Motivator’s Message for the $8,000 or $40 Audience: Believe It’s Possible

Lou Tice remembers the old days teaching psychology and mental health and coaching football teams at Seattle’s Highline and Kennedy high schools. That was his life for 13 years, beginning in 1959, when schoolteacher salaries, he recalled, started at around $8,000 a year.

Lou Tice still lives in Seattle, and is still a teacher, of sorts. But those $8,000-a-year days are long gone. Now it’s more like $8,000 per appearance when he confronts a “class.”

In fact, said Tice on a recent Sunday afternoon visit to Orange County, he would be making that amount the very next day--for just 40 minutes of formal presentation--when he was to address a group in Chicago. Besides that, he would be whisked away to Chicago on a private plane provided for his convenience.

“It’s a long way from being a schoolteacher,” admitted Tice, smiling only mildly at his own small jest, which wasn’t really meant to be funny.

A Serious Man

Tice, a seemingly unassuming man--the kind who leans forward, looks you in the eye and listens intently while you are talking--is quite serious these days about making the most of his teaching skills--and about making money. He appears to be accomplishing both through his own Pacific Institute, which he and his wife, Diane, founded in 1971.

The Seattle-based firm has become a multimillion-dollar operation by taking Tice’s motivational message--one he first wove into his high school teaching--and offering it to the world of business, largely via the medium of videotape. It is a message with definite similarities to that of Orange County’s own the Rev. Robert Schuller (and Tice does not object to the comparison).

In Tice’s program, business people are encouraged to boost their own self-images, to get into “possibility thinking,” to be “accountable” for their own progress, to set goals and visualize themselves as successful in meeting them and to screen out the negative thoughts going through their heads. Tice doesn’t claim to have thought up the techniques himself, but he does claim credit for polishing them up and making them appeal to business.

Drop in Absenteeism

“Client companies without exception report positive results in the enhancement of employee morale, creativity and production, not to mention a dramatic drop in workday absenteeism,” proclaims one institute handout, with an enthusiastic display of its own self-image building.

But on this particular Sunday afternoon, Tice was in Orange County to let Southern California know about his latest expansion step: the introduction of a series of motivational videotapes with a similar message but aimed at a new market--the families of the world.

Although corporations hand over a minimum of $15,000 for Tice’s videotaped basic “Investment in Excellence” curriculum, and the total bill can run into six--even seven--figures, Tice said, the new series of videotapes will be a “capsule form” of that curriculum and cost $39.95 a tape.

“The next 10 years of my life will be dedicated to bringing all of the information that corporations spend hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars for right down to moms and dads, so they can afford it and use it inside their families,” he told the 250 or so people in his audience, mostly adults who had taken his course and brought their families along to hear about the new project.

Tice called on the children’s story “The Wizard of Oz” to explain some of his points. Facing his audience wearing a brown sport jacket, dark brown pants and a striped brown tie, Tice suggested that there are lots of “wizards” out there ready to influence unwary youngsters: teachers, television, older children. . . . He said some of those are negative wizards, those who “instead of giving heart, take heart away; instead of giving brains, tell you you’re stupid; tell you that you’re not pretty, tell you that you can’t turn out for this, tell you that you won’t amount to that.”

But there also are positive wizards. Like the Wizard of Oz, who gave the tin man a “heart” through the guise of a clock and gave the cowardly lion courage through a medal. These are the people who affirm the positive for those around them, Tice said. And that is a role, he added, that parents must play for their own children: “Anything less than that is negligence on your part.”

Right Stuff, Wrong Stuff

Words are powerful tools, Tice said. Tell a child something enough times, and it comes true, he said. “So, what we want to do is to (tell) those of you that are here--moms and dads and youngsters--that it’s important to be careful what you tell yourself . . . and be careful about whom you listen to and what other people tell you because if you get the wrong stuff into your mind, your life isn’t going to turn out very happy. But if you get the right stuff into your mind, your life can be very successful and very happy.”

That, essentially, is the same message Tice gives corporations at a much higher price tag: that if you take charge of your own life, set your own goals and believe in yourself, success can be yours. Many adults who get that message at work have asked how they can take the information home to their families, Tice said, and Intelligent Heart Productions is his answer.

The next day, Tice would be taking his wizards back to the world of business (Oz gets into his corporate presentations, as well), giving that $8,000 talk in Chicago for a firm that deals in computer software. “They will have their people in from all over the world,” Tice said. “It’s part of their whole yearly goal-setting meeting. My job is to open up their awareness to possibilities of their meeting the goals that the corporation has set for them.” Among his many other clients are AT&T;, IBM, McDonald’s, NASA, ABC, Honeywell, Rockwell and the Los Angeles Times.

$15,000 Package

Most of the time, Tice doesn’t even appear in person--only on video. That minimum $15,000 charge for his basic taped series covers 11 1/2 hours of “core” instruction and eight additional hours of reinforcement work, plus training sessions in Seattle for “facilitators” who will present the program within their own companies.

Costs can, indeed, reach seven figures, Tice said, when large companies with thousands of employees sign up for the program. So, he said, “I must make a difference in their organization, one that will maybe enhance (their business) by hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars--or help them resolve problems.”

Among local companies that have bought the “Investment in Excellence” series is Rockwell International’s Autonetics Strategic Systems Division in Anaheim, where Frank Bierman, productivity improvement programs coordinator, said, “We’re very high on it. It provides a tremendous engine for enthusiasm.”

The series, he added, encourages goal-setting and high achievement, and it makes people feel good about themselves. “It has turned out to be the biggest program we have ever presented, as far as attendance.”

