Ep. 194 - Lisa Parda: When Your Plans Change

0:01 Stories from Real Life is a production of Media Well Done, LLC. Transcription by CastingWords This is a conversation about reinvention, resilience, and discovering joy right in the middle of the story.

0:44 This is Stories from Real Life hosted by the 2026 American Writing Awards Male Podcast Host of the Year, Melvin E. Edwards. And today's story is Lisa Pardas. When your plans change. You are listening to Stories from Real Life, a podcast by engaging storytellers for engaged story listeners. Here's your host, author and journalist, Melvin E. Edwards. Hello again, and welcome to another episode of Stories from Real Life.

1:26 I'm your host, Melvin E. Edwards. Thank you for joining me for the podcast where our real stories are so much more interesting than fiction. Like this one. Sometimes life doesn't ask for your permission before rewriting the script. Today's guest, Lisa Parda, is a real estate broker who pivoted to media, a radio host, and a forthcoming cookbook author. And she helps people redraw the map rather than fearing it. So Lisa, welcome to the show today. Thank you very much for having me. All right, let's jump right into the question. When did you start your first business or when did you start your first entrepreneurial excursion, we'll say? Well, I will say I have always been obsessed with making money.

2:11 In grade school, I would bring my toys or books that I was done using to school and sell them for lunch money. I would take my artwork to the bus stop. I was very much... like the transactional piece of like understanding that I've always been fascinated with that. So, but the first time I started, I would say a business was when I was 30 and I went into real estate. Okay. So not when you were a kid and well, you sold, sold stuff to the, to the kids at lunch, but you weren't, you weren't official then you were just. Right. Right. No LLC, no tax, no taxes. When the adult things come in and it becomes serious.

2:54 I would say it was when I started my real estate business that I really got into understanding businesses. And I came out of the corporate world where I had seen business done on a corporate level and then just took it to self-employment. Okay. So as part of understanding the business world, what's the hardest truth about leadership that most people may not want to admit? I think you have to lead by example. And I think A lot of places want you to do what they say and not necessarily what they do. So I think it ends up becoming a very strange culture.

3:35 So I think when people lead by example, then it helps the culture become more connected. And then everyone's learning from everyone else. Everyone's following everyone else. When you have good leaders, they also trust that the people who are doing the work also may have good ideas about how to do it better. And then there's an even exchange of being able to do that back. Okay. What is one moment in your life when everything could have collapsed, but for some, whatever reason did? I don't know. I felt like a lot of things in my life collapsed. So my original dream was to be an air traffic controller and that collapsed. where I never got to actually take the test for the government when I was young enough to take the test.

4:21 Real estate. I lived through the real estate 2008 crash with my clients. Some other things. I don't know. I actually feel that even though failure is devastating on one level, if we can learn from it and understand what it had to teach us, it can just be another... experience. And as long as we make it out alive, we're okay. Make it out alive. That's the main goal. So who are some mentors or influences that shape your personal approach to leadership? Probably say Gabby Reese. I'm not sure if you know who Gabby Reese is.

5:04 The volleyball player? The volleyball player. Can I tell you something real quick how I know Gabby Reese? Yes. Yes. In 1988, I was a graduate assistant at Rice University in the sports information department. And I was the PA announcer for the women's athletic program. And Gabby Reese played, if I remember right, for Florida State. They played Rice in Houston. And I was a PA announcer. And she was tall even for a volleyball player. And that's what stood out to me. Yeah. That's how I know Gabby Reese. And she's a legend. She went on to play in the Olympics.

5:45 And yeah, so you got to see some really cool athlete right there. Yeah, you probably got to see a lot of good athletes. Yeah, I did. What's really funny is I met her, I think in 2017. I went to her XPT fitness event. And people say you should not meet the people that you admire. And she is an exception to that rule. She is just as wonderful and gracious and intelligent and smart and funny as she is, like she comes across. It's not a brand thing. It's really who she is. And the reason why I list her is I read her book, Big Girl in the Middle, back when she was playing volleyball and modeling and all of that.

