About

Co-host & Podcast Guest:  Kris Parsons:  kris@parsons-pr.comKris' Website:  https://parsons-pr.com/  Transcription:Kris Parsons00:02Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do it too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Ray Loewe00:16Good morning, everybody. This is Ray Loewe. And I'm sitting here in our wonderful studios in Woodbury, New Jersey. And I've got a great guest today, her name is Kris Parson, and I'm gonna let her talk in a minute, but not quite yet. Because I want to take a minute and just review with everybody what our podcast is all about. We're changing the rules. And that's because we're just tired of putting up with everybody's rules. And you know, when you live by somebody else's rules, you're not living your own life. That's true. So we find that the luckiest people in the world are really good at handling rules. You know, they know that rules are necessary, they know that we need some structure, but they also know that we've been cluttered with rules throughout our own life. And so what they want to do is design their own lives free of rules. And you know, life is not about finding yourself. It's about creating yourself.Kris Parsons01:16Oh, that's interesting.Ray Loewe01:17So with that, let me introduce Kris Parsons, of Parsons, PR. And Kris has been with us many, many times. And actually, Kris is going to be our co-host. for the month of August. Yes, I'm excited. And she's going to be digging up past guests. It's going to be an interesting session. So Kris, introduce yourself first. You can get the plugin about Parsons PR if you want. Okay. Okay. And then we'll get into the good stuff.Kris Parsons01:44Great. Well, thank you, right, and I hope, everyone's doing well, today, we finally have a cool spell of this crazy, crazy weather in the east. Those of you in the West might not know, but you've got your own problems in the West. Anyway, Kris Parsons, Parsons PR, I have my own PR firm for about eight years now. And I've been doing various things. And what I like most is coming on Ray's show and talking about changing the rules. But that's not all you do. I mean, the nice thing about the luckiest people in the world is you've done many things. Ray Loewe02:17So why don't you tell me what I've done?  It might be revealing.Kris Parsons02:23You've probably forgot because you're involved in that? Well, you know, you started off with a series of books and courses. This was after you had a whole giant career with college money, and were interviewed all over the country about that helping people save money for college, right? Yep. So now then you decided to pivot, you decided to change. And now you're doing the luckiest people in the world? Which do you remember when I first met you? I said to you, oh my gosh, how are we going to introduce you? That's the longest name in the world. Hi, theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com, but you wouldn't let me change it.Ray Loewe02:56But it's expression because it's who I am and you know, it's the interesting thing is I have a lot of restaurants I frequent, or at least I did before this pandemic thing. And they have no idea what my real name is. But they know I'm the luckiest guy in the world. And so it's branding.Kris Parsons03:17Right. Well, it's also conversation-starting, particularly when you're sitting at the bar.Ray Loewe03:21Yep. So anyway, what we're going to talk about, over the next few minutes here is we decided to do something really different for the month of August, right. But it's not different. We are bringing some of the luckiest people in the world, on the air. And we're going to show why they're lucky. And we're going to talk about their journeys. And what's happened is, a lot of the people that you're helping me bring back on now have been on before pre-pandemic, or during the pandemic, right? Yeah, we had both and we're gonna find out what happened to them. And we're going to find out how the luckiest people in the world make changes to facilitate this ongoing life that they have, which just gets better and better and better and better.Kris Parsons04:17Right. And I think what's exciting about this, and I think it's a great topic for August, it's subtle, you know, we ask people to come on and to come on as guests to come to your coffee and cocktails. I don't know if everybody knows the coffee and cocktails that was kind of created out of the pandemic where we would have a virtual networking session, right, we'd have coffee in the morning and cocktails in the evening and kind of just have people talk. And then the nice thing is, afterwards, if you wanted to go online and talk to somebody specific who was at the coffee or cocktails, we sent you the email, same thing you would do at a regular cocktail hour and hand somebody your business card. So that was kind of nice, and I think the subtle changes that people has a lot of people we had on there, met somebody, got a job offer, decided to partner, had somebody help them change their business, it was kind of fun to watchRay Loewe05:09But you know, it was so much better because you know, when you're stuck with somebody at a real cocktail party, you can't get away from them, here you can have internet failure. You can disappear and say, Oh, I'm sorry. But the interesting thing is that we realize that we haven't been able to see people right, face to face. And you know, conversation is such an important part of the lives of the luckiest people in the world. It is, and it's what drives things. And you know, I went on somebody else's community not too long ago, and I was asking him, why community is so important to them. So let me read a couple things. Over here. So some of the comments I got were, the reason that I'm part of a community is the commonality that I have with other people. And that I find that when I get together with people that have the same mindset, as I have several things happen. Number one, I feel comfortable and I feel safe. Good, okay. It's fun. I am able to find ever-expanding growth because I've