Dena Patton  
You know, when we're a business owner and you have 10 employees or 20 employees or 80 employees or 500 employees, and you are walking around triggered five times a day, you are not being a great leader

Jeff Ma  
Hello and welcome to love as a business strategy, a podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We're here to talk about business. We want to tackle those topics that most business business leaders might shy away from and we believe that humanity and love should be at the center of every successful business. I am your host, Jeff Ma. And as always, I'm here to have conversations and hear stories from real people, real businesses in real life. My guest today is Dena Patton and Dena is a third generation Phoenician however, she founded Dena Patton, coaching and training company 22 years ago, while living in New York City. She's an elite business and mindset coach who has worked with 1000s of purpose driven business owners and world changing leaders around the globe. To help them build great companies that break records with their revenues and their impact. She transforms three key pillars of your business number one being your marketing and sales plan to increase your profits. Number two, your greatness mindset to elevate your vision and leadership, which I'm very excited about. And number three, your systems to expand your business growth. Dena has garnered over nine awards, and 60 media stories including CNN, entrepreneur, magazine, and Business Journal, you can check out her Amazon number one best selling book, The Greatness Game that helps you to live and lead with boldness and greatness. So please welcome to the show, Dena Patton. How are you doing?

Dena Patton  
I am awesome. Thank you for having me on the show.

Jeff Ma  
I'm so excited. You know, when I look at all you've done and in this interest, introduction yourself itself, you hit on so many amazing things. And I it's one of those like, kind of wish my episodes were two hours so I could cover them all. But when we first chat, we talked about something that I don't get enough, I don't get enough guests to come on and talk about which is forgiveness. So I'm really excited. It's my favorite topic. When we introduce this show with we want to tackle topics that most business leaders shy away from ? Forgiveness is the top of my list of those topics that business leaders shy away from. So before we dive in, I want to start with just just you and you and your passion. Your story a little bit. So do you mind kind of telling me what is your passion? And what is the road that brought you to that passion?

Dena Patton  
Hmm. Well, I say I am on a mission to help people live and lead from their greatness. But the barrier to that is anger and unforgiveness. So often when I'm working with leaders and business owners, and they have you know, this purpose and calling and visions and amazing ideas and want to change the world. I love that. But what is often in the way of that is there's mountains of anger and unforgiveness. And sometimes they know about it, and sometimes they don't. And so by doing this so long I I call myself a business coach and I do I do a ton of strategy and systems and revenue building. But again, on when you're trying to break revenue records, you've got to be a leader to lead that effort. And you know, really my passion in this over this 2022 years of doing this. It has grown and grown because the more I do it, the more I love it. And the more you see people's lives transformed and free from that anger or free from that past and they can truly step into their greatness, their vision, they're, you know, breaking records with their business. It's just it becomes addicting. Right. And so, I've definitely grown over the years more and more in love with this work and my clients and what people are about I just love purpose driven people are there. They're my people. Like it's just so awesome to talk to people about what they're up to in life and what they're causing and what they're creating. It's amazing. But I think, you know, for me, it really got activated. 22 years ago, when I had my own, I would say a pretty big smallness attack. I was leading my own PR and marketing agency in New York City. And I had a minor stroke that just put me I'm on my knees. I mean, I had to learn how to speak again, I had to learn really who I was under this business because I think my identity got wrapped up, which I think a lot of people do, you know, you get your identity gets wrapped up in what you do. And I didn't know myself under that role. And it was a recovery time of my life that I really realized that my gifts and greatness were not being used in a really great way. And I just changed my life, I transformed habits transformed mindset, sold, that company started this company, and just got really clear in who I want to be and how I want to use my time on this earth and my, you know, efforts and my experience, my guess my greatness, and that's really where it got, I think it was sitting up to them. But that was the moment where I think we all come to the line and go, Okay, no more, I'm done. living this lifestyle or living this smallness, or believing these things. And then you have to be on the journey of the transformation to, to the new life. So yeah, that's a little bit of, of how and the kind of mission I'm on.

Jeff Ma  
That's amazing. What a story and I, I want to kind of dive right in, because we have a lot of guests come through these doors. And it's always valuable. It's always an amazing conversation, different perspectives. But we're always talking about like, I mean, I can't speak enough about mindsets and your attitudes and your the trust and all these things that need to exist in a high performing work environment to be a good leader, all these things. But man, you've already said some words that I want to dive into you lead with unforgiveness and anger. And who can you talk a little bit about? Can you define those in context of the workplace for us? And how that how that shows up and what that looks like to the, to the people in the bottom line?