6:30 And I always... identified something with her that I was interested in following her. And she was very entrepreneurial. She had her volleyball career, but she was always about making money. And she always understood, like she talks about her modeling career and how she knew it was for a season. She knew she didn't have any control over it. you know, but she was using it for the opportunity it was. And then she went to do an MTV program. She used that as an opportunity. So she used everything as skill building and seeing where that next door would lead into the next door. And I always admired that about her. And I always looked up to her for that.

7:11 So even though I didn't know her for the longest time, when I did finally meet her, she was the real deal in person as well. Okay. So let's talk about your midlife shift. So what are some pivot strategies or boundary setting that other people can employ when they're undergoing their own midlife shift? Yeah, so I think I'm coming to mind voluntarily. So I'm a real estate broker. I've been a real estate broker for 24 years. I have been involved in so many different facets of real estate that I'm involved. beyond experienced in my world of real estate. But then that kind of becomes rote or mechanical, or you lose some of the passion for it.

7:55 And so I segmented off the property management portion of my business, which is the most time intensive and the most amount of heavy legwork. I will still do it on a consulting basis. But when I removed that from my business, I still help people buy and sell and consult in that. and I consult in the property management piece, I'm not doing the day-to-day. So it freed up about 30 hours of my time. And I was like, what do I want? The work that I do is very difficult. So what do I want to do that's easy and fun? So I was doing the work on the back end that no one wanted to do that was all guts and no glory.

8:36 When you're doing a great job, no one can say two words to you, but the second you do something wrong, you'll have four 45-minute conversations about it. kind of like the TPS reports of Office Space. So I really was looking forward to do stuff that was more fun and more glory than guts. And I don't know that I necessarily found it, but in exploring my curiosities and things that I do enjoy, the radio show is one of them. And writing and producing a cookbook is the other one. I will continue. I'm actually starting to write a fiction book. I'm probably about six chapters into a fiction book. So I will continue writing because that's something I can think I can do retired.

9:19 So I want to get that going. But I think about pivoting, I think when we're young, we sort of know who we are and what we want. We kind of know who we are as personalities. And then the world tells us how we need to survive and fit in. And I think once you get to midlife, you care less about what makes sense to other people and what makes sense more to yourself. And if you follow that, I think you will get further along to where you need to be. Yeah, I've said that quite a few times. The one benefit of getting older is you care less and less about what other people think about you. When I was really young, I didn't care. When I was in my teenage years, people would tell me things. I'm like, I don't care what you say.

9:59 Like I had a very heavy anti-authority matter. With me. And but then you or I, when I didn't get what I wanted, which was to be an air traffic controller, I was trying to figure out what else I would want to do. And that's when I really started listening to other people because I had no idea. My only plan from six years old was to be an air traffic controller. So I didn't have like, my thought process was like, so what will I do? So I started taking in a lot of advice. And where, when I was in high school, I was in a college preparatory high school and my guidance counselor said, what do you want to be? And I said, I want to be an air traffic controller. She said, no, you're probably going to be an accountant.

10:42 You're really good with math. You're really good at problem solving. I don't want to be an accountant. And it didn't matter what she said. I was just like, whatever she says. And that's how you are as you get older. People say, you shouldn't. I really don't care what you have to say. I do what I want. Do what I want. Are you paying my bills? No? Then mind your own business. Tell me about the air traffic controller. You said you wanted to do that from six years old. Yeah. What ignited that spark? My mother wanted to go on a vacation to Martinique. It required us getting on a plane. She does what any mother would do, try to get her kid excited about flying. And there were plane crashes on the news.

