fisher

David J.P. Fisher is in your business, literally, and he wants to make you a rock star.

As founder of the Evanston-based company, RockStar Consulting, Fisher works to kick-start a client's professional career. People come to him looking for ways to be more successful at their jobs, and Fisher counsels them in ways that therapy and self-help books cannot.

"The definition of insanity," Fisher said, "is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting something different to happen. I act as support and hold [clients] accountable. They bounce ideas off me as they would go to a priest or bartender in the past. Now people go to a coach for support."

The Chicago area is teeming with these "business coaches" who offer training in anything from personal fitness to dissertation practice for doctoral candidates. It is a business that is hard to quantify but profits off the simple happiness, and increased productivity, of its clientele.

Fisher started RockStar Consulting in 2005 with the idea of giving people "their rock star moment."

"The fun of being on stage is just 5 percent of the job," Fisher said. "I help with the other 95 percent."

RockStar consulting offers one-on-one coaching, "tele-coaching" conference-call coaching and seminars for businesses. Fisher said he has about seven to 10 individual clients at any time and generates most of his business by referrals and word of mouth.

But Fisher faces tough competition for clients as he competes with other coaches. The professional coaching field has boomed in recent years and is close to becoming a $1.5 billion industry worldwide. The International Coaching Federation was founded in 1995 and between 1999 and 2006, the number of members in North America surged up 81 percent. Chicago's own chapter, the Chicago Coaching Federation, has about 350 members with a 700-member mailing list.

"People are more interested in their quality of life," said Faith Curtis, President of CCF and her own coaching business, Personal Power Coaching. "They're trying to reach a goal but can't on their own and their old ways have not worked."

Fisher, 30, found his entrepreneurial spirit selling Cutco Cutlery during his junior year of college at Northwestern University. Cutco Cutlery, most famous for its brand of knives, does not sell its products in stores, but through the hands of young salespeople-mostly legions of high school and college students. Fisher became a rock star in his own right with Cutco. He said he earned about $250,000 selling Cutco, to become one of the company's top-10 sellers in the country. He went on to manage the Chicago office for Cutco. At 22, he was "running the show." He organized the office, paid the bills and trained as many as 110 new sellers at a time.

"It taught me how to run a business," Fisher said. "I got experience at 22 that most people don't get until much later in their career."

Being in charge and handling all the struggles and stress that accompany being an entrepreneur made him comfortable running a business, he said. It also gave him experience training people in sales.

"Many people out of college get thrown into sales right out of college," he said. "As the economy becomes more of a service economy, sales becomes more important as a market base. And too many people see 'sales' as a four-letter word."

Fisher described how he helped one client who worked in real estate and was afraid of making cold calls. He met Fisher through an Evanston Chamber of Commerce event and the two developed a program to make cold calls less often.

"We worked to develop partnerships," said Fisher. The networking helped his client search for customers without resorting to strangers. In spite of the recent housing slump, Fisher said his client just had his most successful month ever.

Fisher's clients split evenly among men and women, he said, and range in ages from 23 to their 60s. Fisher could not say how much he charges clients because it varies, but other coaches charge from $350 to $650 a month. Fisher said he wants his services to be a struggle for clients and a stretch financially.

"If they're getting it cheap," he said, "they won't take it seriously."

Therapy, Fisher insists, is not part of the contract. He does extend beyond the scope of business to take a "whole person" approach, incorporating business with personal life. But he does not dwell on the past.

"If kids picked on you in school, great," he said. "Now where do we go from here?"

Fisher is working with two interns from DePaul University to market RockStar. He is publicizing an e-book coming out in August called "The Book of Habits" and he is developing a MySpace page. But business for Fisher grows best when his clients come back happy.

"Talking to clients six months down the line," Fisher said, "when they come back and remember what they learned, that's the best."