What I Didn't Know About Tina Forsyth

A cool upshot of rooming with your own business partner for a week can be unexpected unearthings of cool stories.  Tina Forsyth and I (at left, in Sedona, AZ, after a short hike) have been working together for five years now (some of you may know of her work as Assistant GM of CoachVille until 2003.) 

While chatting with Ken Winston Caine tonight...we discovered that she was very probably one transcription away from becoming General Manager of CoachVille.  (And that Ken himself once got dissed by Thomas like a 'fly being swatted away.') How hilarious!

Let me explain. First, re Tina, in 2000 when I was looking for a career change from my Executive Recruitment business, I went on the internet and volunteered for a transcription position in the Coaching Scoop.  My work there led to Thomas Leonard offering me a role as GM.   The only reason I was there to 'offer' that position to, was because I had paid special attention to the way the word Sebastapol was spelled in a realinterview.com transcription.

Tina had been volunteering for that same project but hated the transcription and so only did one.  Little did we know that learning to type would lead to where we are now, eh? LOL.

On Ken's story, I didn't know this but apparently one of Thomas' website within the Coach U website was something that had a ton of PDF files on it.  And he had various payment options for each PDF.  Some for pay, some free, and a clunky/funny/old-fashioned-seeming-now way of collecting payment.

Ken's thoughts were something like, 'Tons of people are ripping Thomas off here...'

And later, at a millenium tour, wondering whether Thomas would be interested in writing a book for a publisher Ken was with, getting swatted away with a few words "I already have a publisher."  And Ken of course still simply loving Thomas for it.

Stories...the fabric of our lives and our shared history...

Comments

[ken winston caine]

I'll add to this.

When I found that Thomas had e-books and e-reports on a "pay by honor system" on the Coach U site in '96 or '97, I downloaded a few and put a check in an envelope and mailed it to him, as he requested on the site.

I may have downloaded five reports and sent in a check for four because I wasn't so impressed with one of them. But that wasn't the deal. You were supposed to send in a check for any of them you downloaded. I felt a little guilty.

And I wondered, "How many people are really mailing in checks? Doesn't the guy know about e-commerce solutions?" I'm not sure if PayPal had started yet, but there were other similar companies back then, as well as traditional merchant accounts that you could use online to collect credit card payments. So I emailed Thomas. Said something like, "I think you'd be more satisfied with the results if you implemented online payment for these reports." And I pointed him to a couple online payment services.

He emailed me back. Said, "I'm quite satisfied with the results I'm getting."

I remember going, "Huh?" when I read the email.

Dawned on me later--years later--that Thomas probably *wanted* people to "rip off" his downloads, feel like they were getting something really valuable on the sly, and as a result, devour it and start paying more attention to Thomas and Coach U and so on. The guy was a brilliant marketer. This could have just been a sly but wise marketing method.

Story 2: I was heading both the Men's Health and Daybreak book imprints for Rodale and had it in my head that Thomas would be a perfect Daybreak author for us. After all, our readers were very much into self-help and self-improvement and I thought the timing was perfect to introduce Thomas's ideas and the precepts of coaching to the bookbuying world. And especially if we did it by direct mail. We had a reputation for selling hundreds of thousands of books when we took on a title. Sometimes millions of copies.

I thought Thomas would recognize this as a very good opportunity.

Dreamed up a potential book title and concept that I thought he might love based on everything I'd read of his and learned about him and about coaching the previous couple years.

So when I got his email inviting me to meet him on the Milennium Tour, I jumped at the chance.

Drove a couple hours to Phillie, enjoyed his talk, and the Powerpoints and the audience interaction every 15 minutes or so. Took a ton of notes. And then went up to meet him afterwards. Introduced myself, and started to give him a 1-minute summary of what I had in mind. He sort of rolled his eyes and acted bothered, like I was trying to sell him something. After maybe 30 seconds he interrupted me, swatted the back of his hand in the air and said, "I already have a publisher."

The tone was like, "Go AWAY. NEXT!"

And he turned to the next person waiting to meet him.

kwc

[Andy Wibbels]

This whole thing needs an 'E! True Hollywood Story' or 'VH1 Behind the Music' special.