You can have it all. But do you have the guts?

It's the defining question posed by personal coach Laura Berman Fortgang, author of Take Yourself to the Top (Warner Books, 1998). In gutsy, take-no-prisoners language, Fortgang shows how coaching can not only make you more effective in the workplace, but enhance your career and income, and ultimately, improve your personal relationships and quality of life.

"In this book, I tried to come as close as possible to the coaching experience," she said in a phone interview from her Montclair, New Jersey office. "It's a great primer for getting going with a coach."

In Take Yourself to the Top, Fortgang, president and owner of Intercoach, a business and career coaching firm, covers a broad spectrum of coaching issues in little more than 200 pages. While she's quick to point out that coaching is not therapy, nor can this book replace the "human dynamic of the coach/client partnership," she provides specific, yet simple strategies readers can use to make life changes. And she brings the process to life by using clients' stories to illustrate the concrete results coaching can bring.

"Coaching," she writes, "has emerged in the mid-90's as the tool for people to redesign their work in the process of creating more fulfilling lives." It's a holistic, inside-out approach to career success. "By asking the right questions, a coach will help the client come up with the best way" to meet personal and professional challenges, Fortgang says.

Take Yourself to the Top came about in what Fortgang calls a miraculous turn of events. "Two publishers asked me to write a book," she says. "One had found me on the Internet, the other saw me in Money Magazine. They knew coaching was hot." After signing with Warner Books, she wrote the book in nine months flat.

Fortgang's rise to the top of her profession was not quite as straightforward as her book: right out of college, she went into acting, something she'd always wanted to do. "If I hadn't tried it, I didn't want to regret it later," Fortgang says. "For eight years, I lived out of a suitcase, doing musical theater and a little TV. But I knew I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life-and that I could bring my acting skills to people in corporations."

Her two years at Coach University were invaluable. "I was one of the first people to take the course," she says. "I got to work with some of the best coaches in the business. The strongest coaches I know, coaches who are asked to write books, came out of Coach University."

Her coaching certification, and a stint in communications field training, gave Fortgang a jump-start in what she calls her five-year journey to this book. To get her coaching business off the ground, "I was willing to go out and speak to any group, to any number of people," she says.

Fortgang began by talking about workplace wellness, covering topics such as stress and time management. "It just took off," she says. She gradually incorporated more of a coaching approach into her speeches-a new, if not radical concept at the time. "I knew it made sense, even if the world wasn't ready."

Fortgang's journey also included publishing a one-page, black and white newsletter that explored one coaching topic per issue. Despite the modest format, it brought in clients.

"I started out coaching by gathering people in my living room, in a group," Fortgang says. As the coaching profession evolved, so did her approach. She began working with clients one-on-one, still face to face, before moving to phone interaction, the common practice in the industry.

"Now I stick to the phone. You're not geographically limited. And it's a better vehicle," she says. "People are more truthful on the phone, more forthcoming."

Working with clients over the phone gives Fortgang a unique perspective. "I listen for the person, I 'hear between the lines,' use my intuition," she says. "Using one sense instead of many means I have 'pure listening.' I can take information in a very clear way."

Her work led to more speaking engagements and more clients. Fortgang put her newsletter online, and her reputation and business continued to grow, leading to the book contract.

But to write Take Yourself to the Top, Fortgang had to counteract a few myths about the profession. "Some people thought coaching was for sissies," she says. "So the publisher said, 'no woo-woo.'"

Fortgang complied. "I put an edge in it," she says of her book. True; her firm directives leave little room for waffling. But many of the concepts and approaches in "Take it to the Top" are anything but edgy. She explains how 15 minutes of creative silence each day will help you develop your intuition, leading to more effective decision-making, and says that it is critical to work from a place of absolute honesty and integrity. Fortgang also emphasizes that vision, expressing one's values, and attending to the inner self is a critical part of the life-changing process of coaching. But purposeful action makes it happen.

"We can no longer know it all, we must be it all," she says. "We have to learn to use those soft skills. They are the skills of the future."

And the future of personal coaching? "It's going to be around a long time. The rate it's exploding, one day we'll have the same number of coaches as lawyers, or even doctors," Fortgang says with a laugh. "But the true future is in what has already happened because of coaching."

Happier, more productive people, she says, create a ripple effect with co-workers and family members. "The effect is far-reaching."