11:22 This is when DC 10s were falling out of the sky pretty rapidly. First one happens and she says, oh, don't worry. Airplane accidents are so rare. This is the one that had happened. We don't have to worry now. And then another one happened and another one happened. Just a very bad time period for them. But I was afraid to get on the plane. And so she had the dilemma of how do I get this kid on this plane? So she told the flight attendant, the flight attendant back in the day in 19, probably 78 or 80, probably 80 now. How old am I? Yeah, probably 78. Took me into the cockpit. I talked to the pilots. I saw all their buttons and knobs. And this is when they had a flight engineer who used to, do you think this, there used to be three people in the cockpit?

12:05 And I thought, wow, this is so overwhelming and so big. But they told me I didn't have to worry because someone was going to guide us through the sky. I could listen. So on your headphones, you would plug in and you'd listen to the air traffic controllers. And I loved everything about it. And then as I got older and I started, I couldn't think of what I wanted to do. I knew I didn't want to be in an office. I don't want to be under fluorescent lights. I didn't want any of that. And that just seemed like an exciting, interesting, purposeful job. And I just really fell in love with it. That sounds really fascinating. It's not my fault that it didn't happen. I did everything right.

12:46 But we had the air traffic controller strike with Reagan. That lasted all the way up until I was almost 28. And when Clinton reversed it so they could hire new air traffic controllers, they pulled from the military. They gave the first right of refusal to the old air traffic controllers. And by then I was aging out. like you have to be starting to become an air traffic controller before 28, at least at the time. And I was, I aged out. So your timing was just bad. My timing was bad. Yeah. But I did work for the federal aviation administration. I did a myriad of wonderful, fun jobs throughout aviation.

13:26 It was just obvious that when air traffic controllers make really good money, work really well under pressure they have a very specific specialized skill set and when i found that i wasn't going to do that in my head i also wanted to make money so i was just not going to be happy making 35 000 a year at the faa somewhere so that's when i went into corporate america hated that and then went to uh my own business okay so as a your midlife identity how do you how do you identify yourself do you call yourself a radio host are you an author Speaker, what are you? In person, I'm less and less defined by what I do for a living because that is only the way I make money versus like how I want to express myself.

14:11 So I like all the titles, but I don't necessarily identify with all the titles. And I know that seems a little like I'm dodging the question a little bit, but sometimes in an appropriate setting, I will say I'm a radio show host. Other times when I'm talking to someone, I will say I've written a book. But most of the time, if people want to know Career wise, I tell them I'm a real estate broker. It's the easiest thing for people to understand. And even in that, you know, I had so many different titles under that, but nobody would know what they are for the most part. Okay. So what are some practical lessons on letting go of what's draining while making room for what makes you feel alive? So I think we try to hold on to both things at both times.

14:55 That's what I was doing. So I was trying for these new things while dragging the thing I didn't want anymore because I was thinking I can't reach for this new thing or I can't let go of this thing until I've already got the new thing in my hand, but there was never any space for it. So oddly enough, in 2016, before podcasts were a thing, I made, I went into a recording studio and recorded all of the people in my industry who were the experts in their field. So yes, you have real estate salesperson, but you will also have a real estate attorney, you will have a 1031 specialist to help defer taxes, you will have accountants, you will have security teams that manage building, like you have all of these different things.

15:39 And I would bring them on for an hour and talk about what challenges my clients would see. So when people would call me and say, I have a problem, I'd say, oh, listen to this 45 minute podcast. But I don't even know if I called it a podcast at the time. Or listen to this 45 minute call between me and this professional, and you'll have all your answers. Like what to do for what landlords should do when there's fire, flood, or blood at one of their properties. Meaning someone died, there was a fire, or there was some catastrophic event a year. I had the head of a remediation company on, I had a biological group on, like that's the type of things I would do, but nobody was listening to them at the time.

