“Patricia Fripp’s talents as a speech coach has helped me craft my story so well I have delivered it on the MDRT main platform 3 times as well as countless other stages around the globe. Always a Fripp raving fan.” John Nichols, President, Acrisure Insurance Wholesale Solutions 

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“Patricia Fripp’s super-power is she can listen to a superb presentation and find ways to make it even better.” Krister Ungerböck, Author of Talk Shifts

“The information in FrippVT is as valuable as any college course I’ve taken. This is a resource that everyone should know about. The investment is worth ten times more than I paid and has been life-changing. My fees, recommendations, and referrals have increased dramatically. I am delighted.” Mitzi Perdue, author of How to Make Your Family Business Last

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Success

• If you don't, "Act as if your name were on the door," it never will be.
• Our goal should not be to be employed, but to be employable.
• The future belongs to charismatic communicators who are technically competent.
• You do what you have to do, to do what you want to do.
• There is natural talent, but not overnight success.
• It is not who you know, but who wants to know you.
• Frequently Reinforce Ideas that are Productive and Profitable.
• To position yourself ahead of your competition, you have to negotiate from strength: who you are, who you are perceived to be, who is on your side.
• It doesn't matter how good you are. The world has to know it.
• Develop the art of being exceptional.
• You don’t get paid for everything you do it is the cost of doing business. Be confident you will be repaid. It may take a while.
• It is easier to be a success when you have supportive friends who are excited about your accomplishments.
• You may not lack the talent, but the patience.
• Do everything better than you and your competition did up until now.
• Is everyday a learning experience?
• Shameless self-promotion is not only desirable, it's essential. Advertise yourself!
• You are the Chairman of the Board of your own career.
• Have an overall marketing strategy for your career.
• If you don’t toot your own horn, there is no music.
• The quality of your life doesn't depend on your situations and circumstances, but on how you respond to them.
• If you change your thinking just a few degrees you'll see a whole new world.
• It’s better to do something for nothing than nothing for nothing.
• Take every crumb they throw you and handle them magnificently.
• Every time you have a conversation, opportunity is knocking.
• Make decisions focused on where you want to be, not where you are now.
• Nothing will position you ahead of the crowd as much as being a powerful, persuasive presenter.
• Habits are like railway tracks. They take a long time to put into place. When there they will take you anywhere you want to go.
• Where do I want to be in five years? Make decisions and take action for where you want to be, not for where you are.
• Always dress as well as your executive clients. Dress to match the quality of your brand.
• A team is a group of people who may not be equal in experience, talent, or education but in commitment.

Sales

• It is not your customer’s job to remember you. It is your obligation and responsibility to make sure they don’t have the chance to forget you.
• Life is a series of sales situations, and the answer is NO if you don't ask.
• Don’t celebrate closing a sale; celebrate opening a relationship.
• Your best clients are the hottest prospects for your competitors.
• Nurture the clients you have; never take them for granted.
• The real sale comes after the sale, reselling the customer you have to retain their business.
• We are all in the business of offering creative solutions to our clients' problems.
• All I ever wanted is business is an unfair advantage over my competition. I learned a friendlier more personalize sales conversation is often the answer.
• If you sound the same as everyone else you have no advantage.
• You don't compete on price. You compete on relationships.
• Relationships are strengthened when you tell stories that paint pictures to help clarify the results you can create.
• When you lose a customer, you lose two ways:  You don’t get their money. Your competitors do.
• Find out what your customers want before your competitors do.
• When everything else is equal the best presentation wins.
• Don't be foolhardy enough to assume seasoned content experts and sales teams can naturally deliver their message well.
• Without consistency there is no true quality.
• To win more sales make sure you are unforgettable.
• Take your satisfied clients on your sales calls by telling their success stories.
• Find out what your customers want before your competitors do.
• Always dress as if you are your company’s top sales producer. Begin on your first day.

