Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / From surviving terminal cancer to thriving coach, Tom LeNoble’s journey of Resilience

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From surviving terminal cancer to thriving coach, Tom LeNoble’s journey of Resilience · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:05
  I like to say I retired being retired to be inspired.
• 0:10
  Today's guest is Tom Lenoble, a serial entrepreneur who transforms setbacks into a legacy of impact.
• 0:18
  After a record setting career with icons like MCI, Palm, Walmart.com and a ground floor role at Facebook, Tom became a globally recognized executive coach, bestselling author and CEO of the Academy for Coaching Excellence.
• 0:37
  His story is entrepreneurial gold, a testament to turning adversity into reinvention.
• 0:43
  Buckle in because in this episode you'll learn how to turn the toughest failures into fuel for reinvention.
• 0:50
  The daily execution habits that separate doers from dreamers and how you can build them yourself.
• 0:56
  Why embracing risk is a non negotiable for entrepreneurs.
• 0:59
  Plus Tom's take on the Watch this mindset and the actionable lessons behind his new book, My Life in Business Suits.
• 1:07
  If you're looking to be inspired to get real strategies you can apply today and to hear wisdom from someone who's helped build and scale industries, stay tuned.
• 1:17
  As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.
• 1:23
  All right, Tom Lenoble, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
• 1:27
  It's great to be with you, Dave.
• 1:29
  I've been looking forward to this.
• 1:31
  Absolutely.
• 1:32
  We've been looking forward to it as well.
• 1:35
  So Tom, you've had quite an interesting career and then entrepreneurial journey and you've, you've become an entrepreneur, very successful entrepreneur later in life.
• 1:44
  But that's after an incredibly successful corporate career with some, some phenomenal companies within Silicon Valley and and elsewhere.
• 1:55
  Can you just walk us through your, your backstory and how you got to where you are?
• 2:00
  Yes, I'd love to.
• 2:02
  For your viewers, Dave, I like to say I retired being retired to be inspired.
• 2:08
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• 2:13
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• 2:46
  So if you're ready to partner with a 3PL that actually gets your brand, visit EasyDC3PL.com had this great corporate career.
• 2:56
  I was one of the leaders of customer service at mci.
• 2:59
  Some of your viewers will remember they're a long distance company that broke up all the bells and helped us be able to dial 1 for long distance then.
• 3:08
  I was the head of customer service@walmart.com in their early days and spent many days in Bentonville, Arkansas learning fascinating things.
• 3:17
  And then I was the ran global service operations for Palm.
• 3:23
  The Palm Pilot Trio, people that are now part of hp, got a phone call at my desk one day from a recruiter from a little company called Facebook.
• 3:33
  Didn't know who they were because they were only in colleges.
• 3:36
  Thanked them and hung up the phone.
• 3:37
  And a buddy called me and said, I referred you to Facebook and you didn't talk to them.
• 3:42
  Well, long story short, which it's a great story, I interviewed with Mark Zuckerberg when he was 19 and ended up going to work for Facebook and setting up their initial customer operations, user operations, and some other things for
• 3:57
  the company.
• 3:58
  I then ran global service operations and became the chief support officer of a company that's now the backbone of the Geek Squad.
• 4:09
  I worked at a dating site that was purchased by Match.com and managed that merger.
• 4:15
  Went into a number of startups as the COO or VP of hr, where boards would send me in with a perceived problem, never was the real problem.
• 4:24
  And then I fell in love, got married, and traveled the world.
• 4:29
  But I knew I had more to give.
• 4:31
  I knew I had learned a lot of wisdom through those experiences.
• 4:35
  And as a result, today I'm a coach.
• 4:38
  I'm a professional speaker, I'm an author of a new book, My Life in Business Suits, Hospital Gowns and High Heels.
• 4:46
  And I also have my own podcast, Opening Pathways.
• 4:50
  And I'm the CEO of the Academy for Coaching Excellence, an ICF Level 2 certified coaching academy.
• 4:57
  It's 22 years old and we train coaches all around the world.
• 5:03
  That's what I'm doing today.
• 5:07
  Okay, wow.
• 5:08
  So quite an impressive resume and an illustrious career.