16:20 And so people would say, can't you just tell me what the answer is to my problem? And I'm like, I have start to finish. It wasn't a thing yet. And then fast forward all these years later, I'm on the radio, which is also a podcast, you know, cause we play it afterwards. And it's like, oh, I'm kind of doing the same thing, but I'm not limited to just talk about real estate. So it's funny how many times it shows up, but either the timing's wrong or it's not quite the right flavor or something. So if people want to try something new, I would say, give yourself permission to do it without the expectation of money necessarily at the beginning, because there's nothing that can... Money can do two things. It can incentivize you and motivate you and take you through everything, or...

17:04 It's the thing that starts suffocating what might be great about the new thing that you're doing. So yeah, as a radio show host, it was like, at first I was like, I don't care if this is making money. I have something that makes money. I just want to explore what this looks like. And I don't want to have to have a sponsor or someone tell me what I can and cannot talk about or dictate anything. I'm feeling out this world and I want to do it as freely as possible before I start narrowing myself in. So when life disrupts the plans you've made, how do you find clarity about what you're supposed to do next? Ooh. So when I, I had a major midlife crisis at 28 when I didn't become an air traffic controller.

17:48 Like that was like a dead dream. And I was 28. And that took me a few years to reconcile because I was depressed and I didn't know I was depressed. And I didn't know why. I was feeling lost. in unmoored and like the waves could have taken me any direction. So the thing that I think we want is we want to think into action, but actually what happens for me is I have to do something and the action actually makes the path come alive versus trying to think my way into the path. Okay. That makes sense. So does faith play any role in the biggest decisions that you make in your life?

18:31 For the longest time, no, but more recently, yes. So I grew up Catholic. I was raised Catholic. My father was a born again Christian. So there was, I went to Catholic school. There was a lot of religion around me in childhood and through high school. And then my father passed away and I dealt with my mother from five to probably 19. I dealt with my mother's drug addiction. And I had done a lot of praying during that time. And then when my father died, I thought my prayers just don't get answered. So I stepped away from my faith distinctly, like hard right.

19:11 And I kept trying to find something that would make that feel better. So I would read the Tibetan monks. I would read, you know, Navajo Indians. I would read about everyone's religion. I read about Judaism. I read about all these different religions. And then I would pick and poke the things I liked. Like, I really liked the Sabbath. I really liked the idea of this day of rest. Not that I would practice it very often, but I really liked the idea of it. I should practice it is what I should do. But like, there were so many parts that it's like, oh, this is beautiful. I like it and I want to take it. And it was probably maybe five years ago at this point now. Yeah, I think it was five years ago that my faith came, my faith in God came back in such a real and distinct fashion that it was just, and then it was, I was probably finally at the age where I could stop running from it.

20:05 And the hardest thing was learning to pray again, because I thought, well, I'm just going to get angry and resentful if I'm asking for things that don't get answered. So I'm going to stop asking for things. So the way I pray now and I've been praying since is I just am grateful. And then if I shut up and I get out of the way, things have been moving better in a forward direction, especially if I don't demand the how they have to happen. So I'm feeling more comfortable in my faith. I actually just bought a Bible recently because I'm like, I can't find my father's Bible.

20:46 Like I should buy one. And then I open it up. I'm like, oh yeah, this is all hieroglyphic. into trying to find a way to make it more cohesive is part of my everyday. Okay, that makes total sense to me. All right, so you've been involved in community leadership. What does service mean to you personally? I think we, probably the best story I can tell with this is my mother had a business.

21:26 She was an electrolysis. Before they had laser hair removals, they used to pluck their hairs out with electricity because women will just keep on anything not to have upper lip hair. That sounds so painful. It was, but for beauty, right? For gorgeous eyebrows and for upper lip hair. But I remember working there and like not working there, but being there with her while she was at work. And this guy used to come by and sell her these notebooks, these like hard notebooks. And I was like, Maya, you know that CVS has those for like $2 and you're paying $15 for them. And they would go in a drawer. She wouldn't even use them. There's just a drawer filled with these empty lined notebooks. And so she said, they're made by blind people and everyone needs to contribute something.