got people who kind of think the same way I do. And I can play on their growth I can look at their experiences, and I can emulate what I want to emulate. One of the comments I got is that communities have a lot of the same people going the same direction, but often for different reasons. Okay. Most members of communities are there because they're seeking ways to be better. Okay. Okay. And, one of the most interesting one is, this young lady said, I go to these events, and often don't say much, you know, but I'm sitting there, and I get a chance to work through my own stuff, while I listen to others, and get energized and re-excited about life.Kris Parsons07:19No, it's absolutely, I mean, I feel that when I come on to the morning, coffee hours are the cocktail hours. And when I listen to the podcast, because, you know, we talk about change, and we say it's hard to change, but you can get something from hearing how somebody else did it. You know you can get Oh, they did it that way. Well, maybe I can try it. And if you do subtle things, you find all the sudden you're changing, you don't even know it. Sure. Ray Loewe07:43So let's talk a little bit about a couple of people that we know are going to be on in August. Okay, great, and what we hope to get from them. So let's start with a guy you know very well, Jeff Lincoln.Kris Parsons07:55Yes, yes. All right, Jeff, the coffee man, Jeff, coffee, man, Jeff, Jeff and I actually have known each other for many, many years. In fact, our children when they were little, and our children are in their 20s. Now, we played together we did Halloween trick or treating together. It was really great. And he and his wife, Linda Passero, own Passero'scoffee. And they've had that for years. And I've watched them grow and expand I might not be correct here. But I think he's got four locations. But he had to close a few down because of the pandemic. So we kind of reconnected with him during the pandemic, where he was kind of I have to kind of rework my business plan. Now, he always had the idea of doing more online shopping, more online coffee selling, more online events. That was always in his plan. But he didn't have enough time, because he had all these stores open when he had to close them on the pandemic that gave him the time. And he used us by being on our podcast and following some of your ideas to kind of take that step and be more serious with that.Ray Loewe09:01And I know when he came on one of our virtual coffee events. Somebody got so excited about learning about coffee that they asked him if he would do a virtual coffee tasting. Yes. And I think he worked that into his plan and I know I hired him to do a family virtual coffee tasting event. Right? Kris Parsons09:22That was very clever. I like that.Ray Loewe09:23But this is what happens when people get together and have conversations. It's not that all the ideas are new, although sometimes new ideas come into play. But it's getting that impetus and that energy going. It's sometimes you get permission from the group. And permissions is an interesting word here you get permission from the group to take the next step and move. Kris Parsons09:51Right, right, exactly what I think this is what I like so much about the things that you're doing with your company is that you said you give them permission. It's a safe place. There's no rules. It's not like, oh, who's supposed to speak and what happens next? It's really just a conversation. And some of the conversations that come out of it are completely in left field. But they lead to something else. And it's and it's very exciting and we connect people.Ray Loewe10:13Yeah. So Jeff is going to be a guest, yes, he's gonna be on August 4, yeah,he's gonna come back and talk a little bit about his experience so that we can learn how he was able to handle this business situation could have been disastrous. And yet, guess what, He's here. He's reopening. He's excited about things. You know, it all worked. And, and I would like to think we were part of that. Maybe we were and maybe we weren't,Kris Parsons10:43I think you were in fact, that's why Jeff's coming on because he says, You were, I mean, like I said, we give people sometimes the little kernel that they need to take that next step. They might have had it already in their head. But this is a nice way and the coffee, we just by introducing him to, you've got like 1000 - 2000 followers, just introducing those folks to his coffee is benefit enough.Ray Loewe11:06Yeah. And I even got to taste some coffee that I wouldn't have tasted otherwise. Kris Parsons11:10That's right, he has very unusual names of his coffee. I love that.Ray Loewe11:14Okay, so one of the other people that we're bringing back is another friend of yours. I have a lot of friends, Will Becker. Okay. And tell us a little bit about Will and give us kind of a preview. We don't know what he's going to say. But maybe we do. Kris Parsons11:29Well, the reason why I think Will is going to be very interesting is Will was in transition. He's another friend that I've known for years, he and his wife, Anna, who's an artist, she's amazing. He was in transition for a job. And he kept going to interviews and not getting the job because he kept kind of saying maybe the same thing or saying what he thought the interviewee or interviewer wanted to hear as an interviewee. But then, when he came to one of our podcasts, or you interviewed him, somewhere, he said, You taught him how to find out what you want. Like, instead of having the interview be about I'm giving the company what they want, what do you want, and bring more of yourself into the interview. And he did that. And the next interview, he got the job.Ray Loewe12:19You know, this is one of the mistakes that we all make, you know, we try to be somebody else. That's true. We try to live somebody else's life. And you know, we all have a brand that is uniquely ours.Kris Parsons12:31We just don't know it a lot. We don't know. Ray Loewe12:33Yeah and hopefully one of the things that we're helping people do here is to