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ABOUT US
Ken Stark, MA, CHT
Chief Consultant and Principal
OUR MISSION
"We empower people to live with clear vision and purpose,
to be courageously creative, to remedy self-defeating thoughts and habits, and to end abuse against self and others.
To build strong management and interpersonal skills, and stretch people's comfort zones to be more capable, confident
and accomplished, growing more prosperous and magnanimous, making happier lives and a better world."
Ken
is an expert in business and self management, a cognitive/behavioral coach, and certified hypnotherapist. Why does he produce results that frequently exceed clients'
expectations? In a word: Balance. Excelera's Two-Track Change Management Process impacts positively
both business/career and personal... both thinking/acting and intuition/emotions... both the practical conscious and
creative subconscious.
Standard, quantitative management consulting aims for outer, practical change.
Qualitative personasl coaching, for inner, intuitive change. Either alone can produce benefits.
Combined and delivered with insight, they enable clients to achieve more extensive, long-lasting change and
deeper fulfillment in work and life. a
Ken has been doing the work and
developing the tools for two-plus decades, helping the owners, executives and managers of more than 300 firms
(tiny start-ups to $50-plus million in annual revenues) to manage better, achieve more, and enjoy more fulfilling
careers. As a cognitive/ behavioral coach, he helps individuals and couples to expand vision and
raise abilities to direct their lives along more rewarding paths. In his early career,
he coached literally thousands of clients in behavior
clinics, individually and in groups, to extinguish bad habits and establish better ones for longer and healthier lives.
He rose from Junior Consultant in the late 1980’s
to run the Service Delivery Department of a nationally renowned business consulting firm, training other
consultants, managing budgets and so forth. Feeling constrained by the consultative focus on operations --
important but limiting -- he left to merge management consulting, cognitive/ behavioral coaching, and self-hypnosis
training (deep relaxation and the creative subconscious) for business- and life-changing results.
Ken
takes people beyond limiting thoughts and enervating fears to find enduring solutions to problems and discover hidden abilities. “When
I think we’re done working on a problem,” said a client, “You always have more” about
applying the solution beyond the problem-at-hand. Several clients have said “You’re really a business
therapist.”
Other professional highlights:
• B.A., Liberal Arts (English Major, Art Minor.)
• Master
of Arts, Counseling Psychology.
• Certification in Hypnotherapy.
• Certified
Phone Counselor, National Certified Phone Counselors
Registry.
• Launched Excelera Consulting in 1994.
• Won
better-ball golf tourney in 2001 -- the synergy of Ken's putting and partner's driving.
• Published Making the Vehicle to Reach Your Dreams in 2004, a business biography co-authored with
long-time client Phil Fournier.
• Currently working on his next book.
Sally
A. Moses, MS
Consulting Specialist
"I want
every business to be strong and successful. There's enough opportunity out there for all. Each person is a
vital human resource. We make improvements by coming together as a team, open to one another's wisdom and experience."
Sally's focus is
on helping firms to thrive. Currently, she's a freelance sales and marketing contractor. She holds a Masters
in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, with twelve years' combined experience with businesses and nonprofits.
She has advised orgnizations on mission statements and strategic planning, board and volunteer orientations, leadership, group
process, job analysis, disability accomodations, and outsourcing. She has conducted workshops on team building, diversity,
communication, stress management, and work/family balance. Sally brought Lucky to Excelera, for which Ken is forever
in her debt.
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Choosing the Quality
of Your Experience
I
am forever grateful for the personal transformation that led to this work. For two years in my twenties, I drove a
forklift in a warehouse. The work and pay were fine, yet I was angry
and I persistently thought, "Kurt is taking advantage of me" and everyday I arrived in a bad
mood. Truth was, I was angry at Authority and the owner Kurt was a handy target. But my benightedness ended
at a seminar one evening, thankfully, when the psychologist John Enright changed my
life with this profound and simple idea:
How I experience a situation or event is up to me. With no change whatever in the actual circumstances,
I can choose a positive rather than negative experience.
Well. Sometimes one hears exactly the right words at precisely the right time. John had offered a dramatically better way of being
and -- What a revelation! It was, for me, like being launched to the moon. I saw from that vantage that,
far from being powerless, I had nearly complete control – not necessarily
of events, but of my responses to them. Listening to John describe the benefits of living consciously on that
happy night, my misdirected anger instantaneously evaporated. I resolved then-and-there to change my thinking, and
the next morning I revved up my forklift with a wholly different attitude. I was glad
to be there and said so -- my first act of reinforcing my new way of being.
These many years later, it is woven in the fabric of me. Driving in traffic, delayed for hours in an
airport, slicing a golf ball into the woods – I choose them. Not
that I'm thrilled, I’m simply not upset. I look for and usually find the opportunities
in such previously discomfiting situations. Stuck in rush hour? More alone time to ponder a problem
or listen to a favorite CD. Three-hour flight delay? I can read, or watch "hello/goodbye" behavior
while enjoying a $7 slice of airport pizza -- yum! Another golf ball into the woods? Excellent -- how will I escape
and can I save par? All of which keeps my mood up and blood pressure down. It's far more fun to laugh
at a shank than to curse the game or myself.
(What's the upset, anyway? If chasing
a ball across lush countryside that's meticulously groomed for me is upsetting, why on
earth bother? In contrast, I used to golf with a buddy whose generalized anger simmered beneath the surface. One
windy day, I was hitting low, penetrating shots through the bluster -- I had practiced for such conditions and was having
fun! But halfway through the round, I lost my playing partner. He was angry at the weather and abruptly
quit! As you might imagine, his unresolved hostility caused a panoply of completely avoidable problems
in his life.)
I have
just described repairing one type of mistaken thinking -- Emotional Reasoning -- in which a habitually mistaken thought
produced in me a negative emotion, and I assumed that my anger grew from the “reality” that I was being taken
advantage of. I learned that I was misdirecting anger at my father onto Authority figures ranging from the warehouse
owner to the President of the United States. As I resolved the anger and other issues,
I became more available to people and made a good life. With study ("steadies" as Grandma Wanda
called them), clinical application, lessons gleaned from personal experience, and whatever wisdom I can muster, that
good life includes the Excelera Consulting you're reading about.
Lucky
Official Mascot
"Woof... woof,
woof! Wo-o-ooff... woof!"
Canine-to-English
translation:
"Woof... such a blizzard that was! Wo-o-ooff...woof!"
Lucky is Excelera's mascot, a cuddly Shelty/Dachshund
mix. In fulfilling her job description "to keep things in perspective," she has grown wise and mellow
in her fifteen years. She has fully actualized her dogness. Lucky keeps Ken company and often walks him
after client sessions or writing stints. Thus refreshed, Ken gets back to work and Lucky gets back to keeping one eye
on office goings-on and the other on her doggie dish. "Wuff..." she says, "I have my priorities."
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