About Chris Patterson
The breaking point
At 25 years old, my life was a bit of a disaster; I had been fired from multiple jobs, was battling depression, and struggled in relationships. I was down and out with a horrible attitude.
Boy... What a mess I had made of myself at that point.
And then something incredible happened. My father called me and said, "Would you like to go to a success seminar with me?"
Even though I was disinterested at that moment, I opened up my eyes, looked around my room, and saw nothing but dirty clothes in one corner, beer cans, ashtrays, and everything else in the other corner.
Worst of all, I was sleeping on a futon. It was about two inches thick.
And I thought, "What do I have to lose?"
So I went to the success seminar with my dad.
I was a little judgmental of some of the people that had come out on stage, but there was one guy that blew me away...
He was marching up and down the stage from left to right and he was saying things like, "You can have everything you want in life. You'll just help enough other people get what they want."
And I looked at my dad and I said, Dad, who is this gentleman?
He said, "Son, that guy's name is Zig Ziglar. If you don't pay attention to anyone today, make sure you pay attention to him."
I said, "Why is that?"
He said "Zig has impacted over 250 million people in his lifetime. He's also written countless best bestselling books, and most of all, he's changed countless lives with his message."
My First mindset shift
Zig Ziglar was saying all kinds of things about how we should think that were counterintuitive to the way that I thought.
I thought I was supposed to be critical, cynical, negative, and tough.
I thought that the way that I was doing life was the way you're supposed to do it, and I didn't know any different.
But when he made that one comment, you could have everything you want in life if you'll help enough other people get what they want.
That opened my eyes because, at that time, it was just all about me and getting what I wanted.
I was selfish, self-absorbed, and uninterested in anyone else's life, and consequently, that kind of mental attitude was destroying my own life.
While I was at the seminar, Zig said he had some life-changing information that was recorded on audio.
I had asked my dad to buy me the set. At the time, those were audio cassettes, so my dad bought them for me because I was broke.
I proceeded to listen to it every day for months and months until I got the courage to follow one of my dreams, which was moving to South Florida. And I did move to South Florida in 1997.
What did you decide to do then?
I decided to pick myself up from my bootstraps and create the person that I wanted to be, and I was no longer trapped feeling like a victim that I couldn't move forward. I now had some tools to help me.
Create the life that I wanted.
So the first thing I wanted to do was move to Florida and I did.
And the second thing I wanted to do was get a great job. And I did. In the first job that I got, I was promoted four times within the first year.
That was quite a dichotomy from my last set of jobs where I couldn't hold down a job for more than a month.
So what happened? Why did I change? I changed because of the information that went into my mind.
One of Zig's most famous quotes is, You are where you are because of what's gone into your mind, and you can change where you are. More importantly, you can change who you are by changing what goes into your mind.
So I started to put the right stuff into my mind and wouldn't you know it, the right results came outta my life.
I was promoted four times in the first year as I worked as a marketing director for a very large fitness organization.
At first, I was selling memberships one by one, and then I became the weekend manager and then they promoted me to the weekday manager then I got a phone call and they wanted to move me to Texas to give me my own set of clubs.
And that was the biggest promotion I'd ever gotten in my life.
ENCOUNTER WITH A LEGEND
I was in my office at the new health club. And one of my employees came in and said, Hey Chris, you should really take this next gentleman around the club. And I said why would I do that? That's your job. And it was at that moment, he took out a driver's license and he slid it across the table and I read it and it said, Zig Ziglar.
So my heart dropped. I didn't know Zig lived in that area. I didn't know Zig needed a health club membership, but fortunately, he did.
So I decided I was going to just pretend that I didn't know who he was. However, I did understand all of his philosophies on sales.
So I used all of his strategies as I went through the presentation:
- establish rapport,
- find out what his needs are,
- compliment him,
- and then match his needs to the specific equipment or fitness areas that he would need.
And then by the time we got into the closing room where it was time to ask him to buy I decided to use something called "An Alternative Choice" close...
Mr. Ziglar, you can buy this membership monthly for this fee, OR you can pay in full for three years and save yourself 15%, Which would you prefer?
And it was at that moment he said, "Son, you know who I am, don't you?"
And that's when I melted down like a little Justin Bieber fan. I was so excited that he was in my presence and I couldn't contain my excitement anymore.
The last thing I asked Zig after he signed up for a membership... "Is there anything else I can help you with?
And he said, "I do need a personal trainer."
I decided to work out with him three days a week for free if he would spend one hour a week working on my mental fitness.
Because of my coaching with him, I got to meet his son, Tom. After Zig had passed.
Tom Ziglar had called me and said Chris, would you like to help carry on Zig's legacy?
And I said, Sure, how do I do it? And he said, Oh, you're gonna need to fly to Dallas and spend about a week with us and get certified as a Ziglar Legacy certified coach. And that's what I did.
Thinking Into Results
The stuff that Zig Ziglar taught was my high school education on mindset and it was probably the most important information that I could have received because it helped me to get to where I am today.
However, there was another man that I had an encounter with and met, and his name was Bob Proctor.
I was in his inner circle program, his most intimate program, all the way up until he passed away in January.
I had spent countless hours studying Bob Proctor's content and personalized learning through his group coaching program, the Inner Circle.
And within less than six months, I decided to become a Proctor Gallagher consultant as well.
The challenge I was facing at that point was just becoming stagnant. It's interesting, even as a coach, I'd say about 60 to 70% of people that I do coach, feel stuck.
Or they're in a transition, they want to transition and do something different with their lives, but they just may not know how. Even though I had learned so much information and I was so grateful for my education with Ziglar Corporation, I still felt a little bit stuck.
I needed a different voice and I needed a different set of content to absorb, and that's exactly what I did, as I was completely obsessed with learning all of Bob's methodologies.
I knew I needed something different to motivate me or intrigue me to take different actions.
And through Bob's training, I saw massive changes in my coaching business, in my software company, and my digital marketing agency.
Not only did all three of my companies begin to grow, but I grew!
Most importantly, I got out of my comfort zone and honestly, I didn't wanna be in that comfort zone.
And it was the "Thinking Into Results" program that opened up a completely different zone of genius, so to speak, for me to learn and follow and impact others.