THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 19, 1996 TAG: 9609190039
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Profile
SOURCE: BY PAM STARR, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 183 lines
LEE MILTEER, wearing a headset and listening earnestly to ``Jean from Reno, Nev.,'' talk about her smoking habit, sometimes forgets that she's working from her Virginia Beach home and not in front of an audience.
This highly sought-after motivational speaker will leap from her chair when particularly excited. She jabs her finger in the air to emphasize a point. She talks as if the person is present in the room. Jean tells Milteer that she has tried everything to quit smoking, but the habit has conquered her. That kind of defeatist thinking is keeping Jean hooked, Milteer says.
``Jean, if you are doing anything that costs you time, money or energy, then you're losing your integrity,'' Milteer tells her. ``Let's face it, it's your decision to smoke. You've got to be 100 percent responsible to yourself.''
Milteer rises and glances at one of her cheat sheets tacked to a bulletin board. This morning, she's discussing her new 21-day self-empowerment audiocassette program, ``Habit Busting,'' one of several self-help programs she's created. Milteer is a well-known motivational speaker whose clients include Xerox, Walt Disney, IBM, Federal Express and AT&T.
``If you try to change physically you'll hit a brick wall about the fifth day,'' Milteer continues. ``You have to change mentally first.''
After giving Jean some more advice, Milteer goes off the air for a few minutes until the next radio station calls. She carefully extracts the headset from her long, blond hair and swivels around.
``Whew, this is harder to do than speak in public,'' Milteer says. ``I love speaking but my priorities have changed. It's time to revamp and do things differently.''
This year, Milteer, who gives her age only as being somewhere in the early 40s, is enjoying the fruits of her 16 years on the public-speaking circuit, where she jetted to as many as 100 cities a year on a breakneck schedule of seminars. She also hosted an advice segment for three years on Canada's top-rated daytime talk show, ``The Dini Petty Show.''
As president of Lee Milteer Associates, Career Development Strategists, she counsels professionals and creates radio and television infomercials. The ``human potential'' seminars are still being given but at a much slower pace, like three or four a month.
Milteer, who earns a six-figure income, took a rare vacation in August (no traveling, she just didn't work) and spends three mornings a week pepping up callers on radio shows.
Her career, which began at radio station WNOR in 1971 as a disc jockey, has blossomed to the point that Milteer now pitches her products as a guest on local radio showsacross America. Her appearances are booked through Talk America, a radio infomercial company, according to project manager John Sommer.
``Lee comes with very good credentials,'' Sommer says. ``She came really recommended because of the `Dini Petty Show' in Canada. Lee's had some very good success with her Habit Busting theme.''
When she's not on the air or out in public, Milteer writes from her living room on a laptop computer as she looks out over a deserted beach and the Chesapeake Bay. In 1993, she penned ``Feel and Grow Rich,'' a hardcover book that sold only in Virginia bookstores and never got off the ground.
But she and the publisher, Hampton Roads Publishing, believed so much in the self-help message that they re-released the book this June under a new title and new paperback cover. Milteer says the new title - ``Success is an Inside Job'' - made the difference.
``The title was too connected with `Think and Grow Rich,' '' she says. ``It was dying on the vine with that name. But as soon as we changed the title it went national. I'm so proud of this.''
Re-releasing the book was a good gamble. ``Success is an Inside Job'' is now in its second printing of 5,000 copies in just three months. Canadian and Australian distributors also have picked it up. Ken Eagle Feather, marketing director for Hampton Roads Publishing, says that the book has the potential to be very successful.
``I've been in this field for 25 years and think it's one of the best self-help books I've ever read,'' Eagle Feather says. ``It's a good way at training your intuition for applications in daily life and is very practical and well-written.
``This will withstand the test of time and be a strong and consistent seller for years to come,'' he predicts.
Milteer is a paradox.
A bubbly, witty and entertaining public speaker, she comes across as an extrovert, the life of a party. And she is, in her public life.
Privately, though, Milteer is an introvert. She's fueled by solitude and likes to be alone to meditate, to think and to read. She even describes herself as ``reclusive'' and ``a hermit.''
Milteer was married once, to a man double her age who had three children. For the last seven years she's been seeing one man, a local businessman, but hedges when asked his name or the status of their relationship. She doesn't like talking about her personal life.
``I was very shy growing up and I'm very shy socially,'' says Milteer, reclining on a beige leather sofa in the living room of her four-story duplex. ``To me, it's work going to a cocktail party. I get enough share of the limelight. I really try to keep my public life and my personal life separate.''
