Barbra: Andrea, let’s start at the beginning. Can you tell us how you came to work for Thomas J. Leonard and Coachville?
Andrea: Complete and utter luck, actually. Well, if I had to give credit somewhere, it would be to computers, and the internet. Which in itself is interesting, because without those two things CoachVille certainly wouldn’t have grown the way it did either! So I guess it’s a good moment to appreciate technology.
Long story short, it was after I’d been in my first business several years. Jaded and quite discouraged, I was researching a new career on the internet and came across this thing called life coaching. This was in 2000. How many of us have this story in common, eh? Through Coach U, I found Thomas’ website, and there I really perked up at the photos of him and his dog, in the desert. At the bottom of that page was a little sentence that’s actually still there. It said “please say hello.” I did, with an email that went something like this:
Hi Thomas, just saying hi as you invited. I just discovered coaching, Coach U, and am at the is this for real? quick call the Better Business Bureau stage.
To which he replied…
hehe, yes coaching is real and so is coach u. it’s good to question!
This intrigued me, so I continued the internet search and found the Coaching Scoop ezine with a request for volunteers in it. Specifically, then Manager of CoachVille Steve Davis was looking for transcriptionists for the Real Interviews which were these 7 minute recordings. My internal dialog went something like this:
“Aha, I’ll get a free education while doing some volunteering. This way I can find out how real this coaching thing is.”
Barbra: So how did you go from being a volunteer transcriptionist to being the General Manager?
Andrea: Well, that was kind of funny. One of the recordings had a word on it, a place name that I didn’t know. It was Sebastapol California. Being my nerdy diligent self, I wrote to Steve saying, this transcription is done, and, I’m not sure about this word, Sebastapal or whatever.
I came to know later that it was this and a few other things that made an impression on Steve, so that when Thomas approved a budget for $2000 to hire a part-time customer service helper, Steve wrote me and I accepted. It was a huge compliment and I really owe it to Steve for all that’s happened since.
So I started in customer service in this (cough) part time virtual job, and it all seemed rather surreal, but it was to get even more so. I worked mostly with Steve at that point, and a few months later for some reason Steve was away, I think on holiday. During that time Thomas said to me “I think you’d be a great General Manager of CoachVille.” Of course, I really had no idea if I would be or not, but you know, if Thomas thought so, then okay, I would try it.
Not so short after all, Barbra, but there you have it! Now you know exactly what I mean by ‘complete and utter luck.’
Barbra: Those were heady years at Coachville (during your tenure as General Manager). What was a typical day like for you?
Andrea: Heady! And very busy. I worked pretty much all day, breaking for lunch and dinner, and most evenings I would put time in also. It wasn’t just that there was an overabundance of work – it was that the work was so compelling and magnetizing that the rest of my life came to pale by comparison.
Why would I do other things when there was this wild world of CoachVille to help build? When there was so much to open my eyes to and so much to express, as I discovered myself through my work? The work itself was what you might imagine: website creation, event management, customer service email, product creation and a lot of project management to take Thomas’ ideas (which usually came in the form of announcements) and make them happen.
Barbra: Yes, I remember those announcements often came at the speed of lightening. He was such a creative genius (and I don’t use that term lightly) and he was very skilled at delegating to others.
Andrea: For sure. He once wrote an email to the R&D team titled ‘Thomas, the Bottleneck’ and then shortly thereafter claimed the theme of ‘Absence of Dread’ in the Absence of program he was leading. Someone in that program wrote to tell me that Thomas had been saying my name a lot in class because Absence of Dread meant delegating things to Andrea!
Barbra: Did you feel appreciated by Thomas? By the CV membership?
Andrea: I did feel appreciated by the members as a whole, yes, because there was a lot of feedback coming through the R&D team for the work we were doing to advance the coaching profession.
As for Thomas, overall I’d say no, I didn’t feel appreciated by him.
Once in awhile he would express appreciation for sure. I have a card he mailed to me which said “Andrea, thank you for everything you do, especially the things I don’t know.” I found this really touching, probably precisely because it was quite rare.
Barbra: I appreciate your honesty in sharing that, Andrea. I must admit I had a bit of a hidden agenda in asking you that question. I’ve never told you this but I was at that first Coachville conference in Las Vegas in early 2002. And I remember at the end of the three days Thomas did his thank you’s from the stage, and he didn’t mention your name! And I had seen you working your butt off the entire time. I’ve always been curious about whether that was just an unfortunate oversight or whether that was typical of Thomas.
Andrea: Well, I’ll tell you something I’ve told I think only one person, my coach at the time. It was after the Las Vegas conference when I told Thomas I was upset that we hadn’t had time to sit down together. It was the first time we’d met in person. His response was pretty much ‘oh well’ which I now understand easily, because guess what, it wasn’t about ME and I had been trying to get my needs met through work. But what was even funnier was when I heard that Jan had said to Thomas “You treat your dog better than your team” and Thomas’ reply was “I do treat my dog very well don’t I?” LOL.
Barbra: That is very funny!
End of Part 1 – Scroll down to read Part 2.
