My name is Andrea Haynes. I am married to Richard Haynes. He is a coach, an AMAZING coach. He was born to be a coach. He shines when he is coaching others. It fills his soul with the fullness of God when he helps others experience massive changes in their lives, especially when he helps others to see who they really are.

Let me share our journey of how we got here:

I’ve always believed in Richard and the possibilities that are within him of what he could accomplish. When we got married 23 years ago, one of the themes we had at our wedding was butterflies. It is because when I met him, I felt like he was a butterfly in a cocoon. I could feel and sense his potential and knew that he would emerge out of his cocoon and become a beautiful butterfly.

We got married in the year 2000 (which makes figuring out how many years we’ve been married very easy!) The first year we were married he became a student at the University of Calgary in Finance. In the five years he was in university we had 3 children. He got a job after 10 long months of graduating, with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a Facilities Manager. After about 4 years, he felt an itch to further his education and work towards getting a Master of Commerce. During this endeavor, curiosity got the better of him and he started looking at a job transfer that would land us on the other side of Canada. He flew home from his last day of classes in British Columbia, Royal Roads University, and the very next day we left to drive across the country with our 5 children in tote a few days before Christmas of 2011. Our moving truck arrived on Christmas day. We unpacked our Christmas tree first and our new adventure began!

After a few years in our new habitat, Richard started to get that itch again to get more schooling. When he was in his master’s program, he took a coaching course and he ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT! He decided he wanted to take Coach training and enrolled with the International Coaching Academy. Once he graduated, he started coaching people on the side of his full-time job. It became increasingly challenging to work full time, coach part-time and try to spend quality time with his family so he eventually put coaching on the back burner.

Richard and I for a few years kept feeling a pull to move back to Alberta, Canada where we had come from. That call became increasingly louder in 2018 as Richard’s sister was getting sicker and sicker with cancer. We felt a very strong prompt to move back but there were no openings for him to transfer with his job back in Alberta. We prayed about it as a family and decided it was time. Five days later, we had 2 of our teenagers on a plane to fly back to Alberta so they could start high school on time. Over the next two weeks, we prepared our home and put it on the market. It sold the very next day, and we were offered $20,000 over our list price. Two weeks after that we packed up and moved as much as we could in our Mini van and our cargo pod and headed back to Alberta. Richard stayed with us for a week. In that time, we moved into a rental and bought a house. Our possession date for our new house was 30 days. We bought a much smaller house than we had in Ontario with a much smaller mortgage as we still had no idea when Richard would be able to come and join us and when he would find a new job. This was a challenging time for our family. Our 5 children and I were living in Alberta and Richard was living in Ontario in our old home as we had a long possession date. He continued to work his job, so we had an income. We all ached to be reunited again. He started entertaining the idea of started coaching again but how he could he support his large family and even come close to replacing his income? It was so scary for him to consider. He took his role of being a provider for our family very seriously. He was almost making 6 figures in his current employment, and we had full health benefits.

We took possession of our new house in Alberta at the beginning of November. My children and I moved in as Richard was preparing our home back in Ontario for its new owners close to the end of November. After we lost possession of our Ontario house, Richard moved in with some friends of ours from our congregation and he continued to work his job. He drove home for Christmas and surprised our children by arriving a day early by driving through the night. When he arrived and came into our home our daughter Eden burst into tears. It was such a happy Christmas reunion. The best Christmas present we could have! Our family back together for the holidays.

During the month of November Richard flew down to California and where he took his second level of NLP training (Neurolinguistic Programming). He felt a massive shift here and he came to more realize his mission and his potential. This gave him the courage to take the leap of faith and give notice that he would be quitting his job at the end of January. To make this decision even harder for us, his current employer was offering buyouts for employees, but we would have to stick around for about 10 more months for that to happen. He was also told by a close family member that leaving his job was a bad decision and that if he failed, this family member would not be there to rescue us financially.

Richard quit his job at the end of January 2019 and became a self-employed coach and named his company Empower Potential Coaching. At first, we lived on the financial reserves that came from the sale of our house. After a few months that money ran out and we opened a line of credit to live on. We got within $3000 left until our line of credit would be maxed out before Richard started making an income. It took about 6 months for him to start making money. At one point, he asked me if he should get a part-time job, and I told him that I didn’t think it was a good idea because he would lose momentum and focus. So, he continued to work to build his coaching practice, and soon after that, he started to get clients.

In 2019, he made a total of about $25,000. At Christmas time that year, we received a Christmas basket from our congregation. I jokingly said to Richard, “Well, I guess we’re poor!” The next year that came was, you guessed it, 2020, and Covid hit in March, and the world shut down. Guess what happened to Richard though in the year of 2020? He replaced his income from his previous job. Within two years of starting his business, he replaced his old income. IT WAS ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE!

I am grateful for this incredible journey that God has coached us through. And the journey continues. I am excited at the possibility that lies ahead of us, for the transformation that is happening to our family and for the transformational work that he will be able to help others achieve. I have a feeling that miracles are in the making for our family and for those who choose to coach with Richard.