22:10 And you let people contribute what they contribute. So my idea of services, I'm never going to ask you to give me what I need, but whatever you think you can give And then if you, you can allow a child, a six-year-old to help do something because they're doing what they can do. Everyone can contribute something in the way that they contribute it. We all have something different than we can contribute. And if we act in service, that we all come to the table with what we have. And then of course, people can ask things of us and we can step up and see if that works for us or not. But I also think letting people come to you with what they do best and what they can give you freely is probably the best way for service to work.

22:53 All right. So what separates a good leader from a truly impactful one? Do you have a distinction between those? Well, I would say that an impactful leader makes the hard choices about problems that no one else thinks they can solve. So I joke all the time, we don't talk about, we try not to talk about politics on the radio show. We're trying to be two hours of feel good, laugh with us, you know, hang out with us. And so we don't bring any kind of, we try not to bring a political spin to it. But what I, how I feel about politicians is the world has a lot of difficult problems to solve. And most of the problems are unsolvable, or we would have solved them by now.

23:34 And to do the hard thing, someone's always going to be unhappy at whatever decisions you make. So now take out the political piece. In businesses, you have to make some decisions you don't want to make. You have to do things that you don't always want to do. I think that an impactful leader is able to do those and act in what's the best interest for everybody, for the business, for the company, for its people, for the product, whatever it is, you have to serve that as the as the guiding force. And that's what I think makes an impactful leader versus a good leader. Okay.

24:14 So what's the most meaningful moment you've experienced while you're out serving your community? I'd say some of the most meaningful moments are with the kids. So, um, and probably with some elderly people too. So like when I manage apartment buildings, I'll be the landlord, for example, and you know, you're fixing the water heater, you're doing all these things. And I had some really special tenants. I had one woman who just said, I've lived here for 30 years. I want to stay in this house till I die. Can you help me stay here and do that? And we talked with the owner and the owner's like, absolutely, whatever we need. And she had lived in that apartment without the carpet being changed for 30 years.

24:55 And everyone said, you can't change the carpet when someone lives there. And I was like, yeah, but she might live here another five years. Wouldn't be great to get her a new carpet. So I'm like, well, what if we do this? And we moved all of her furniture to one room. We had them come in, do that. We moved all the furniture to another room, did the hallway and that. We replaced her. And I know that seems like so weird and trivial, but it seems like the most foundational important place we have in the world is our homes. That's where we feel like we're kept in. I mean, we all watch the news and have the internet So we're letting the world into our homes, but this is our place that we're like shielded from the world. And I think if you can do anything to make that the safest place that you can, the nicest place that you can, and when you can help people with that, I think that's very impactful.

25:41 And like the little kids that, you know, live in some of the places that I managed, they were always, they always made me feel the best. And they were always real fun. Thanks. What challenge have you faced the most, whether it's individually or in your business? Income does not go up in pace with expenses. Income never seems to keep pace with expenses. That is a true statement. So I don't know if I've ever solved that all these years in business. So that's probably the biggest challenge from every business could say that, I think. But I think as a group, our biggest challenge is going to be trying to understand how all of this technology really fits into our lives here on earth.

26:27 I think we live in an exceptional time. Don't think we even know everything happened so fast. And I was just talking to someone about AI today and I don't know, I just, that's going to be a really big challenge to see how it works. Because I will tell you that as a business, I used to have very specific places to advertise, for example. I knew what my advertising budget was. I knew my three places to advertise. I knew how much to allocate. I saw a return on my investment. Now there's a thousand places to advertise. None of them have information about return on investment. Like, I don't know. Everything just seems like so many more choices, but not necessarily better options.

