Caption: Mark Everson, a personal and business coach, helps clients get their lives in order. In weekly meetings, he helps them work toward goals.

"I have hired over the years some incredibly expensive consultants that were worthless."

"You set goals, and (Everson) actually makes sure you get them" Colleen Fogarty, owner of a health-care market research and recruiting business in Edina, MN.

Mark Everson is a coach without a whistle, a stopwatch or fiery half-time speeches.

He does his coaching while seated in the basement office of his Putnam Drive home, wearing a telephone headset. In weekly half-hour conferences, he needles his clients to take steps to improve their businesses and personal lives.

Everson, whose company is called "Soar High Coaching", is a personal and business coach.

"I can get real scattered all over the place, and when you work with a coach like Mark, it keeps you right on target," said client Colleen Fogarty, owner of Fogarty & Associates, a health-care market research, consulting and recruiting business in Edina, Minn.

"He's always taking you back to the focus."

Everson is one of 5,000 personal and business coaches in the country and one of 1,400 who belong to the International Coach Federation, said ICF Administrator Audrey Farley from headquarters in New Mexico.

The profession, which was invented a decade ago, is growing rapidly, Farley said. In this era of therapy, it's the next step.

"It's for people who are healthy to begin with, and they want to make their lives or business more in line with how they envision it," she said. "Coaching is really all about making your life better in any way you'd like to focus on."

Everson, 42, worked as general manager of a real estate and development company and later ran his own massage therapy business.

After getting his degree in psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire last year, he sought a career in which he could use his business experience, his psychology degree and his natural health background.

He read a story about personal and business coaching, and after more research he enrolled at Coach University in Houston, which offers classes over the telephone and e-mail.

The year-old business now has 10 clients, and Everson hopes to grow to about 25 by yearly next year.

Most clients are small-business owners or managers, and more than half live and work outside the Chippewa Valley.

Clients have four 35-minute meetings a month with Everson, usually on the telephone, for a monthly fee of $150. He also stays in touch in between meetings through e-mail and fax.

Everson provides them with support, guidance and a sounding board for their ideas.

While he gives some advice, often people already know what they should do, and he just brings it out. "I ask questions to help them answer their own questions," he said.

Meeting regularly with a coach makes clients accountable for their promises to change, Everson said. "When they think, Am I going to do it or not? they think I told Mark I'm going to do that," Everson said.

In Fogarty's opinion, a coach is worth more that a consultant because a coach follows up rather than just walking away like a consultant.

"I have hired over the years some incredibly expansive consultants that were worthless," Fogarty said.

Fogarty became Everson's client last year after hearing about coaching through a friend.

"You set goals, and he actually makes sure you get them,: Fogarty said.

Everson has helped her better define her business's mission and to delegate chores she doesn't want to do.

While clients often approach Everson because they want help building their business, he often ends up providing advice on their personal life too, he said. That's because they're all connected.

For instance, one client came to Everson last year because he wanted to expand his 5-year-old business, and they started working on the business plan together.

The client realized he was too controlling and judgmental as a manager, and he could do a better job. That led to a discussion of the client's personal life. He felt like his girlfriend smothered him, taking all his free time.

Everson encouraged the client to set up specific times he could see his girlfriend, so he could have leisure apart from her too.

Also with Everson's encouragement, the client set aside a half-hour of quiet time each day, when his employees and others are forbidden to interrupt him.

"He has a quiet time to read something he wants to read and think about what he wants to think about," Everson said.

Like many clients, this man knew he'd have to rearrange his priorities because he couldn't continue to work six or seven days each week.

"He said it made a tremendous difference," Everson said. "He's not always bombarded."

Often Everson recommends clients take more time for themselves. "We try to achieve a balance between their personal and work life," he said.

Kathy Boone, owner of Studio 12 hair salon in Eau Claire, turned to Everson more that a year ago.

"I really needed to fine-tune my organizational skills and management skills in my personal life as well as business," Boone said. "He pushes, but he's gentle."

It's improved her life and her business, she said.

"Otherwise you flounder through life and run your business by the seat of your pants," Boone said. "This way you sit down each month and go over what you'll do next month, and for the next three months, and you'll lay out your year program."

Occasionally you look back, to see where you're been, she said. "It's like having a map to get to where you're going," she said.

Ed Graca, who runs Marquest Financial mortgage brokerage in Minneapolis, became an Everson client a month ago and said it's already helped.

Everson asks what's getting in the way of what you want, Graca said. He also sends copies of pertinent articles and makes assignments-Graca's current task is to clean out all his closets.

"Are you getting everything life has to give?" Graca said. "It's more of a life lesson than a business lesson."

Everson can be reached at 835-2074, coachmark@usa.net or www.soarhigh.com.

Everson has been named the chapter host for the International Coach Federation's Eau Claire/West Central Wisconsin Chapter.

"I became more focused, better organized and am starting to reach goals I had only dreamed about", states a client of Personal and Business Coach Mark Everson. Heard about coaching? And we are not talking about your kids soccer team. It is a new and rapidly growing phenomenon which has sprouted and taken hold recently, with an estimated 4,000 coaches
nationwide.

