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Leading Edge of Knowledge and Discovery with
psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove Hello and welcome. I'm
Jeffrey Mishlove. Today I have a very special guest, a
dear old friend, somebody I've known for decades,
somebody I've actually wanted to interview for
decades, Patricia Fripp. Patricia is a l
egendary
person in her own right. I remember back in the days
when I lived in San Francisco driving down Highway 101,
there would be a huge billboard with her picture reclining,
if I remember correctly. Patricia, how I know
Patricia is because she's the founder of the
San Francisco Chapter of the National Speakers
Association and she is a speaker of legend
all over the world. The chapter gives out its annual
Patricia Fripp Award. So when you have an award named after
you, I think one could say y
ou've arrived. And I'm so delighted,
Patricia, that you've arrived here in Albuquerque so that I can
interview you in our little studio. And Patricia is also well
known as the sister of the legendary rock musician, her
brother Robert Fripp. And, well, there's so much more I could
say. She began with humble beginnings. Her career started
as a hairdresser in San Francisco. And even before that, lived in a haunted
house with her brother. Welcome, Patricia. Thank you, Jeffrey. It
is a pleasure to be
in your modest studio in
your spectacular home. Well, I'm so delighted
to be with you. I know we've talked about doing
an interview long, long ago. And it's a pleasure
for me to share a dear friend with the New
Thinking Allowed audience. I should also say, I really
need to say I owe you a debt of gratitude for
helping me with the award acceptance speech
at the Bigelow Institute competition. And I'm so
glad you were there with me. It is so exciting any
time you have some help with the presentati
on
to sit and listen to it being delivered. Of
course, in that circumstance, it was so exciting and a
memorable experience. Yes. And in fact, the speech
that you helped me craft won an award, as I recall, as the
best award acceptance speech. Well, I did submit it to the Professional
Speechwriters Association. And in the category of acceptance speeches, yes, a
Cicero Speechwriting Award was sent to me. That's another reason that
I'm grateful to have you as a friend. Well, what I didn't say
for ou
r viewers is that you're renowned in so many different
ways, but I think one of them is certainly that you are a coach
for other professional speakers. You are a speaking coach.
And although you started life, I think it would
be fair to say, with humble beginnings, you
are a master of diction. And I'm sure you
could correct my diction. No, I was a young girl because
our story, of course, begins in a small town in England. And to put this
into context, to help our listeners understand, my mother
was a
coal miner's daughter in South Wales and at age 18 was smart enough
to know there is nothing for me here. I have to leave home.
My father, who was the eldest of six and a very
bright young man, was born with polio. He had polio
in his mother's womb, which, of course, wouldn't
happen now, but years ago. So consequently, he could
never serve in the military. So when my parents got married in 1939,
at the beginning of World War II, and he was a realtor, well,
nobody buys homes when they're dr
opping bombs. So my mother
became the major breadwinner. However, I was born at the end of
the war. And although I would say, yes, both the beginnings were humble, they
worked very hard to elevate themselves. And I would give good
credit to the British educational system because I left school
10 days before my 15th birthday to serve an apprenticeship.
And my father would never believe that I now put the
words in executives' mouths. And I would say to all parents, if
you want your children to hav
e a good start in life, help them understand
the importance that language makes. My mother told me stories
about how Winston Churchill would get on the radio and,
with the power of his words, would inspire the nation to
have hope and be prepared to experience any hardship
that would be necessary. So when I was growing
up, and I only realized this as I matured, England, for
all the time I lived there, because I left home to
come to America at 20, was still suffering from the
expense of World War
II. England was devastated with
the German bombing campaign. So when I was born, my parents were
living above my father's business premises. And, of course, as soon as there was a
second baby, and my brother, who grew up to be an internationally-acclaimed
rock and roll guitarist, Robert Fripp, he is one year, one month, two days,
12 and a half hours younger than I am. And with two babies, they
had to move. So that is where your story really begins,
because it was a haunted house. How interesting
. I just interviewed
your friend, my friend Terry Brock, and I mentioned to him, I said, did you
know Patricia lived in a haunted house? And Terry's a bit of a skeptic,
and he says, well, what does that mean? What do you
actually mean by a haunted house? Well, I can tell you, because
my brother and I were very young. We just knew, and I
think we shared a bedroom because we knew there was
something strange about it, as if there was somebody
visiting us in the night. Not that it talked to us, but
we were
aware of. And again, what we found out, because when in the
war, the army would come over and take
over rooms in your house. For example, in the
business premises, the army came in and took one
of my father's two offices as the pay office for
the soldiers and took over the big sitting room
to house 13 soldiers. And so there had been American soldiers
in this house that had come to help us out. And one black American soldier
had hung himself in the upstairs toilet. And of course, in later
life, as we matured, our parents told us all the
stories. They had at least six different times plumbers
come in because the lavatory chain would pull itself and
nobody was using the bathroom. The amount of times that
they continued to try and fix this problem that never went away.