27:10 And then AI comes in and I may be as dense as like a block of concrete, but I really don't understand how AI is fixing everything. I don't. And everyone keeps selling it as the next promise. So I'm going to think that's the biggest challenge we have. Okay. So what do people misunderstand about resilience? What do you think the definition of resilience is? I think resilience is being able to be malleable into situations and to be able to conduct yourself in a way that is appropriate for any time in a challenge. What do you think resilience is? Well, I was going to say it's not not giving up.

27:52 but it's not quitting. So you may give up, but then you start again. I think a lot of people think resilience means you just don't quit. You don't ever give up. But I think you can give up plenty of times as long as you try and try again. Sometimes you have to give up the thing that's not working, that you're really attached to because you want it to be the thing that works. Like one of my thing is I'm a not quitter. I'm a very determined per, I persevere and I have endurance, which is great. Right up until the fact that I'm not supposed to be doing something, but I'm enduring anyways. And I'm persevering.

28:33 I have a girlfriend who I will call her with a problem. And she goes, are you dragging dead horses up hills to do that? She goes, I think you're doing that. I think. I think we let this horse remain wherever it is right now at the moment. I've never heard that term before, but I get the visual for that. That is me dragging dead horses uphill. So let's give you a chance to give your younger self some advice. Let's say before you turned 28, when you realized you couldn't be an air traffic controller, what advice would you have given your younger self? Stop being so mad. Stop being so mad would be one of them. I used anger as a motivator when I was younger.

29:13 It does incite action, but it also burns you out often. So I don't think that's ultimately healthy. So, and then the other one would be don't hold so tightly. Hold loosely. Because then I wouldn't be dragging so many dead horses up hills if I was more loose. And you just reminded me of a 38 special. Hold on loosely, but don't let go. Yes. Yes. That would be my advice. And that song is going to be running through my head the rest of the night. Now I'm going to go listen to it on my phone. What helped you move forward when things were uncertain? or things were just blocked and like the air traffic controller situation.

29:57 So the air traffic controller one took me several years to get over and it, I did not get over it until I really started liking real estate. I do think that part of what makes having dreams and trying to accomplish things is to give yourself deadlines, but to allow things to flow as they will, because sometimes we have a deadline and when things don't happen by our deadline, we give up on them and we just needed to wait for the timing to be better. for a different time period for just like the podcast I try to do, educating all my people about what to do in their real estate business. It just took six more years and I could do what I wanted to do slightly differently. So yeah, I think that might be the, the advice.

30:38 Okay. As we start to wind down the conversation, I've got like two or three more questions and I want to talk about legacy. So what impact do you hope your work leaves behind? So I know my work, that I leave behind is that I make places better than I find them. And I do it on a real tangible level with real estate in communities. So one thing that I think I saw, I apologize for my cat. That's a big cat. He's healthy and well-fed. He does not go hungry around here. And he's so interested in our conversation. What were we talking about before the cat interrupted me? About what you want to leave behind.

31:19 Okay. Yeah, so one thing that people don't understand is that a local community needs to have local businesses. It needs to have local people and that's who cares about your community. You know, it's great when a big corporation comes in and does some really good community events. That's really good. But what's better is when businesses are sitting in an area and they're part of the community and the communities look nicer. They feel nicer. They have more social responsibility to each other. And I know that when we go in, I've had police that have had to show up at our buildings because we buy these buildings and they're cheap and they're cheap for a reason.

32:02 And they take a lot of work, but 18 months later, they're beautiful and they're functional and they're have, good people in there and they have great businesses on the first floor and tenants above them and all of these wonderful things. And it becomes a productive member of the community. That's when you turn a building into a productive member of the community. It's providing something back. And I would love when the cops come to me and they'll say, especially when I'm first known to some cops, they'll be like, why am I in this building? Do you know what you're getting yourself into? And it's like, oh, I know what I'm getting myself into. I'm well aware. And you and I are going to see each other quite a lot. Why do you like your coffee when I come in? Because we are going to be meeting at this place a lot.

