Alum Heads Online Coaching Academy

In this Cleveland Plain Dealer article, Sandy Vilas `59 provides insight on the coaching of coaches. Coaches: They`re not just for the jocks anymore People from dentists to pastors are paying for personalized advice Thursday, March 09, 2006 by Chris Seper, Plain Dealer Reporter Ron Arndt is a personal trainer without the sweaty workout. The North Ridgeville dentist is part of a growing industry of personal coaches -- think professional friends -- with specialties. Former pastors are coaching other ministers. Dentists are coaching other dentists. There are spelling bee coaches and coaches for divorcees, attorneys, military spouses and winery owners looking for advice about passing possessions on to their kids. \"We`re training coaches to coach anyone through anything,\" said Sandy Vilas[`59] , president of Coachinc.com, an online coaching academy. \"But now there are specialties we hadn`t dreamed of.\" Coaches dispense advice about personal happiness and financial success, usually through phone calls and e-mail newsletters. Arndt takes it to another level by showering his clients with gifts, greeting cards and dinner invitations. The International Coach Federation, an industry accreditation association, has 9,600 members -- more than triple its numbers in 2000. Georgetown University now offers a certificate in \"leadership coaching.\" There are scores of groups not certified by accredited coaching schools like Coachinc.com or Georgetown. \"Other coaching wasn`t holistic enough for me,\" said Betsy Muller, an energy coach who runs the Indigo Connection in Strongsville, which promises to boost your morale and increase your energy. Muller was trained last year through a group in Saratoga, Calif. \"I wanted to help people with their health, frame of mind and attitudes.\" Some make big bucks doing what they do. Arndt coaches more than two dozen dentists and five other clients, and he pulls in about $19,000 a month to coach them. \"How`s your staff?\" \"Are you managing your payroll?\" \"What are you doing for Valentine`s Day?\" These are some of the questions he asks when he checks in with them about three times a month. \"When something goes great in the office, he knows the feeling,\" said Dr. Fred Hecht, a New York dentist whom Arndt has coached for four years. \"When you have the patient from hell and can`t satisfy them, he knows that feeling.\" Those who are coached say they aren`t looking for a psychologist but someone who will focus on them and keep after them to reach their goals. \"I can be selfish,\" said Debra Stanton, a pastor at the Bensalem United Methodist Church in suburban Philadelphia, who has used a coach for three years. \"He tells me what`s happening with him for less than a minute, then it`s all about me.\" Stanton sought out a coach three years ago as she struggled financially to modernize her church. Prayer-based counseling had \"run its course,\" and consultants were too expensive, she said. She hired clergy coach Val Hastings, a former Methodist pastor, for $250 a month. They discuss ways other churches handle similar problems. Hastings makes Stanton recall recent successes and pushes her to pursue personal goals. \"It was very important I had a pastor who knew what it`s like,\" Stanton said. \"Advice from a secular person would not have worked.\" Clients laud Arndt, the dentist coach, for his experience and his personal touch. Every year he invites clients to a pre-Thanksgiving Day meal at his home. He once bought each client a DVD of \"Mr. Holland`s Opus,\" the story of an inspiring music teacher, and told them to watch with their families to remember how important they are to others. \"People come to me under the expectation we are going to spend a