My mother tells a story about how several times she would
hear dad's car come in the evening, crunch over the gravel, and
she'd run to the back door. And father hadn't driven in, but
she'd heard it. My mother would a
lways kiss my father on the top of his
head if she came in from a meeting. And this one day, my father
was watching, was reading whatever he was doing,
because that was before television. And we were, of course,
the first family in the town to have a television, but
this was before television. My father would
have been reading or listening to the radio
in the sitting room and he heard mother come in from her meeting
and she didn't come kiss him on the head. He heard her walk upstairs
and he thou
ght, oh, she's going to check on the
children before she comes in. He heard the lavatory chain
pull, heard her come downstairs. She didn't come in, which was
so strange, she went out to look. And then an hour later she came in
and he said, did you come in and go out? And she said, no, I've just come home. Now, when they left that
house, I was about six or seven. My father said to my mother, I never wanted
to tell you, but that house was haunted. She said, I knew. I
never told you I thought it wa
s because I thought
you would think I was crazy. So all of us had a different experience and
we do believe it was the American soldier. He never left the house. But it's interesting, here you
are in an intimate family situation where you're afraid to tell
each other what you all know. That is very strange because
probably my father must have known because there was
only one other owner before us. And probably they might have
had a challenge selling it because it was known that the soldier
had hu
ng himself in the bathroom. And my father would have been a
man who was looking for a good deal. And he probably thought Edie wouldn't
move there if she knew it was haunted. Now, people don't realize, but
the part of the world that we live in in the south of England, it is the highest
percentage of sightings of UFOs. I didn't know. Oh, yes. And because my
brother, who grew up and has bought multiple houses
himself that he's lived in, and he always buys houses which
were built in the 1600s or the
1700s. And I said, brother, why
do you buy such old houses? And he says, it's the only way
you can get an established garden. Well, that was his answer.
I don't know if it's true. However, we always like, in
England, you like antiques, you like tradition, you like, or many of us
like what is old and has a history. And of course, if you buy a
house that has been in existence for hundreds of years, a lot
has happened in the house. A lot of people have died. And one of the homes
that brother bough
t, this was before he got married,
and this was an old house. It was magnificent. And in the past, there
had been a family that had a child that was
probably mentally retarded. People didn't know in those
days really what was wrong. They just knew this something was wrong. And unfortunately,
their habit, there was no way they could have
got help in those days. They would keep the child in a room. And as far as the outside world
knew, they didn't really exist. Well, they had been a child in this
house
who lived their entire life in this room. And when they died, there was definitely a
presence when my brother bought this house. Now, you understand to my
brother, this was fascinating. This would make it more interesting,
whereas it might put some people off. And they knocked down this room
because he had a circular staircase put in. But they always knew there
was a presence in that house. And there was one time I was
visiting and my brother was out. He was out with some friends. And I wa
s a little tired. I just lay down on the sofa. And I was at the state, Jeffrey,
that I wasn't 100% asleep. But I was close enough to sleep that when
I heard my brother open the door and say, Oh, sister's here. She's having a sleep. Let's go. We'll talk to her later. And then I must have gone to sleep. And I got up. And then my brother came in
about an hour after I woke up. He said, Did you come in
earlier? And he said, No. But I vividly, you can say, Oh,
you were asleep. You're dreaming. I do no
t believe that. I do not believe that. But I never slept in the house every day. I would visit, but I
wouldn't sleep overnight. Now, the house that the oh, yes. And when he was having
work done on the house, one of the workmen
was in the toilet upstairs. And his mates were, you
know, rattling the door handle and shouting abuse at him
and, you know, making fun. And he said, Oh, go
away, you guys, go away. And then when he went
down, he said, Why were you making such a fuss
when I was in the toile
t? And they said, What do you mean? We've been out here eating lunch. So there were enough of those situations. You can say, Oh, you were
asleep, sister, you were asleep. Well, there were too many of these stories. And in England, there are so many homes. It is it's not considered a
