The Guru: The cost of Sally Anderson's self-improvement education
Thursday, 26 April 2018
Self-improvement guru Sally Anderson says she wants to help people, but some believe she does more harm than good. In part three of a four-part series, TONY WALL and STEVE KILGALLON explore how Anderson charges $50,000 for her coach training and culls people who challenge her.
Until a few weeks ago, Phil Holland was Sally Anderson's right hand man.
The Tauranga businessman would run workshops for Evolved Leadership — the latest iteration of Anderson's ever-morphing self empowerment coaching.
Holland would convince people, including friends, to fork out big money — $5000 for a three-day course and up to $50,000 for three months of 'immersion' training, at the end of which they too would become a coach.
He was happy to do it because he considered the education life changing, although he was starting to have concerns about Anderson's methods — she'd often leave coaches in tears.
But Holland's seniority in the organisation counted for nothing when he fell out of favour with the mercurial guru — he was cut from the Evolved community in February.
His crime?
He says he'd turned down a new position because she wanted to halve the retainer she'd initially offered.
VIDEO: Sally Anderson talks about how she wants 'stop people hurting'.
Anderson summonsed him to a 'clearing meeting', he says.
'It turned into this big 'we don't trust you any more'. About two days later Sonia [Thursby, the CEO] called to say I'm out.
'All those years of putting in time and money and effort — just cut.'
Anderson won't talk about the departure of Holland or others who've been kicked out of her peer community, to respect their privacy.
But she says their stated reasons for being removed are incorrect.
Anderson established Evolved Leadership, now called Evolve by Choice, after moving to the Bay of Plenty from Auckland around 2014, a string of failed coaching ventures behind her.
She and husband Roger Te Tai, who is also involved in her life coaching businesses, rent a palatial home on the outskirts of Tauranga.
We spoke to more than 10 people who'd been through Evolved training and were concerned by Anderson's methods.
Holland was not the first member of the management team to find himself on the outer.
A former Evolved CEO, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, says Anderson accused him of disloyalty when he sided with coaches who'd claimed they'd been mistreated.
'They came around to my private home and really degraded me and made me feel worthless.
'I thought 'I'm not going to put up with this crap'… and I resigned.
'I'm a really positive guy and I ended up suffering from depression near the end of working for Sally and then afterwards. My marriage split up over it.'
Another former coach, Angela Cheruseo, moved to Tauranga at Anderson's encouragement but was cut from the organisation after just 12 days, also accused of disloyalty.
Cheruseo, who just a year earlier had won Evolved's 'most transformed coach' award, is understood to be going to court to try to recover some of the money she spent on training.
Several people have also left the current immersion intake and are trying to get some of their money back.
Anderson would not be interviewed, but by email said if a coach leaves of their own volition, no refund applies and they know that before they begin.
We spoke to several graduates of the coach training who'd been kicked out or left — by one count, only about a dozen of the 80 or 90 coaches Anderson has trained remain in her peer community.
Anderson says that's incorrect — there are currently 30 coaches.
'In our entire history only five coaches have been asked to leave due to their dishonouring our agreement,' she says.
'Some coaches come in, get what they feel they need and move on, others stay longer. It's fine either way.'
Anderson says Evolved decisions are made collectively.
Once someone leaves the community, it's as if they don't exist, according to several former members.
They're immediately blocked from the group Facebook page and are told to remove any reference to being an Evolved coach from their communications and marketing.
Anderson says the business 'moves quickly to ensure we protect the integrity of our work' when someone leaves because they 'chose not to honour the standards'.
'Of course, they can continue to call themselves coaches … just not under the Evolved brand.'
When Holland left, it came as a shock to many because he had been seen as one of the faces of the organisation.
He runs a business coaching consultancy called Love Your Business and also has an escape game franchise.
Three of his friends who had taken out loans to do the immersion training quit the programme because of Holland's departure, even though they'd paid up front.
One, Deb Purdy, who manages Holland's escape room business, says he was treated like 's…'.
Purdy says she used to think of Anderson as 'busy, powerful, she seemed to care', but now believes she's not using the education she's teaching.
'It seems that as soon as you question something or get angry or have an emotion about something … it's 'oh, you're in default'.'
Anderson teaches that incidents in our youth — our 'defaults' — shape us negatively and trap us in certain behaviours.
Holland says that term was used a lot against people. 'If you question anything you're in your default.
'She was never in hers, everybody else was.'
Anderson did not respond directly to claims she misused the model but suggested they came from one or two disgruntled people.
Like many who enter Anderson's world, Holland met her when he was at a low point in his life, after a business venture had fallen over and he was thinking about just 'driving into a motorway barrier'.
He paid $30,000 to do Evolved's immersion programme, which involves four three-day residential clinics over about three months, and it changed his life.
He graduated in May, 2015 and started running one-day and three-day Evolved clinics.
There was confusion around who was staff and who were volunteers, he says.
'Sally's very good at manipulating you into giving a lot of your time for free.
The cost of the various courses kept climbing, he says, the immersion course now costing up to $50,000.
'Every year she'd plan to put it up by about five grand. She does her due diligence on the people — in this current [intake] some have paid 30 thousand some have paid 35, some 50.'
Anderson says prices are dictated by what people are prepared to pay. There is a 'significant variance' in what different coaching organisations charge, she says, and Evolved is in the middle.
'Some people choose to spend their funds on a boat or a holiday. We deal with people who see value in exploring the innermost reaches of themselves. Our work is also very personal and individual – some will have deeply transformational experiences and others won't.'
Holland says Anderson makes big promises about how much coaches can earn once they qualify — up to $25,000 a month — and names corporations which are supposedly lining up their staff to be coached.
'I've not seen any coach who's gone through it who's been able to sustain it as a full time business.'
Anderson says it's a coach's responsibility to generate their own clientele with support from the Evolved peer community structure.
'Those who have not met their coaching quota to earn what they wish to earn is by choice, not because it is not possible.'
Most recently, she has told trainees that they are likely to find work coaching Zespri staff.
In a rambling email in January — subject line 'F… are you sitting down!' — Anderson told her team that she had met with Zespri chief executive Dan Mathieson, who'd 'lapped up' her spiel and was on the verge of committing to putting a dozen of Zespri's global executive team through an Evolved cultural development programme.
(Zespri says Mathieson met with Anderson as part of scoping staff training needs. 'Following this, we decided not to use Evolved Leadership's services.')
Anderson says sometimes organisations decide to use Evolved, sometimes they don't. She sees questions about this as a 'commercial attack' orchestrated by competitors.
Holland and other former coaches we spoke to are critical of royalties that must be paid to Evolved once they start coaching clients.
Coaches are asked to sign a memorandum of understanding which requires them to hand over 30 per cent of their income.
They also have to follow a strict fee structure — charging clients a minimum of $9000 and up to $21,000 for six months of one-on-one sessions, which some feel is too expensive for most people.
Anderson says fees are mutually agreed when coaches sign the MOU and what other coaching firms charge is not her concern.
'You can pay $350,000 for a Mercedes or $35,000 for a Nissan but you don't ask Mercedes why they charge more than most people can afford.'
Holland says he's relieved to be out of the Evolved management team and feels terrible that he introduced friends and associates who lost money.
For him, the most frustrating thing is that everyone in the Evolved community is expected to live by the education, but in his view the leader doesn't.
'Her favourite saying is 'I'm coming from love', but there's no love there. I was supposed to be her right hand man and just because I put my family first and couldn't do that role for the amount of money she was offering, all of a sudden I'm out of everything.'