Dena Patton  
Yeah, so what I observe, I do my own process of getting to people's anger, resentment, and unforgiveness, because when we unearth those, and we can deal with them, then we can actually get to our greatness and our vision and all the things that we really want to do. But the wait, you know that we're so weighted down with this. And what I have learned in my own journey of this and learning of this is anger is the thing that's at the surface. So what I first do is really observe and have them observe their anger, bouts, right? Like, where are they getting triggered? What are they pissed off about in there, they start to journal, all the things that make them mad every day, and just really getting into that anger trigger. And some have a lot more, some don't. But anger is kind of the lighthouse, to then dig deeper, and what's under anger is resentment. And what's under resentment is unforgiveness. And when we can get to the like, the thing that we're not forgiving, then we can we can forgive, whether that's ourselves or someone else, we can heal from that and then move on it. Because I think what people don't understand how much subconscious energy we give our unforgiveness, like we're things that we're bitter about things that we're resentful about. And it might be in the background. But really, it's not in the background, because there's these all these little open wounds that, you know, your person in HR is triggering, and your business partner is triggering, and then your secretary is triggering. So you have all these people in your life that are triggering you throughout your day. And I'm not saying every single trigger, you know, leads to this non forgiveness place. But it's really interesting when you start to audit your anger is what I call it, auditing your anger and starting to really see there's a pattern to this and there's this thing or two that you have not forgiven and it is just an open wound for people to scratch, you know, and and so it shows up, you know, when we're a business owner and you have 10 employees or 20 employees or 80 employees or 500 employees, and you are walking around triggered five times a day. You are not being a great leader. You're not tapped into your values, your vision, your You know, moving the train in the direction of your mission, what you're doing is you're totally derailed by all these triggers that are happening. And then you're trying to get yourself back on track. We all know, right, we all know what it feels like to be triggered and derailed and you're like pissed off in your office, right. And that might be five minutes, or it might be an hour. But even if that happened once a day, that's a lot of time to be given giving to our triggers. And I think as business owners, we don't and leaders, we don't audit our own anger, and really understanding how it is derailed lead, our leadership, our mindset, our intention, our focus, our vision, our greatness leader, we're trying to have this impact on our employees and our clients. And meanwhile, you're triggered five times a day. So auditing your anger and, and then going down into it. It's hard this is work, you know, whether you have a therapist, or you're doing it on your own, or someone's helping you, you know, looking at your own anger, and then figuring out what's the thing, what's the, and it might be with your husband or wife that and you're just walking around with all this unforgiveness and weight, which is robbing your leadership. And it's robbing the amount of time that you can be in your greatness. Because what you're what you're actually in Israel, in our smallness, in my words, so we're always in our smallness, or our greatness. And, and it's really hard to be in both. So. So that's the first step is, is really doing that audit anger on yourself and taking that courage and that time to do it, and then starting to understand and asking yourself, why is this triggering me? And then what possible unforgiveness is under this?

Jeff Ma  
Yes, absolutely. And wow, for me, you know, you're just talking about this, I'm sure many listeners are hearing you and they're just already replaying in their head, the times they've been triggered. And in those things, but what I find that that's really damaging for me for unforgiveness is that when you get really good at it, when you get really good at unforgiveness, if you will, it almost on a day to day basis becomes less about triggers, but it starts seeping into kind of your unconscious actions and decisions where it's like, Oh, I'm not going to sign this project that person just because I know that that situation will trigger me because I have a lot of unforgiveness towards that situation towards that person. And I'm not even going to set myself up for that. But this could be the completely wrong business decision. This could be something that's really harmful to the relationship to the, to the company, all these things. And so unforgiveness becomes for me, less of a just triggered all the time thing. But this like, even more dangerous like looming, build beneath the surface. Unconsciously that doesn't, that doesn't feel like anger doesn't feel like anything, but it just manifests as bad decisions decisions.

