It Takes a Village to Help One Man

Is this a participatory feature or an exercise in masochism? Both, it turns out. For one week, I followed the advice of 12 of LA’s growing legion of “lifestyle experts ”—including a life coach, a spiritual advisor, a physical trainer and a personal brander. Ended up a little more confident, a lot more self conscious and very, very tired.

When Robin Fisher Roffer needs career advice, she phones her business coach. When she needs help with her wardrobe, she summons her style strategist. And on those occasions when she feels uncertain about her place in the world, she calls her metaphysical therapist.

“I love coaches,” she says. “I have a total posse. I do whatever it takes to make my life work. I have a nutritionist too. I live in L.A. I don’t know how you survive without your posse.”

A working mom who writes books, gives seminars on personal branding and runs three marketing companies, Roffer has a fuller plate than most. What’s remarkable is that she manages to power through her schedule apparently free of the frenzy or panic that bedevil so many of her high-pressure, have-it-all peers. It’s not all that difficult, she says.

“I give it over,” she says. “The way to get control is to release control. It’s an amazing thing. It’s giving over to the nanny. It’s giving over to the hairdresser. It’s giving over to the coach and letting them help you get control.”

Holding court in the living room of her immaculate Hancock Park home, Roffer certainly appears a whole lot more together than most working parents I know. I think of my own living room, piled high with plastic toys, half-read magazines and mismatched thrift-store furniture. While Roffer is doing Pilates or taking a conference call from execs from MTV, you’re likely to find me at a desk jammed into the corner of my kids’ playroom, eating fistfuls of animal crackers, obsessively checking e-mail and ignoring that 50-cents-a-word story I need to finish by Friday.

A moment later, Roffer swivels back. “Did I mention my eyebrow guru?” I’ll skip the eyebrow guru, but I’m ready for the rest of it. Roffer is not much older than I am, but swallowed in the folds of her designer couch I feel like a slouchy kid on break from college.

Which was a fine way to feel five or six years ago, back in my floundering formative years, when the biggest things in my life were my five roommates, two pet chickens and a $600 car known as Doug. These days I’ve got a baby girl, a toddler boy, a wife in a high-stress job and a late-model minivan. I wouldn’t trade any of it—OK, maybe I’d ditch the minivan—but the problem is, I feel as if I got all this great stuff without any operating instructions.

Scattered, schlumpy and almost entirely unversed in the exotic arts of self-improvement, I’m ready at least to entertain the seductive notion that the difference between us has less to do with tax brackets or basic character than with the people on our payroll. Maybe with some professional help, I could scrunch my sorry self into the driver’s seat of a shiny new high-performance life.

After all, why should pampered starlets be the only ones with an entourage?

What I need, obviously, is a posse. I’ve already begun rounding one up. This visit with Roffer is actually the first stop in a weeklong experiment in personal improvement that will introduce me to a dozen of the city’s growing legion of lifestyle experts. Filling out that lineup has been surprisingly easy—Los Angeles, it turns out, is filled with people who will gladly tell you how to work, dress, speak, eat, exercise, play, pray, even breathe. So far, I’ve got a life coach, a business coach, a color consultant, a physical trainer, a nutritionist, a speech coach, a spiritual advisor, a networking coach, a style strategist, an organizer and a feng shui expert.

Professional nagging is in fact a huge industry, with estimates putting the number of full-time professional coaches (excluding sports coaches) at more than 100,000. What they charge can vary widely depending on each client’s needs, with some corporate career coaches fetching more than $1,000 an hour for weekly phone sessions and organizers, spiritual advisors and wardrobe experts charging hourly rates from $50 to $200.

I keep a journal along the way and excise the most cringe-inducing material when the week is done—I’ll spare you the discussion with Dolores Kaytes, the organizer, about the wonders of vertical file storage or my talk with Avtar Wagner, the nutritionist, about recurring acid reflux. You’re welcome.

Herewith, excerpts:

Monday, 10 a.m.

“Personal branding,” I learn from Roffer, is all about taking the techniques marketers use to boost a company’s business and applying them to individuals to help advance a life and a career. The whole proposition kind of gives me the creeps—I have visions of sitting on a supermarket shelf, hollering, “Pick me! Pick me!” Still, I’m not so disturbed that I don’t happily accept Roffer’s offer of a three-hour freebie; she ordinarily charges $5,000 for the service.