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Interview Part 2:
Barbra: We left off talking about the heady days of Coachville’s beginnings in 2000 and 2001. How much help did you have during that time?
Andrea: As you probably remember, there were a certain number of volunteers who took part in various projects, so there were always a few hands on deck. Officially though, on CoachVille’s payroll there were essentially these people, not throughout, but for a while:
(1) Tina Forsyth, who started as a volunteer and became Event Manager, part time.
(2) Dave Buck, who taught classes, led events, and co-created content.
(3) Susan Austin, who also started as a volunteer study group manager I believe, who became a co-leader of classes and events with Thomas.
(4) There were also Lisa Micklin (affiliates), Marki Talley (ezineville), Judith Buddle (customer service), Jan MacGregor (customer service) Bryan Yambao (graphic design and CS), and Shari Horne (project based web design) who were also involved in some of the more technical aspects of the work of CoachVille, in their specific areas.
Barbra: That’s a trip down memory lane hearing the names of all those terrific Coachville folks! Thomas did have an amazing way of attracting good people towards his projects.
Andrea: Yes, for sure. On a very day to day basis, though, I’d say there was me, Tina and Susan. We used to say that it was a team of 3 running the place, and more or less that was true, if you don’t count the various people we outsourced to.
Barbra: What did you enjoy the most? What was most exciting?
Andrea: The pace and variety as well as the constant stream of evolution. Working at CV was like watching an ocean, always changing, and part of a giant expanse of something significant. Being tested to my limits of intelligence, judgement, speed of response, conflict management, creativity. Coming to believe passionately in the work itself, for the sake of this thing called coaching.
Barbra: If you had to choose just one thing you learned from Thomas, what would it be?
Andrea: It would be about flow. As versus struggle, sure, but also about finding a zone for living in that suits me.
Barbra: Did Thomas have a dark side? If so, how did it show up?
Andrea: Oh sure he did, and I think it showed up for lots of people who worked with him. It’s like I have fun saying, “Working with Thomas was like Heaven and Hell at the same time.” :-)
Barbra: For example?
Andrea: Well, he would sometimes disappear for days at a time, unresponsive to emails or telephones, and no one would know what had happened. He would be very unrelenting and some would say lacking in compassion for the humanity of others, and their capacity to keep up with him, even though they did their best.
Barbra: Isn’t that interesting. So even though he knew all about the value of compassion for the humanity of others, he wasn’t always able to practice it. How human!
Andrea: Yes, he was human like the rest of us. I remember the way he let go of a Virtual Assistant while I was still a volunteer. It was difficult for him I know, because she had let him down, but it wasn’t the most graceful of endings.
Then there were people who felt they had been used by him. They volunteered, and didn’t get access to him the way they thought they might, so they became upset and Thomas wouldn’t much care. For Thomas I really think the way to understand it is that he championed people by not meeting, or acknowledging any neediness in them. He didn’t pander, that’s for sure.
Barbra: In a sense that’s the ultimate sign of respect.
Andrea: Yes. I think some people were surprised to learn that he wasn’t touchy feely and about making you feel good. And if you tried to get your needs met that way with him, you were in for a bit of a shock.
Barbra: It sounds like sometimes he took that to an extreme.
Andrea: I think so. Sometimes it would surface as a rough or brusque way of being with people. Also, his sensitivity and creativity could show up in a dark manner. He couldn’t and wouldn’t take criticism, as it would impact him a lot, so he would turn off relationships that were that way. He was so creative that I think he felt lonely, so sometimes he used his projects to meet his personal needs. All in all, Thomas was very human, I think, and thank goodness for that!
Part 3 – A Candid Interview with Andrea J. Lee
Barbra: Andrea, You were CV’s Business Manager at the time Thomas passed away. What were your immediate business concerns when that shocking event happened? What did you learn about business (e.g. contingency plans, succession, communications) from that experience?
Andrea: My thought process certainly had its share of four-letter words I can tell you that. I wondered ‘how would we deliver on our promises?’ especially to Graduate School of Coaching members. And how could we (myself and the team) hold the ship together in order to be there for the community? What were we going to say to the community? How could we communicate this horrific thing, his passing?
For me, the most difficult part was holding it together on the business end, since there really was only me. And though I had no idea how I was going to do it, I was not about to let Thomas’ memory down.
Barbra: What was your first priority?
Andrea: My goal then was to carry forward with as smooth a transition as I knew how. I returned to my hotel room early from his memorial service in order to draft the first CoachVille Member news to go out to the membership.
Oh Barbra, how I painstakingly chose the nuggets to go in that news. A photo of his dog Fringe looking sad at the top, evoking Thomas, but not a photo of Thomas yet, it was too soon. Setting up a website where everyone could vent, and communicate their feelings, and all of that…what a blur.
Don’t ask me how, but I knew that somewhere in the chaos that was about to happen there needed to be a calm in the storm. So I just proceeded to try and do that.
Barbra: I recall that you made a decision to go ahead with all the scheduled live events.
Andrea: Yes, of course, more pragmatic issues followed pretty quickly. We had quite a few live events planned for right away. So we communicated with everyone that the show would go on, with Dave Buck and Susan Austin at the forefront, doing so through their grief.