• 5:13
  So we'll get into some of the entrepreneurial stuff, which sounds really fascinating.
• 5:18
  Just go back to the beginning in your career throughout the corporate world, you know, with so many high level roles and it seemed like you were someone that was sought after and, and really brought in to, to get
• 5:29
  results and turn things around and, and you know, scale companies.
• 5:33
  Like, how did you get to that level?
• 5:35
  Well, I'll, I'll tell you, Dave, it started out interesting.
• 5:39
  I was actually working in a private psychiatric hospital running a lab.
• 5:44
  And I got a part time job at MCI to make some extra money because I wanted to buy a new car.
• 5:51
  And it just was like a match from the beginning.
• 5:54
  And I quickly was asked to be full time and then promoted to supervisor.
• 6:00
  I quit the lab manager job.
• 6:02
  I was assigned at a special project of only 27 people from around the country to go to corporate.
• 6:09
  I came back after nine months and then was tapped to go lead the department that ran the program that we were doing corporate.
• 6:17
  I was on a fast track.
• 6:19
  I ended up going and running and opening their first commercial customer service center for the company.
• 6:25
  And then I ended up back at the where I started as a part time rep as the director of that contact center over about 400, 500 people and then back to corporate and was leading customer service along with
• 6:39
  a team around the country.
• 6:41
  And what I haven't shared with your viewers is during everything I'm telling you, I've had two life threatening illnesses, one I was told was terminal and I've lived with metastatic cancer the last 13 years and I'm still here.
• 6:53
  And while I was at mci, everything stopped.
• 6:57
  In fact, I had a doctor tell me for the first time of three, you have six months to live.
• 7:02
  Do you want to spend it at your desk or doing something you enjoy?
• 7:07
  And I ended up going on disability, giving up a career that was near and dear to me.
• 7:12
  One of the hardest things I've ever done.
• 7:14
  Well, about six years later, after I was told this was the best things are going to get.
• 7:19
  There's a thing about me when you tell me I can't do something or something's impossible, I have this reaction that's sort of like, watch this.
• 7:27
  And I decided to go back to work on my own.
• 7:30
  And I entered the Internet revolution during the dot com days, having missed the whole Internet revolution and got a job at a position at a Internet startup as the director of customer service and satisfaction.
• 7:46
  I knew I had a lot to learn, but I knew I was very bright and I did.
• 7:50
  Which led me to other startups which just started the career again, which led me to Walmart.com to lead customer service there.
• 7:59
  Spending a lot of time in Bentonville, Arkansas.
• 8:02
  Talk about fascinating things that you learn in that company.
• 8:05
  That one thing led to the other and it built on it.
• 8:09
  I went to Palm primarily because I wanted to expand my international experience and then Facebook.
• 8:15
  I just took a big risk.
• 8:17
  My whole business today is about risk, resilience and reinvention.
• 8:21
  And it was one of those times I just took a big risk.
• 8:23
  Left my office, my corporate staff of 14 traveling around the world and ended up in a room with a bunch of 20 somethings old enough to be everyone's father.
• 8:34
  And it went on from there.
• 8:36
  And then after I Took the break when I fell in.
• 8:38
  Like I married and traveled.
• 8:40
  I just knew that throughout my whole experience of my corporate life, illness, and some other things that went on in my life, that it was time for me to share more and bring more wisdom and teach what I
• 8:52
  had learned.
• 8:56
  Okay, wow.
• 8:58
  So a lot to unpack there and appreciate all that context and that, that explanation.
• 9:03
  Let's just go back to the.
• 9:05
  So you start as you started MCIS as a part time job because you want to buy a car, turns out to be a perfect fit.
• 9:13
  You scale up through the company and get promotion after promotion and opportunity after.
• 9:18
  What was it like?
• 9:20
  Did you just have this natural aptitude for business and getting results within the organization that it just, you know, just took off?
• 9:30
  Well, I think there were a few things.
• 9:32
  One, I love people and two, I have a passion for customers.
• 9:37
  And I think when you put those two things together, there's been a number of times that I've been in charge in my career of Both service and HR and CEOs have come to me to say, why are these
• 9:48
  two disparate things together?