Early on, Roffer asks me to read the title on my business card. I never thought the words “writer-reporter-editor” were particularly heinous but, judging from Roffer’s revolted expression, the card may as well read “plagiarist-kleptomaniac-serial killer.” “Blech!” she spits. “Throw those out immediately! We want your spirit,” she says. “The real Christopher. The essence.

“It’s about telling your best story in the most authentic way,” she says. “Who are you? Boom.”

Henceforth, I am no longer a writer-reporter-editor or any other horrible hyphenate. I am now a “narrative journalist.” She doesn’t offer a slogan or a logo—I was secretly hoping to leave with a cool squiggle or an artful inkblot. But I do get a “product description” and, just like a real corporation, a mission statement: “to tell stories, to transmit information and, ultimately, to reveal the surprise of the individual.” The week has hardly started and already I’m a man with a mission.

Monday, 4:30 p.m.

Master colorist Jennifer Butler is a former Bloomingdale’s buyer who now runs a color consultancy firm out of a mid-Wilshire duplex filled with candles, orchids and Oriental ephemera; it’s immediately clear that I’m about to find out far more than whether I look pasty in orange.

“Color is radiant energy—it invents us and defines us,” purrs Butler’s associate, George Daisa, who floats into the sitting room bearing mint tea on a gold tray. He says he discovered whole new dimensions of himself when Butler advised him that he is, in fact, a “tawny spring.” “This is about self-discovery and transformation. It’s not just about looking good. It’s about revealing the authentic self.”

Who I am, apparently, is a “summer gentleman.” Butler makes this pronouncement after examining my eye color, “auric field” and skin tone—which she describes as “dusty rose,” which sounds more like the name of a stripper than the color of my skin. As a summer gentleman, I look best in teal, navy, chestnut and maroon. A quick perusal of my wardrobe reveals just a single item in any of those colors—a pair of chestnut sweatpants that I’m pretty sure belong to my wife. (Scary thought: Could it be that I’m married to a summer gentleman?)

Tuesday, noon

After my encounter with Jennifer Butler, master colorist, I’m primed for Andre Champagne, master trainer. (That’s his real name and his actual title, he swears.) A Louisiana native with a sweet laugh and impossibly squared-off shoulders, Champagne works at Sports Club/LA, the 110,000-square-foot West L.A. sweat lodge to the stars that surely ranks as Los Angeles’ high temple of self-improvement.

“Where do you want me to take your body?” Champagne asks. “Be as specific as you can.”

The first place that pops to mind is Ben & Jerry’s, followed shortly by Jennifer Garner’s bathtub—but I manage to hold my tongue as he continues. “I’m used to hearing, ‘I want Janet Jackson abs’ or ‘Give me Brad Pitt tone.’ “

I’ve never really zeroed in on a celebrity body part I’d like for myself, partly because it never occurred to me I could just go out and get one but mostly because I figured wishing would inevitably land me in a gym, and gyms make me panicky. All I know is I don’t want a Homer Simpson belly.

Champagne leads me around the weight room, offering gentle encouragement as I do my best not to look like a total doofus while surrounded by glistening Sports Club regulars. This isn’t easy when you’re wearing chestnut sweatpants and quivering like a nervous little bird. I do something called a forward lunge that I swear provokes giggles around the rowing machines.

Wednesday, 10 a.m.

I wake up sore, very sore. In no mood for the business coach, whom I picture hovering over my desk with a whistle, hollering, “Go! Go! You call that garbled nonsense a story, Nancy-boy?!”

I’m relieved, then, to encounter Rachael Lewis, an eminently reasonable executive coach from Laguna Beach whose introductory session is more like a grad-school psych seminar than a cheesy pep talk.

Lewis administers something called a DiSC assessment, a behavioral test developed by the same guy who created Wonder Woman and the polygraph test (obviously a go-getter—bet he had a posse). Apparently, I’m extroverted, social, impractical and interested primarily in the form and beauty of things—your garden-variety raging aesthete.

The rest of the session is like therapy without the tortured talk of parents; we review goals and obstacles, then list things I can do to get closer to my goals and avoid my obstacles. It’s helpful, in a very mundane and straightforward way. I’d much rather be perusing color samples with Butler and Daisa, but that obviously just proves what a raging aesthete I am.