figure out what their brand is by listening to the way other people package themselves. And we have some online courses that I think were extremely helpful to Will in this case, but we're going to find out because he's going to come back and he's going to talk a little bit about his journey, and where he's going next. And that's what I'm really interested in because life is a continuing journey.Kris Parsons13:05I won't share it now. Because I want you to listen. And that's going to be August 17th. Will's going to talk to you about the 10 things, the 10 things you ask people, and I'm not going to tell you what it is I really want everyone to tune in. Especially a lot of people there's a lot of people in transition now, a lot of people looking for jobs. It's very interesting what Will has learned about himself what he's learned about others, and about perception, about the perception that people have of you, and what you think they perceive. And oftentimes we're really wrong. What we think people perceive of us.Ray Loewe13:40Well, yeah, because we like to think about what's real. And we all know from reality TV and everything else going on. That doesn't make any difference. It's all about perception. Okay, so another person that I know we're going to be talking to is Bill Hughes. Now Bill Hughes has been kind of a regular he's actually going to be one of our co-hosts out in the future. I think it's October, but Bill is a thinker. He's a very, very smart guy. He does a tremendous amount of reading.  He's on our coffee and cocktail event, almost always.Kris Parsons14:20Yes, I know he's a regular which we like because if not, sometimes we have little lean, lean days, and he's good to have on there.Ray Loewe14:27Well, one of the things I think he does is is he just observes and, he looks at what other people are doing. And he doesn't say an awful lot on these things. You know, he just sits there and listens. And I think the value that he gets from all of this is observing what other people are doing and that affects his life and he's also an executive coach and that helps him explain concepts and things to other people.Kris Parsons14:53Right. Well, you know, I have a favorite saying that and I think Bill falls right into this. The written word is your master, the spoken word is your equal, and the silent word is your servant. So I feel that Bill is great like that because he's a wonderful listener. And he's very silent, so when he does open his mouth to say something, people are all they want to hear what he has to say. Because it's important.Ray Loewe15:19I didn't know you were that erudite. I have all sorts of little things. And I didn't know that I knew the word erudite, either. So you know, so whatever it is, okay, so who else might we look forward to?Kris Parsons15:32Oh, well, another colleague of mine, and I've been working with her for years, Sharon McCullough, she is the owner and CEO of Expert Events. And she has an interesting story, because she like me, we have a little bit of downtime with COVID, all the events completely shut down. In fact, that first week in March, or whenever that was, we shut down four events that week. And these are huge events, like hundreds of 1000s of people. And it was pretty amazing how we had to pivot. But she is talking about how she's changing and how we're all changing with this virtual, you know, now, even going forward, where we all can see one another. Events are now all looking to include some kind of a hybrid, where you can still tune in to watch it because some of these galas people don't even like to come to, they just like to give them money and see what's going on. And now you can do it virtually. Ray Loewe16:26And it saves a ton of money. And parking. And parking. But interesting when Sharon comes on now, Sharon has been on before.Kris Parsons16:35She has all these people have been on before on their own particular podcast. So I encourage everyone, please go back to Ray's website, the luckiest people in the world, and find some of these episodes, because they're on there all the time. And so you can listen to them again, you know, they're all cataloged, they're all archived. Ray Loewe16:54And one of the big things here is that we kind of caught a lot of these people when they were getting shut down. Yes, when things were going the wrong way. And now they're back going the right way. And I think what we're going to learn a lot is how these people think, how they solve problems, and how they're always looking for a positive solution. And they find it right.Kris Parsons17:19I was very impressed by everyone. There's not a lot of naysayers. I mean, this was a tough time, and everybody was very positive and said, Okay, here's what we have to do now. And that's the whole essence of your company anyway, right?Ray Loewe17:32Yeah. And then we're gonna bring some new people on, right? Mm-hmm. Okay, some kind of what much more famous than we are? People? Okay, well, we're going to bring some Philly sportspeople on. And again, we're going to look at their journey. Because, again,  it's all different ways that we can think about life and the idea is if we can find that niche that fits us, if we can brand ourselves the right way, all of a sudden, life just takes on new meaning. And it starts to get exciting, and it starts to move forward. Right?Kris Parsons18:05Well, you know, they say that people are brought into your life for different reasons, sometimes to take it from step a to step B. And I just really encourage people to participate in some of the things that you're doing now your website, your coffee hours and we're looking to have the friends connection come back now we've done it virtual for a couple times. But now we're looking to have a comeback. We might actually do it in Philadelphia with Jeff at his coffee roastery in Port Richmond, that might be fun. And we're looking to maybe go elsewhere go national to Atlanta, Georgia, like linear we might do. What is it our barbecue smoker with Kevin?Ray Loewe18:41Yeah, we're gonna bring back people who