About the Episode

How Curiosity Built a Career in HR: Andrew Coelho’s Journey at Lancaster Painting

Andrew Coelho came to Lancaster Painting seven years ago looking for a sales job, and left that second interview with an HR role he never planned for. Today, he’s the company’s HR Manager, a member of the management team, and the facilitator of Nolan Consulting Group’s Summit HR Peer Group. On a recent episode of Out of the Hourglass, Andrew shared how curiosity, ownership, and the freedom to fail forward turned an unexpected start into a career worth building.

An Unexpected Beginning

Andrew was still in college and working full-time in banking when he applied for a sales position at Lancaster Painting. The second interview didn’t go as expected.  The owner, Steve, told him his DISC profile wasn’t the right fit for sales but he saw Andrew’s HR background and offered him a different role instead. Andrew took a pay cut to join Lancaster, making the call because, as he put it, he had always looked further out and seen the potential there.

It wasn’t a confident start. He remembers feeling like an imposter early on, unsure of some basics, worried he’d lose the job before he’d found his footing. His approach was simple: be honest about what he didn’t know, and commit to figuring it out.

From Reactive to Building Systems

Andrew describes his early HR work as constant firefighting.  He was responding to whatever needed to get done, with little time to think further ahead. The shift came when he stopped just solving problems and started asking how to prevent them from recurring.

His first small win was digitizing pay stubs that had previously been printed, folded into envelopes, and left uncollected. A minor fix, but it represented a bigger mindset shift toward building systems instead of just getting through the day. That instinct would define how he grew at Lancaster Painting.

What Real Leadership Support Looks Like

A turning point came when Andrew accidentally sent a liability check to the wrong account. Rather than panic or try to quietly fix it, he went straight to Steve with the problem and a plan. Steve’s response: “Thanks for letting me know. Let me know how it goes.” He resolved the issue within the hour and says that kind of grace, paired with the expectation that he’d own the outcome, shaped how he’s approached every challenge since.

He also credits a pivotal leadership decision: when he asked Steve about pursuing a SHRM certification, Steve redirected him to the HR peer group instead. Andrew initially bristled at that. Looking back, he sees it clearly:

“I think learning from the mistakes of other businesses within Summit and my peers was worth way more than that certification could ever be worth.”

Facilitating the HR Peer Group

Andrew joined the HR peer group as a participant under Kathryn Freeman, who he describes as his North Star in learning how to facilitate well. After about a year, Kathryn asked him to take it over, a moment he says genuinely made his month.

He was candid about the self-doubt: “I felt like, man, I don’t have as much experience in HR…like, why me?” But he came to understand that a facilitator’s job isn’t to have all the answers. It’s to create space for the group to share honestly with each other.

Today the peer group covers recurring challenges across several key areas:

• Hiring & Retention
• Employee Development
• Compliance & Policy

What motivates Andrew most is hearing how the conversations land outside the meeting: a member calling back to say a reframe changed how their owner thought about something, or that advice helped them navigate a difficult conversation they’d been avoiding.

Beyond HR: AI, Systems, and Marketing

Andrew started experimenting with AI tools in 2020, well before they became common in small business. His curiosity about technology goes back further than that; he’s always wanted to understand how things work and find ways to make them work better.

As the tools have evolved, so has how he uses them. He recently used AI to analyze all 1,300 of Lancaster Painting’s online reviews, turning them into clear takeaways for the admin, sales, and field teams.  This is work that would have taken roughly a week manually.

He also moved into marketing after noticing nearly 80% of the company’s leads were coming organically, prompting a closer look at what could be built in-house rather than paid for. At one point, he even stepped into an operations manager role for six to eight months.

“If that automation doesn’t work, it’s not lying to you. It doesn’t work, and you need to figure out what the next step is.”

Paying It Forward

Andrew points to Alejandro, Lancaster Painting’s field supervisor, as someone who reflects his own path. Alejandro started as a painter and grew to crew leader, advanced crew leader, and now field supervisor, all within four years. Andrew sees the same self-agency in him: a drive to understand what went wrong rather than assign blame, and a willingness to take on whatever the team needs.

He’s candid that not every investment in someone returns that way. “For every story like that, there’s probably three to five where you want to invest in somebody and they just don’t hold up their end of the bargain.” However, he doesn’t think that’s a reason to stop. His philosophy is to give everyone the opportunity and see what they do with it.

When asked what kind of impact he wants to have at Lancaster Painting in the years ahead, Andrew’s answer wasn’t about a title. He wants the company to be a place where anyone who is looking to build a real career sees it as the destination.  He also wants Lancanster Painting to be a place where customers trust them so completely they never consider a second quote.