little strange and wacky the way it might be perhaps in
America, which really isn’t old. It wasn't old. The church where I was confirmed
in England was built in ten something. I was I was visiting
England last year a
nd I went to a magnificent cathedral
that was built in 700. Well, so many stories, so
many situations and the house that my brother and his
wife live in now were filmed. There's a TV show in
England about haunted houses. And apparently the situations in their
houses are the scariest of any in the show. My sister in law, who's
a very famous actress and singer, Toyah Willcox,
she she is more open. I would say I won't say dead. She talks to dead people. However, she's very aware and sensitive and
s
ees and hears what the average might not. Well, you have described
your relationship with your brother, a famous musician,
also is that he's your soulmate. Well, yeah, well, as little children
being one year, one month, two days, twelve and a half hours apart, my mother
and British people are very practical. My mother realized
that little children, you know, you two, you're
three, you're four. You don't understand
why your brother or sister would get presents
and you don't have any. For many yea
rs, we celebrated our
our birthdays on my birthday in April. His was May because we would understand. And brother, when he was young, little,
as the most articulate person I've ever met now, the way he spoke, I don't know if it's
something to do with his teeth coming in. I was the only one who could
understand what he was saying. And being two children
close to the same age, I think it's different if you're
four or five years apart. Oh, you know, take your
brother or sister with you. We played t
ogether. We had this this game called Dinky
Dogs, which we would make up these stories and have little characters
and make little plasticine domes. And when we were quite young,
I know we said to mother, oh, you know, we're going to get
married when we grow older. Mother said brothers and
sisters don't get married. We said that's most unfair. We'll never love anyone
that we love each other. We'll live together when
we're old, which anyway, as it happened, we grew up and of
course had many romanc
es ourselves. And brother met the woman he recognized as
the woman he's going to marry and proposed within a week, which
interestingly enough, so did my father, who
was a staunch bachelor. When he met my mother, he
proposed on the second date. Do you think you might have a
telepathic relationship with your brother? I had never thought of it that way. However, we have a strong support system. There were some topics about
families or losing our parents. We could only really
talk to about each othe
r. I know once or twice my brother
had challenges and he would find it easier to talk to me
than perhaps tell his wife. I wonder, hypothetically,
if something were to happen to him, he's
now 6,000 miles away. You might know if something
happened to him, if he were in trouble of some sort,
you'd have an instinct about it. I probably would agree that might happen. I don't say it has happened,
but it might happen. I just wonder because the sensitivity
to a presence in the house, a haunting, suggest
s that in the family there was
kind of an openness to this sort of thing. Some people wouldn't
be sensitive to it at all. I would definitely say that
our family would be open to it. Well, let's talk a little bit about
your brother and his career. He was known, if I recall
correctly, King Crimson. Yes. Well, yeah, King
Crimson was his first band. And interestingly enough,
and as we grow up and we talk on a very regular
basis, multiple times a week, we have found there have
been dates and times wh
en our careers have matched
or situations in our lives. For example, King Crimson
was born on January the 13th. I emigrated to America on January the 13th. There's always publicity and
social media presence about this is the anniversary of
King Crimson being born. So I celebrate January the 18th,
the day I got off the boat in New York. And various situations that we talk about. I said, well, that's the day
I did this or connections. But King Crimson was born. Now, it might interest you
to know t
hat the first live performance of King Crimson
was in the Speakeasy Club, which was also known as the
Speak Coarsely and Loudly Club. This was an industry watering hole. They were where they
performed about 100 people. However, as these were industry,
people in the music industry, because they did well, they
were influencing the influencers. That meant that their career went. It began faster. And interestingly enough,
David Bowie was there and walked over and
asked a young lady to dance. Now, Ki
ng Crimson music,
if anyone's familiar with King Crimson, you don't think
of this as dancing to music. However, that was David Bowie's first wife. Later that summer, because
of influencing the influencers, they had the opportunity to
