group than with the large, that we do have a common language. And when someone brings something up, they don’t have to qualify it. They don’t have to say, well, this might not be relevant, but they don’t have to say that because they know this is a safe environment and everything is relevant. And if you want to talk about the trouble you’re having with your son. Because it’s impacting everything else in your life, you should do that. That’s what this meeting is for. And it’s about getting to know the whole person, not just the business person.

Lucas Root: Yeah,

Patty Block: what some of these groups I think are missing is that they’re, we’re [00:28:00] not getting to know the whole person because we don’t allow ourselves to be seen that way.

Lucas Root: amazing. So, There’s so many ways that I could go with this. It’s sometimes it sucks to be really passionate. Okay, I have a theory about numbers. And one of the theories about numbers is that the number six is an absolutely magical number not just because there are six elements of community the most amazingly perfect structure is the beehive, and it’s made up of hexagons.

It’s got zero internal slip, so it doesn’t matter how you apply pressure to it. As long as the pressure that you apply to it isn’t strong enough to break the beehive itself, there will never be any slip. And so people who are engineers understand that, and people who aren’t are, you know, their mind is wandering at this point.

When I look at community I have come up with a theory that community doesn’t start until you have about [00:29:00] six people. Now that could include the person who’s pulling it all together and is playing the role of leader, maybe temporarily or maybe relatively permanently because that’s what we as a community want, right?

But it’s not a community yet until there are six of you. It’s on its way. It’s building. It’s, but it’s incomplete and it will feel incomplete until we get to six. I Also noticed that in family. So, when I look at family, what I realized is I, we, you and I, we talked about the not for profits.

What I realized is that in family, There are separate communities at work there are the adults, and then there are the non adults, and they work together, but they’re actually separate communities. What that means is that the core family structure that everybody thinks is some parents and some kids is not actually the core family structure.

The core family structure is actually six people, [00:30:00] two parents and four grandparents. And if you don’t have, isn’t that cool? And if you don’t have four grandparents, then your core family structure actually needs to pull from your wider community. In order to be a complete core family, so you need some aunts and uncles, or you need some really deeply close friends that can come in and play a part of that role.

And you are incomplete as a core family unless you have all six of those roles filled. And then the kids are served by that family, but again, like the not for profit, the kids are served by it. But they’re not actually part of it. They’re just served by it. That’s the core family structure. Six people.

And you’re mentioning the smaller ones that are eight to ten, which is of course greater than six. I’ve noticed similar things. I’ve been a member of a couple of really powerful communities that are [00:31:00] growing and something changes. Significantly, at somewhere between, and I’ve noticed these numbers, and I’m, of course I’m a meaning making machine just like the rest of us, and I’m making meaning here, somewhere between 25 and 40, and obviously I’m going to guess that the magic number there is 36 but somewhere between 25 and 40, there’s a really big change.

And and it stops being the thing that I thought I signed up for.

Patty Block: really, well, it’s really fascinating. It’s fascinating to hear how you talk about the two parents and the four grandparents and that they are serving the children. And it’s a switch from what we grow up believing that the nuclear family. Is the parents and the children and so what you’re saying to me makes so much sense and with these networking groups or communities that you and I have joined, I’ve noticed that as well when I noticed a big [00:32:00] shift is when they shift over 100

aNd maybe because it’s more noticeable than the 25 to 40, but once they get over 100 members.

The whole nature of the organization changes

And I also think the person who’s putting that community together, or maybe it’s a group of people who started, they have some control at the beginning

They lose control the bigger it gets. And so I think that’s also. Part of the underlying problem with some of the groups that I’ve been a member of, and they’ve served their purpose for a period of time.

And then I’m ready to move on to other communities and other groups, because as you said, it may not be serving my needs. Exactly.

Lucas Root: something but not what I thought I signed up for. Yeah wow, so cool. A lot of people are going to listen to this and think what about [00:33:00] leadership? Which is a great question and a great way to spend some time thinking about this. My, my response to that is, so, I actually did an episode just about a year ago where I talked about what it means to be an adult human.

Because I don’t think we as humans have a definition for what it means to be an adult. There are other animals where the definition is quite clear. For humans, it’s not. And so I spent some time just the way I do with everything else, really dug into it. I wrap my mind around it and I came up with a definition and part of what required of humans in order for us to be successful in the world is this capacity to pass the baton, to be able to be in charge, to be a leader however big or however small, and to stop being a leader.

sO I called it fluid leadership because we need to be able to pass the baton. We need to be able to receive the hot potato and hand it off because the potato is hot. Leadership is heavy. [00:34:00] Being responsible for a decision is a hard thing to do, regardless of how big the role is at the time. And to be healthy as a society and as a community, we need to pass that around so that those decisions are more nuanced in their capacity to be made.