said they were master barbecuists. We're gonna find out if that's really true. Exactly, exactly. So what are some of the other things that we're going to look forward to in August?Kris Parsons18:52Well, I just I would like everyone to know what you have going on. Because you started this company three or four years ago. You've built on it. You've got the podcasts, you've got your courses and books, you have a 90-day plan, right? You still have a 90-day plan to help people make change because change is hard for people. You've got your virtual coffee hours and cocktail hours. We've got the friends connection, and we hope fingers crossed, that we can bring back the travel connection soon. Ray Loewe19:20Yeah, I think the travel connection will be back next year.Kris Parsons19:23I hope so. We missed out on a fabulous cruise to Greece. That was a shame. Ray Loewe19:27Well, we'll redo it and it will be better because we know more and because we now know how to protect ourselves. And you know, we learned so much over the last year and I'm excited because over the last year we've grown in a different way. So we've interviewed some 50 people over the last year, okay, that are all luckiest people in the world. Many of them we didn't know before.Kris Parsons19:56No, we just found themRay Loewe19:58Through the connection. Through the networking caused by the other members in our community leading us to people that they think are interesting. And although we have a mission here, and the mission is to learn how to become luckier and luckier and luckier by reinventing ourselves constantly. Correct. I think the other thing that came out of here is that the luckiest people in the world, I think, are actually the most interesting people.Kris Parsons20:27They are and you know, and it makes for more interesting cocktail hours and coffee hours, right? Yeah. Nobody likes to sit and talk to a really dull person? Ray Loewe20:34Well, I don't think we've had a really dull meeting. And, one of the things that's happening is now more and more of the people that we've interviewed on our podcast are coming to our virtual coffee and cocktails. Oh, yes. And it gives us a chance to actually have a conversation with people as opposed to just hearing in a one-way monologue, what they're all about. And there's a lot to learn here, because I know one of the people who've come to the coffee session a number of times, we're not going to mention names here, but she's a young lady that's between jobs. Uh-huh. And, you know, again, it's what I think she's learning is that she doesn't necessarily just have to go back and repeat what she did before. Exactly. She's learning by listening to these other people that there are ways that you can take the best of what you did before. And focus on that, and figure out how to get rid of the junk that you did before.Kris Parsons21:37That's certainly what I did seven years ago when I opened up my own company. Ray Loewe21:41And the whole idea here is to be able to repackage things and to refigure out how to make your life better and better and better because life is short for us. And we want to make the most of it. And we want to have happy people.Kris Parsons21:55Right? And it shouldn't be afraid. I think fear steps in a lot. And you know, with money and things like that, but I think honestly if you take that first step or small steps and that's what I think we give people here with your podcasts and your you know, Friends connection, and we give people like small little kernels of wanting to try this.Ray Loewe22:16kernels, kernels what is that like corn.Kris Parsons22:18Kernels of Knowledge, kernels.Ray Loewe22:20It's jersey corn time it is. Anyway, we're about done, Kristine, So any parting comments?Kris Parsons22:28No, thank you for having me on. It's actually you know, it's kind of fun. I like to say as a PR person, I am behind the scenes, I usually put people in front. So it's nice to every now and then be on the microphone and express some of my views because I'm always propping up other people.Ray Loewe22:44And you know, keep listening to the podcast in there are gems, you know, and not everyone fits every person but they're all up on Apple iTunes. You can listen to them. And you can choose carefully which ones you only listen to, and you can fast forward through them and get the gist of things. And then I think one of the biggest things is come to coffee, virtual coffee, virtual cocktails every Thursday, and you can sign up on our website,Kris Parsons23:148:45 for the coffee and 4:45 for the cocktails, we end up getting people from the west coast to the 4:45. Because they're not going to get up at 5:30 for coffee.Ray Loewe23:26Now you never know. Right? Right. But but but the whole idea is you know, the more you show up, the more you get involved, the more we all get out of it. And it's a two-way piece here. It's what we learn from listening to others and what we get because new people participate, and we get new seeds that we can plant in our own gardens and make work.Kris Parsons23:50And you find it's a small world it becomes a smaller world. Some of the people get on I don't even know or people don't know. And then they find out they know them or they know them through somebody else. And next thing you know you have a new friend.Ray Loewe24:01Yep. All right. So Thank you, everybody, for being with us. Kris Parsons24:05Yes, Thank you. Please go to the website. Yep, theluckiestpeopleintheworld.comRay Loewe24:10I know it's long.com. But it's all one word, the luckiest people in the world.com. And once you get in your browser, you don't have to type it in anymore. That's true. All right, everybody. Have a great week. And join us again next week, when we're going to have one of Kristine's lively guest. Yeah, join us. And I'm not true which one but it's going to be interesting, amusing and fun. We'll have some previous talk to everybody later. Thank you.Kris Parsons24:39Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do that too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.