Dena Patton  
Yes, yes. Well, and also, you know, we all have paths. And what I can say about entrepreneurs, is, you know, especially in early years of entrepreneurship, or early years of leadership, is you make a lot of bad decisions. And you might have ruined relationships or broke up with a partner or a boss, quote, unquote, screwed you, you know, like, there's all these things that are in our past that we're holding energy, we're holding unforgiveness for holding bitterness or resentment. And that unless we do the work to really heal that, and then I call, bless and release, bless and release that so that you can really step into your future and make clean new decisions that aren't based on that resentment, like you said, right. And, and just the weights that we carry around. And I think entrepreneurs, you know, especially around failure, I think this is a really important lesson to learn. You've got to transform your relationship to failure. Because when you are a leader, and you are a business owner, there's a lot of mistakes and a lot of things that you're going to, quote unquote, fail at. I don't call them failure failures, really their lessons. But if you don't see them as lessons, you're going to take them on as failures. And then what failed. What usually happens is we fail at something and then we cloud ourselves with a lot of shame and embarrassment. Right. And that's another barrier to greatness is just carrying shame around. I cannot tell you how many entrepreneurs have come to me and said I failed in two previous businesses I drove I'm into the ground or I, you know, didn't do the books, right. And I, you know, didn't manage the money and I have all this failure, shame. But yet I want to start another business, right? And but they're bringing in that shame to that next business, they don't have that complete. And so it's important, you know, to give ourselves grace. And Grace is by kind of definition, it's undeserved love. And when we make mistakes, or failures, or we trip along the way, I want you to look at that as lessons like thank you for this lesson. When you make a mistake, you say, Thank you, not fu thank you for this lesson. Because when you see it with new eyes of gratitude, even like the most painful, those painful, painful, someone embezzling from you, I mean, that happens all the time. Business owners leaving their business partner, that hurts, and there's a lot of, you know, hurt around that. But can you get to a place where forgiveness and grace are a part of your leadership style? Is my is my question. And my challenge to the listeners is growing your capacity for grace, especially for yourself. Because we make a lot of mistakes, but they're really not mistakes, they're lessons. And when you can give yourself those that grace every day saying that, whoa, I really screwed up that appointment yesterday, or that report or man, this this client, I just dropped the ball and instead of shaming yourself, can you give yourself love and grace, and then go to that client, clean it up with them, own it be responsible, clean it up, and then do better? Right? It's about learning this life is so much about loving ourselves and giving ourselves grace through, not through the good times, through really hard, hard times. And that is really hard, because I feel like most people don't have capacity for grace, when we're in the dark. When we have a lot of shame and hurt. And we we've made all these mistakes, and we're just down on ourselves. Where is grace, you know, where grace is in your heart where you're like, I'm going to give myself Grace today, I made that mistake yesterday, that was really horrible. I'm going to learn from it. And I'm going to give myself love and grace today. And I'm gonna move on, and I'm gonna learn from this. But it takes practice, right? You know, that takes practice to create that narrative and to practice that narrative. When we are in those mistakes.

Jeff Ma  
In the thing that comes to mind, as you speak is the saying that I think is almost overused nowadays, which is to bring your your full self to work. You know, that's like something that is, it still holds a lot of good meaning but it's used so much that I'm not so sure that we've people dissected what that really looks like. And I'm of the opinion that that equation to bring yourself to full work is severely lacking in a lot of people's minds. The element of this shame, you're talking about this uncomfortable, unforgiveness and anger, these parts that, you know, when we say bring your full self, I think a lot of people think oh, I'm just gonna, you know, I'm, I'm a bubbly character. And I like to joke and I'm gonna bring, you know, they think those are the things that we're expected to bring. And we kind of miss that your full self includes really a lot of the bad stuff was, and actually that's the part that you're meant to bring when we say bring your full self. And how do you how do you kind of connect that to how do you slot? This work on forgiveness and an overcoming shame? But how does that look like when you kind of bring it forward into the workplace when you need to address those things? You mentioned a lot of things about working on yourself giving yourself grace. But when you when it's time to bring that with you? What should that look like when you need to bring it into the workplace? Is it something that we should just completely fix on our own and then show up or is something that we should bring with us and present to others? Like, what is your take on that?

