We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Leslie Patrizio a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Leslie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

It was the perfect timing for me to begin my business. I had the skills, confidence and the time to give a new business one hundred percent of my attention. If I had started my business earlier I would not have been able to give it my full attention. You can not have a fall back plan. If you do, you won’t succeed!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I absolutely love what I do professionally! I produce fashion shows, host fashion seminars, assist with personal styling and emcee live events.

I started my career in event planning for the casinos which gave me a tremendous experience working with a team as well as independently. It was a way to crate an idea, develop the project and produce the finished product. While my children were young I did not work professionally, however I volunteered with a number of charities in the area which introduced me to a variety of talented people and wonderful non profit organizations.

As my children grew up I used the contacts that I had made and the skills that I had learned volunteering and started my own business. During the time that I volunteered I coordinated quite a few fashion shows as fundraisers for non profits. I realized how much I loved fashion …working with the area stores, boutiques and designers. I loved dressing the models, choreographing the show, selecting the music and emceeing the event.

I now produce fashion events for department stores, local boutiques, country clubs, women’s groups and non profits. Based on the client’s needs I do as little or as much as they want for the event. Sometimes I do everything to create the event and sometimes they hire me to simply emcee their event.

I am most proud of my creativity, hard work ethic and my public speaking skills. I have truly spent a lot of time creating my craft and improving it.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

The pandemic totally shut down my business. Live events were obviously not happening. Since the pandemic things have changed in my business. Prior to the pandemic, most of my clients were stores, especially department sores. Since the stores are are all struggling financially at this time more of my clients are non profits. I now work with the stores to do events in their space bringing in foot traffic. I used to be paid by the store where as now I am paid by the group.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

When I started my business an advertising executive taught me about branding. He sent me a few books on the topic and I read them all. To this day I feel it is very important to brand your event and continue to reinforce the image of that event. Use the same logo, invitation … time and again. This way your customer starts to associate you with that particular image and knows what to expect!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lesliepatrizio.com
• Instagram: lesliepatrizio
• Facebook: Leslie Patrizio
• Linkedin: Leslie Patrizio