And as an individual, to be healthy, we need to be able to pass that hot potato on so that our hand can cool off, because it’s hot. Fluid leadership. So when we’re really small, four, five, six people, and there’s one specific leader, part of what you and I signed up for was not having to be the leader.

I’m paying some money so that I can get some value, and I don’t have to be the one that’s driving it. Someone else will do that. I’m actually paying. In a very literal sense to outsource leadership inside an area that I think is important to me Now as the group grows the thing that the group needs either is Continued to be highly focused, [00:35:00] which is great Maybe we get to 200 or a thousand members that all want the exact same very specific thing.

That’s unlikely or it gets diffused what the group wants what the thing that people think they’re paying for is Less specific. Maybe people are coming in and paying money because they want to be the leader rather than outsourcing leadership. I don’t know about you, but typically what I’m paying, part of what I’m paying for is to outsource leadership.

Life is complex. I want to outsource leadership where I can.

Patty Block: Silence.

Lucas Root: But if other people are not making the same decisions that I’m making, they have different considerations when they decide that they want to come into a group. Ultimately, that’s gonna result in a power struggle. Not necessarily between the members and the leader, but between me and you.

Because what you want and what you paid for is different from what I want and from what I paid for. How’s that sit with you?[00:36:00]

Patty Block: Yes, it’s also what you’re describing is also why I start my own groups,

Right? So I like

being a leader.

Lucas Root: leadership that way.

Patty Block: You don’t, but I like being a leader. I like bringing people together. And I get a lot of joy from that. So with the block party, for example, we are all members of another networking group, but I started to notice that division in the group as a whole, that some people were focused on one purpose.

And some were focused on a different purpose and there was that divergence. So I had met all these really wonderful women in this group, and I could tell we’re very aligned in how we think and probably why we joined the group in the first place. So I reached out to them and I said, I’m interested in starting a group.[00:37:00]

That’s just us. There’s no cost. However, is an obligation that you commit to participating in the group and what we’re bringing together is that we have a similar way of thinking, how we approach business, how we treat our clients, how we network, all of those pieces. And I’ve had the opportunity to get to know each of you.

But y’all don’t know each other

And that’s the whole reason I want to start this group because y’all need to know each other. And that is, it’s been fabulous. And excuse me, we’ve been together now for about a year. And one of the women said, you know, I’m thinking about leaving the big group, but that means that I can’t be in this group.

Right. And I said, no, that does not mean that we are now our own community. So regard, you know, we met through that larger group. But in my view, [00:38:00] we still can get together and participate in our own community separate from that. And they were so relieved because then two other women said they were thinking of leaving the bigger group.

So you know, part of that is making sure that the participants are getting what they need, whether they’re paying to be in the group or whether they’re not.

Lucas Root: Yeah.

Patty Block: that means you have to have a really engaged leader. I love playing that role and being that person who brings people together and helps us stay on track with our purpose as it evolves. So yes, sometimes I outsource leadership. And sometimes I’m very happy to take that on myself and I’ve started many, yeah, I’ve started many groups over the years and they, you know, typically the groups last a year, two years, three years, and then people [00:39:00] are ready for something different. And if the group doesn’t provide that.

Then it’s time to disband the group. And to your point about passing the baton, that is the other thing is facilitate organizing and facilitating a group is really easy for me. Some people find that very challenging. So they get the benefit of my doing all the organizational work and facilitating, and we all benefit from being in the group, but also I’m a role model for.

How to best facilitate those groups, how to make sure everyone’s treated fairly. So I would hope, and I have seen that people that come out of some of my groups start their own. And often I’m encouraging them to start their own. And that is a way of passing the baton. And so, so I am a big believer in balance.

Right. It’s not I’m not [00:40:00] saying to every woman, you need to raise your prices. I never say that. I’m saying we need to look at the structure of your pricing. You may need to raise your prices, but it depends on who you’re serving. Who is your audience? So I just don’t believe in this extreme on one end or another.

I think there has to be a balance in everything that we do, including leadership.