open for the Rolling Stones. There were several other acts. They were one of them for
a free concert in Hyde Park. And although nobody knows
exactly how many people that were there, it's
estimated 650,000 people. And because King Crimson
did well, they were open to
opportunity to perform
internationally in Europe, in America. And because many people had
come from all these places to see the Rolling Stones, when they went to
Europe, when they came to America, there were enough
people that said, hey, you've got to come
with me to see this band. So that first performance
at the Speakeasy launched them as far as
England was concerned. With the Rolling Stones later that year,
it gave them the international opportunity. And that's how it began. Now, there were m
any hard, hard years. As I recall, Rolling Stone
Magazine listed him as one of the 100 greatest
guitarists of all time. The 42nd guitarist in
the history of the world, living or dead, Jimi
Hendrix, was number one. Now, in other lists, you see him higher up. It all depends. Now, it might interest
you to know in this story is King Crimson was having
their 50th anniversary tour. And my brother, who didn't
at the time normally talk to the press, realized we've got
to have a press conference. So they
had a beautiful club in
London and press came from all over. And the editor of the Rolling
Stone came over from New York to London and he
asked my brother this question. What is the purpose of the King
Crimson 50th anniversary tour? And my brother said, to introduce
King Crimson to innocent ears. To innocent ears. Because anytime you go to any of
their events, and now he is lecturing, I was just doing the merchandise
and some of his speaking events with his business
partner, David Singleton, th
ey've had fans that
followed them for decades. He obviously realized there
were a lot of fans who were coming in a lot younger who
would appreciate the music. And this is true with all bands. And they took different choices. You go to King Crimson
concert, you don't have flashlights, you don't
take pictures till the end. It's not conventional rock and roll. But it's so complicated music. And the musicians play
in different time frames that you really don't
want the distractions. You wait, we'll
take your
photographs, you take ours. So they took different choices. They went to Rock in Rio, 100,000
people, and it's all video and photos. However, they introduced
King Crimson to innocent ears. So there are a lot more 20-,
30-year-olds that discovered King Crimson. Well, let me ask you a little bit
about the name King Crimson. It sort of evokes the idea of the devil. The devil is sometimes portrayed in red. Well, I wouldn't say that. And I did ask my brother,
and I can't exactly remember th
e answer to how they
came up with that name. But it wasn't that complicated. However, anyone who's
familiar with King Crimson, In the Court of the Crimson
King was their first album. And the schizoid face, because one of their
famous songs is 21st century schizoid man. And the face, the front and the
back, it's very strange and weird. So you might think of
that as having strange. Now, I wouldn't say the
devil, but it's very strange. The schizoid face is very famous. And the young man who created
the album cover was not an artist. But he created it, and he died very young. It was the only piece
of art he ever created. Let's talk about your life when
you came to the United States. You began your career as a hairdresser. Well, I served a three-year
apprenticeship to be a hairstylist at 15. And I had the idea through a girlfriend. She said, she was a
little older than I was, and she said, I have
a pen pal in America. I'm going to go see her. And I said, wait till I finish my
apprenticeship
, and I'll come with you. Well, as fate would have it, we went on
a double date, and she married her date. So the idea of going to America went out. So I went to live on an
island off France called Jersey, the Channel Islands,
for two and a half years. And then it was in the back of my mind. The kids all talked about it. They never talked about,
when should we go home? It's where should we go next? And for me, the back of my
mind was always America. And I went home for a couple of months. The id
ea was to go get
my visa, come to America. Now, Jeffrey, I was 20 years old. I had only ever met two
people who'd been to America. America was really an
idea for people in England. As I say, when I came over, we're
still recovering from World War II. There were not cheap vacations
to Florida that people went on. We knew it by the movies. So it was an idea more than... I recall being in England early in
my life, probably a little after that. But I do recall the American dollar
went very far in En
gland in those days. It was destiny that I come to America. And I'll tell you how I know that. I knew nothing. I just knew I applied. I went to the American embassy. And I filled in a