Dena Patton  
That's a good question, because I think it's really scary showing our flaws to people, right? It's very vulnerable. It's not our best self quote unquote, it doesn't feel good to say here's my weaknesses. This is what I am horrible at or here's my flaw, but I'm an I don't subscribe to, let's tell everybody everything right? Like, that doesn't really work either. But I do really, really believe in authenticity, it's one of my highest values is authenticity is our biggest currency, when we can really be ourselves, and I'm always telling my daughter, be yourself, do not into the teen world, you know, it's so about be like everybody else and do what everybody else is. And they don't really get that lesson. We don't get that lesson till later in life, that it's really our individual, self and our authentic self, that's our biggest currency not being like everybody else. But that's a lesson that we have to learn. And I think adults are getting caught up in comparison, you know, in social media, where my husband, you have to have to look like hers, or she's above me, or she's better than me, he's, he's stronger than I am. Or look at his revenue, you know, and comparison is such a thief of joy and greatness. And I think the key is authenticity, know who you are, and who you aren't, and what you stand for. But also, I think there's power in knowing our weaknesses. I mean, maybe one or two that is applicable to the workforce, right? There's a lot of people who, let's say, have ADHD, if you hide your ADHD from your team, or your boss, and you try to cope with that by yourself, you're asking for a breakdown or to get fired, or to quit. Because things like that, where you are truly you truly struggle with A, B, or C. And then you fake it, fake it, fake it, but but you're, you cannot get there. That is worse than saying, hey to a team, hey, I want you to know, I have ADHD, I struggle in doing this and doing this. So when I do, do those two things, I would love to ask for help. Right to people who are, you know, organizing? is a really big thing with ADHD people don't do well. Right planning organizing is one. And so if that's something that might be part of your job, you know, maybe there's someone on your team that does it really well. And you say to them, Hey, this is not really my strength, can I come to you if I need help? Like that's being responsible about your weaknesses, right? Or someone maybe isn't really great with research and data, aggregation, and they find someone on their team and saying, Hey, this isn't really my strength. I don't do this. Well, could I ask for some mentorship? Or can I ask for you to help me and I think that's where in the workforce we can be clear and responsible around maybe a weakness or two or a flaw or two or just something that we struggle with. Instead of faking it and acting that we have to be perfect all the time. This perfect like perfection is such a smallness game, it is not a greatness game. And that's the what my books about really is, like really getting people clear of are you playing a smallest game and perfection is one of those smallness games that we can get really tangled up in? And we think it's good because we're trying to be perfect and don't they want perfection. But meanwhile you're completely struggling in it. And you're probably not doing it well. Because you're struggling, right. So let's Let's actually create a greatness game, be responsible for it, go ask for someone to help us with this thing that we're we struggle with, right? So that's what I would say is yes, be authentic and know who you are, who you're not what you stand for. And embrace that, that flaw or two or mistake, not mistake, but the struggles. One or two things that maybe in your job that you struggle with, and be responsible around those and ask for help. I think people I know as a business owner, I respect people when they ask for help. I do not like when my employees try to fake something and do it and they do not know what they're doing. I would much rather than say Hey, can you retrain me on this, I don't really get how to do this spreadsheet or this action or this system. So but for the most part, I think most business owners and leaders respect when you ask for some mentorship or some retraining or some help than just screwing it up and trying to do it on your own Sure. Yeah.

Jeff Ma  
I want your advice on something if if, if I'm talking sometimes when I talk to folks about forgiveness, they're stuck in this mindset around. How am I supposed to forgive and that a lot of times forgiveness for them is forgiveness for other people, right? There's also fitness for ourselves, but in their in their mind right now they're really they're, they're probably focused in on probably some people who can they can name their thinking specific people. And they're like, Well, how can I, if I'm just supposed to forgive all the time? I'm just a doormat, like, I'm just being walked out, like I'm being taken advantage of. And I'm just, you know, it's just too nice. And I'm just forgiving and forgiving mistake after mistake. What do you say to these folks that are kind of in this zone when it comes to forgiveness in their lives?