• 9:50
  And it's because they're both about a customer.
• 9:52
  One's internal, one's external.
• 9:55
  So I think that I took those skills of being able to communicate well, that I cared about people, that I cared about developing people, growing people.
• 10:04
  I cared about taking care of customers.
• 10:07
  I'm a very bright man about business.
• 10:10
  That was just, I think, something that I had and put them together and it allowed me to do more and more and more.
• 10:18
  And I'm thrilled that I was able to.
• 10:20
  It's been great for me.
• 10:23
  Okay.
• 10:23
  Love that.
• 10:24
  And yeah, clearly, right.
• 10:26
  Because this show is all about entrepreneurship.
• 10:28
  And every entrepreneur, I'm sure, can attest to how critical it is to take care of your customers and to deliver outstanding value.
• 10:37
  So it sounds like you had that from the very beginning.
• 10:40
  Let's go to the first time that you were told you had six months to live.
• 10:47
  I mean, what, when that happened, I mean, what was going through your mind?
• 10:53
  Well, I remember that when it happened, I had this feeling and I went to my car after learning about it and I looked in the rear view mirror and I said to the illness, if you want to live
• 11:07
  with me, welcome to the party.
• 11:10
  If you think you're going to take me out, you're in for the fight of your life.
• 11:14
  And I went back to work and I kept working until the doctor suggested that I might want to think differently.
• 11:23
  And it was very, very hard.
• 11:26
  But what I did is I decided to Approach the illness somewhat like I would approach a new job.
• 11:36
  I'm a builder and a creator.
• 11:38
  Once things are in maintenance mode, I'm ready to go do something new.
• 11:42
  And so I just applied some of the skills, some of the entrepreneurial skills that I was using in work towards my own health.
• 11:51
  And I think that's really what happened.
• 11:55
  I created what I call the healing wheel where I was at the center of it and all the things that I needed, from doctors to acupuncture to massage to different kind of things I was using to try and
• 12:06
  stay well.
• 12:07
  But I was running the show and I think that's one thing that have happened throughout this is I remain in charge of my own destiny and try and make sure that that's what's happening, that I'm doing something that
• 12:20
  I know speaks to me and sings to my heart that I'm making a difference in the world.
• 12:26
  Okay, so you get this diagnosis and clearly you had such a.
• 12:35
  Towards the word, you said, you know, again, if you want to live with me, welcome to the party and if you think you're going to take me out, you know, think again.
• 12:43
  Right.
• 12:43
  And so talk more about applying this, your creativity as an entrepreneur to this illness.
• 12:50
  So you talked about the healing will.
• 12:52
  Okay.
• 12:52
  And being in charge of your destiny and understanding you're, you're accountable and responsible for your results.
• 12:58
  What, what other types of creative things did you apply to?
• 13:01
  I think as an entrepreneur, especially in startups, there are a few things that you must do.
• 13:08
  One is you need to acquire information and learn as much as you can.
• 13:11
  And often I like to say your to do list today, if you didn't get it done, forget about it because you have a new one tomorrow.
• 13:18
  But you're wearing many hats and you're learning many different things.
• 13:22
  And so I applied that in the same way to illness.
• 13:26
  I learned everything I could.
• 13:28
  I started looking at it from an entrepreneurial way of how do I get ahead of this?
• 13:34
  How do I learn about it?
• 13:35
  What new things can I do with it?
• 13:37
  And looked at it of information is key to me.
• 13:42
  What can I learn?
• 13:43
  I think the other thing about me that's been clear along the line, Dave, is I'm a big believer in not living in what has happened.
• 13:52
  I work with so many clients today that live in the past and there are no do overs.
• 13:57
  When we live in the past, we're missing out on the present.
• 13:59
  So I think just as these events happen in our life, whether we lose jobs, whether we lose somebody we love, even a pet, a relationship A job, whatever it may be, getting present about what's happening, learning from what
• 14:13
  happened, but moving forward in the present is critical.
• 14:17
  So I looked at it and this is happening to me.
• 14:19
  Me.
• 14:19
  How do I make the best of it that I can?
• 14:21
  What can I do with it?
