Michael Pfau sat on a bench outside his downtown Philadelphia office building in September 2003, fresh from completing his coach certification. He’d just finished a year of evening classes while working full-time as an I.T. Network Administrator at Lincoln Financial Group and volunteering 15 hours weekly as Assistant Pastor. The question hung in the air: “Lord, what’s next?”

Within a week, two opportunities arrived that would shape the next two decades of his life.

This wasn’t how Michael expected his story to unfold. Back in 1986, he and his wife had moved to Philadelphia to plant a church in the inner city. To support themselves, Michael took a job as a PC technician at the city’s largest law firm – hardly the background you’d expect for someone who would go on to coach over 270 clients and mentor 260 coaches through 5,000+ hours of transformation.

But in 2002, while leading his church’s Christian Education program, Michael discovered Gary Collins’ book Christian Coaching. He was searching for tools to train small group leaders, but what he found changed everything.

“What I loved about coaching,” Michael recalls, “is I didn’t have to have the answers for people.”

Working with church members, he’d noticed something: folks didn’t always want advice. Some needed someone to listen. Others just wanted to complain. Coaching offered a different way – meeting people where they were, whether with empathy or challenge, without having to fix them.

Intrigued, Michael hired his own coach – Chris McCluskey – to help navigate his own next season. During their work together on life mission and vision, Chris mentioned he was considering offering evening coach training through the Institute for Life Coach Training. Two obstacles stood in Michael’s way: the class had to be offered at night (he was working full-time), and it had to be affordable for him.

Both fell into place. The evening class launched in Fall 2002. A small inheritance from his mother’s passing provided the exact funds needed. “The Lord gave me the green light,” Michael says simply.

The training revealed something crucial: “Coaching is both about the skill of the coach AND the being of the coach.”

For someone with a background in information technology – someone who’d actually been told by personality profiles that he “would not be good for coaching” – this was transformative. What mattered wasn’t natural soft skills, but a genuine desire to help people grow.

That prayer on the bench? God answered definitively.

The Christian Counseling and Education Foundation (CCEF) called, asking if Michael would do career counseling. “I’d be delighted to do career coaching,” he replied, explaining the difference. Then came an invitation to join Bruce Wilkinson’s Dream Giver Coach Network – one of seven coaches selected across the U.S. and Canada. “Only God,” Michael says.

Twenty-four years later, Michael’s practice looks different than it did in those early days of copious note-taking and anxious tracking of client progress. Now he’s more relaxed, trusting transformation to happen at each client’s pace. He works with 25 clients monthly, specializing in the very transitions he once navigated himself: mid-life shifts, career changes, retirement. He’s added mentor coaching and, in 2025, coach supervision.

The challenges haven’t disappeared. Finding new clients requires constant attention. Juggling everything while knowing that if you don’t work, you don’t get paid – that’s the reality of building a practice. Potential collaborations have come and gone, with only 2-3 yielding actual work. But Michael holds firm to one conviction: “It was God’s idea for me to do this, and I have found Him faithful to provide.”

What still lights him up after 5,000+ hours? Watching mindset transformation. “It is just so great to see clients become aware of negative mindsets and use the tools I provide to help them renew their mind.”

Since 2008, Michael has trained aspiring coaches alongside his practice, co-teaching with the late Judy Santos, as well as others at PCCI. He loves the moment when students finally “get it”, when coaching clicks.

The best coaches, he’s learned, maintain “a peaceful and neutral mindset. These help the coach to stay curious and notice without judgment. Good coaches treat each conversation as a wonderful adventure, not sure where it will go.”

His advice to aspiring coaches echoes his own journey: “Practice and get feedback as much as you can. Keep a learner’s mindset and you will excel.”

And to those who wonder if they’re qualified enough? “The thing that makes the difference is to genuinely want to help people grow and succeed. To overcome challenges and obstacles, especially within themselves.”

Michael’s journey from network administrator to PCC-credentialed master coach proves something important: coaching isn’t reserved for the naturally gifted. It’s a craft that can be learned, a calling that can be answered, and a profession that can be built – one conversation, one client, one transformation at a time.