It’s been nearly a year since Thomas Leonard passed away. (February 11, 2003.)

And what makes me most pensive about his absence isn’t missing him personally, although I do.

Click the link to access a downloadable PDF:

http://www.andreajlee.com/thomas.pdf

It’s a little known fact that over the 3 years that we were colleagues, I met him only 3 times in person and probably only spent one day with him in conversation. The rest of the time we were engaged in the delivery of some spectacular conferences in Las Vegas and Toronto.

Most of our relationship was built over in-depth emails and Instant Message conversations, the content of which I’ll unearth and share with you as we get to know each other through this blog.

Which brings me to my point. What makes me most pensive about Thomas’ absence isn’t so much personal anymore.

It’s that his personality isn’t around to drive (compel?) curiosity seekers to commit to a deeper exploration of his body of work. (He was a Leo, say no more.)

When was the last time you sank your teeth into a Thomas Leonard email lesson, audio teleclass or critique?

If there’s one thing I invite you to do this week, it’s that.

Lately I’ve been retraining myself to write more simply. (It’s hard.) The goal being to create material that contains just “sips” of information/knowledge/wisdom rather than great huge gulps of it that overwhelm. Many of the Internet Biz Whiz lessons started feeling like great anvils or telephone books; they’d land with a great clunk. And they’re not 100% better, but they’re becoming more like sips.

And that’s good evolution for me. I want to get fabulous at distilling and portioning out information in ways that will reach you best.

When I think back, I remember that at CoachVille we used to get a near-constant stream of comments saying “too much!” or “I’m overwhelmed.” And even though I fully understood and worked to balance that at the time, I’m now very grateful Thomas was so prolific.

For the short time he had to produce the material he did, I guess he was as fiercely and overwhelmingly creative as he was for a reason! Now it’s up to us to go back, become historians, and remember to take regular sips from what he left.

Thomas used to talk about “being a spring of wisdom” that people could dip their cups into. Question: On the one-year anniversary of his death, is this a good time for you to try a cup?