Autobiography

[vc_accordion active_tab=”false” collapsible=”yes”][vc_accordion_tab title=”John Patterson”]John was born in a small town near Roswell New Mexico the day that U.S. President, John F. Kennedy and Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev, negotiated the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis – October 27, 1962.

As a child, he was fascinated with how things worked and built toys, robots, and forts. At age 8, a scroll saw Christmas gift began the construction of many wonders. Then at age 10, a Super-8 movie camera began a journey through stop-action monster movies, then theater and motion pictures. Gifted musically, he was throughout Junior High and High School, first chair in the Symphonic Band. Wanting to study film and editing, John received a music scholarship and was headed to SMU when a high-school crush re-oriented him to begin college in 1981 at Texas A&M University.

With no film studies at Texas A&M, his love for tinkering and wood-working led to studies in architecture which began with a bachelors in Environmental Design; the applied arts and sciences dealing with creating the human-designed environment.

This degree was his first foray into the human-environment relationship and he thrived in it.

In 1985 he studied abroad at the University of Florence, Italy, and while being guided on a comprehensive tour of the arts, architecture and urban design of ‘all things Italian’, was introduced to many new and stimulating cultures, environments and ways of thinking. This education spurned a profound appreciation for the relationship between human beings and their built environment.

In 1987, the month he graduated, John participated in the Werner Erhard Forum, the reinvention of the EST training.

At age 25, John used his design skills to start a furniture design company. In four years, a line of 126 designs found their way into the Furniture Trade Centers in Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Japan, making the pages of magazines and the cover of the Neiman Marcus catalog. He found a head for business, a love of entrepreneurship, and an appreciation of beauty.

In 1991, after selling the company and seeking a next endeavor, a friend invited him to an evening seminar and John found himself back in a program with the reinvented EST training; now Landmark Education and the Landmark Forum. It was at this time, at the Austin Hilton at an evening seminar, that he met, his founding business partner, Kirkland Tibbels.[1]

In 1992, John began his career as a Program Leader when he was asked to consider Landmarks Program Leader training program being one of 12 of almost 300 people certified to lead programs.

His study in built environments translated very naturally into the study of linguistic environments; both exemplify the inescapable nature of organism-environment.

In 1994 John was hired as a Staff Member for Landmark Education and, except for a 2 year-break as a curriculum designer for a $5BN company, was employed there until 2008, the last three years of which was spent as the manager of the Chicago Center, a $5M regional office. He was, on any given week, accountable for a five-state region, 165 program leaders and over 500 volunteers. In 2007 he was trained by Werner Erhardt in London during the first return of the founder since 1986.

From 1992 to 2009, John led successful programs for over 40,000 participants primarily focused on leadership performance, sales training, and train-the-trainer programs.

In addition to leading programs, for 10 years, while working 9am-9pm Monday-Saturday as a Landmark Staff Member, his task was to talk to 5 people and register 2 into the Forum. These 36,000 hours of deliberate practice gave him an uncommon ability to lead programs that met or exceeded the program measures he was required to meet over his 27-year history.[2]

In 2008, John left Landmark Education and as most people do, thought to return to a childhood love for film. He was hired by a Chicago Post Production company in Business Development and thought to call his longtime friend Kirkland Tibbels to ask about the industry and Kirkland, now famously asked John –

“Hey dude, how’s your money?”

I lied and said my income was fine. Kirkland challenged my conceit and naivety beginning the demonstration of the substantial breakdowns I did not know I had in work, career, and money. The solution to these breakdowns was the specialized knowledge that became the basis for our company and its intellectual property.

In October 2009 Influence Ecology was officially incorporated and in its fourth year sold its first million, bypassing 2012 sales by October.

The company has grown by almost 20% annually since inception.

 

[1] The Commitment Seminar led by Bev Leonard at the Austin Hilton, 500 N Interstate Hwy 35, Austin, TX 78701. Although Kirkland jokes to the confusion of where we met, we’ve agreed that this was our first meeting while he attended the seminar not yet available in San Antonio where he lived.

[2] It should be noted that while John did participate and work with/for Landmark for many years, as of 2008, he is no longer connected with, nor does he practice or condone the ideology on which this organization is based. In fact, it should be noted for historical purposes that in his experience, “there is immense value in these programs to resolve and eliminate long-held sabotaging beliefs, however, the education itself is highly self-actional in nature and dismisses the biological and transactional facticity of life; it disregards our being an aspect of environments and promotes our ability to ‘lord over the universe’. Furthermore, the pressure on faculty to ‘produce results’ in my mind is almost cult-like in approach; the consequence of which is an identity of pressure and over zealous behavior.”[/vc_accordion_tab][vc_accordion_tab title=”Kirkland Tibbels”][/vc_accordion_tab][vc_accordion_tab title=”Darryl Anderle”][/vc_accordion_tab][vc_accordion_tab title=”Drew Knowles”][/vc_accordion_tab][vc_accordion_tab title=”Liz Smiley”][/vc_accordion_tab][vc_accordion_tab title=”Marne Power”][/vc_accordion_tab][/vc_accordion]