Communication

• Outside of the privacy of your own home, all speaking is "public speaking." There is no "private speaking."
• Today's audiences are stimulation junkies with short attention spans.
• The first thirty seconds and the last thirty seconds have the most impact in a presentation.
• Your communications must be emotionally and intellectually satisfying. Your audience will not remember what you say, but what they see in their minds. Tell stories.
• The purpose of speaking is to order, clarify, and intensify the experience for the audience.
• Your audience of one or 1,000 will forgive you anything except being boring. Being too predictable is boring.
• If you have great ideas and no confidence to share them, you will not get credit for having them.
• When speaking to leadership report on the deals; handle the details.
• People will remember the images you create in their minds, much more than they will your exact words.
• Good eye contact creates intimacy and demonstrates confidence.
• When you look around the table, use “piece-of-the-pie” eye contact.
• In a conference room, look at each person for a thought, an idea, or a phrase.
• Get comfortable looking into your webcam and create an energetic intimacy.
• When you look into a webcam imagine you are looking at a good friend.
• Good music and good communication both contain changes of pace, pauses, and full rests.
• Pauses mark the time when your listeners think about what they have just heard.
• There are no boring subjects. Just boring speakers.
• There are some who claim that public speaking is merely knowing your subject.  That is not at all true.
• Merely knowing your subject is as far from public speaking as knowing the words of a song is from singing.
• Knowledge of your subject is vitally essential, yet that alone does not give you the ability to speak interestingly and hold your audience.
• We speak to be remembered and repeated. Do this well and we communicate with the audience of our audience when they repeat what they heard.

Technology

• Technology does not run an enterprise; relationships do.
• Use technology to serve, but don't lose the personal touch.
• Why does it not do all I want it to do? Chances are the free version is not what you want.
• When in doubt - reboot.
• Want to build rapport? Turn on your webcam.
• If you don't have a green screen don't use a virtual background.
• In virtual meetings, if the light is behind you, they can't see you.

Life

• When you focus on what might have been, it gets in the way of what can be.
• Never argue with the inevitable. Make your decisions for your tomorrows not just your todays.
• You can't be too kind or too generous.
• Reality does not usually live up to expectations.
• Have you noticed what fun you can have initiating conversations with strangers in elevators?
• Give everyone you tip a raise. $2 more to those who serve us makes a bigger difference to them than to us. For many years of my life tips were part of my income and I really appreciated them. 
• Do you count your riches in money or memories?
• A stranger is a friend or customer you have not met yet.
• Of course, we can have it all. Just not at the same time.

Robert Fripp on Life

• One of the lessons of early childhood: we can’t do everything that we want to do.
• One of the lessons of later childhood: everything we do has consequences.
• One of the lessons of early adulthood: we are held accountable for our actions.
• One of the lessons of growing maturity: we can do whatever we will, if we are able to deal with the repercussions.
• One of the lessons of maturity: Wish is sacred.

Business

• Never overlook the business that is right under your nose.
• You have to earn the right to do business with people.
• For a company’s advertising strategy to work, it has to be handled not only corporately, but also individually. Have you ever walked into a hotel and felt like saying to the desk clerk, “Haven’t you seen your commercials? You are supposed to be nice to me!”
• Everybody brings in business, serves customers, and increases profits.
• People do business with people they know; People do business with people who do business with them; People do business with people their friends talk about; People do business with people they read about.
• Your business is as good as your worst employee.
• To build your business, hire only the already motivated.
• It is not what you say you believe that is important, but what you model, encourage, reward, and let happen.
• A team is a group of people who may not be equal in experience, talent, or education but in commitment.
• The lowest price is usually the most expensive.
• Make short-term decisions that will help your long-term goals.
• Don’t forget to keep in touch with past clients and prospects.

Marketing

• Your marketing efforts have to be ongoing, consistent and relentless: hi-tech, low-tech, no-tech, and sometimes and sometimes totally shameless.
• There are two types of people to market to, those who know and love you, and those who never heard of you.
• When I wear a hat, lots of nice people I don't know initiate conversations.
• If you speak to 50 people at a service club, you will likely do business with a higher percentage eventually than if you met them one-on-one. Look at the time you saved!
• Communicate with customers the way they want to be communicated with.
• Want to improve your open rate? A clean list is a happy list.

Goals

• Tell me what you say you want, show me one week of your life, and I will tell you if you will get it.
• Challenge everything you do. Expand your thinking. Refocus your efforts. Rededicate yourself to your future.
• Think big; start small.

Time Management

• There is no point in doing well that which you should not be doing at all.
• Say “No” to a request, and offer an alternative that is better for both of you.
• Learn to say no without feeling guilty.

Networking

• There is no point going anywhere people don't remember you were there.
• It is not who you know, it is who wants to know you.
• Dressing up and looking good adds a smile to your face and that of others. Then it is easier to begin a conversation.
• Develop a distinctive signature, interesting ties, striking jewelry, in my case hats.
• Make your mother proud; do not do anything that would embarrass her.
• Work your name tag.  Wear it on your right shoulder where it is easy to see.
• Develop an unforgettable greeting and make your introduction apply to whomever you meet.
• The key to connection is conversation; the secret of conversation is asking questions.
• The quality of the information you receive depends on the quality of your questions.
• To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions.
• Don’t ignore people you recognize, even if you’ve forgotten their names.
• Travel with your own PR agent. All you need is a friend or  colleague. Commit to becoming a credibility duo. For example, "Susan is too modest to tell you she is the best-selling author of 6 books."
• Take the initiative to begin conversations by making a sincere and flattering comment.

