About The Practice · Ocala, Florida

You Leave Ninety Days Running The Room You Were Promoted Into.

Needle & Thimble is a two-principal coaching practice built around one problem: the people promoted for their craft are handed a room of people and no pattern to work from. We draft that pattern — measured to the role, written down, and fitted over a fixed ninety days.

Request An Engagement Meet The Two Principals

A coaching workbench — leather ledger, brass thimble, green thread and a drafted plan on grid paper

Why The Practice Exists

Built For The Weekend A Title Changes

A promotion is announced on a Friday. The larger room — the budgets, the reports, the stakeholders — arrives on a Monday. The gap between those two days is the whole of our work.

Needle & Thimble was founded in Ocala on a single, stubborn observation: the directors and VPs who struggle most are rarely the ones who lack ability. They are the ones promoted for excellent individual work and then left to improvise the leadership of it.

The name is deliberate. A good garment is never cut to a template — it is measured, drafted, basted, and fitted until it sits right on the person wearing it. We run a leadership engagement the same way. We take the measurements before we draft anything, we write the plan down, and we adjust it against the role as it reveals its real shape.

We stay small on purpose. Two principals, a fixed ninety-day frame, one agreed figure per engagement. The coach who takes your measurements is the coach who finishes the seam — the work is never handed down to someone you have not met.

The Needle & Thimble studio — a drafting table by a tall window, pattern paper and a ledger in afternoon light

Promoted recently, or watching someone on your team make the jump? Start with a measurement, not a pitch.

Request An Engagement

How We Hold The Work

Six Principles We Do Not Negotiate

These are the rules of the room. They decide what we take on, how we bill it, and what a sponsor can and cannot see.

01Measured before advised

No recommendation leaves the room before the 360° read is in. We do not coach on first impressions.

02Written, not spoken

The plan, the read-out, and the closing review are documents you keep — not advice that evaporates after a call.

03One figure, agreed first

Billed per engagement, settled in writing before the first session. No hourly meter, no open retainer.

04The 1:1 is closed

Individual sessions stay between coach and director. Sponsors see only summaries you have reviewed first.

05Fitted to the role

No reused workbook. The plan is drafted against your actual calendar, stakeholders, and scope.

06The measurer finishes

The principal who takes your measurements runs the engagement through to the final seam.

The Practice At A Glance

Small, Fixed, And On The Record

Four things define how an engagement is shaped here — the structure that lets two coaches do careful work and still be accountable for it.

90Fixed days per onboarding plan

360°Feedback on every engagement

2Principals, no handoffs

1:1Weekly coaching cadence

Who You Actually Work With

The Two Principals

There is no bench behind us. Every engagement is run by one of these two from the first interview to the final review.

Founder & Principal Coach

Marguerite Vance

Marguerite founded the practice and leads the 1:1 onboarding track and every 360° debrief. Her work concentrates on the hardest shift a new director makes — from running the work to running the people who run it — and the quiet habits that decide whether a first quarter builds trust or spends it.

Team & Program Coach

Everett Shaw

Everett runs team coaching and the quarterly development programs. He works with leadership groups on decision rhythms, meeting discipline, and the handoffs that keep a growing function from fraying at the seams as headcount climbs — the structural side of leadership that rarely gets taught.

The Record

How The Practice Took Its Shape

A frustration, written down

Marguerite leaves a corporate L&D role convinced that one-size onboarding decks were failing the exact leaders they were built for. The first ninety-day pattern is drafted on paper for a single director.
The studio on NE 12th Street

The practice settles into its Ocala studio — a fitting room for leadership, with a drafting table, closed-door sessions, and the hours a working director can actually keep.
Team coaching joins the bench

Everett brings the team and program track, letting a single director and the group they now lead be fitted together rather than apart.
Per-engagement, by design

The billing model settles where it stands today: one agreed figure per engagement, fixed before the first session, so the work is judged by the fit of the result and nothing else.

The fitting room on NE 12th Street is open Tuesday through Sunday. Bring the role you were just handed.

Call The Studio — (352) 555-0186