Coach Spotlight on… Andrea J. Lee Multiple Streams of Coaching Income www.multiplestreamsofcoachingincome.com andrea@andreajlee.com How did you discover coaching? After working in executive recruitment and running my own recruitment firm in Calgary, I finally got disillusioned after sending yet another quality person to a company that treated them less than well. Feeling ineffective, I decided to take a sabbatical and either regain focus or do something new. Surfing the Internet, I discoverd the Coaching Scoop, and Thomas Leonard's website with its photos of a cute white dog and a very tanned man. At the bottom of the site were two words: "Say Hello." Don't ask me why, but I did. From there, I decided to volunteer as a transcriptionist for the Scoop, figuring I'd learn what "this coaching thang" was all about while lending a hand. Within a few months, I was offered the opportunity to help out 'on the payroll' and then a couple more months later, I woke up in a daze and discovered I was now General Manager of CoachVille. I guess you could say it was a whirlwind romance. What personal growth work did you do to help you become successful as a coach? I still consider myself on the path of personal development, and defy any coach to disagree. My mental and emotional conditioning is something that I treat even better than my physical fitness sometimes…I work out every day on the former, but not the latter! In particular this year I've worked on my resilience quotient, or what I call 'courage under fire,' as well as cultivating laughter. I heard a story once about something called "Rule #6" which is "Quit taking yourself so !@#$ing seriously." This may sound corny but laughter, to me, is the sound of love. So I work on that quite a bit. What coach training have you had? I'm a student in Schools of Coaching, or Schools of CoachVille, as they're now called. In particular, I've focussed on skills and aptitudes in the School of Personal Development, the School of Small Business and the School of Ecommerce, and I work with several mentor coaches to go deeper in each of these areas in a one-on-one and small group environment. Having had so many great mentors, I think I've been spoiled for other kinds of learning environments! Who has coached you? As you may have guessed, my first coach was Thomas Leonard, which was a lot of fun some days and quite uncomfortable on others. One of my favorite moments was when he said, in an Instant Message conversation, "You seem like you have a Governor on." To which I had to say "What's a Governor?" Turns out it's a thing that is installed on school buses that prevents the driver from driving faster than a certain preset speed. So I guess rephrasing the question, it's something like "Why are you limiting your own success?" It was a great eye opener. For the full article click here |