Last updated 14:13, April 27 2018
Phil Holland was Sally Anderson's right hand man - until he fell out of favour.
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.
Sally Anderson and her husband Roger Te Tai rent this palatial home near 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.