So much time to herself allows Milteer to read. She devours dozens of self-help and self-improvement books every year because ``that's my job.'' In fact, Milteer wrote ``Success is an Inside Job'' to get all of the information swirling around her head down on paper. The book is subtitled ``Heart, Integrity and Intuition: The Secrets to Getting Anything You Want.''
``I'm an information utility,'' she says, stroking her constant companion Murphy, an 11-year-old poodle. ``I sort of wrote the book as an autobiography, with my trials and tribulations. I'm not the only person who has fears and doubts. . . . I have failed at things a lot. Bad things have happened to me but that's a process of life.''
When pressed, Milteer explains. She invested a large amount of money in a Psycho-Cybernetics infomercial a few years ago, only to lose it all. Psycho-Cybernetics founder Dr. Maxwell Maltz had been one of her many mentors.
``I was the spokesperson and was blinded by my belief in the product,'' Milteer frankly admits. ``I lost a tremendous amount of my life's savings.''
More recently, O.J. Simpson cost Milteer a lot of money. She had used this Simpson quote in one of her audiocassettes and in the 1993 edition of her book: ``The day you take 100 percent responsibility for yourself is the day you go to the top.''
At the time, Milteer says, it was a great quote. But how was she to know that Simpson would be tried last year for murdering his wife and her male friend?
``Women were outraged,'' Milteer says. ``And I don't blame them. It cost me a fortune to take that quote out of the program.
``But I never focus on the past. You need to do a retake and go on. You have to train yourself to think positively. When you focus on the negative you shut down and have no energy.''
Milteer practices what she preaches in her popular seminars. Every morning she writes a list of everything she's grateful for and thanks God. Then she writes her intentions for the day and asks herself what she really wants to accomplish. And how she can utilize her energy most effectively.
``My talent in life is getting people to see their own talents and abilities,'' Milteer says. ``I want to feel that I'm uplifting people. Once someone's energy is uplifted they're inspired and see possibilities.
``I can moan and bitch very easily,'' she adds with a throaty laugh. ``But I believe we create our realities by what we think about.''
Milteer's success as a public speaker, business owner and television personality sprouted from her humble beginnings as a farmer's daughter in Chuckatuck, a small Virginia town 18 miles from Suffolk.
It was where she learned self-reliance and independence as the oldest of two children.
By age 7, Milteer knew how to drive. At 12, Milteer was in charge of 30 people chopping peanuts and was responsible for the horses. On a farm, she says wryly, there are no excuses and no trying. You either do it or you don't do it.
``I learned tremendous survival skills and decision-making skills there,'' says Milteer, who has lived in Virginia Beach and Norfolk for about 25 years. ``I grew up in a self-sufficient culture. My parents really instilled a sense of independence.''
The phone rings and Milteer excuses herself to answer. The Girl Scouts are asking Milteer to give a free half-day seminar this fall. Milteer donated three videotapes of her seminars to the city of Virginia Beach, which airs them on cable television Channel 48. And she donates a portion of her profits to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
``I'll probably do it,'' she says when she returns. ``I really try to give back to the community. There are so many worthy organizations but I can only do so many (free seminars).''
Milteer works seven days a week from her home office and likes to say she's a ``16-year overnight success.'' But she still isn't where she wants to be. Once thought of as a speaker who writes, Milteer now sees herself as a writer who speaks. Her next book, tentatively titled ``Habit Busting,'' is about 50 percent complete.
``I want to be a best-selling author,'' Milteer says. ``I want my work to make a huge impact on people. I can see myself at 90 still doing this.''
The secret of Milteer's success is her ability to delegate, she says. Milteer has a housekeeper, an assistant and a secretary so she can ``totally focus'' on her career. She does not advertise, nor does she need to. Clients flock to her through word-of-mouth.
Every December or January Milteer takes to the hills of Arizona to write her goals for the year. While it's not that time of year yet, Milteer already has resolved to work more in Hampton Roads and continue her writing. And she wants ``more peace, more fun and more simplicity'' in her life.
``If I were to die tomorrow, I would feel like I've led a very full life,'' Milteer says with a smile. ``I've had a real adventure and a very untraditional life. I feel that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.'' MEMO: Lee Milteer will sign copies of ``Success is an Inside Job'' at
Barnes & Noble, 4485 Virginia Beach Blvd., from 2 to 3 p.m. Sunday. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Beth Bergman/The Virginian-Pilot
Lee Milteer answers calls on a radio progam out of Reno, Nev., from
her Virginia Beach home as her poodle, Murphy, naps.
Color photo
Lee Milteer
KEYWORDS: MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER PROFILE by CNB