form that was no to everything except, could
you support yourself? And in my town of Wimborne,
they had been a very... rather the only vaguely celebrity
creative hairstylist in that town, Terry. And Terry had left and gone to Canada. And then he'd gone down to California,
Los Angeles, to visit his sister. However,
he wasn't there legally. And so he couldn't get the good
job he was capable of having. So he went back to England to get his visa. And we met at a Christmas party. And I said, well, I'm going
over in a couple of weeks. And he said, oh, next week
I'm going to go get my visa. And I'll see you there
in a couple of months. He did not know. And I did not know. The week after I got
my visa, they changed all the rules and I
would never have got in. You had to have a definite job to come to. Well, it's
very difficult to find. There are no hairdressers in America. Two, you have to have a
relation who's an American citizen. Well, Terry's sister was married to
an American, but she wasn't a citizen. It took him 18 months to get
a job through the Hairdresser Journal to work a two-year
contract in Houston. It took him over three and a half
years to get back to where he began. And by then, of course. So I think I didn't know, but it was
destined that I come to America. Or I wouldn't have made
it the
week before they changed the rules and
I wouldn't have got in. And of course, I didn't know
I would stay here forever. You're 20 years old. You know, it's an adventure. And even though I'm very
close to my family, even though I call home
every week, I was never... It never occurred to me anything
would ever go wrong, and it didn't. But that's a huge decision
to cross the ocean like that. Well, now I look back, I
said to my mother once, it was really nice you
and daddy let me go. Because at that
point in England, I
came four months before my 21st birthday. If my parents had
said, you can go, but not till after you're 21, I
would have done that. In those days, we listened to our parents. And then I probably wouldn't have got here. So I was destined. At that point in England in the 60s,
nobody had expectations of girls. I think of my friends, my
dad's friends in the Rotary Club. It would never have occurred
to them their daughters could take over their business
and run it better than the
sons. Many of whom would have been better. So for me to come to be
6,000 miles away from home, it gave me the opportunity
to live up to my potential. I don't believe the opportunities wouldn't
have happened if I stayed in England. I'm sure I would have been
successful in some way, but it would not have been the
same as coming to America. Well, even here, growing
up as the firstborn son myself in a Jewish family, I know
male privilege still exists. So, if I remember rightly,
you at one point ran
the salon at one of the major
hotels in San Francisco. Well, no, not exactly. When I got off the boat and I came out
to San Francisco, I had the opportunity. My father said, you have
to write to some salons. And I had one of the two people
I'd met who'd been to America was the daughter of one of
my hairstyling clients in Jersey. And she gave me the name
of four salons in San Francisco. I wrote to them all. And one of them, Charles, who ran
the beauty salon at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, wrote to me
and said, I can't
promise you a job, but come see me. So I went to see him as soon as I arrived. And he took me to beauty
school where I got my license. And then I worked for him. And what was great about that,
because I didn't know anybody. And so I had nobody
to build a clientele on. However, in a hotel, of
course, you have people from all over the
country, all over the world. So it was a great education. The Mark Hopkins is
right at the top of Nob Hill in San Francisco, across
from Grace Cath
edral. It is the epitome of
upper-class life in San Francisco. And we had a lot of very rich
women and some men, Cyril Magnin, lived in apartments
in the Mark Hopkins Hotel. And at that time, it was
owned by Gene Autry. Now, Gene Autry, the singing cowboy. My dad had taken my
brother and me to see movies. So that was exciting
because in England, I like to say we believed
everyone in America was rich. And the streets were
paved with movie stars. So, of course, I remember seeing
Gene Autry in the
coffee shop. And his cousin was the
hotel manager who was married to a woman
called Pamela Britton. Pamela Britton was
quite a successful actress. She was searching her. She was in a couple of
movies with Ronald Reagan. And she was in a very
popular TV show with Ray Walston, Bill Bixby,
called My Favorite Martian. She was Mrs. Brown, the lady next door. She was also in a movie
that became a cult movie. If it's Tuesday, this must be
Belgium, which was a takeoff on the trips to Europe when you go
to a different country every day. And I used to do her hair. And of course, she
would tell me all these stories about Hollywood,