Dena Patton  
So I think you're touching on to things that get collapsed a lot. And that's boundaries, and forgiveness, right. So I think a lot of people, there's a certain personality of people pleasing people where they just want to people, please, right. And those people get in a lot of internal hurt, because they do feel like a doormat, they're trying to please. But what that breeds, what that creates is people taking advantage of them, because they don't have boundaries. And so I think people pleasers really get in trouble in this area of lack of boundaries. And then people using them or stepping all over them. And then, you know, they end up resentment and it resentful and angry and having to forgive, and it's a cycle rate that they can't get out of, because what's missing is boundaries. And so I would, I'm a huge advocate for boundaries, both in the workforce, oh my gosh, in our businesses, if you're a leader or a business owner, you have to have boundaries in your business, because leadership can eat you up, right? I mean, all of a sudden, your weeks gone, you've already put in 50 hours, 60 hours. And still people want more of you more, more, more. And that's why so many leaders and business owners get overwhelmed and burnt out is untreated, overwhelm, that comes burnout. And I've seen it so much in the last 22 years. And I experienced it in my first business and I had to learn the lesson, a very, very, very hard way of sickness, I had a minor stroke at 27. And it was just a horrible lesson that I did not take responsibility for myself care my mind, body and spirit and I was running to really high pressured businesses, and I did not manage my stress. And it is your responsibility, to your mindset, to your body, to your emotional regulation, to your marriage and to your clients and employees for you to take care of yourself. And I don't think enough leaders, I'm such an advocate for self care and leadership because I don't feel like a lot of people are advocating for this emotionally, spiritually, mentally, physically, because we are the trains that have to stay fueled. We're the the thing, right, that's fueling our teams fueling our businesses, fueling the clients the results, but yet you're on empty. How Why do you think that that's responsible? It's not. So part of my, my teaching is is self having a self care plan. And and I think it's important that people have boundaries. So part of self care is boundaries. So for example, like, if you really need to get a hold back a hold of like your physical health, you may be put on weight or you just have you just haven't been kind to your your mind, body and spirit and you're saying, okay, every day, I am leaving work at six o'clock. That's my new boundary. And day two, someone comes to you with a report at five to six and they say, Hey, I need you to do this report. Are you gonna stand through your boundary and say, You know what, I would love to do your report. But I have to do it tomorrow because I promised myself to go to the gym today at six o'clock. Like, do you have the courage to uphold your boundaries when you've made I'm making boundaries as easy. Upholding boundaries is hard, especially in the moment with someone else. So So managing your time and your capacity are you at 150% of your capacity? Are you at 90% are you at 70% but managing your capacity with boundaries and And then layering in one of the exercises that I do with all my clients like session one, session two, is getting clear in their self care plan, because I will not build someone's business when it's ruining their marriage or ruining their health or ruining, you know, the, they think they're building their business, but they're actually imploding the business because they don't have a self care plan in there. So that's what I would say is, there's boundaries, and there's forgiveness and their self care. But I do want to circle back to what you were saying about forgiving, like always having to forgive others, I think what I would say is, look, there's like one or two things that you are really like, it is the thing that you have not forgiven. And it might be a father figure, mother figure, it might be a business partner, it might be an old boss or spouse, it might be yourself, right. But there's one or two that are pretty big. Start there. And then, and then incorporate more boundaries with others. And what you'll see is there's going to be a lot less of people using you and pulling on you because you have boundaries, and you're communicating them. boundaries don't speak for themselves. You're the one that says, Oh, I would love to help you move. But I'm going away to a retreat this weekend, or I promised my wife, you know, to take her on a date night that night, so I can't come to your event. But, you know, invite me the next time, you have to have courage to If your marriage is important to you, you've got to nurture it. Right. And you have to have a boundary around that or it won't happen. So that was a big answer to like three

different questions. But it was incredible. You got some little nuggets in there.

Jeff Ma  
No for sure. We got many many nuggets and and with that that's out of time already. Many more questions, but I guess they'll have to wait and I hope people who still have questions we'll learn a lot they can check out your book. The greatness game on Amazon, I'm sure and others. Where else would you point people to connect with you or find out more learn more?

Dena Patton  
Absolutely. Well, they since we talked about self care, I actually have a free self care whole template help you mind body spirit template on my website, amazing greatness.com And just go there download, you can literally just draw that line today and say I am getting my centerback mind body spirit there and then that's my website, you can check out my services, my books on there and any information about me and my services.

Jeff Ma  
Amazing. Dena, thank you so much for the time today. Thank you for your wisdom and a lot to think about. So thank you so much.

Dena Patton

Thank you for having me.

Jeff Ma  
Thanks to the listeners. As always, hope you enjoy this episode and all the others. Check out our best selling book love as a business strategy. Please if you haven't, and all the things subscribe rate the podcast, leave some feedback, tell a friend tell your mom leave a book on your boss's desk, all those things. With that. We hope you enjoyed this and we'll see you all next week.