I was a life coach who hated the coaching industry

Maybe it was never the right path for me?

Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash

I remember knowing that the time had come to move on from the magazine that defined a decade of my life, but I was also really scared of what was next. I knew I wasn’t ready to go back to a corporate career, but I wasn’t really sure what my next move was. I had been working with a coach when she asked me what my gut was telling me.

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A spinoff of the magazine was a group program called the Kindred Intensives. We tackled one subject per month - sometimes body image, sometimes self care, sometimes self love - we dove in deep, with me writing lessons, doing research, and suggesting activities that would get us taking action, as a whole. Maybe, I thought, I could do something like the intensives on a bigger scale? But when my coach suggested I become a coach, I laughed. Why would anyone ever pay me to coach them? And then a member of a previous intensive said to me, “Sarah, you’ve already been coaching, this would just make it official.”

So I started researching - what does becoming a coach involve? How do I get certified? How do I get clients? What would I coach on? What would I charge? I spent a year researching and learning and getting certified, I took on free clients to hone my skills, I joined group programs with other coaches to learn their techniques, I watched and listened to coaching calls over and over again so that I could see what the “best” coaches were doing. And then one day I was certified, I was a self-love coach (essentially a life coach, with a specific focus on self esteem.)

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I never actually stopped to ask myself if this is the direction I wanted to go. I never stopped to really investigate my own feelings around coaching and the coaching industry. Other people told me I’d be good at it and because I didn’t know what was next, I figured why not. My coach had asked me what my gut was telling me, but I ignored that piece, I ignored my gut.

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I started working with women who I had previously worked with in the intensives. They already knew me and trusted me, and it seemed like the next logical step to work together one-on-one. And I truly loved the calls I did with them. I can see in my Five Year Journal where I wrote about how transformational I found these calls - not just for my clients, but for me, too. Maybe, I thought, I’ve found my true calling?

But outside of those calls, I saw myself actively rejecting the label of “coach.” That label hadn’t yet taken on the ick that it has now, the industry hadn’t yet done the type of harm that it has since done. But I didn’t like to talk about my job. And I saw myself shrinking when talking to girlfriends who were therapists. Was I just a joke? Did they think I was causing harm to my clients? (They assured me more than once that I was brilliant at coaching and should keep doing it.) But those thoughts continued to creep in.

It wasn’t the actual coaching that felt wrong. I knew from my clients that our time together was helpful. I knew that they were making real progress and I was proud of that. But it was more about the actual coaching industry as a whole. So many people were diving in without taking the time to really learn about coaching or to get certified. Anyone could say they were a coach with no training. People were walking away thousands of dollars in debt to their coach, while having nothing to show for it. (Ahem, my own experience of wasting $9000 on a coach.) And then there were training programs charging upwards of $20,000 to certify you, coaches going into debt before they’d even started. And in each program I was a part of, it felt less like we were listening and more like just having to ask the question “but what if you DID know” to our clients over and over again. And it just didn’t make sense.

I also struggled with the marketing aspect of it. It felt wrong to seek out people when they were feeling down about themselves and offer to help them fix it. Because what if I couldn’t? My training hadn’t quite prepared me for these overwhelming feelings of wondering if I was doing the right thing. My bank account depended on other people struggling and when does that ever feel good?

A complicated knot of feelings was forming in me - I truly loved helping women. Each time I had a coaching call, I was excited. I loved knowing what was happening in these women’s lives, I loved watching them succeed at their dreams, I loved being a small part of it. But when I’d close down Zoom and have to get back to the “business” of coaching, I couldn’t shut out the voices that told me I wasn’t on the right path. Regardless of whether or not I was good at it, the coaching industry as a whole wasn’t sitting well with me. I was finally listening to my gut, and what I was hearing wasn’t what I had been doing.

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Slowly, quietly, I began to let go of coaching. I took my services off my website. I didn’t seek out new clients. And when prospective clients came in, I let them know I was taking a break from coaching¹. I wasn’t sure what would come next (thankfully that summer everything changed), but I knew that if it wasn’t sitting right with me, it was something that needed to go. I wanted to be able to say proudly what I did for work.

I still struggle to identify as having been a coach, even though that’s what I was. And I do know that there are some incredible coaches out there (the one I had been working with was great!). But even so, shouldn’t there be more regulations around the industry? Shouldn’t there be some accountability behind it all? What if we’re actually causing more harm than good? I’m proud of what I worked on with my clients during that time, I’m proud of the relationships that were formed. But I hope that in the future we can see more standardization and boundaries around coaching.

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A few more things…

🦋 I haven’t been on Twitter for YEARS as a regular habit, so as it burns itself to the ground, it means nothing to me. But I did recently hop on the BlueSky train and I gotta say, I’m enjoying it. If you’re there, let’s connect. Here’s me.

📖 You all know how much I love reading - particularly on my Kindle. I’m eyeing a new Kindle case for Christmas and my favorite place to get them is Page the Shop.

🎄

Brittany's Notebook

is one of my favorite Substacks, but she outdid herself with this post with 2024 Advent Calendar Ideas, Plans, Tips and Printables. I’m going to be incorporating SO many of these!

1. It should be said though that I’ve kept one client on throughout the last couple of years and I love her and I look forward to our weekly calls.