Meet Coach Evan Burk

Today we’d like to introduce you to Evan Burk.

Evan, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My first experiences as a leader as captain of my high school football and wrestling teams really sparked my initial interest in leadership. I loved competing in sports growing up and gradually began to view myself as a leader as I matured. That first leadership experience, in combination with the impact my high school coaches had on me, really served as the fuel for my desire to pursue coaching.

That desire to lead and have an impact led me to begin coaching while I was in college. Even at 20 years old, I knew that I wanted to be a head coach for a NFL or college football team, I just didn’t know anyone that was a college coach or where to start or how to start. Looking back now makes me laugh a little at my naiveté about coaching, but I just felt I needed to start coaching so my first role as coach was with a 4th-grade football team.

From that initial coaching experience, I coached football at the high school level, D1 college football, and the NFL over the next decade, where I got a true taste of the coaching profession by living in 5 different cities in 10 years. In 2014 I moved to Los Angeles to coach at UCLA. Over the next two years, despite the success of the team, I began to question whether I wanted to continue as a football coach for the first time in my career, and that feeling caused me to leave football at the end of the 2015 season after a 12-year coaching career.

Now I work as a leadership coach with athletes, coaches, and sports team executives on developing the character and leadership that drives winning team cultures. This transition has certainly taken time and lots of learning along the way, but I love it because I get to stay involved in the professional and college sports world. Being able to work directly with team leadership, the chance to explore new industries such as professional esports, and meet fascinating people I never had the chance to work with before keep my days exciting and fulfilling.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There have definitely been obstacles along the way, but I have always had the attitude that the adversity I’ve faced has really allowed me to grow and constantly evolve as I’ve progressed in my career.

In football, most pro and college coaches are either a coach’s son or played in college or the NFL, which makes it hard for people to break into the profession like me who have neither. So in that regard, it was difficult at times and I felt very little respect was given to me early on in my career because I didn’t possess the normal pedigree of a coach and I don’t necessarily look like a coach. But what that did was it made me earn that respect every single day I showed up through my work ethic and my willingness to learn. And while there may have been challenging experiences, I’m glad I went through them. It gave me a tremendous opportunity to prove I belonged at the highest levels of the profession and allowed me to have some amazing experiences and make incredible friends along the way.

The transition after football was also difficult. I had only known one way of life since graduating college, and it was easy to look at my resume and say I had no professional or business experience. It really took a while before I could look back on my career and recognize the soft skills and intangibles that go along with competing and succeeding at the highest levels of any profession.

Understanding that transitioning careers is a process and requires a step-by-step progression also took time for me to really buy into. There have been multiple failures over the past four years after football, but each of those experiences allowed me to grow and use it moving forward. I’m very happy with my work as a leadership coach now, but I also have to remind myself that dealing with those adversity and setbacks, although tough in the moment, helped lead me to where I am now.

We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
As a leadership coach, I’m constantly working with high-performers, coaches, and sports team executives on leadership development, coaching education, and building winning cultures. My clients vary from working with professional esports organizations like the Los Angeles Gladiators to working individually with startup founders, to building client and employee leadership training programs for companies.

I specialize on working within the sports industry, mainly focused on helping leaders and teams develop organizational frameworks, structures and processes that help them achieve consistent success.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Communication as a coach is really important, and I’m always working on communication skills and technique development. Two things that have been important to my success have been in dealing with people in an authentic and positive way, and my ability to communicate across industry boundaries. Each of these have played a big role in allowing me to adapt my work to different sports, companies, and people.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.coachevanburk.com
• Phone: 214.458.8840
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachevanburk/

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