Bob Proctor said it all the time. “If you can see it in your mind, you can hold it in your hand.” I heard him say it in rooms. I’ve heard it in recordings and in my own head for years. I’ve said it to clients. And last month it landed in a way it never had before, standing in a small office in Toronto with a light on a stand and a camera still in the box.
Let me back up.
Cheryl Keates is a Master Certified Coach. She coaches female leaders and trained coaches, and she’s been doing it for years and years. We met through Bob’s work, and she’s been in a number of my programs since. For most of that time I’ve known her the way I know most of the people in my world: through a camera. Her face in a Zoom box, her bookshelf behind her, a window right in front of her.
What I didn’t know until August was what the other side of that screen looked like.
The part that came first
I want to be clear about something before we go further. Cheryl cared about how she showed up long before I came along.
One of the first things she did when she started her business was hire a professional graphic designer, back when that meant paying by the hour and it was not cheap. Her brand has always been clean, classic, warm and inviting. High-end boutique. Her words. One of her top character strengths is appreciation for beauty and excellence, and if you’ve spent ten minutes with her you don’t need a test to tell you that.
She put it this way:
“It’s important to me to put myself out there in a way that shows I care. I care about myself and how I’m presenting myself, but I also care about what you’re receiving on the other end.”
That is the thing I keep trying to teach. How you show up on a screen is a cue system, and the people watching are deciding whether to trust you before you've finished your first sentence. Cheryl teaches the same thing from her side of the desk: the minute we connect, our bodies are talking to each other before either of us says a word. She knew all of this in her bones. What she didn't have yet was a setup that agreed with her.
Summer 2024
Two summers ago Cheryl was in what she calls a season of contrast. Things with her team weren’t working. Some client relationships had run their course. She let a lot go.
If you come from Bob’s world you know exactly what she was living inside: the vacuum law of prosperity. You clear the space, and the space gets filled. She described it as clearing, cleaning, forgiveness, and a lot of sitting in creation, thinking about what the next version of her business would look like.
That same summer she earned her Master Certified Coach designation. And that same summer, during our very first Proctor’s Principles launch in July 2024, she put me on her vision board. Not a light. Not a camera. Me. As her Creative Director.
“When I decided I wanted Tommy as my creative director,” she told me, “I was deciding that I was stepping into my highest and best, most masterful level of creation. For myself, for my business, for my clients, for my impact.”
We’d actually been talking about her camera setup since 2023. But that was the summer it stopped being a conversation and became a decision.
Then two years went by.
That is not the vision board failing. That is how it works. She held it. She didn’t force it. And this August, when I was in Toronto to produce Proctor’s Principles Live with Brian Proctor, I knew I wasn’t leaving without a few extra days so I could go see Cheryl.
The afternoon
I walked into her office and there it all was. The bookshelf. The diplomas. The window. I’d seen the room in photos a few weeks earlier while we were designing her gear blueprint, and before that I’d been looking at it through a lens for years. Now I was standing in it, looking back the other way.
Nothing about it was loud. It was quiet and internal. Here’s this room, and here’s the other side of it. This is real. I’m in her house, doing the thing we’ve been talking about doing for years. You really can hold it in your hand if you can see it in your mind.
We spent the afternoon building her GlamCam Studio™. And here’s the part I love. Her lighting was already done. Between the window in front of her and the video light she already owned, Cheryl has had million-dollar light on her face for years. There was nothing to fix. What she didn’t have was a camera good enough to show it. So that’s what we brought: a camera where her eyes already go, and a teleprompter so she can look at her people while she coaches them. Nothing about the room changed. Nothing about Cheryl changed. The screen just finally caught up with her.
And then she picked up the camera and held it. I took the photo at the top of this piece about four seconds later.
What she saw
I asked her what it was like the first time she watched herself through it. She sent me a voice note, because Cheryl is auditory and would rather talk than type, and here is what she said.
“I felt energy. I felt my soul’s energy. I felt radiant. I felt joyful. I felt excited about the next iteration of Cheryl Keates, master transformational coach, the guide for guides.”
And then:
“I actually felt like I was looking into my soul.”
I’ve done a lot of these installs. That one I’m going to remember.
Why seeing it was never her hard part
Here is where I want to bring in something Cheryl gave me permission to share, because it explains the two years better than anything I could say on my own.
Cheryl is a Projector. In the language I use, an Advisor. Her design runs on invitation. She is built to guide, to read a room, to direct energy she doesn’t have to generate herself, and her work lands best when someone recognizes what she carries and asks for it. One of her clients said it to her in a group this week: "What's different about you is you speak to our souls." Cheryl's answer was that she isn't talking to your ego. She's talking to your soul.
Her profile is a 6/2, the Authentic Guide: someone who has been through the trial-and-error years and is now stepping into the role of the wise one, who does her best work in environments that feel simple, harmonious and true. Her Life Work theme is called The Alpha. She captivates people with the future she can see.
So seeing it was never her hard part. Cheryl can see a future in her sleep. She can also see, the minute she meets you, exactly where your work is. Her values frequency is literally named Integrity, which is the exact word she used when I asked her what she stands for, before either of us had that page open.
What her design asks of her is the waiting. Her core frequencies describe desire that unfolds in its own time, ideas her mind revisits and refines until they suddenly become clear, and influence that works when she’s chosen rather than when she pushes. Two years on a vision board, then one afternoon. That is her design doing exactly what it does.
There’s also a lot of Line 2 in her design. Line 2 is the natural. The one who’s good at the thing without trying and doesn’t always know why people are watching. That’s my read on why aesthetics have never been optional for Cheryl. It isn’t a strategy. It’s her nature, and now her setup shows it.
One more thing, for the record. Her design says she’s built to see the patterns underneath people’s fears and how those patterns keep running in the present. If you know her work, you’re already nodding.
Cheryl’s next thing
Her program guide opens with a line I could have written:
“Most people don’t have an information problem. They already know what they should do. The challenge is what runs automatically underneath.”
That’s her 6-Week Transformational Breakthrough, a private intensive for one specific pattern that insight, willpower and regular coaching haven’t shifted. The procrastination that survived all your work on procrastination. The not-enough loop. The decision that takes days every single time. She does the detective work on how the pattern is actually running, and then she goes in and collapses it. If that’s you, or someone you love, the link above is where to look.
And if GlamCam Studio™ is on your vision board, The Green Room is where I’ll meet you.
After we wrapped
I figured it out in the Uber on the way to her house. We drove past Mount Pleasant Cemetery, and then I saw her street sign. Pleasant Avenue. Oh my gosh. She lives right by Bob.
Cheryl knew she lived near the cemetery. She had no idea that’s where Bob was laid to rest.
So when the prompter was up and the camera was set, we walked over.
The last time I stood there it was winter and everything was gray. This time it was green and warm and there was a fountain going in front of him. On his stone, under his name, there’s a line from William James:
“The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.”
I stood there in my loud floral shirt, fresh from helping a woman he taught see herself the way her clients see her, on the afternoon a two-year-old vision board came true.
We’ve since decided that Cheryl is now the Bob Proctor student living in closest proximity to him, which means she has a responsibility to the rest of us. She’s going to walk over and say hello to him every week. She says she will, and I believe her.
If you can see it in your mind, you can hold it in your hand.
What’s on your vision board that you haven’t let anyone hand you yet?
You were right, Bob. Thanks for the view.
So beautifully written Tommy. I am so glad you were able to do live Glam Cam setup with Cheryl. What a treat for her and you. And the perfect ending to a perfect day was to go say hi to Bob. Gives me shivers. 💜👏👏👏