• 14:23
  And I'll tell you, I just never believed that I couldn't not survive.
• 14:30
  Wow.
• 14:31
  Love that.
• 14:32
  All right, so like, let's.
• 14:34
  Let's go to.
• 14:35
  So you detailed all these amazing corporate experiences and roles that you had, and then you get married, you travel the world, and then you retired from being retired to get inspired.
• 14:48
  So let's talk about that, that part of the journey.
• 14:50
  What, like, what made you.
• 14:52
  After all this success and being retired and traveling and being in love and all that, what made you say, okay, now I'm going to start this, this coaching practice?
• 15:03
  Well, I took coaching back in the late 90s, before coaching was even a thing.
• 15:08
  In fact, I used it in my corporate life, but I couldn't call it coaching because they thought you were working with this after work softball team or something.
• 15:16
  And, you know, it fell under employee development.
• 15:19
  But I was using the skills of coaching.
• 15:22
  And what's interesting about it is the coursework I took by our founder at the academy is the same coursework we teach today.
• 15:30
  Before there was an academy, before coaching was an $18 billion industry.
• 15:36
  And so I used those skills.
• 15:38
  So I had been a coach throughout.
• 15:40
  And I knew through coaching again, my life is really about service to others.
• 15:46
  And through the coaching practice, I'm able to be able to be of service to others and help them move forward to find their goals and dreams and sometimes find out what they really came here to do.
• 15:58
  So that's what started it.
• 16:00
  And I spoke all the time when I was in my corporate life, so that was a natural for me.
• 16:05
  So things just started falling into place.
• 16:07
  Place.
• 16:08
  And it became what I was doing today is sort of built on top of itself, of taking all.
• 16:13
  I had learned a lot of my experiences, a lot of things I wanted to express that I couldn't and created my own brand around it.
• 16:22
  Okay.
• 16:23
  All right.
• 16:24
  And so, so many times we see, like with the entrepreneurs that we interview on the show, sometimes, like the first business fails, second business fails.
• 16:36
  Maybe they get it right third or fourth time right, they have all this experience or even if it's the first business, there's this intense period of struggle and setbacks, and it looks like they're not going to make it
• 16:46
  at one time before they finally break through.
• 16:48
  So you kind of had a different Path to where you had this incredibly successful corporate career.
• 16:55
  You know, granted you had different types of diversity, but that when you finally started the business, did it, I mean, because you were so experienced and you were accustomed to us and had learned so much from all these
• 17:06
  great organizations, it sounds like things just took off right away for you and you never look back.
• 17:12
  Well, I think, you know, you say, well, you have to still put a lot of hard work in it.
• 17:16
  There are still setbacks.
• 17:17
  I think it's your mindset of what you do with those setbacks.
• 17:21
  So the entrepreneurs I know that have failed become some of the most marketable people because they've been through that.
• 17:29
  Let's face it, if you look at the statistics, very few make it that start startups and end up being successful.
• 17:37
  What you learn through that process can make you more resilient, which is one thing I love talking about, which is taking risks, being resilient and reinventing yourself.
• 17:48
  So I think for me it became really an exercise of how do you keep moving forward Again?
• 17:55
  One of the things I like to teach and work with people on is I find so many people living in the past and there are no do overs.
• 18:03
  And this applies to your question in that whatever those setbacks are, whatever those disappointments or what we perceive as failures, how do we look at them as a resilience moment of getting back up, moving forward and most importantly
• 18:21
  growing from it and reinventing ourselves.
• 18:24
  Or we could choose to hang out in the oh, poor me, what happened to me?
• 18:30
  Who did what to me thinking we're going to have a do over.
• 18:34
  There are no do overs.
• 18:36
  So I think the key here, especially for entrepreneurs I know that are successful, is to keep moving forward, keep iterating, keep trying, keep looking for new ways and let your failures or perceived failures be a gift.
• 18:55
  Okay, love that.
• 18:56
  Let's dive more into that.
• 18:58
  So I mean you're is particularly with your coaching.
• 19:02
  Resilience is, is really a key area that you focus on and clearly it's something that entrepreneurs really need.
