Empowering Women in Business
Chat with Women, on KKNW 1150 AM SeattleCondensed Transcript, June 25, 2008
Rochelle: Welcome back. You’re listening to Chat with Women, and I’m Rochelle.
Pam: And I’m Pam.
Rochelle: And joining us now is Deborah Beroset, who is the Director of Corporate Communications and Seminar Leader of Landmark Education. Good morning, Deborah.
Deborah: Good morning.
Pam: Good morning.
Rochelle: So Deborah, tell us, what is Landmark Education?
Deborah: Landmark Education is an international training and development company – and the company is committed to the fundamental principle that people have the possibility of success, fulfillment and greatness.
We offer our core program, The Landmark Forum, and over 50 other courses around the world in 24 countries, in more than 125 cities, and they’re basically designed to have people able to challenge their conventional perspectives in their decision-making patterns. They give people new tools so that they can affect significant change and actually shift the very nature of what’s possible for them.
Rochelle: Well, you know for me, we’ve heard about this for many years, that it’s a three-day program. It’s a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and if you look at your materials, it says that it’s designed to bring about positive and permanent shifts in the quality of life.
So I want to know, how to you accomplish that just in three days? That’s a lot to accomplish.
Deborah: It is a lot to accomplish. I think it’s helpful to kind of give you a picture of what people can expect when they go in there, right?
Rochelle: Yes, that would be great.
Deborah: Okay, great. It’s a guided dialog between the instructor and the participants. It’s conducted in a casual environment. There are generally 75 to 250 people in a course, and it’s basically an opportunity for people to look at their decision-making patterns. Now the thing that has this so impactful, is that this is not one of the seminars where you get all these tips and hints. Those have their place, that’s just not what this is.
In this program, and our other programs, it’s really designed to have people have an opportunity to look at how they think and how their habitual ways of looking at themselves and life and others, and their relationships in their businesses, tend to color not only their perception of how things have gone, but also what’s possible. When you have an opportunity to really look at how you operate as a human being in life, that is an extraordinary shift.
Rochelle: Okay. Well I’m curious, so I’m still thinking I’m walking in that door Friday. Give me an example of… (laughing) Well, give me an example of what would it be like at first. I am so having a hard time imagining…how are you going to get…what’s like a first question?
Deborah: Sure.
Rochelle: -- and we have these patterns that we think are just fine, and so obviously you’re shaking that up in that three days, but give me an example of a question that you ask of the participants.
Deborah: Well, the great thing is once the program leader kicks off the conversation, you’ll find that other participants are asking as many questions as the program leader. So people can be sitting there in the course and get the whole course out of just listening to interactions that the program leader is having with the people in the course.
What happens is, people will get up to share about something going on in their lives, something they’re dealing with, and suddenly you’ll be sitting there and a little light bulb will go off for you as you hear something that applies to your own life.
So let me just give you an example of one. You know, when I first did The Landmark Forum back in 1998, the summer of 1998, I’m sitting there, and it’s Friday and there is a fellow up front at the microphone, and he’s talking about his relationship with his daughter. And I’m sitting there thinking okay, well, you know he really needs to kind of get it together. I’ve got all these opinions going through my mind and I’m thinking about how this guy is an emotionally distant father, just like my dad was – as I saw it at that time an emotionally distant dad – and all of a sudden the course leader made some comment about how we think of ourselves as open-minded and objective, but in fact our approach to ourselves and circumstances and other people is often filtered – and sometimes even obscured by – these pre-existing notions and ideas.
And all of a sudden I got that this guy talking about his daughter was absolutely a great dad. His daughter was probably just fine. It’s just that he had some pre-existing filters that he was listening to his daughter through. Well that’s all very well and good, but in the next moment, I was completely – it was like a cosmic 2-by-4, and I realized that I was viewing my father through some already- existing filter. That there was no way the guy could make it with me, everything he did was more evidence for my opinion of him. I called him on the next break and let him know what I had suddenly seen after thirty-some years, and our relationship has been altered ever since. That’s the kind of thing that happens in The Landmark Forum.
Rochelle: Well speaking to that, Deb, we want to bring on Karen Dannenberg of Karen Dannenberg Clothier. Good morning, Karen.
Karen: Good morning, ladies.
Rochelle: Because I believe you have a beautiful story to tell us what Landmark Education has done for you.
Rochelle: When we met Karen, we were at an event and Karen started sharing her story with us, and again she was moved to tears, which brought Pam and I to the evolution of why we had to bring on Deb from Landmark Education.
If your life can be so moved, and you can be thrust into another dimension, then it was very important for us to get this out to our listeners to see, because look, we all carry baggage, we all carry things with us, and if you can while you’re here at this short moment of time change your life, that’s what Pam and I wanted to do, so that’s why we have these ladies joining us.
Karen: Well, she was talking about her dad, and what kept coming up for me was I was so not in a relationship with my father that I wasn’t even aware of it, and it was just – I swear, by Saturday morning I was just so shocked that I realized I had no relationship with my father, and for a long time I made him wrong for so many things. Anyway, I called my dad, and we had a great talk, and I told him I forgave him for a lot of things, and I wanted to open up the doors to get in a relationship with him, and over the next few years he started to decline in health.
And I went back to Boston one year, several times as he was getting sicker and sicker, and it got to the point where I had to ask his forgiveness to forgive me for not allowing him in my life, and when my dad died, we were totally complete. We knew how much we loved each other, and all the stuff I made up about “my dad didn’t care,” “my dad didn’t love me,” was just not the reality. I knew that my dad loved me, and no matter what happens, the truth is that my dad loved me and he was always there for me.
