![Debra Poneman Debra Poneman](/sites/default/files/past_show_headliners/guest_pics/debra-poneman_3.jpg)
In the winter of 1981, while working as an account executive for an LA investment company, Debra attended an evening seminar entitled, "Money Magic." Thinking she was walking into another dry financial tutorial, she sat transfixed as the seminar leader shared radical ideas about how prosperity is really created – ideas that had nothing to do with working hard or investing wisely but rather using energetic tools like the now popular “Law of Attraction” to create prosperity. Feeling as if every fiber of her being was resonating with the seminar leader's words, she knew that night that her life's work was to study this knowledge and share these principles with the world.
The next morning she quit her job and spent the next several months studying the laws of true success and prosperity as expounded on by icons of western “esoteric” thought such as Napoleon Hill, Wallace Wattles, Earl Nightengale and Florence Shin. In early 1982, she founded Yes to Success Seminars, Inc., a company dedicated to teaching enlightened, timeless principles of success and prosperity – in modern day language.
By 1983, Debra's seminar was being taught in over a dozen major US cities. By 1984 she had reps teaching her ever-growing body of knowledge in seven countries internationally.
Debra soon became a favorite talk show guest and appeared on radio and TV and in print media from coast to coast. As a sought-after speaker, her client list included Mattel Toys, McDonnell Douglas, the Xerox Management group, International Trade Management, Women in Management, Women in Banking, Business and Professional Women, and more.
Her seminar was the launching pad for many now-renowned transformational leaders including Marci Shimoff, Janet Attwood, Peggy O'Neill, and Extreme Leadership’s Steve Farber.
By 1987 she was being represented by a top literary agent and had a book deal in the works with a major publisher—and she was in the middle of negotiations for her own day-time talk show.
In 1988, her world stopped. No, there was no accident or catastrophe. Her world stopped when the mid-wife handed Debra her new baby girl. And, being true to her own teachings, she chose to follow her heart and for the next two decades devoted her life to being a mom-at-home to her daughter and her son who was born three years later.
Although she fit in a few keynotes, wrote a book on how to cook for your vegetarian children as well as the best-selling Chicken Soup for the American Idol Soul, and ran a successful home-based business, she only worked when there were no basketball games to cheer at, recitals to attend, or birthday parties to throw--and she was almost always home to tuck her children in, read them a story and kiss them good night.
Fast forward to 2012. With her baby girl happily employed in the world of fashion and her son running his own successful business in the basketball world, although she took a break from her career as a professional speaker to be a professional mom, the timeless principles of her Yes to Success seminars are as useful today as they were when she first founded her company in 1982.
Debra is once again sharing these principles with the world and helping thousands more say Yes to Success. Adding richness to her already vast wisdom is the profound and invaluable insights into the human spirit that she gained from being a mom.