Lucas Root: I love it. So water is effectively free when I turn on my faucet. It’s not actually free, we pay for it, but effectively the exact same water that comes out of my faucet, you can buy in plastic bottles at the at the convenience store. Really. I mean, truly, it’s the exact same water is what comes outta my fau.

And when you buy it in plastic bottles at the convenience store. Or Costco, perhaps you can get a 24 pack of that water for, I don’t know, 4 bucks or something at the convenience store. It’s, you know, the tap water in plastic bottles is probably a dollar. And then you go to [00:41:00] the airport and that exact same water is 6.

ANd, you know, tap water is not going to kill me. I’m not particularly excited about drinking it, but it’s not going to kill me. And it’s really interesting to think about the different value stack of my faucet, Costco, the convenience store, the grocery store, and then the airport. Because when you consider the difference between those, and you look at the pricing structure, as you said in those different scenarios.

It’s it’s a powerful reminder that it may not be about raising prices. It may be about finding the right customer. It may be about changing your value stack. It may be about changing your offer.

Patty Block: aNd again, it’s not what you think you should do. Right. It’s what you want to do, what you need to do [00:42:00] within your business. And a lot of, especially early stage business owners think that there’s some cookie cutter idea of what they should be doing. And that often gets in the way of their true success because they keep thinking they’re supposed to go down this path and that path may not serve them.

Lucas Root: That path may not serve them. That’s so true. The irony is. In order for you to be able to charge 6 at the airport, you might have to be selling 24 packs for 3 at Costco just to be able to charge 6 at the airport. it might be necessary.

Yeah, very cool. Thank you, Patty. How do you, this is a, this is going to be an interesting one. How do you maintain the what I call the social contract the interest in showing up in a specific way inside your community? How do you maintain that without [00:43:00] charging?

Patty Block: I think there are a couple approaches, so I have a combination. Some groups I charge for, especially when I’m teaching and coaching, and some groups are meant to be a group of peers, so that no one is teaching. No one is, quote, the guru. It’s the combination of helping each other. So that’s kind of how I look at the different communities.

I think one thing I am, I often think I’m boring and because I’m very predictable and I’m very consistent, right? So showing up for. Any of my communities is really not a challenge for me, showing up consistently, predictably. I am who I am. What you see is what you get. I say what I mean, and I mean what I say.

So because of that and that [00:44:00] grounding, which I really have to give credit to my nuclear family, that grounding makes it easy. To show up and remain engaged with people in my communities in a very consistent way. So, I think people would be really shocked if they showed up and I did something impulsive or I don’t know, said something inappropriate.

I’m very careful with my words.

Lucas Root: party?

Patty Block: Yes.

Lucas Root: supposed to do at a block party?

Patty Block: Well, and I’ll tell you at the block party, but we stress it’s a safe environment. So we can, we really don’t talk religion and politics, but I guess we could, right? We try and stay away from those horrendously controversial things that polarize so many people. But. bAsically the underlying belief in who we [00:45:00] are doesn’t change and it has, it’s not going to change for me.

I know who I am. I know what’s important to me. I know how deeply I care about others and certainly others in my community. And so, and I also know how much I care about expanding that community, that the way we show up needs to be inclusive, not exclusive. And that’s very important to me. So I think people would be really shocked if I ever showed up someplace and did not, was not, if I was not consistent and predictable and.

Didn’t say as directly as I’m saying today, this is what I believe and this is how I operate in the world because that hasn’t changed since I was 20. Right? That’s who I am. So did I answer your [00:46:00] question?

Lucas Root: Yes sort of. So, to add words to that, the way I heard it, what you’re saying is you’re providing a really consistent role model, and your hope is that they will follow the leader, in a very literal sense, for the social contract.

Patty Block: Yes. And I set the standards

For groups that I start. Obviously, not for groups that I join, but groups that I start, I set the standards and I talk about authenticity and honesty and kindness and being thoughtful and meeting outside of our meetings, how important that is to build those relationships. And so I set those standards from the very beginning.

People can choose whether or not. They agree if they want to participate in that way, everybody, [00:47:00] of course, chooses their own way, but why would you stay in a group? If you disagreed with the standards? Right? So I’m starting by well, and I’m starting by asking people to join that are that I think would be valuable to the group and then I’m setting those standards and expectations.

So, and it is a way to pass the baton because people do pay attention and they do take notes and then they can go start their own groups.

Lucas Root: Yeah and hopefully learn, and hopefully do it the same way so that baton continues getting passed. That’s the human way right there.