• 19:10
  And you know Ari, I think in one of the previous episodes too, so I think the theme was resilience is better than the perfect business plan to have in terms of what you're going to encounter when you get
• 19:20
  out there.
• 19:21
  But can you just talk more about like the people you work with and the, the, the, the, the strategies I guess that you, you teach with your coaching and how, how important resilience is and I guess some of
• 19:36
  the key challenges that, that you see people having.
• 19:39
  Well, I primarily work with CEO their executive teams or executive directors and their teams of nonprofits.
• 19:50
  Well, one thing we know, if you are certainly CEOs and founders know, it's kind of lonely at the top.
• 19:57
  And the days of the CEO being a figurehead are over.
• 20:03
  You're now part of a team, and leadership becomes much more important and coaching becomes much more important how we develop people and create opportunity.
• 20:12
  It will become even more so as Gen Z and the Zoomers move more into the workforce, as they're doing today.
• 20:18
  Because just like every generation, there are different demands.
• 20:22
  No matter how much we want to discount them, they are real and they will happen.
• 20:25
  Every generation has them.
• 20:27
  And so I think we're called to be a different kind of leader.
• 20:31
  And resilience comes from often at this level of people that simply have no other people to talk to.
• 20:38
  I also lead a coaching group with just CEOs.
• 20:42
  I have 12 or 14 CEOs in the group.
• 20:44
  They're all from different industries, different companies, different kind of everything.
• 20:49
  And we have cross functional discussions.
• 20:51
  Well, we also do things like talk about grief, we talk about success, we talk about leadership, we talk about experiential stuff that goes on in real life that affects us in our workplace.
• 21:07
  So all of these things come together to build resilience.
• 21:11
  Then I have people that are really interesting.
• 21:13
  They're ending nearing the end of their career, but they don't want to stop working.
• 21:18
  And often what happens is they speak to, I want to do something that I never got to do.
• 21:24
  And what I find frequently happens is either someone told them along the way, you can't be that you can't do that, or there's some structure of knowing they have that they can't follow that dream.
• 21:37
  And it's so exciting to be able to dismantle that and help them see those possibilities.
• 21:45
  I work from something in my practice I like to call the haystack method.
• 21:50
  What that is, is we often say it's like finding a needle in a haystack.
• 21:56
  Well, I believe you have your own answers.
• 21:59
  I don't you feel like it's finding a needle in a haystack.
• 22:03
  My job is to hold the space to help you clear the hay so you can see your answers.
• 22:14
  Okay, love that.
• 22:18
  All right, so.
• 22:19
  And one of the things you mentioned there, that's something so many of my previous guests have talked about that probably other people looking from the outside in wouldn't necessarily think is talking about how lonely it is as a
• 22:34
  entrepreneur, as a CEO, and kind of.
• 22:37
  It's tough to find people that really Relate to the pressure and your mind racing and all the things you have to keep track of and people that depend on you and et cetera, et cetera.
• 22:48
  So I mean, can you talk about that from, from, from your perspective?
• 22:53
  Because I'm, I'm sure that's an issue your clients have and how, I guess how you help them deal with.
• 22:59
  Yes, and I think I have it as a CEO today, except that I like to practice what I preach, so to speak.
• 23:05
  Because I think the idea is for us to dismantle this idea that you have to be alone.
• 23:11
  One of my favorite stories about a client that called me who said I need you immediately and was somewhat in a panic and he shared this story with me that he was thinking about leaving his company because he
• 23:24
  had created this open door policy and that he had basically rolled out the red carpet for anybody to come visit him in the office.
• 23:32
  He had standing hours that he put on his calendar for people just to drop in and on and on with these stories about people coming to him and they weren't, and what was he doing wrong and he was
• 23:44
  failing as a leader and he had no one to talk to about it.
• 23:47
  And he even felt vulnerable about going to the HR people to about talk, talk about it.
• 23:51
  Certainly vulnerable to talk to his board.
• 23:54
  Well, I listened to the story and I remember telling John, this is quite simple.
• 23:57
  John, have you ever thought about getting up out of your chair and going outside of your office instead of waiting for people to come to you?
• 24:08
  Go out and be a real human and go see them.