Wednesday, 12:30 p.m.

I may be impractical at work and spastic with a dumbbell, but it’s not all bad: My life has been blessed by a mystical being called the Traveler. This I learn from Lony Ruhmann, a lanky Midwesterner whose job history includes a stint at Mattel managing the Masters of the Universe toy line. Today he works with masters of a more ethereal sort, running a private Pasadena practice that helps Hollywood screenwriters find a “direct and grace-filled path to success,” according to his ad in the Writers Guild magazine. A part-time writer himself—he just completed a manuscript called “Bite This Book,” which he says is part of the small but emerging genre of literature for dogs—Ruhmann is a member of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, the New Age church founded by trance channeler John-Roger (himself a member of Arianna Huffington’s posse, and she seems to be doing rather well). Finding success, Ruhmann says, is as simple as “calling in the light.” All I need to do is repeat the phrase “I ask that the light be present for me now.” He does it all the time, for all sorts of reasons.

“Yesterday my wife was in line trying to get into the studio where they were taping ‘American Idol,’ ” he says. “So I sent the light that she would have a good time. Later I sent the light that she would somehow get in. She did get in, yes.”

The whole thing feels pretty silly—at one point he instructs me to tap my nose and repeat the words “heal, seal, clear, protect, spiritualize”—but I’m determined to keep an open mind. After all, being sarcastic or glib won’t gain me much favor with the likes of the Traveler, and what posse is complete without at least one mystical entity?

Thursday, 10:30 a.m.

News from the feng shui advisor is grim. I’m not sure how much I actually believe in feng shui, but that doesn’t make it any less spooky to learn during a home visit from expert Kathy Zimmerman that I’ve been sleeping in something called the funeral position. Apparently, while I sleep, energy has been trickling out the soles of my feet and spilling out my bedroom door down my staircase, like so much gutter water. “That energy spills out lickety-split,” she says with a grin.

A prim Los Feliz local who looks more like a real estate agent than a practitioner of an ancient Eastern art, Zimmerman is very nice, but it’s clear that my house would qualify as a feng shui Superfund site. The front door is flanked by energy-refracting cactuses. The placement of the couches under exposed wood beams may result in liver and kidney problems. And everywhere else, the clutter I’ve always excused as part of our family’s eclectic Salvation Army aesthetic is upsetting the house’s flow of chi in a big way. But I don’t care what she says: The Elvis lamp stays.

Friday, 11 a.m.

It’s a little embarrassing to admit how much I enjoy having my wardrobe ripped apart. It helps that the person doing the ripping is style strategist Pikke Allen, an efficient blond who manages to reject half the contents of my closet in the sweetest possible way. Out go the Mr. Rogers cardigans and baggy trousers. Out go the frayed blazers and vintage bowling shirts. She wants me “a little more architectural, a little more dangerous.”

A former studio costumer, Allen now heads a consulting business geared toward professionals flummoxed by clothes. In addition to cleaning out my closet, Allen has agreed to scout stores and take me shopping—before she goes, I make two follow-up appointments. (Note to self: Find mind-control coach to convince editors to reimburse for an architecturally dangerous Hugo Boss suit.) I’ve also decided to give Lewis the life coach a trial run. The week is almost over, but clearly, I’m not ready to set my posse free.

Monday, 10 a.m.

It’s the last day of my week of personal improvement and I’m sitting cross-legged on a mountaintop, overlooking a bluff that is actually called Inspiration Point. Next to me is Dina Weinberg, a former TV exec in baggy cargo pants whose Mindlight Group leads “hero hikes” to help clients gain perspective during intensive outdoor coaching sessions.

On the way up, Weinberg asked how I’ve changed this past week. Mainly, I tell her, I’m feeling incredibly self-conscious. I can’t do anything—put on a shirt, read a book, fritter away three hours watching John Hughes movies on cable—without thinking that I should really be getting some help with this. But I’m also feeling strangely relieved.

For once, a whole reservoir of nagging worries are being handled by professionals. I may be iffy about my career, but Lewis is working on it. These pants may be dorky, but Allen’s scouting something cooler. I may be totally out-of-touch spiritually, but Ruhmann’s on the case. I’ve given over.