We had Graduate School classes and an incredible, now completely absurd-seeming promise to deliver 1000 hours of content, without Thomas.
What wasn’t really obvious, and may still not be, is that the revenue model for CoachVille, though lucrative in some ways, only worked because Thomas worked for free, and Thomas working was like I don’t know how many people working. No way were we going to replicate that.
So, the entire business was going to need to change, or go completely under. Because of the conflict Dave Buck and I had at
that time, I wasn’t around to carry it forward, so it really fell to Dave to either fulfill Thomas’ promises or not. To his credit I think Dave did the thing he felt was right to do, tough as it ended up being for him.
Barbra: Looking back on it, what were the business lessons learned?
Andrea: As a whole, the lessons learned about business are pretty universal. Always have a contingency plan – failsafe the viability of the enterprise. Who would take over for your business if you were to disappear? Would they have what they needed to carry forth the mission? Have you educated them and provided for them, or are you handing them a giant (unfair) headache? (Not everyone will care about their business continuing after their death mind you, so this will be something to consider on a case by case basis.)
Barbra: What has it been like going through the TJL materials? What criteria have you used to select what will be created?
Andrea: The criteria evolve as I consider what markets we’ll be targetting, but I’ll tell you the things that are foremost in my mind.
First, that there is a certain amount of content that should, and always will, if I can help it, be free. From that then, of course,
the question needs to be, okay, how do we fund those free things?
This was another place where people have been misled, by the way. It seemed to the world that CoachVille was a profitable, wonderful business that if they only copied, would mean great profits, etc. Well, not only did Thomas fund much of CoachVille with his own time, all that he made free was funded from his pockets too. So, it’s a caveat I’ve wanted to make openly public for a while. The CoachVille model of generosity while marvelous, is something to be careful with when trying to replicate.
But I digress. There is of course, a lot of packaging and formats of material that will be for-fee. And after that, the criteria really are simple. What will be of most benefit? What needs to be preserved, so as not to fade away forgotten? What’s easiest to create for now, so we can keep in motion? What’s most enjoyable to complete, both for us as the project owners, but for the market. What will be revenue-generating so we can sustain ourselves well and be around for a long time, because you know, there is a lot of work here and we want to be around long enough to do it thoroughly and well. And last but not least, requests and feedback from the community I take seriously into consideration as well.
Barbra: What are you hoping to achieve with your Thomas Leonard Success Strategies coaching program?
Andrea: Many things. As you know I’m a business coach, so I want the program to help business owners grow themselves and their businesses. I know with my heart of hearts that there is a meaningful way of thinking about business that is useful to learn from Thomas.
But more than that, my hope is to recreate some of the energetic
spark, and flow, that existed when Thomas was alive. That spirit of
mischieviousness and profound creativity. With the group coaching
classes where I’ll share Thomas stories to set the stage, I hope that the sizzle of energy will become a hallmark of this group coaching program.
Barbra: There are so many programs for coaches. What’s different about this one?
Andrea: Again, lots of things, and my answer above I think covers the most important, along with the fact that the material is 100% unique. But here’s just one more, very practical reason. This program is the only one that will end up being actually worth more money than what was originally paid.
Barbra: How’s that?
Andrea: Originally we planned to ship 6 print books and 4 CD sets (multiple CDs) to print program participants. That has now increased to 7 print books and 5 CD sets, because we’ve uncovered some more very precious recordings that would be wrong to exclude.
Barbra, each of these items a la carte will be an enormous amount more than what we’re charging now for the program. Thomas said “Add
value for the joy of it” and we’re taking that to heart. My hope is that this program will be talked about for decades to come as the thing that took a stand for value, and regenerated Thomas’s energy around underpromising and overdelivering.
Barbra: Sounds terrific Andrea, good luck with it. And thank you for doing this interview, I really enjoyed it!
Andrea: Thank YOU Barbra, for the fun interview!
This has been the final installment of my interview with Andrea. Would you like to do business coaching with Andrea? Click the banner below to learn more.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
hi Andrea and Barbra:
It’s really fun to read this. thanks to you both. I knew Thomas in a different time and in a different way, i.e., i only worked for him as a staff person for s VERY short time as director of training (i think that was the title) for Coach U. Anyway, it’s the job LBF took on after I quit. My one experience of working with him as boss was cleaning up his mess and I decided that wasn’t my idea of fun. The story: He was leading a class and no one would speak/participate. And he ended up telling them that if they aren’t going to speak, he would end the class. in fact, i think he said he would cancel it. When no one responded even to that, he hung up the phone. Then he called me to call the people in the class and have them apologize to him. I told him I wouldn’t do that; I gave him my opinion on what he had done; and I thought he owed THEM an apology. He was not happy with my reaction, and he wouldn’t consider my suggestion. We did talk for a while, but he wouldn’t relent and I refused to do what he wanted, so I think I quit on the spot. Too bad I couldn’t have modeled the approach I was suggesting for him: cool off, find out what was really going on and then create a solution. He WAS a piece of work.
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your experience Shirley. “Then he called me to call the people in the class and have them apologize to him” – I’m really glad you refused to do that!