According to Mark Everson of Soar High Coaching a local coach, It's probably easier to describe coaching by saying what it isn't. It is not therapy and it is not just being a consultant. The client uses the coach to set goals, grow, get a great life and make changes. Coaching helps you identify the areas of your life that take energy away from the things you really like to do. Most of what coaching is about is having you find out what you really love to do and then setting up your life to do those things you love. With coaching, people start to live their dreams. Business people also use coaching to help them start up and improve their business while reaching a balance between work, family and fun.  Some of the reasons it works is that a coach supports and helps a client stay focused, in action and gives you someone to whom you can be accountable and share your successes or perhaps even point them out.

Born out of the competitive pressures to today's economy, as well as the struggle to find balance in the frenzied pace of modern life, coaching is earning devotees among small business people,  professionals, entrepreneurs, CEO's, and people in transition struggling with life issues. "I feel like I'm in training; training for success" and "I can't believe how much I'm getting accomplished; I have more time", to "I've even lost weight; much to my surprise", those are a few comments coming from clients of Mark Everson after only a few months. Another client, "I've talked all my life about wanting to be a writer; and now, after several months of coaching, I'm writing every day for the first time in my life. I'm not sure how it happened, but I do know coaching helped make it happen."

Fees start at $125 a month for weekly half-hour sessions. Coaching takes place by phone and with e-mail or fax support (if applicable) so it doesn't matter where you live. Some coaches like Mark Everson offer a complimentary half-hour introductory session.  Featured in articles from Newsweek to the London Times, it is predicted that by the year 2000, it will be as common to have a coach as it is to have a personal trainer. And people won't ask what is coaching, they'll be saying "who is your coach?"

For more information on personal and business coaching contact Mark Everson at 239-699-2362 or email: coachmark@usa.net

By Sandy McKinney
Freelance Writer

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When Robert Wagnon enlisted an outside professional to help him build his Houston mortgage-banking business last summer, he didn't get quite what he expected. Early in their relationship, Wagnon's new adviser sent him a survey. "It had nothing to do with my business," says Wagnon, 32. "It was 'Do you live in a well-lit, clean, orderly place? Is your car in good order? Do your sheets need mending?' I thought, I ain't hiring a therapist." Wagnon **wasn't** hiring a therapist. But he wasn't hiring a business consultant, either. He was hiring a 'coach.'

Coaches say they're in the vanguard of an entirely new, and distinctly '90s profession. Part consultant, part motivational speaker, part therapist and part rent-a-friend, coaches work with managers, entrepreneurs, and just plain folks, helping them define and achieve their goals -- career, personal or, most often, both. For fees ranging from $150 to $500 per month for weekly half-hour phone sessions, a coach might consult on everything from selling a business to shopping for snowtires. The most successful earn six-figure incomes, and proponents say the field is primed to explode. "It's a new thing, so a lot of people don't know what it is," says Talane Miedaner, 30, who works by day as a Manhattan bank executive, and coaches part time in the evenings. "But I think within the next five years people are going to say 'Who is your coach?' not 'What is a coach?'" 

Despite his initial misgivings, Robert Wagnon is now an enthusiastic client. His coach helped him understand that his work and home lives are interdependent. "I might be sitting in a meeting with you, thinking about the fact that my wife and I might not be getting along real well. As a business person, I might not choose to address that. I might say, 'I know what my problem is, I need another $100,000 in sales this month.' Well to get there, I may have to go clean up something else." Dr. David Wadler, a Houston orthodontist, says his coach helps him stay on track. "I didn't have anyone to answer to, so if I said I was going to do something, there was no one keeping me focused." With his coach's help, Wadler, 50, beefed up his marketing efforts -- and ensured that an addition to his home was completed properly. "It's like having a friend to bounce things off of that has my best interests in mind," he says. 

Coaches generally ask new clients to sign up for six months, and rely on word of mouth to generate business. Advertising, you see, is a little crass for an endeavor as personal as coaching. "We're not selling coaching services; we're selling a partnership in someone's life," explains Thomas Leonard, a former Salt Lake City financial planner, who in 1992, founded Coach U to train potential coaches. "If you turn that into an advertising campaign, I just question the intimate nature of the coach/client relationship." Not to mention that where there's advertising, there's regulation, and coaches are still free from any licensing requirements. Though some have backgrounds in business, education or therapy, they're not necessarily experts in anything. "There's no industry standard currently on what's OK and what's not OK in terms of how much advice one gives, other than common sense," says Leonard. Anyway, say proponents, coaching is much more than mere consulting. "Most of what coaching's about is having you find out what you really love to do and then setting up your life so you're just doing stuff that you love," says Miedaner. "People start living their dreams."

Interestingly, many clients decide that living their dreams means a career change...to coaching. "It's a very optimistic, upbeat, fun kind of profession," says Lee Smith, 52, who's phasing out a 10-year family-therapy practice in Dallas to coach full time. "I also like that it's very portable. You can do coaching from anywhere, anytime, as long as you have a telephone." You can also learn to coach from the comfort of your couch. Leonard's Coach U is an entirely virtual institution. Would-be coaches can download expensive training 'modules' and self-administered tests from the Coach U Web page and dial into regularly scheduled conference-call 'TeleClasses.' Leonard, who runs the show from a roving RV loaded with the latest computer and telecommunication gizmos, estimates that there are 1,000 coaches nationwide; he says Coach U's enrollment has tripled in the past year, to 350. It's tough to say whether the demand for coaches will keep pace with the supply, but it sounds like nice work if you can get it.

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