Chris Comer
About his life as a teenager in Hope back in the late 1980s, Hope native Chris Comer told me, “I was a completely different person then. But a lot of seeds were planted from mentors.” He mentions current Hempstead County Judge and former sheriff Jerry Crane as an influence, and then cites what he learned about himself from tenth grade Hope High English teacher Bonnie Routon, who identified him as a talented writer. “I would have never seen it in myself,” Comer said.
Comer’s poem about “my Aunt and Multiple Sclerosis” was the winner of a creative writing contest, and he collected a nice plaque for his effort.
But now he is planning and delivering a course on a work of fiction, almost like Routon herself did in the classes she taught Comer. And getting to this point has taken a long journey.
Back in May, Comer told Mike Forrester, the host of the podcast Living Fearless Today, that he began hearing the call to become a life coach in 2016 after a difficult time in Fayetteville trying to sustain a shop that restores classic cars, The shop had to make some unforeseen changes in location because of real estate developments. Comer had started that business in 2004, after serving as a paramedic for a number of years.
Comer told me his upbringing in Hope probably had something to do with his feeling an urge in mid-life to help others. “We were a community that helped each other and looked out for each other. And I think that instilled a very positive servant's heart in me to want to serve other people,” he said
Comer made it out of his car business, though, and now he has fully embraced his new role as a coach with a focus on marriage and financial coaching. He and his family now live in a Fifth Wheel camper and travel full-time, while using family land in Hope as their “home base” when not traveling. He is working on a website to better showcase his Life Coaching, Financial and Marriage Coaching services and another to storefront his Customer Relationship Management software, system automations and consulting business.
How did Comer find his way into teaching and life coaching? In mid-August of 2016, while visiting family for his birthday, Comer saw a video his mother wanted to show him from YouTube of Andy Andrews giving a talk that struck Comer as comical but also wise. From that point, Comer told Forrester, he “dove head first” into all of Andrews’ books and podcasts, the then-240 episodes of which Comer listened to in about a month and a half.
This period of study of Andy Andrews’ work “started clarifying a lot of things for me,” Comer told Forrester. He then reached out to the Andrews organization to receive a consultation about how best to close the classic car shop business he no longer felt interest in and now saw as an obstacle to a new career as a coach. His key question, he told Forrester, was “How do I do this in a way that’s honorable and takes care of my customers … and at the same time have the energy to pursue this new course of a career?”
What he got in return was helpful. “They offered me a lot of good content and materials,” Comer told Forrester. “Things to do in business, ways of conducting business. It opened up my eyes to a whole other way of doing life.” Comer also got to meet Forrester that year for a free session, and began relationships with other people in the Andrews organization. “Since ’16 the best thing has been the quality of people that were put in my life,” Comer said.
Comer said he not only learned how to bring his business to a soft landing, he also found help with the toll that struggling with the business had taken on his marriage. Then, encouraged by how the Andrews courses he had taken had helped him, Comer turned to the work of Zig Ziglar and Dave Ramsey, two well-known figures in salesmanship and financial coaching.
Finally, he took their (Ziglar’s and Ramsey’s) Master Coaching courses, which helped him use his own experiences to help clients with their businesses and their marriages. He is now certified by the Dave Ramsey and Zig Ziglar organizations as a coach. He specializes in marriage and financial coaching.
“Financial and marriage health—they are interdependent,” Comer told Forrester.
Comer had the opportunity to meet Andy Andrews in 2017, and become closely involved with several projects through the Andrews team. In doing so, he and Andrews became friends, and Comer expressed his desire to work with and/or under Andrews in some capacity.
While volunteering to help in the aftermath of the damage Hurricane Sally wrought on Orange Beach in September 2020, Comer was invited to Andrews’ home again to stay while in the area to assist. This is when Andrews said to Comer, “That coaching thing you wanted to do? I have a project I want to include you on.”
Andrews later reached out to Comer to ask him to teach a course on line based on Comer’s favorite Andrews book, The Noticer Returns, which described the further adventures of Jones, the main character of The Noticer (2009). In its sequel, The Noticer Returns, Jones, a white-bearded elderly man with qualities similar to those of Walt Whitman, Jerry Garcia and the Buddha himself, continues to interact with people encountering crossroads in their lives to help them think in ways that allow them to find solutions. He addresses such issues as parenting, marriage, running a business and even teaching techniques (he only briefly lectures, yet his students do learn).
Andrews was complimentary of Comer’s ability to find what Andrews called “nuggets” in the writing that Andrews himself didn’t realize were in there.
Comer began teaching his first course in The Noticer Returns this past May 17. He is one of only six instructors whose courses are part of The Andy Andrews Life Skills Project. As he was finishing the course, Comer told me “It’s going very well. Had a lot of interaction last week along with a few revelations.” Now he’s teaching the course again starting August 18.
Comer said he had full freedom to plan the course according to his own intent and explained his method for teaching. “Things [from The Noticer Returns] speak to me and say things and so what I've done is taken those things, like a quote of Jones and asked open-ended questions about that particular piece of advice or piece of wisdom so that my participants can apply to their own lives and come to their own realizations without me leading them by hand.”
Since closing his business, Comer admits he took a pay cut, but he said he and his wife both feel more free to pursue life together as they never had before. “My wife and I are designing our lives to where we could start pulling back as far as what kind of income we required,” he said.
While Comer has certifications from both the Dave Ramsey and Zig Ziglar organizations, he said he identifies more with Andy Andrews. He explained, “First of all, he is not nearly as focused as Ramsey on financial matters. He also dislikes the term motivational speaker. He’ll tell you, ‘I’m not here to motivate anybody. It’s your momma’s job to motivate you. But I WILL help you change how you think.’”
As a speaker and a writer, Comer told me, Andrews often seems to be attempting to make three or four points at the same time, a habit that may come from Andrews having what is called Attention Deficit Disorder, which he has acknowledged publicly. When you’re listening or reading him, you may even wonder how these points cohere. “But at the end, he just brings it all together with a big bow on it. And you say, ‘I would have never put that stuff together and made those connections.,” Comer told me.
About Jones, the main character of The Noticer Returns, Comer wants to allow readers to draw their own conclusions. But he does have his own way of thinking about him. “I see him as an angel of sorts,” Comer told me. And he explained the importance of Jones knowing exactly what time it is without owning a watch.
Andrews' work continually demonstrates the need for those who are struggling in life to look at their problems differently. “He is so big on not believing everything we think,” Comer told me. “Don't believe everything you think, especially about yourself and the world around you. Because perspective is so important. Perspective is the only thing in the world that can change the outcome of a situation without changing the facts.” You can read an interview with Andy about The Noticer Returns here.
Comer sees his own story as a lesson on the benefit of a changed way of seeing life’s problems. At his worst time, when the classic cars business was struggling, he told me he was “feeling like there was no hope left, I had no value to anybody.” Because of Comer’s use of Andrews’ technique of changing his perspective, he went from there to seeing what his experiences running a business and saving his marriage were worth and then “to realizing that there's so much more I could offer someone.”
Comer’s fully online course on writer and motivational speaker Andy Andrews’ 2013 book The Noticer Returns starts Thursday, August 18. Those interested can register for the course on its website.