Father Frippicism

• Don't concentrate on making a lot of money, but rather on becoming the type of person people want to do business with.

Mother Frippicism

• It is the inside you that is important. Dress up and look good so you attract people who can find out how nice, interesting, and valuable you are.
• You will never meet anyone without faults. Marry someone whose faults you can live with. (I have stayed single.)

Presenting

• If you can stand up and speak eloquently with confidence or at least stagger to your feet and say anything at all, you will be head and shoulders above your competition.
• The first 30 seconds and the last 30 seconds have the most impact.
• We use words to communicate, however, our listeners see what we say when we use visual words.
• Specificity builds credibility.
• If it were not a "thing," what would it be?
• If you can't weigh it don't use the word "tons."
• Stuff is rubbish and debris; remove it from your language until a turkey is involved.
• Fruits and vegetables come in bunches, ideas do not.
• Nothing will position you ahead of the crowd as much as becoming a powerful, persuasive presenter.
• Rehearsal is the work; performance is the relaxation.
• Stories are about people and what we can hear them say. Deliver the dialogue, do not report on it.
• Once you have your presentation, internalize it so that your words fall flawlessly from your lips.
• Focus on who the audience is. It is all about the audience.
• The purpose of your opening is to arouse interest in your subject.
• Being predictable is boring.
• Your audience will forgive you anything except being boring.
• Your last words linger.
• Speak to be remembered and repeated.
• When your message is memorable, you are speaking to the audience of your audience when it is repeated.
• Your speech structure frees you, it doesn’t freeze you.
• Security is knowing your lines.
• Every presentation is built around a premise or big idea.
• Visual aids are “visual” and “aids.” Not a scripting tool.
• We need to connect to our audience intellectually and emotionally.
• No matter what position you are in, and what industry you are part of, the best presenters gain a competitive edge.
• It never ceases to amaze me that intelligent, well-educated, and ambitious professionals frequently overlook developing the number one skill guaranteed to position them ahead of the crowd. Learn to present.
• Does public speaking terrify you? Most likely, it is because none of us want to look, feel, or sound stupid in front of others.
• No, you are not a terrible public speaker. You are an untrained speaker. Stop telling yourself, “I am a terrible public speaker.” You are reinforcing what we are going to change.
• How do you expect to be good at what you have not focused on?
• To become a powerful, professional-sounding presenter is not rocket science. Just more complex than you realize. Get help!
• Outside the privacy of your own home, all speaking is public speaking.
• Any ambitious professional who is willing to focus their attention on any learning to present well, can stand in front of an audience or behind a webcam and deliver a good presentation.
• Everything we do and say adds to, or distracts from, our message.
• Each presentation we deliver increases or lowers our reputation and credibility.
• When we develop the ability to speak in a clear and concise way, our message will be remembered and repeated.
• When we deliver our message well, we are speaking to the audience of our audience as our ideas and suggestions are repeated.
• Great presenters have a competitive advantage at every stage of their careers.
• There are three parts to every presentation.
  - First, your content; what it is you are going to say.
  - Second, to make your message easy for you and your audience to remember, you need a simple, logical structure as the framework for your words. This is what I call the skeleton under the flesh of your words.
  - Third, is your delivery, which includes your eye contact, quality of your voice, pauses and inflections, and how to move and gesture. All while remembering what you intended to say.
• A presentation is not a conversation. A great presentation is delivered conversationally. 
• The written word is for the eye, the spoken word is for the rhythm.
• Speak in shorter sentences; one idea a sentence.
• Your pauses are important for you to breathe and for your audience to think about what they have heard.
• Once you know what you are speaking about, and the purpose of your presentation, your next question is, who is your audience?
• The structure is the framework of your presentation; consider it the skeleton under the flesh of your words.
• The secret of being able to connect to your audience is to look at your message from the audience’s point of view.
• Understand the makeup of your audience by interviewing representatives, and quote them in your presentation.
• You never want to hear, "She knows her subject; however, she has no idea who we are.”
• Eye contact is essential to creating an emotional connection.
• Your thought process begins much earlier than your preparation.
• It is never too early to begin planning for an important presentation.
• The purpose of your opening is to arouse interest in the subject.
• You have thirty seconds to immediately command the attention of your audience. Don’t waste it.
• Certain speech openings captivate, mystify, and create an emotional bond that keeps an audience in the palm of the speaker’s hand.
• Everybody loves a good story, and that is their power.
• Wise leaders, sales professionals, and ambitious professionals do well to develop an arsenal of great stories that provide clear, dramatic examples.
• Good stories help differentiate us from our competition.
• Good stories that are interesting, memorable, and illustrate your message can inspire and motivate, train and teach, convince and persuade.
• Stories are about people and we like to hear them speak.
• The best way to perfect formal presentations is to improve your everyday conversations.
• Practice does not make perfect. It makes permanent.
• All fuzzy, clumsy, and unclear language will destroy your credibility and your claim to professionalism.
• Nobody sees how you feel. Only how you act.
• If you turn the sound up and the lights down, your audience does not think they can hear you.
• When you sound the same as everyone else, you have no advantage.
• Effective speaking involves more than a script.