• 24:12
  Go out and be amongst people, go sit with them and ask them what they're working on.
• 24:16
  Go be someone who is an equal to them that just happens to be the CEO of the company.
• 24:22
  So it's mind boggling to him.
• 24:25
  So I think this loneliness at the top requires us to do a few things.
• 24:29
  One, work with peers that we have other CEOs like the group I lead, where we can talk about these things and some of the common things we have that you really can't talk about how you're feeling with your
• 24:40
  company, even your team sometime, because as the CEO, you're not supposed to be that type of person.
• 24:47
  Allow yourself to be human and actually show that you're human in your workforce and with your employees, to let them see that side of you that you're reachable, touchable, and discover some of the magic that will bring to
• 25:01
  your position and what you're doing.
• 25:03
  And also I think there's a dose of reality that you took this position, you're the leader.
• 25:08
  Your title means something.
• 25:10
  No matter how much you might know someone, how much you feel you're getting close to them and they can open up to you, the power of your title still means something.
• 25:19
  So I think it's a good dose of reality, a good dose of reaching across to peers and talking with other people that are like you.
• 25:28
  And also being a little bit more human and showing that you are your personality, who you are as a person, and get out with people and expose how you feel about that.
• 25:41
  Okay.
• 25:43
  All right.
• 25:43
  And Tom, let's talk about book.
• 25:46
  So your book is.
• 25:49
  What is the title of your book?
• 25:51
  My Life in Business.
• 25:52
  Suits, which we've talked about.
• 25:55
  Hospital gowns, which we've talked about, and high heels.
• 25:58
  If you want to know about the high heels, you need to read the book.
• 26:01
  But trust me, it's worth the read.
• 26:05
  The purpose of this book for the reader, it's a memoir that crosses over into self help, but the real purpose for the reader is who we are today.
• 26:16
  Who we are today are as the sum parts for all those that we've been throughout the course of our life.
• 26:25
  Well, there's parts of our life that we may keep private, we may think was outrageous, we might even have a little shame for or that somebody just might not understand.
• 26:36
  But the truth is, all those parts together made you who you are today.
• 26:42
  And without all those parts, you wouldn't be who you are today.
• 26:46
  And to celebrate those parts, and in doing so, you're actually being of service to other people because they can celebrate those parts too and understand that those things that might seem private or all those things I said are
• 26:59
  really part of who they are and how they became the person they are today.
• 27:05
  Okay.
• 27:06
  All right.
• 27:07
  So the book just came out as we record this in, in mid November 2025, the book just came out about a week ago and it's doing very well on Amazon.
• 27:17
  It's the number one bestseller in several categories.
• 27:19
  Is that right?
• 27:20
  Well, it's not a bestseller yet.
• 27:21
  It takes a little while for that.
• 27:23
  But it launched four categories and the best new release, which was very exciting for me and lots of accolades for it and people that are reaching out to me.
• 27:33
  And one guy called me and said my wife's going to divorce me because I've written 100 pages and I can't stop reading it.
• 27:39
  And I'm not getting anything done around the house this weekend for reading your book.
• 27:43
  And so it's been fun to hear some of those comments.
• 27:47
  Okay.
• 27:48
  All right.
• 27:48
  And so, Tom, if people want to get in touch with you and learn more about the coaching work you do and also the book.
• 27:57
  Can you just talk about where they can can find you online or I.
• 28:00
  Can you can reach me at the easiest place is my website www.tom lenoble.com.
• 28:07
  i'm on LinkedIn.
• 28:08
  I'm on all the socials.
• 28:09
  You can also find me at the Academy for Coaching Excellence website.
• 28:13
  But Tom, lenoble.com is the best place and my email address is resilience tom lenoble.com and I'd love to hear from you.
• 28:23
  All right.
• 28:24
  And we will link all that for the show notes and everybody and then we'll put the link on Amazon for your new book in there as well.
• 28:32
  All right.
• 28:32
  Well, Tom, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing all this incredible wisdom from your journey with our listeners.
• 28:38
  We greatly appreciate it.
• 28:39
  Thank you, Dave.
• 28:40
  It was a delight and pleasure to be here today.