Australian Inquiry

Pacific Institute doesn’t have to advertise to get corporate clients, Tice said. And not all the requests for his services come from business, he added. Last spring, for example, an Australian official suggested that Tice might help figure out some way of improving life for that country’s aborigines.

But Tice figures it will take much of his own time for the next few years to ensure success of the motivational tapes aimed at families--tapes carrying titles such as “Make Your Children ‘Lucky Stars’: Reticular Activating System,” “Children of Royalty Are Treated Royally: Self-Esteem,” “Make Your Children Mentally Wealthy: Possibility Thinking,” “Why Does the Dog Hide Under the Bed When You Talk to Your Family: Captain of the World,” and “Build Heart, Brains and Courage in Your Children: I’m Off to Be the Wizard.”

Each tape will be accompanied by a learning guide, encouraging family participation.

Tice’s graduates from throughout the Greater Los Angeles area had been invited to bring their families, including the children, to the introductory program at the Anaheim Hilton and Towers.

Offered Full Evening

For $10 a family--Tice subscribes to the theory that something free can’t be worth much--they were offered a full evening: Big baskets of potato chips and pretzels were on hand; free coffee and soft drinks were provided; helium-filled balloons were waiting for the youngsters. Entertainment featured the high-school-aged Montebello Hi-Tones as well as Pacific Institute’s own barbershop quartet, decked out in--what else--Wizard of Oz costumes. The premier attraction, of course, was Lou Tice; the only way most of those in the audience had been able to meet him was on tape.

This evening, in addition to some enticing bits from his theories of raising children, Tice would also tell how the parents could sign up for the tapes, themselves, and further, how they could “participate in some way” to get word about the new program for families out to America and the rest of the world.

“We’ve got to get it out to black people and white people, yellow people and red people, old people that are afraid of dying and young people who are confused and don’t know what in the hell is going on,” Tice told the group. “We’ve got to get it to everybody.”

Parents who want to help spread the word would earn commissions by promoting the $39.95 tapes, Tice said following the formal program.

Stopped in Seattle

Among enthusiastic parents there to hear Tice’s talk were Diana and Jim Rains of Seal Beach. Diana Rains had taken the basic course at the Fedco corporate offices in Santa Fe Springs, where she works as a consumer affairs representative. “I was so taken aback by ‘Investment in Excellence’ that I wanted to do something the whole family could benefit from,” she said.

Her husband, who hasn’t taken the course, was impressed enough with his wife’s progress to stop in at the Seattle headquarters while on a business trip in the area and ask what they could offer the couple’s daughter, Lisa, 11, a competitive swimmer. Sure enough, he returned with an institute book, written for young people. Now the parents are eager to buy the videotapes.

The Tice theories introduced by Lisa’s mother and picked up by her father--supported by the book her father brought back--have, indeed, made big improvements in her life, the bubbly pre-teen-ager said. Now, she said, her parents--even one of her teachers whom she told about the program--don’t badger her about homework; it has become her responsibility. Her father, who admits he used to be critical when Lisa turned in a poor swimming performance, now accents the positive.

The whole family agreed that Lisa’s swimming has improved because of the changes. Jim Rains proudly announced that Lisa, a member of the Cypress Aquatics Team, has won 450 medals, ribbons and trophies, helped greatly by her new skill at setting goals and keeping a positive frame of mind. Lisa’s new techniques include visualizing her goals; one visualization she’s working on right now takes place at the 1992 Olympics, where she is on the stands receiving a gold medal.

Took Mental Health Class

For Lou Tice, the initial inspiration for all this positive thinking occurred about 1960 when he enrolled in a mental health class at the University of Washington.

In conversation before his group appearance, Tice said he had enrolled because it sounded like a few easy credits. But what he found, he said, was “the most inspirational teacher I ever came across.” Her name was Ruth Woeckler, and what she offered was “advanced, practicable, applicable psychology,” Tice said. “She was teaching transactional analysis 10 years before it was very popular; she was into Gestalt psychology and made it sensible and usable.

“All I did,” Tice said, “was embellish it and work on it and polish it up and add to it.” Soon after he incorporated that knowledge in mental health education classes that he was teaching at the high school level, parents began asking him to appear before groups and businesses. It wasn’t much longer before Tice left the school system to challenge corporate America.

At the start, he recalled, “it used to cost $25 a person to go through our program”--and that, of course, included Tice’s personal attention. Today, to get Tice in person, the best bet is to travel to Seattle, he said, where he appears at 10 four-day seminars a year, at a cost of $775 for singles, $925 for couples. But the 130 or so Seattle staff members spend a majority of their time working with the video programs.

Wife’s Positive Approach

Actually, Tice said, “we don’t care if we ever do anything live anymore because we can reach so many more people through video.”

Whichever way the message comes across, Tice likes to include personal stories to illustrate points. During his talk to the Anaheim audience, he described a particularly poignant situation in which he is still involved.

“We discovered that Diane had cancer about the end of September,” he told the quiet audience. “And it’s a tough shot. It’s the type that is pretty aggressive, and we’ve got a real fight on our hands.”

Diane’s attitude, Tice said, is “very positive and constructive.” Although she is getting chemotherapy, he told the audience, she is not giving all of the responsibility for her care to the doctors. For example, he said, she uses the visualization techniques of the Pacific Institute program to picture herself in a state of good health.

“Everybody has crises and problems,” Tice told his audience. What he’s trying to do, he said, is help people handle their problems constructively.

“One of the greatest gifts you can give anybody,” he said, closing the gathering, “is (the knowledge of) how to control their own thoughts, how to control their own future and how to be accountable and not let anybody talk them out of it.”