Patty Block: Yes. And to be inclusive and to treat people with respect and never deviate from how you’re interacting.

Lucas Root: Yeah,

Patty Block: I don’t have to agree with you, but I do have to respect you.[00:48:00]

Lucas Root: Well, yeah, I mean, it’s hard for me at least and this is I think pretty universal but not a, it’s not baseline, but I think it’s pretty universal. It’s hard for me to enter into a period of self growth. That started with somebody calling me stupid.

Patty Block: Absolutely.

And there’s no excuse for that.

Lucas Root: yep.

Patty Block: Right?

Lucas Root: you can challenge my ideas, and now I have an opportunity. But if you start that with, you’re stupid. Boy, it’s a whole lot harder for me to say, let me think about how I can improve my presentation. If I’m like, you know.

Patty Block: Right. And also Anyone who is going to insult you, intentionally insult you at the beginning, why on earth would you want to spend any time with them? Right? And so, you know, I think that’s the other thing. As we get older, we start to learn that, you know, the more [00:49:00] you pay attention, the more bad actors you have to deal with.

We start to learn who we want in our sphere, in our orbit and who we do not want. And that’s another thing that brings The communities I’m in together is that we’re very clear that we don’t want to deal with jerks. We don’t want to deal with people that are so oblivious. To hurting others or might intentionally be hurting others.

So, you know, then you, as you get older, you start figuring out who do I want in my world and who do I need to move out of my world and then take action to make that happen.

Lucas Root: yeah. That’s good that’s good advice generally. Like, do that with your group of friends. Do that with the way that you interact with people that you’re working with. You know, be thoughtful about how you decide to bring in other people’s energy into your life.

Patty Block: [00:50:00] Yes, because it affects everything. And that’s true. If you have a client that you wish you could fire,

A lot of times we get really. Yeah, we get really stuck on that. First of all, we don’t want the confrontation. We don’t want conflict as women, especially, but also we don’t want anybody to feel hurt.

We don’t want them to take it personally. And we think we can control that. And yet I bet we’ve all worked with clients we wished we could have fired. And in some cases we have fired them and you can find a way to do that graciously. And I’ve done that when I felt it was necessary. And I also questioned whether they really were experiencing the value that I provide.

If they really weren’t, then why am I continuing to take their money? That doesn’t seem ethical to me. So, making those decisions and then taking action, I’m not at all saying it’s an easy thing, because it’s not, but it’s a necessary thing. Because you’re right [00:51:00] about bringing that energy into your world, or tolerating that energy.

Lucas Root: Yeah, I love it. Thank you. I typically wrap up my interviews with three questions you probably already know where, what’s coming, but just number two and number three is where the fun starts showing up. The first question is for anybody who’s been enchanted by you, Patty as I have been, this is now our fifth conversation and I’m looking forward to the next one already.

whAt’s the one best way for them to find you?

Patty Block: You can go to my website, which is TheBlockGroup.net. But also, if you’d like to learn more about the book, Your Hidden Advantage, there is a separate site, YourHiddenAdvantage.Com, and there are bonuses there that are companion pieces to the book. So you are welcome to go to yourhiddenadvantage. com, download the bonuses, and then you can also get the book there.

Lucas Root: Nice. Yourhiddenadvantage. com.[00:52:00] I’ve been there. Here’s number two. This one’s fun. So what we’ve now spent, I don’t know, 50 something minutes hanging out and talking about community, which to me is a block party all by itself. What is the one question that you wish I have asked you, but had you?

Patty Block: How about Who I am as a person, as opposed to a business person.

Lucas Root: Yeah, I love it. So, one of the, one of the calls that you and I had, I think, was about nine months ago and you were just in the process of moving closer to your kids, which is something that I’m hugely in favor of. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are as a person?

Patty Block: So I am a person who used to believe in marriage and all of a sudden I was 35 years old. I had three little kids at home. [00:53:00] I had a thriving political consulting business and a surprise divorce

Realized very quickly that I was going to be responsible financially. Emotionally, logistically for raising my children and taking care of myself which I, you know, so a very difficult time for me.

And it was a long period of time to get through the divorce and so on. And I needed to close my business because the lobbying required a lot of travel. So That’s one of the reasons I’m so passionate about helping women position for exit, because I wish I had been able to sell my business instead of closing the doors, and I wouldn’t have had the first clue how to do that.