There’s just one problem. All this improving myself has left me much too busy to tackle the deadlines and to-do lists that might actually help create the sort of VIP surroundings I now require. I clearly need a posse for my posse.

As soon as I get that posse rounded up, things are really going to change. In the meantime, I’ll be at my desk with a bag of animal crackers—there are just a few e-mails I need to get to.

*

My coaching lineup

Robin Fisher Roffer

Specialty: Personal branding, Big Fish Marketing, (323) 874-2737.

Deep thought: “When you say it, you become it. The last thing you should ever do is blow out the candles on your birthday cake and not tell anyone your wish.”

Jennifer Butler

Specialty: Color consultant, Your True Colors, (323) 931-2619.

Deep thought: “I don’t tell people to dye their hair or put on colored contacts. I tell them the way they are is perfect.”

Andre Champagne

Specialty: Physical trainer, Sports Club/LA, (310) 914-4587, Ext. 634.

Deep thought: “Everyone in L.A. wants to look and feel healthy because the standard is so high. Where I’m from in Louisiana, people fry water.”

Jack Barnard

Specialty: Speech coach, Speakeasy Coaching, (310) 822-4803.

Deep thought: “Public speaking is about connection, not perfection.”

Lony Ruhmann

Specialty: Spiritual advisor, (626) 799-7351.

Deep thought: “We ask that the light come forward for this very article. May the L.A. Times and its readers really enjoy this article and benefit from it.”

Rachael Lewis

Specialty: Executive coach, Trilogy Coaching, (949) 721-6888.

Deep thought: “People work with a coach because we are only concerned with their success. The only thing I’m interested in is getting the results you want.”

Janice Smallwood-McKenzie

Specialty: Networking coach, (323) 938-6751.

Deep thought: “The key to networking is being other-centered. Let other people have their moment. Let them feel special. Be of service.”

Kathy Zimmerman

Specialty: Feng shui advisor, (323) 661-1435.

Deep thought: “Feng shui represents about 30% of what’s working on you.”

Dolores Kaytes

Specialty: Personal organizer, Highly Organized, (310) 207-3184.

Deep thought: “Organizing is about discovering as much as it is purging. I uncover things people didn’t know they had.”

Pikke Allen

Specialty: Wardrobe consultant, Style Strategy, (310) 394-2174.

Deep thought: “Developing your own style is all about moving beyond trends and into your core identity. When you’re stylish, you’re confident and empowered.”

Avtar Wagner

Specialty: Nutritionist, Universal Life Force, (310) 342-9840.

Deep thought: “If you nourish the body correctly, you wake up with soaring energy and keep that energy all day. I’m close to 60 and I feel like I did when I was 20.”

Dina Weinberg

Specialty: Life coach, Mindlight Group, (310) 826-8900.

Deep thought: “My interest is seeing you succeed to a greater degree than even you think is possible. I see your success sometimes before you see it.”

*

How to round up your own posse

The trick to rounding up a posse of your own is finding a single coach to lead your personal improvement assault. Once you’ve done your due diligence to ensure this primary coach is the right person for you, finding other coaches should be a cinch: In addition to knowing all sorts of techniques to help you get what you want, good coaches know many other good coaches.

The International Coaching Federation: This trade association accredits coaching programs and maintains ethical guidelines for the industry. It also offers a referral service to 6,000 corporate coaches, personal coaches, small-business coaches and speakers. Referrals are available online at http://www.coachfederation.org.

Coach U: A Colorado-based training program, it lists 7,000 graduates in its directory at http://www.findacoach.com. The trade group Coachville hosts a database of coaches who specialize in everything from learning new computer programs to overcoming fears at http://www.coachville.com.

Other tips: Most coaches work by e-mail and phone, so you may never even meet your personal advisor face to face. Which makes it even more important to thoroughly check out prospective candidates. Interview three or four coaches before selecting one. Ask about their training, experience and philosophy. Get references. And you can always do a little snooping with the help of the Better Business Bureau, which allows you to check out a company via its Web site at http://www.bbb.org.

The specialists: The National Assn. for Professional Organizers offers a referral line at (770) 325-3440 and a database of members at http://www.napo.net.

The Society of Professional Nutritionists gives referrals to members at (800) 342-8037.

And the International Feng Shui Guild hosts a directory of local members at http://www.fengshuiguild.com.