So I would say that’s the biggest gift of The [Landmark] Forum in my life, and how that changed my relationship with my dad and my family.
Rochelle: That’s very, very, powerful, because when we carry that kind of baggage, because we feel unloved, we cannot be successful in our lives. So Karen, from that you’ve created this fabulous business. So tell us a little bit about how did Landmark help you in that arena?
Karen: Well, I had continued to do courses, and I actually moved to Seattle out of doing a course called the Advanced Course and moved here 12, 13 years ago. I believe it was 1997 when I did a course called the ILP, the Introduction Leaders Program, a seven-month seminar on leadership. Little did I know it would alter my life forever. But in the beginning of this course, I spoke that I was going to do a store someday, and my girlfriend talked to me on the phone from Portland and she said, “Karen, when are you going to do your store? You’re getting old.”
Rochelle: (Laughing.)
Karen: And I was 46 years old and I said you know, you’re right about that.
Rochelle: You’re not old.
Karen: During the course I spoke that I was going to do a store someday, and what I realized in the training and the coaching from amazing people who work with individuals and stand for what they were committed to and what their goals were -- I didn’t even know what my goal was. I didn’t even know how to put it in place, and the structure for fulfillment of the training on time frames and measurable results was something that is crucial in starting a business. I had no clue that I was going to open a store by the end of that course.
And when my financing didn’t come through, I was backing out of my commitment, and the coaches were so amazing. They never let me quit. They stood for me and they believed more in me than I believed in myself, and in September, the end of that year, I opened my first store, a little small store, 400 square feet. I outgrew that in a year, and I think it was 2003 that was the first year that we had a million dollars in business. My financing didn’t come through in the beginning, but I charged my first store on a credit card. I bought a Numoir, which is now in my living room, and a beautiful leopard Charenautem, which is in my store now. I did it on a prayer and a wish and a dream, and I never gave up, and here it is 12 years later, and we have a wonderful store and a great clientele. I’m eternally grateful for the training and the support that I have from Landmark Education.
Pam: What a beautiful story.
Rochelle: We are being moved this morning by two wonderful women. First we have Deb Beroset, who is with Landmark Education, and we also have Karen Dannenberg of Karen Dannenberg Clothier, who is sharing with us her beautiful, beautiful story of how Landmark Education really changed her life.
But you know at break, Karen, you said something very important, which is you know going to Landmark Education you really didn’t have an agenda or any expectations.
Karen: I had no expectation at all, and a lot of people have shared with me about the forum, and I said one of these days I’ll do it. I had met a gal who was in a seminar at the time, and she shared her life with me, and I went home one night, and I just really thought about what she had talked about, and the next morning we met again and I handed her a credit card, and I said, “Would you register me in The [Landmark] Forum?” She started crying, and I said, “Why are you crying?” She said, “Nobody’s ever asked me to register them,” and she was in a course also at the time. We have been friends ever since. That day really did alter my life forever.
Rochelle: Deborah, I’ll bet you’ve got a lot of stories like Karen’s, don’t you?
Deborah: Oh, I was just listening to Karen and being inspired all over again. One of the privileges and great things about my job is I’m in touch with people who have participated in this program all around the world. In fact, just recently there was an article that came out in a magazine in the UK called “The Apprentice,” which is affiliated with their version of the show that we all know about here in the States.
Pam: Right.
Rochelle: Donald Trump’s, yes.
Pam: Yes.
Deborah: There was one of the people who was profiled in the article called “The Keys To Success” about people who have done The Landmark Forum to benefit in terms of business. She has a company called Designer Alterations in London and also another one called Total Wardrobe Care.
She’s got these fashion editors and celebrities among her clients, and she has shared that when she did The Landmark Forum, she was thinking that – she was doing pretty well with her business, but when things went wrong, she blamed other people, and she was getting to the point where she said she just didn’t want to be doing her business anymore. It was just really an uphill battle for her, and she said when she did The Landmark Forum, she found herself more focused on her team, making sure people have what they need to do a great job. This was a really key point for her, that she was enabled to make requests for people to contribute in the areas where she wasn’t as strong.
I’ve had tons of women entrepreneurs and women with careers talking about the risk-taking breakthroughs that they have had. We look at successful people and we just assume that they are not afraid like we are. And successful people are afraid all the time. They just act anyway when it makes sense to do so, right?
Pam: Right.
Karen: Right.
Rochelle: Absolutely.
Deborah: A lot of women have shared with me, and I think I heard some of that in what Karen was sharing, that they recognized that some of the trepidation or just that sense of being stopped doesn’t actually have to stop us. In the programs, you look to see what is in the way of you actually taking action – and make commitments, make promises, make big promises, and then fulfill on them.
Rochelle: What I’d like to ask of you, Karen, is can you say to our listeners why should they call, and beside the fact of what has happened to you in your business and your personal life, is there any last little statement you would like to make to listeners about how important this is?
Karen: Well, I think if anybody is going through any transition in their life, maybe changing careers, looking to start a career, getting married, getting divorced, anything that might be coming up in their life or furthering their education, non-linear education, and expanding their mind in their fields, this would be an amazing opportunity for somebody to just go to a weekend and see what opens up for them.
And as I said, you could sit there for three days and four nights and not say a word, and the way the course is taught, things just come up in your life. By the time you leave that weekend, you are so committed to what you’re committed to, and that light does go on, and things just seem to alter.
Rochelle: Right.
Rochelle: Well thank you ladies, and thank you, Deborah, from Landmark Education.
Deborah: Thank you so much for having us.
Rochelle: You’re so welcome. So we will see you ladies later.
Deborah: Thanks so much.
Karen: Thanks, bye-bye.