He's an actor, or maybe more precisely an aspiring or struggling actor. In the ten years since he moved to L.A. he's booked a few commercials and landed a few Indie walk-ons. He takes yoga twice a week and trains at Gold's Gym with a few guys from the Kings.
He does some substitute teaching in the public schools to make ends meet and even though he barely has two pennies to rub together he hired this "career counselor" to help him get ahead.
He's had a few relationships and almost got married once to this really nice woman from Seattle. Her name was Penelope and at 28 she was the senior social worker for Family Services of Yerba County. They were a great couple but ultimately Phil chickened out.
"I have this fear of intimacy thing," he explained, "whenever someone gets too close to me I feel threatened and terrified."
He figures that with all the money he saves by not dating anyone, he can afford going to all these expensive career seminars.
"It comes down to this," he told me the other day while we were sipping chia seed slurpies at an acai bar on the Santa Monica pier, "I'd much rather be coached than loved. Relationships are far too transparent. As soon as you let someone get close to you they learn to read you like an oracle bone. Life coaches are all about encouragement. They never make me wrong."
... okay...
It sounds like a business model straight out of the art world. Your clients are terribly insecure so you give them just enough advice to make them feel better about themselves but not quite enough to render your services obsolete.
Who do you think the better actor is, Phil or the coach?
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