I don’t want other women to experience that. Because I had built so much value in my business over eight years and yet couldn’t do anything with it because I didn’t have the luxury of time.

Lucas Root: [00:54:00] Yeah.

Patty Block: so that’s one piece of

it.

Lucas Root: not just for you. I mean, you had relationships, you probably had processes and procedures you knew how to get things done the next person who filled the void, because that service was still required, so as you closed the door, the void was closed, they had to reinvent all of that themselves instead of being able to just buy the manual literally from you.

Patty Block: That’s right. And so that was really heartbreaking to me. And I needed to get a job, which I did. I went to work for an international school as director of development and then became director of operations. And it was there for about eight years. When I left there, I really was waiting for my kids to get older and more independent so I could take the leaf of leap of faith to go back into owning my own business.

And I always knew I was going to do that. It was just really a matter of timing. And so in 2006, I started the block group and wanted to bring my experience in finance and [00:55:00] operations.

Lucas Root: a couple months ago or so.

Patty Block: Yeah. Yeah. 17 years ago. I wanted to bring my experience in finance and operations to the small business market. So that is how the company evolved.

And I think one of the underlying factors and why I give my nuclear family so much credit, my mom and my dad, and certainly my grandparents, is that. That foundation of feeling confident, knowing who I am, knowing what’s important to me and working towards that, that didn’t just start when I turned 50, right?

That was always the case. And the older I got, the more I understood how important that was and how much of a role model I am for my children. And that was. The focus that I needed to bring during the divorce was focus on raising good humans [00:56:00] and everything else was I could deal

Lucas Root: Love that.

Patty Block: Right. But raising good humans is a huge challenge,

Lucas Root: It is a huge challenge.

Patty Block: but I’ve now done that.

And all three of my children are business owners

Lucas Root: Oh ho!

Patty Block: and we have complimentary businesses. So we help each other in all our different businesses and it’s very symbiotic. So that has become really cool. And. As you mentioned, I ended up moving closer to two of my kids. My daughter is out of state, so fortunately she comes in frequently, but my two sons are here.

And that it’s just been wonderful. The fact that we want to be in close proximity to each other is so heartwarming to me. And I’m very close with my extended family, my siblings, my nieces and nephews. And so All of that has been, it just enriches my life so [00:57:00] much. My parents are no longer with us. And in some ways I feel as though my mom passed the torch to me to bring everyone together for family reunions and to stay in contact and build those relationships, which I do every day.

And so that to me is so important and understanding the legacy that I want to leave. Just like my mom thought about the legacy she wanted to leave and certainly my dad did so all of that kind of wrapped up Together is me as a person and my identity is very wrapped up in my business But as I mentioned my first business brings me joy so And I think that’s what my kids are feeling as well, that they really enjoy being business owners.

And the fact that we have this kind of symbiotic relationship.

Lucas Root: I love that. Are you adopting? [00:58:00] Don’t get me wrong. I love my parents, but I want some of that.

Patty Block: Oh, thank you. You know, I’ve raised my children. I’m done. And I now have my first grandchild. So I want to impart some of this to my grandchild, hopefully grandchildren someday. And and that’s really what is most important to me is family. And that I really firmly believe everyone needs to contribute to their community, and you can do that in a million different ways, whatever way works for you.

And everyone in my family, my big extended family, that is something that we all believe. So we all give back, we all participate in our community, and care deeply about Making sure one little step forward means the world’s a better place, because there’s certainly a lot of tragedy and heartbreak, and we hear about it every day, and we have to [00:59:00] counter that with all the good stuff.

Lucas Root: Yeah. Yes. I love it. Thank you. Finally, do you have any parting thoughts?

Patty Block: of the things I hope that your listeners will take from this is that they have choices. So it doesn’t matter what you think you should do. It doesn’t matter what anybody else in the world is doing with their business or in their families. None of that matters. What matters is figuring out what you want, what’s important to you, what your values are, and how you want to give back to your community.

And in that case, you have so many choices and a lot of times I think we lose sight of that. So give that some thought. Know that the thought and time and energy that you put into being intentional in how you contribute to the world will come back to you tenfold.

Lucas Root: Yeah,[01:00:00] I love that. The energy you put into being intentional will come back to you tenfold. It’s at least. Yeah. Thank you, Patty.

Patty Block: Thank you. Thanks for having me and I’ve really enjoyed our conversation.

Lucas Root: Me too. Thank you.

Narrator: Thanks for joining us this week on Elements of Community.

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