Customer Service

• Good customer service is good for sales, but it is not good enough. We need to exceed our customers’ expectations.
• If you roll out the red carpet for a billionaire, they won’t even notice it. If you roll out the red carpet for a millionaire, they expect it. If you roll out the red carpet for a thousandaire, they appreciate it. If you roll out the red carpet for a hundredaire, they tell everybody they know.
• I don’t judge companies by the CEO or the people who fly in corporate jets. I judge a company by the real people, the ones who answer the phone or carry my bags.
• Take the initiative. Creatively remove the obstacles. Save the customer.
• If you lose a customer you lose two ways: You don’t get the money, and your competitors do.
• People do business with people they know, who do business with them, who their friends talk about, and who they read about.
• Your customers should be a major part of your PR program.
• Customers want quality, value, speed, convenience, choice, and to be appreciated.

Leadership

• Leadership is the ability to decide what has to be done and then get people to want to do it.
• Leadership comes from the top down as it has traditionally, but in today's world it also has to come from the bottom up.
• The secret to discovering innovation and solutions is to honor your everyday heroes.
• Powerful words from well-intentioned leaders can change the whole culture of a company.
• Winston Churchill proved what executives need to understand. We respect a position. We will fight in the streets for the person. 
• Leaders, the secret to discovering innovation and solutions is to honor your everyday heroes.

Favorite Quotes

• Dolly Parton, “When I was young and poor, I wanted to be rich and famous. I promised myself, if ever I was, I would never complain about anything.”
• Raquel Welch, "Style is being yourself, but on purpose."
•  On 60 Minutes I said, “As a hairstylist, I worked on the outside of heads. As a motivational speaker, I work on the inside of heads. There is only half an inch difference,” That line got me on 60 Minutes. That half inch has made me millions of dollars…not all in the same year! 
• Patricia Fripp, "The first time I tried email I almost electrocuted myself by licking the stamp."
• Edith Head, the famous costume designer for Hollywood movies, “You can have everything you want as long as you dress for it!”
• Michael Caine, “First of all, I choose great roles, if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don't come, I choose the ones that pay the rent."
• Michael Caine, “It’s a lesson in life—don’t look back, you’ll trip over."
• Michael Caine, “Do you know that the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing? Nothing that has meaning is easy. "Easy" doesn't enter into grown-up life.”
• Morgan Freeman, ”How do we change the world? One random act of kindness at a time.”
• Denzel Washington, "Don't aspire to make a living, aspire to make a difference."
• Jerry Seinfeld, “ I consider it a good day’s work if I can edit an 8 word sentence into 5.”
• Michael Hauge, Hollywood story consultant to speakers and business professionals, “A story has to be true. Not 100% accurate.”
• Tom Hanks, "The only way you can truly control how you are seen is by being honest all the time."
• Billy Crystal, "By the time a man is wise enough to watch his step, he's too old to go anywhere."
• Robin Williams, "I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone.”
• Ben Stiller, "Success doesn't necessarily mean happiness."
• Eddie Murphy, "We are all sculptors, constantly chipping away the unwanted parts of our lives, trying to create their idea of our masterpiece.
• Tom Hanks, “If you have to have a job, a high-priced movie star is a pretty good gig.”
• Michael Caine, “It’s a lesson in life—don’t look back, you’ll trip over."
• Alfred Hitchcock, "A movie is like life with all the dull parts left out." 
• Walt Disney, “We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.”
• The Australian press said of Lady Di, “She came, she wore, she conquered.”
• The slogan on my favorite Toyah Willcox tshirt, “She’s loud, she’s proud, she’s back.”
• Walt Disney, “We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.”
• Jane Fonda: “I am now in the third act of my life. That is the one that makes sense of the first two.”
• Bill Gove, The National Speakers Associations’ first president, told me, “Fripp, the written word is for the eye.

