The Coaching Industrial Complex's dirty little secret...

So I'm going to flip this around today. Instead of talking about chiropractic, I want to talk about the coaching industry. Specifically what's wrong with it and why so many people have negative experience with coaches out there. One of the reasons I wanted to do this is I spoke to a colleague earlier in the year, he came to one of my seminars and he shared a story with me about joining a coaching program a couple of years ago. Spent £5,000 to join it. The coach seemed very friendly, patient, centered, really wanted to help him out. As soon as he joined it, he found out that actually the program was just delivered either on demand or by previous clients of this coach who are now delivering the content for him. In fact, the only time that he had any interaction with the coach was when the coach was trying to sell him his elite mastermind level program for £25,000. Basically five grand a year didn't buy you anything more than a sales pitch from this guy. He had everyone else do it and he left feeling quite defeated and quite unhappy. And I can completely understand why. In fact I'd actually work. I've worked with this coach myself in the past. It didn't surprise me. Unfortunately, a lot of people get into coaching because of the money, because they think that this is an easier way I can make more money than I could as a practitioner. And many of, in fact this one in particular was only in practice for a few years before leaving to become a full time coach. And one of the problems of the coaching industry is this thing called the Ascension model. This is the standard model. It's the standard business model for nearly every coach, influencer, guru, online personality out there. And it's sold to coaches because coach coaching is a little bit incestuous. You know, it's ironic this is a pyramid because you could argue coaching does have elements of a pyramid scheme. There are coaches who coach coaches how to coach people and they sell coaches programs, telling them how to sell their customers programs. And this essential model is kind of baked in. The vast majority of coaches out there will be using some form of the essential model. Now here's how it works. Essentially what you don't do is you don't go in as a coach and try to sell a high level program. Trying to sell your elite one to one, you know, very, very expensive coaching there. What you'll generally do is you'll have some free stuff that just brings people in. So for example, videos like this where you deliver value and that's bringing people into the model. They're Going, oh, this person, you know, I like them, they've got some interesting content. I'm going to pay attention. I might subscribe to their newsletter. And then from there what most coaches do is they have what's called a tripwire offer, which is as soon as you join the program or sorry, as soon as you join their free newsletter, you get sent a series of emails which are designed to sell you something. I'm going to draw dollars. Apologies to fellow Brits, but I'm rubbish at drawing pound signs on a board. But it's designed to sell you something, something fairly inexpensive, something where you go, okay, the free stuff's been quite good, I'm going to spend a little bit of money on them, okay, and you buy that free thing, sorry, you buy that cheap thing and you know, it probably helps and it will get you one step towards that. But often that is designed to only partially answer the question. It's only going to get you so far because then what happens is their email system logs that you bought a fairly inexpensive thing and it starts sending you more emails designed to ascend you to the next level, which is more expensive. Now the initial thing may have been a download, it may have been a series of videos or something like that, it might be a small course, that kind of thing. But what's really designed to do there, that's not designed to make much money. In fact, ed coaches who run ads, best case scenario, that pays for the money they're spending on ads, they don't make any money on that. But what it does is generate customers who are now spending more money, this might be several hundred pounds now on something a bit more premium, something that might be a higher level online course or program or something like that. Basically you go, okay, this is going to get you step one. But once you're in step one, you need to solve step two. Right, well, lucky for you, now you've spent some money, I've got something for even more money. So I'm going to sell you up that. And this kind of continues beyond that. You might have, this might be group coaching here. That's the first part we actually get in any interaction with the coach at this point here. It's really just, here's some content I put together, I can sell that for free. You might have this now here and then at the top you've really got the premium. So this is designed to get you serious answers here, to get you to the group coaching program. And then at the very top here, this massive dollar sign, this is their Top level program. This is not something you will generally get or is generally advertised to anyone apart from their customers. This might be their premium one to one service. It might be their elite level mastermind that you know, this person was basically they joined here and they were then tried to be sold the thing up here. So the way that most coaching content is designed is not to actually give you everything you want because then you're not a customer anymore. It's actually designed to, to move you and ascend you up the model because although maybe only 5% of their customers ever