which was wonderful. And I did Anne Landers
hair, Hayley Mills, Rosalind Russell, Princess
Anne from Denmark, because she asked for me because
I was British, which was wonderful. So it was a great education. And then I got the opportunity
to talk my way into working at the first fancy men's
hairstyling salon in San Francisco when men's hairstyling
was a new industry th
at was taken over by Jay Sebring,
the Hollywood hairstylist. Jay Sebring really
created men's hairstyling. Did all the movie stars here. I'd pick up the phone. Oh, this is Steve McQueen. Can Jay go racing with me tomorrow? I'd have to cancel his appointments. Yeah, I remember when all of a
sudden men started blow-drying. Oh, yes. I mean, it was amazing. My clients, who were the movers and shakers
in the financial district, used to say, Oh, we were a dinner
party last week and all the men were ta
lking
about the hairstyles, not much to the
amusement of all their wives. And that was a very exciting time. Our opening salon party,
Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward came up,
Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, the English actress
came to our opening party. And then, of course,
one morning, you know, just started as an
ordinary Saturday morning, and my best friend, Frankie,
worked in the next booth. We used to go to breakfast and
drive to work in his 1960 Falcon. I used to drive. He'd look out the wi
ndow. It took two of us to drive this car. And the executives, who now, of course,
would probably wear jeans to their office, because they only, in
those days, would wear jeans at weekends when
they went to catch up. But we were, it was fun
working in the financial district on a Saturday,
a lot more casual. And I was in my second haircut. The phone rang and I picked it up. And it was my friend, George Shaffer Jr.,
who worked in a radio station in Ukiah. Well, you know Ukiah. It must have been a
very small radio station. But he said, Have you heard the news? I said, What news? And he said, About your boss. I said, What about my boss? And when he told me, I
hung up and I called him. I said, Guys, let's go to the back. Because the night before,
because Jay Sebring had a home in,
obviously, in Los Angeles, but he was staying on a
houseboat in Sausalito and would come up to the
salon to launch it every week. And the night before, and
these were very chauvinistic times, and I was the
only wo
man in the salon, we would stand at the edge of our
booths and shake hands with Mr. Sebring. And my friend Frankie had
given Jay Sebring a mug with Mr. Sebring
sandblast and gold leafed in. And I shook hands. And for the first time,
he kissed me on the cheek and said, You
are doing terrific haircuts. Now, that's like being
acknowledged by God in my world. And he said to Frankie, Look after
my mug till I come back on Monday. And the news that I got
from George Shaffer Jr. that I shared with my
te
ammates was the night before Jay Sebring had been murdered
with Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger and her boyfriend
Wojciech Frykowski and Stephen. The Manson murders. Yes. So we found out later
it was the Manson murders. So that was the news. So it began as a very
ordinary day, Jeffrey. One of our favorite Saturdays. At the end of the day, we would not have
another normal day for at least a year. Now, if we fast forward a few years,
this is a story that might interest you. I have a friend we just los
t, Larry Wilde. Larry Wilde was successful, what you might
consider second tier opening act comedian. He opened for Sonny and Cher and
Debbie Reynolds, Steve Lawrence. So he was successful, but
he was also a superb writer. And he he'd written a great book, What
the Great Comedians Say About Comedy, What the Great Screenwriters
Say About Comedy and all the there was very
popular for a long time. The Italian Joke Book, The Nerd
Joke Book, all these he created. And he joined the National
Speakers A
ssociation when somebody had
given him an article where Bert Decker and
I were interviewed about the speaking business
when we began the chapter. He came down anyway, and we became friends. Anyway, to cut a long story short,
Larry Wilde and his wonderful wife, Mary, had met in Albertson's
supermarket in Los Angeles. They got married in Albertson's
supermarket in Los Angeles on a Saturday. And one of their friends
who married them was really a screenwriter
with a certificate who declared them two
for the price of one. And this was so funny. And years after, they went back and some
women who still remembered them from that, because a great way to
get publicity for a comedian. Well, Mary and Larry had always told
me about their friends, Brad and Janine. Brad had been president of the
Screenwriters Guild a couple of times. He'd written 300 movies, TV shows. And his wife Janine was a successful,
you'd say, second tier actress. And she, it was, I believe it was
Petticoat Junction, a TV show.