  The spoken word is for the rhythm.”

Robert Frippicisms

• Small additional increments are transformational.
• Don't be helpful; be useful.
• Things are not as bad as they seem; they are worse than that. They are also better than that. (We do not see life as it is, but as we perceive it to be.)
• The craftsman teaches by what they do. (Conditioning) The master teaches by who they are. What the craftsman does is who they are. What the master does is who they are not. (Beyond conditioning)
• My brother Robert said to me, "The application of intelligence is a beautiful and rare thing...seldom seen when I am driving and talking to my sister at the same time."
• My brother Robert said to me while loading his car, “One operative mind is better than two non-cooperative.”
• It should not be our aim to have an easy life, but to have a better quality of problems.
• You have to master technique in order to abandon it.
• Discipline, not an end in itself, but a means to an end.
• Discipline is a vehicle of joy.
• It’s very hard to see what we’re looking at, if we believe we already know what we’re seeing.

Robert Fripp's Favorite Grace

• All life is one and everything that lives is holy.
• Plants, animals and people all must eat to live and nourish one another.
• We bless the life that has died to give us food.
• Let us eat consciously, resolving by our labors to pay the debt of our existence.

Robert Fripp's Aphorisms

• Courtesy is an inward grace, which extends outwards to others.
• Equilibrium is not static.
• Expectation closes the door to what is happening in the moment.
• Our understanding changes what we understand.
• Performance is a vehicle for entering different worlds of experiencing.
• The science is in knowing; the art is in perceiving.
• The future is what the present can bear.
• The way we describe our world shows how we think of our world. How we think of our world directs how we interpret our world. How we interpret our world governs how we participate in it. How we participate in the world shapes the world.
• There are few things as convincing as death to remind us of the quality with which we live our life.
• From Mrs. Robert Fripp, Toyah Wilcox: Be Loud, Be Proud, Be Heard

Robert Fripp's Ideas

• The advent of lawyers into business affairs is the death of flexibility and has increased the adversarial approach to negotiation.
• When a legal system fails to provide justice, people will seek their own remedies outside the process of law. This is inevitable, necessary, and dangerous. Better then that those within the legal system see their responsibility towards the living body politic and address that responsibility.
• The quality of our perceptions determines the quality of our judgment. Our judgment determines how we interact with the world. How we interact with the world changes the world. Therefore, the quality of our perceptions changes the world we perceive.
• If I name myself, I recognize who I am. By recognizing who I am, I am becoming myself.
• In our actions we reveal the world in which we live. We speak of what we see and understand and know. That is, everything we do is reflective of who and what we are. A musician presents a view from the world in which he or she lives. This provides an opportunity for an audience to look into this world. Similarly a reviewer reviews himself or herself.
• A reviewer reviews himself or herself by presenting the extent of his or her understanding.
• When a record company makes a mistake, the artist pays for it. When the artist makes a mistake, the artist pays for it.
• The artist has one career. The manager has as many careers as they have artists. The record company has as many careers as it has artists.
• An honest society is an ordered society. An ordered society is an efficient society. An efficient society is a richer society. A richer society may invest in itself and support a poorer society.
• Any action carries repercussions. Active and creative interaction and involvement with anything carries active and creative repercussions. Things are not as they were before. They have changed. Therefore, if we approach a living, creative, intelligent object a second time and expect it to be the same, we will not see or understand it-it is not the same. So, to see it again, we will have to see it not only “as if for the first time,” but also in actuality for the first time, because it has not been like this before.
• So, we can never reach a Final Understanding of anything because it will change as we develop understanding. If we did reach a Final Understanding, simultaneously the subject would have changed, rendering our FU as past tense and no longer final!
• Complex fields of intelligence, in order to enter our world, (that is, to become more fully real by becoming more fully part of the totality of worlds), need people to anchor the points between which the fields of intelligence can dwell and operate. Not so much in people, as between them. In a sense, a group is giving birth to an angel by providing its spirit or intelligence a framework to inhabit.

For more Robert Fripp, click here for Robert FrippVT and to download these Robert Frippicisms.