32:44 But one of the things is I always love when they come to me later and say, I would live here. Like, I didn't think you could do it. I didn't think this is like, I didn't have this vision or I didn't think it could be this. And I, so I really like, and then I will have other people where, you know, I'm coming to look at a building and people like, are you going to buy this? Or like meeting my clients, because then it totally changes what's happening on either side of it. If you're going to be this one, because I have a reputation of coming in and, it's better than we find it. We can make it better. Nice. You know, I like adding beauty things. I like adding beauty to things. Like we had this one building and it was brick and it's this old, you know, and then I'm like, okay, we're going to put potted plants. And everyone's like, they're just going to be ashtrays.

33:24 People are just going to put their cigarettes in them. And then someone falls in love with them and waters them and takes the cigarettes out. And then you put the cigarette container in and you go, no, the cigarettes go in here. These are the plants. This is for the cigarettes. This is the ashtray. Yeah. But you can encourage people by showing them. Okay. So what does success mean to you today compared to what it meant to you, let's say, 10 years ago? 10 years ago, success was everything checking a box. And I think now I'm fine with things being messier. Like you asked me about uncertainty. And I think for a while, when I didn't have my faith, I had a real problem with uncertainty.

34:07 It was the groundlessness. It was the... If you're not, but the truth is, and I was saying this recently to somebody, I don't know why we make five and 10 year plans. I couldn't have predicted five years or 10 years and I'm going to be 54 in April. I still can't plan five years from now any better than I could have 10 years ago. You know, cause you, who could have predicted a pandemic? Who could have predicted, you know, who could, I don't know. So I think when you have faith and certainty becomes easier and For me, it did. But there's a beautiful book by Pema Chopra about, and I might be pronouncing her name, last name a little bit wrong, but it's called Living With Uncertainty.

34:47 And that's a book that I've read probably every year for almost 20 years to remind me that most of it's ego, most of it is a lie. Anyone who's ever had the before and after moment of losing someone or getting a cancer diagnosis or something, you were a different person before and you were a different person after. But if you understand that that's always happening, you would hold less tightly to the things that have to happen and you could gracefully be in more of a present moment. But we think we can control so much. We think we're controlling this and making certainty. None of us have any certainty.

35:28 Sorry. Sorry to bum everyone up. Hate to break it to you. I didn't believe it either. I didn't believe it either. Before we go, is there anything that I didn't ask that you want to discuss today or any links you want to send people to to get in touch with you or follow your work? Yeah. So I'm a real estate broker in New Hampshire. The name of the company is RealtyScape Brokerage, especially if you like income generating real estate. I'm your girl here. And then my cookbook is My Love Language is Food. Again, my name is Lisa Party. You can find it at starsatnightpublishing.com, stars at night publishing, like Van Gogh, stars at night.

36:09 And you can find it at Amazon and in bookstores. It'll be available after the 10th of March. And then for the radio show, it's Lisa and Robin on the mic. And we have a Facebook page, an Instagram page, and we have a YouTube channel. We're found on Spotify. And it's Lisa and Robin, R-O-B-Y-N, on the mic, M-I-C. Okay. That sounds good. So everybody who's interested in what Lisa does or wants to find out more about what she does, those links will be in the show notes and you can just click on it and go and follow her and get a copy of her cookbook by the time this episode comes out. So my guest today has been Lisa Parda. Lisa, good luck with the upcoming cookbook. And you're welcome to send some of those dishes down here to Texas and I'll give them a try.

36:54 If you give me your address, I'll send you a cookbook. Yeah, that sounds good. Thank you. I appreciate that. So stay warm up there in New England. Yes, more snow on the way. Not for me. Not for me. Although it's like 90 degrees down here already. Yeah, I don't feel bad. All right. That's it for this week's episode of Stories from Real Life. Until next time, don't forget to shine your light wherever you go. Thank you so much. That was Stories from Real Life. Join us again next week for another great storytelling journey. See you next time.