And she got the job because Jay
Sebring, who was engaged to Sharon Tate, and then she married someone
else, but they're still very, very close, had suggested that she
need to pose nude in Playboy. It would be good for her career. Well, some of these TV shows
that were more family friendly. So Janine got the job because Sharon
got fired because she posed naked. Just a side. Anyway, Larry, I don't know if this
would be 15 years ago, might be 20. It seems to me as
recent, but it is a while. And he
said, you've got to
drive down from San Francisco. We're going to have this great
party and very interesting people. And you're going to meet, finally meet
Brad and Janine, we keep telling you about. Well, I worked around my way talking
to most people and I talked to Janine. And my favorite question,
I've asked it of you and Janine, how'd you
meet and fall in love? And she said the first time Brad and I
met, I don't remember, but he remembers me. He was married. And then the second time they me
t,
he was divorced and they went out. And then as what often happens, you
have this wonderful party and experience. And then most people
go and a couple of friends who are close to the
hosts are still there. So it was Mary and Larry,
Brad and Janine who were staying in the guesthouse, me
and a gentleman called Mark, who was an NSA, National Speakers
Association, Northern California member. And that afternoon, he had told
me his mother had been an actress. In fact, his mother's hand was
the one t
hat did the stabbing in. Psycho. Yes. I mean, just trivia to add to the story. You cannot miss this story. And we were sitting around and
then I finally pushed myself up. I said, well, it's a long
drive home, I better go. And Brad said, before you go, I haven't
had the opportunity to talk to you much. Will you please give me
a snapshot of your life? I said, born in England,
came to America, worked at Mark Hopkins,
worked for Jay Sebring. One night he kissed me on the cheek. And Brad said, stop t
here. He said, that night was
my second date with Janine. And we were driving and a car
jumped a stoplight in front of us. And I said to Janine, those
teenagers are high on drugs, they've been involved in a crime
because they're covered in blood. In 1969, there are no cell phones. They drove to a call box. He said, this is who I am. This is what we saw. This is the number, the
license plate on the car. The next weekend, the Manson
family went out and killed the LaBiancas. Eight months later,
pro
bably they caught them. Years later, Brad said,
he was writing, somebody was writing a screenplay
about that night And doing the research,
he went to the police station. And in the old log, found the
report of his call, never followed up. And then Larry Wilde
leaned forward and said, Patricia, do you
remember I told you, at that time, I lived two doors
from Sharon Tate. So you have three people with
some connection to the same night. And none of us would
know if Brad had not said, can you give m
e
a snapshot of your life? And that is such a wonderful question. Whenever I have a new executive
coaching client, I always say, let's begin. Please give me a snapshot of your life. For me, I'm looking for stories
and situations and changes that can be stories that can
go into their presentations. That's very powerful. You're connected in a synchronistic
way with a horrible event. But it led to good
things for the rest of you. And so we could go on. We could go on for a long time,
but I don't wa
nt to detain you because I know you have
another meeting coming up. Well, give me one more question, Jeffrey. How did you begin as a speaker? Traveling nationwide for
a hair product company for the person who took over
the Sebring Empire, Jim Markham. And then my executive clients knew I was
speaking, giving seminars for hairstylists, said, hey, come speak to my Rotary
Club, Kiwanis Club, breakfast club. In fact, as you know, I am the president
of the Golden Gate Breakfast Club. Janelle is an ac
tive and excited member
of the Golden Gate Breakfast Club, having been a speaker for us. And that was the first group I
spoke to outside of hairstyling because my client, the
wonderful Al Stanton, said, hey, come give a
talk to the breakfast club. And I just spoke there at
your invitation three weeks ago. Yes, exactly. Everything is connected. Everything is connected.
That is a wonderful lesson. It's quite amazing, though, how far
you've come in the speaker's world from starting out as a
hairdre
sser to become a person of enormous
worldwide renown in that field. And all I would say is, I
can't say it's brilliant planning. It's taking advantage of opportunity
because opportunity does not knock once. It knocks all the time. We don't
always recognize the sound. Perhaps, Jeffrey, just as
we began our conversation, there are connections
beyond what we understand. Invisible presences. I would agree. Well, Patricia, I'm
so honored to be able, finally, to have this
conversation with you. It's b
een an absolute joy and
a delight. Thank you so much. My pleasure. I hope it will be of
interest to your legions of fans. I suspect it will be of interest
to your legion of fans as well, people who know you as a
great professional speaker probably have never heard
about The Haunted House. That's true. That's true. Perhaps we are both introducing
our messages to innocent ears. Your fans and my fans. Thanks to your brother for the phrase. Yes, yes. Well, once again, thank you
so much for being wit
h me. And for those of you watching or listening, thank you for being with us because
you are the reason that we are here. New Thinking Allowed I imagine that by now
many of you already realize that, in conjunction
with White Crow Books, we've just launched the
New Thinking Allowed Dialogues book imprint
and our first title is Is There Life After Death? New Thinking Allowed
is a non-profit endeavor. Your contributions to the New
Thinking Allowed Foundation make a meaningful difference in
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lity to produce new videos.
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