The first two times I met with CoachAccountable users it was while I was abroad: John Kentworthy early last year in Singapore, and David Frank Gomes a few months ago in Vancouver.

This time I had the luxury of a CoachAccountable user coming to me, and in my own country no less!  Kelly Talamo was in town from New Orleans for the day, and wanted to make a morning of meeting me at a coffee shop in my neighborhood.

In early September Kelly emailed me the following in response to CA’s birthday announcement:

Thanks for sharing this killer news.
I’m so grateful for you and your system.  It’s totally been a gift for me.

My business continues to grow — even more than when we spoke last. I’m about to swap out some old clients for new ones and also about to bring one of my clients into a team environment.  I’ve mentored a gal who’s becoming the “lead coach” in one of my companies and when I walk out the door they are committed to their own Coach Accountable system.  :)

So business is great for me — but will be even better for you!  Having said all of that –  I have a confession (of sorts) to make. That is — as well as I’m doing in my coaching and consulting — I’m not where I should be (knowledge-wise or practically) on Coach Accountable.  I’m so busy growing people – and creating solutions for my clients – I’m sort of “neglecting me.”  Not totally — but in this area.

So – I had a special request that I’d like to run by you.

I may be coming to Denver to spend time with a friend — and I was wondering if you and I could perhaps meet at a coffee shop – where ever you are and spend about 2-3 hours where you could walk me through some of this. I know this is kind of ‘special treatment’ – and I’d be happy to pay for your time — but it’s also how I learn the best.

Would you consider that?

It’s always a treat to meet the folks who use my system, so I was immediately keen.  As I’ve mentioned before, I can’t buy market research better than experiences like this.

So we made a date, and about two weeks ago spent what turned out to be a delightful four hours of hanging out.  Kelly has made good and regular use of the system in his nearly-a-year of working with it, but has really just scratched the surface by employing only Session Notes and basic Actions.

So at his prompting stemming from a desire to really master the system, we toured around on his laptop through all the things CoachAccountable is capable of.  He was delighted to learn about how Engagement Reports work (never bothered to click that button before), how Client Exports work (never bothered to click that button before), how Appointment Scheduling works (never bothered to set that up), how Happenings Reports work (never noticed them before) and even how Metrics work (never bothered to consider how he might fit that into his coaching).  Even the existence of Action Projects made a welcome bit of news for this veteran user.

Clearly I’m doing a rubbish job of bringing new features to the attention of established users.

My favorite part of our time spent together was when Kelly described his clients’ experience of CA:

My clients, they ask me “What’s the deal with this CoachAccountable guy?”  I say ‘whaddaya mean?’  They say “He’s all over me.  I have an action that’s due at 6pm, I rush home to get it done, I mark it done at 6:30.  CoachAccountable says ‘hey great job, but you’re 30 minutes late.’

I tell ’em, “Oh yeah, he’ll do that.  I may be a nice guy and lenient, but CoachAccountable IS LAW.”  CA has taken on a personality with my people, it’s like good cop, bad cop.

CoachAccountable is law, goodness that tickles me.  Having CoachAccountable be the hard-nosed bringer of authority and integrity has become so central to his style that when we were setting up his White Label branding, Kelly opted specifically to NOT rename the system to something else: “Yeah, let’s keep it CoachAccountable.  I don’t want my clients to think that CA is backing off in any way.”

The time passed quickly and Kelly even bought lunch: not a bad reward for a morning of being told your creation is awesome and collecting a boatload of user perspective.  One particularly actionable bit came in an email from one of his clients that he shared with me, wherein it was suggested it would be nice to see the comments for a given Action from within the Actions tab, rather than go fish it out on the Stream tab.  The next day I added little comment icons next to client items which put you a click away from the conversation about a respective item.  A nice touch for sure.

Kelly ended our time together with a request to be coached by me.  I usually coach programmers to be great at the business of contract work: having walked the walk myself it’s the professional realm in which I am eminently qualified to do coaching.  I hadn’t considered coaching coaches before this point in time, but upon being asked I realized that I am qualified to do that as well.

So for grins I’ll be coaching an already powerful and successful coach to do what he does even better.  As he put it:

I want you to know that I’m very much into this — as mastering the CoachAccountable system will not only benefit me personally, but will benefit every client I have. And that in turn, should benefit you. So in effect, I see this as the Trifecta Win! We all win.

Well reasoned indeed.  I suspect from our work together to come I’ll get a lot of insight into how to train a broader audience of coaches to be better at what they do.

Thanks Kelly for coming to visit, here’s to inspired collaboration!

Kelly and I agree we can do better on a picture together. The fellow patron at the coffee shop we troubled for the job wasn’t the most savvy photographer.