Newtown resident Mariette Kammerer combines image consulting with professional and personal coaching, as well as promotion for her popular weekly radio broadcast under the umbrella of her KES Educational Services, Inc. In a recent chat with The Newtown Bee, she said her primary goal as a consultant is to help clients discover their own oft-hidden talents and misspent energies, rechanneling them into new blooming careers or endeavors.

Ms Kammerer realized years ago that her own unique gift is the ability to quickly assess individuals she meets, then coaching them to tap their greatest possible potential and putting it to work so they can achieve a new or greater level of success than they ever imagined.

But don’t confuse what Ms Kammerer does with any fly-by-night self-realization pitch, or professional cheerleading; while she certainly promotes all the things she sees her clients doing right, she does not shy away from being diplomatically but brutally honest when she sees them doing something wrong in her assessment.

Basically, she said, neither she nor her clients can afford to waste any time languishing on half-baked successes or dwelling on ideas she believes do not fit a roadmap envisioned to deliver them to a destination they sought when contracting her services.

On the broadcasting side of her career, Ms Kammerer often focuses on individuals who have already hit stride in their professions, helping facilitate information she sees as being beneficial to the entire listening audience tuning in to her Tuesday slot between 9 and 10 pm on WICC.

“The problem with a lot of people who could be more successful — much more successful — is they won’t change,” she explained. “They don’t even want to change. But for a lot of people, things seem to be going great until life changes that for you.”

Ms Kammerer has a very good idea about how quickly that can happen because it happened to her. For years she was a six-figure executive, until 1996.

“Things were going great,” she said, “I had money, success, I was a key decisionmaker in a corporate world. And then I had a stroke.”

Life After Stroke

The aftereffects of this life-changing medical emergency sent Ms Kammerer into a medical rehabilitation setting where she spent much of the time recovering and relearning how to walk. And when she was finally discharged to care for herself, she decided that she could not go back to her corporate world.

“At one point during a tough stretch of my recovery I said if God lets me work again, I’m going to go out and help a lot of people,” she said. So she dove in to volunteerism, taking a post supporting the Salvation Army.

“While I was learning a lot about the support agencies that help disadvantaged people and those on the street, I was also able to use resources from my previous career to help them,” she said. One of those efforts involved creating a relationship with Pepperidge Farm that resulted in an ongoing donation of bread and other products for economically stressed families.

Ms Kammerer thinks people who are dealt life changes, whether it is a health crisis or a job loss, often settle into a “state of limbo,” even if they have an idea for a new career or ways to reinvent themselves.

“There are a lot of gifted people in that situation,” she said. “My gift is being able to assess where a person in that situation is both mentally and emotionally, and devising a plan to get them from point A to point B.”

She said no matter how excited a person is with a new idea or direction for themselves, and how perfect a fit that plan may be for them, she is there to stand by them and continually remind clients that the true key to success will come from endurance.

“It’s that endurance factor, whether you’re working for someone else or self-employed,” she said. “All new things, even if they are a perfect fit, require both steps to get there and the endurance to make it happen.”

That is especially important for individuals who may tend to get frustrated when things don’t go their way, or who get discouraged when life’s daily pressures pile on and seem to discourage them, obscuring that all-important roadmap to success.

“Maybe if everybody was forced to lay in a hospital bed for a few days, or weeks like I did,” she said, trailing off. “You know, very few people are born long-distance runners, but every weekend thousands of people go out and run marathons. That’s because each and every one of them decided they wanted to do that, and then built up the endurance to succeed.”

‘Strategy To Endure’

She is there to help those individuals craft a “strategy to endure.”

“I consulted with a realtor and a mortgage representative who wanted to team up and conduct workshops to help potential homebuyers, and hopefully draw clients from those workshops,” she recalled. “At first, nobody came out, but I encouraged them to endure. By their fourth session they had ten people in the room, which resulted in three new clients for them.”

For other clients, Ms Kammerer’s efforts are thankless.

“A lot of people lose their energy after they get a good idea,” she said. “I’m there to take personal responsibility for that client, even though I don’t know how long their endurance will last. All I know is, when my work is finished, that client shouldn’t need me any more.

“When people have the faith to put themselves in my hands — and many do — they get good results.”

Her weekly radio program is not patterned on any other broadcast she has ever heard. Ms Kammerer said she has designed the show to highlight life changes, health and careers; it is not a pass-through for guests she hopes to turn into clients.

“The intent is to introduce listeners to successful people,” she said. “I really like to go in-depth about subjects that can help a lot of people.”

And while her broadcast can potentially be accessed by thousands and thousands of people, in her consulting field, Ms Kammerer never takes on more than a handful of clients at any one time.

“I’m generally working with no more than five people at a time,” she said. “Any more would take away from the ones I’m helping — some take just a few months to get on track, and others can take eight, ten, 12 months to accomplish the same goal.

“I have this proven ability to help whether a dream is tangible or intangible,” she concluded. “If someone wants to be helped, I can draw their best out of them and help architect revenue streams from those talents and gifts.”

To learn more about Ms Kammerer and KES Educational Services, Inc, visit kmareducation.org or call 203-505-3660.