join at this level, but they will make 95% of their income from this because it is such a high premium and those are the people that you know, they're really invested in. Everybody here is really just in a sales funnel. They're just paying money to join it. Now it's a little cynical. They will get some answers here but it is specifically designed to make you want the next thing. It's not really designed to give you all the answers there. So this is the way the model works is fewer and fewer people it, but the ones who do start paying higher and higher amounts and it's exponential. I've known coaches who charge 50 grand or more per year to join at that level there. So that's the way the coaching industry works. And what it often does is it leaves people joining these lower levels kind of going oh, that didn't really help me like I thought. And they just want to push me up this ladder there. So you may have had experiences that maybe this will make some sense of before now. The reason I'm explaining this, obviously if this is what I wanted to do, I wouldn't tell you this. Coaches don't tell people. This is what they tend to do there. So the thing that I wanted to change about this is that basically it's just treating people like numbers. It's the whole profits over people kind of thing that those who know me for any length of time, no, I'm absolutely not about. But the other thing for me is that I'm not, I'm not a coach for the money. This is not my income. My main income is seeing patients in this room and running my practice. I coach on the side and that means that I get to do it as and when I want to. I don't have these premium level things at all. I don't actually want to do one to one with other practitioners any more than I do right now because I do one to one with my whole team and I help mentor People through the Royal College and the prt. I've got that. That scratches the itch there. I do have a certification program, but I only run that about once a year as and when I have the bandwidth. And I feel like I'm not doing what most coaches do, which is constantly running something here and always trying to sell people up. In fact, 11 months out of 12, if you're chatting to me and you're asking, you know, how can I work with you, I'm going to go, well, I can't even give you the certification thing because I'm not running it right now. So I only do that when I have the bandwidth because I really enjoy it and I really like doing it. And essentially I'm doing this because I want to help people. Yes, I can't do it for free because it's taking time away from my family or my practice or that kind of thing. But I'm not interested in trying to ascend people. And any of you who've ever bought a course or a program from me, sure. I might mention, by the way, if you want to learn more about this, there's another course, there's a tool there, that kind of thing. But you'll know I don't just hammer you with sales emails because I really want the thing that you got to be the thing that makes a real difference for you as well. So I'm a little different in that respect there. It's really for me about when do I have the time, when do I have the bandwidth? And most of the time I'm focusing on my own practice and that keeps me busy enough there. And I don't. This is the other thing I don't like doing with one to one is one to one has to be quite high cost. Most practitioners, especially the ones I love helping, they don't have the budget to spend several thousand pounds an hour to work, several thousand pounds an hour, several hundred pounds per session to work with me. So again, it's a time thing there as well. What I'm looking to do and what I'm actually going to reveal in the next video is a way I'm going to change this and I actually want to kind of break the coaching industry. I really want to just take this whole thing apart because to me it's far more about serving coaches interests than it's actually about serving, you know, practitioners interests as well. Because it's. And it's about solving this dilemma of people often need more support than just an online course there. But there's only so much of my time that I can give there, and I've wrestled with how to offer that and how to give the support without having to charge a huge amount of. And I've been working on something for the last few months, and I'm really, really excited that it's going to completely revolutionize this. And the reason I'm so excited is because I don't think other coaches are going to be able to offer this kind of thing. If they did, it would destroy that model. They would have nobody wanting to ascend up there because they'd be getting all the value of things at this higher level here without having to pay nearly as much. So they'd either do it by completely overcharging people, which I'm not going to do, or they essentially do it by using this thing in an unethical way there. So I think this is going to break the industry a little bit and I'm really, really excited to share it with you. So stay tuned. There's a video in another couple of days where I'll explain what that is, how it's going to work as well, but in the meantime, I thought I'd share that. If you have worked with a coach and you think things seem a little bit off or you wonder why so many coaches don't seem to do and follow up on their promises there, that's the reason. It's because of this essential model. And forewarned is forearmed. If you know about it now, you can know to spot the signs there and maybe go, is this person really about helping me or are they just constantly trying to upsell me on the next thing? So stay tuned for that video. I'll be back soon with another one.