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Why Most Coaches Fail
And how to succeed (for real).
1,188 Words | 4 Min 55 Sec Read
Today we’ll be discussing why coaching is such an easy business to start, but such a hard business to succeed with.
We'll also discuss the one aspect of your coaching you absolutely must prioritize if you want to achieve long-term success.
Let’s dive in.
In the late 2010s I worked at one of the largest coaching companies in the online business space.
When I left, the company employed 15+ specialists and onboarded anywhere from 50 to 100 coaches, consultants and agency owners any given month (while clearing $25M in annual revenue).
During my time there, I saw most every kind of coaching business you can imagine. From mindset and weight loss experts to a man who trained women how to rekindle their relationship with their horse!
After leaving the company, I launched various offers designed to help coaches land clients, from DFY video sales letters to performance-based email.
I mention this not because I think you care about my story, but to emphasize the fact I've worked with more coaches than 99.99% of people online.
And if there's one thing I've noticed about the business, it's this:
Coaching is an incredibly easy business to start, and an incredibly difficult business to succeed with.
And here's why.
First, most anyone on planet Earth can build a website and/or social media profile and proclaim to be a coach.
While there are professional organizations that offer certifications, etc., it's not like how law school students have to pass The Bar before they can call themselves attorneys.
Second, similar to freelancing and agency services, you can launch this kind of business on a literal $0 budget.
While it helps to have some money for ads, a professional website, etc., you'd be shocked how many coaches hit multiple six (and even seven) figures with nothing more than a free Facebook Page and/or Group.
Combine the fact there are no qualifications with the fact you can start for $0 and the barrier to entry in the coaching industry is virtually non-existent.
And because of that, coaching tends to attract the type of people who (often, but not always) are not financially, mentally or emotionally equipped to start a more traditional business (the kind that requires capital, skills, etc.).
Instead, Internet Marketing gurus profess to their followers that:
"As long as you're one step ahead of the people you're teaching, you can call yourself an expert."
And while most coaches have in fact achieved something relevant to what they're selling, you'd be shocked how many "aspiring coaches" have never achieved anything related to the outcome they want to help people with.
But even if they have, what people fail to realize is that coaching is not an information or teaching business.
Instead, it's a motivation business (hat tip to Alen Sultanic on this one).
As a coach, teaching students your five step system for achieving ABC outcome is the easy part. The hard part?
Getting them to actually do the work.
But as you likely know, nothing happens until the work gets done.
Meaning, it doesn't matter how perfect your system or methodology is if you're incapable of motivating your students to:
Take action / get started
Persist in the fact of challenges
Adjust based on feedback
As you can imagine, this is easier said than done.
While putting this into text takes five seconds, getting your clients to overcome their limiting beliefs, childhood traumas, etc., is a herculean pursuit.
To make matters worse, a large segment of who sign up for coaching have little to no intention of doing the actual work.
Instead, on a deep psychological level, they hire a coach because it allows them to abdicate (big word for offload) responsibility for their success.*
*As someone who's done this before and seen other people do it, this is both highly common and a total mindfuck to wrap your head around.
The logic of the person who does this goes something like this:
"I really want to achieve ABC outcome. But I haven't been able to do it on my own and likely never will. So, since this is important to me, I should hire someone to help me with this."
But because deep in their psyche, these types of students do not want to:
Do the work
Overcome the rejection involved in achieving the outcome
Face their fears
Deal with their traumas
...these people sign up for coaching programs, do the bare minimum possible, and then blame their failures on the coach / the coach's system.
In doing so, they remove the blame from themselves under the guise of having spent tons "trying" to achieve the outcome.
As you can imagine, your run of the mill coach is in no way, shape or form equipped to deal with this level of mindset fuckery.
Instead, it would take a full blown psychologist to wrap their heads around - and develop a long-term solution for - dealing with this type of mindset.
In addition, coaching also involves dealing with students who simply don't have the IQ, skills, work ethic or whatever required to achieve their goal.*
*A good coach will filter this before accepting them as a client, but bad apples can lie / manipulate their way through the sales process.
So why does all this stuff matter?
Because in the coaching biz, word of mouth is everything.
When you’re selling $10 eBooks or $20 knick knacks on Amazon, you can get away with having no / few / bad reviews.
But when you position yourself as the “Go To” expert for achieving XYZ outcome - and start to get some traction online - people talk.
While they might not leave bad reviews or ask for refunds, if the people in your program aren’t getting results, word will spread. And it will spread fast (which is justifiable and to be expected given most coaching programs cost $3,000+).
Meaning, if your students are struggling, you'll find it increasingly difficult to enroll new students given the bad (and invisible) word of mouth surrounding your program.
In conclusion, the reason most people fail with coaching is because they drastically underestimate the mindset component involved in helping total strangers achieve massive life transformations.
Instead, most coaches think that because they achieved something, they're equipped to help to help other people achieve the same thing.
In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
To succeed with coaching, you need to approach the fulfillment aspect of your business from the perspective of a motivational psychologist first, and an educator second.
Anything less and your failure is virtually guaranteed.
💡 Takeaway: While coaching is an incredibly easy business to start, most beginners put too much emphasis on their system and past achievements and too little emphasis on the mindset aspect of coaching. By emphasizing mindset, however, your students will have a much higher likelihood of success.
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