As an executive business coach, Meredith Eicher is not prone to sugarcoating the truth. Read Meredith Eicher’s insights in Voices of Influence. “I’ll shove you in the back, I’ll put my hand on your shoulder, I’ll call it as I see it,” she says. Nor is she judgmental. “I’ve walked in their shoes. I understand the challenges they face. I understand the triumphs and the failures. And I think that has served me well. Even the worst thing that can happen to you can serve you down the line.” That combination—directness and empathy, accountability and compassion—is what her clients come for, even if they can’t put it into words. “Something is keeping them up at night. They begin to realize they’re stagnant. They want to grow and they’re not sure what’s holding them back.” There’s no real distinction between business and life coaching because there is no great divide between a person’s professional and personal life, she says. “The human being shows up to the table first,” she says, “and they’re dragging a suitcase with them—and it has a whole bunch of junk in that trunk.” In the 1980s, as a college graduate with a background in political science and accounting, Eicher was driven by “a fire in her belly” and an ambitious vision that stretched as far as the Governor’s Mansion. But life had other ideas. Eicher was incarcerated for five months in 1990 on a felony conviction in connection with the failure of a family business. After that fall from grace, employment was elusive. She took a job as a short-order cook and began the slow process of rebuilding. Then a restaurant customer offered her a nominal monthly fee to balance his checkbook. A friend loaned her a computer and software. One client became two. Two became many. Over 20 years of hard work, she built a thriving accounting practice with more than 650 clients. But she woke up one night and thought, “What am I doing? I’m a people person!” The upside of accounting had never been the math. Clients would talk about their people problems, their business frustrations, the things keeping them up at night. Eicher was drawn to all of it—the human stuff, not the numbers. At the suggestion of a friend, she reluctantly attended a personal development workshop. The facilitator asked probing, thoughtful questions that changed the course of her life. A simple but powerful idea stuck with her: “Suffering is optional.” She realized she could choose something new that she’d be passionate about. The transition didn’t happen overnight. Eicher took a coaching course and began volunteering with the workshop organization, eventually becoming a trainer and facilitator herself. Then came a call from Vistage, a worldwide executive coaching and peer group organization looking for contractors. The model was simple but not easy: Find your own clients, convince them to join and launch your group. One by one, she built her first group of eight. “If it were not for those members who took a chance on the idea” she says, “I’d never be where I am today.” Today she’s a confidant of regional business leaders, facilitating monthly CEO peer groups and working with private clients from companies with five to 1,500 employees. Eicher is passionate about the IM Foundation, which brings social and emotional learning to children in underserved communities. She is active in the Parole Project, which advocates for second chances, and personally sponsors women coming out of incarceration who are working to stay sober and rebuild their lives. The through line in all of it is a belief she has carried since that workshop—that people cannot always see their own possibilities. That it sometimes takes someone else to plant a seed or to point out blind spots. “When people say ‘You’re too busy,’ I say ‘I’m doing what I love.’ I’m getting to give back, to share experience, to share strength and to share my business acumen. I’m a perseverance type,” she says. “But I have extreme humility. And I’m just grateful.” ...read more read less