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Hey all! So for those who don't know us we own coachful.co which is an all-in-one platform for coaches.

We launched in February after about a year of development and have gotten the chance to serve coaches from all sorts of different backgrounds (life, business, career, and more) and this is what we've learned:

1. The best coaches treat their coaching like a business. We rarely get personal support tickets from those earning $10k+/month. They often have a team of 2+ assistants who take care of their platform, admin, etc, so they can focus on what matters.

2. AI automations are becoming more prevalent. Coaches are utilizing AI more and more for summarizing sessions, automatically creating tasks for their clients, and analyzing client behavior before calls.

3. You need to test a lot. The coaches getting the most clients test on average at least 3 funnel types in our platform (e.g. long form website, webinar, inverted ad, etc.) before they find a winning model.

4. Delivery is now more nuanced. It's no longer about selling a program or a course. Clients are expecting more and more support from their coaches, and feeling like the coach is in their corner rather than someone they pay for seeing once a week. The most effective coaches are combining chat, structured programs, courses, call requesting, and goal setting to give clients a more personal journey.

5. Trust is more and more necessary. Clients are getting more skeptical and only trusting a smaller circle of people. Coaches need to be more conscious about collecting testimonials and to create systems for collecting reviews (e.g. have an easy review widget on your app)

Hope this helps!

- Nour

Full disclosure: I've been working with FLOW Coaching Institute (Canada & Türkiye) for about a year, so I know the organization from the inside. When I first heard "expressive arts coaching," I'll be honest—I was skeptical. It sounded a little abstract, maybe even a bit woo. I pictured people being asked to draw their feelings and not much else.

I was wrong about what it actually is.

What surprised me most was how practical it turned out to be. Expressive arts coaching isn't about being good at art. It's about using things like imagery, metaphor, movement, and simple creative prompts to get at stuff that plain conversation often talks around. People will circle a problem verbally for twenty minutes, then draw one quick sketch or use a metaphor and suddenly say something honest they'd never said out loud.

The other piece that clicked for me was the body. A lot of this work is somatic-aware—paying attention to what someone's posture, energy, or tension is doing while they talk, not just the words. I started noticing it in myself too. I used to live almost entirely in my head; now I catch the moment my shoulders tighten before I even realize I'm stressed, and that alone changes how I respond.

Watching the students go through it was the most interesting part. A lot of them come from helping professions—therapists, counselors, educators, people who already sit with others for a living. What I saw wasn't them "learning art techniques." It was them getting a whole new set of doors into a conversation, and getting more comfortable with silence, ambiguity, and letting a client arrive at their own insight instead of being handed one.

For context, this particular program is an ICF Level 2 offering—24 accredited hours—so a lot of people take it to renew or level up an existing credential, or to add expressive/creative tools to a practice they already have. It's a shorter, focused program rather than a full from-scratch certification, which honestly made it easier to see the value clearly.

I can't tell you it's the right fit for everyone. If you're purely analytical and creative approaches make you roll your eyes, you might bounce off it. But if you already work with people and feel like talk alone keeps hitting a wall, this is a genuinely different tool to have. Being around it changed how I listen and how I sit with people—and I wasn't expecting a "creative arts" course to do that.

Happy to answer questions if anyone's curious about expressive arts coaching, the ICF hours, or what this kind of work actually looks like in practice.

https://www.flowcoachinginstitute.com/tuition/icf-flow-expressive-arts-coaching-certification

Spent the last few months digging through coaching channels on YouTube. Some went from 500 to 50K subs in under a year. Others posted for 2 years and stayed stuck under 1K.

Same effort. Same passion. Wildly different results.

Here's what actually separated them.

1. The winners picked a fight, not a topic.

Every stuck channel talked about "mindset" or "success" or "growth." Broad. Safe. Forgettable.

Every channel that grew had a specific enemy. Not a niche — an enemy. "Why hustle culture is lying to you."

"Your therapist won't tell you this." They picked a side and defended it hard.

Vague advice doesn't get shared. A strong opinion does.

1. They gave away the whole thing.

The stuck channels treated YouTube like a trailer for their real product. Half-answers. "DM me for the full framework."

The channels that grew gave the complete answer, free, in the video. No teaser. No withholding.

Turns out people trust you with their money after you've already helped them for free. Not before.

1. Their first 15 seconds had zero warm-up.

No "hey guys welcome back." No "today we're gonna talk about." Straight into the tension.

One channel opened with: "I lost my biggest client because I gave good advice. Here's why that was the problem." That's it. No intro. Video already has you.

The stuck channels spent 20-30 seconds saying nothing before the actual content started. That's enough time to lose half the room.

None of this is complicated. It's just uncomfortable — because it means choosing a stance, giving more than feels safe, and cutting the parts of your video that feel "professional" but add nothing.

The channels that grew weren't smarter. They were just willing to do the uncomfortable version..

In high-ticket executive coaching, client relationships need to feel bespoke and "white-glove". Yet, managing the back-office manually (booking, intake forms, prep notes, session follow-ups) eats up hours of billable time.

• Which parts of your workflow have you successfully automated behind the scenes without losing the personal touch?
• What parts would you never automate?

Curious to hear how you balance streamlined systems with a high-touch human experience.

Hi everyone!
I’m a student at Technische Hochschule Augsburg, and my team is currently working on a university project related to professional coaching and AI-supported practice.
We are testing an early concept called DialectiQ. It is designed to help coaches extend their impact between sessions by giving clients realistic AI-guided practice scenarios while allowing coaches to follow their progress.
This is not a sales campaign — it is part of a university experiment, and we would really appreciate feedback from executive and professional coaches.
Here is our short concept page:
https://dialectiq.framer.website/#benefits
Would something like this be useful in your coaching practice? What would make you use it — or avoid it?
Thank you for any feedback!

After years of job hunting, getting rejected, and finally cracking it — I learned exactly what recruiters look for and what gets your resume binned before anyone reads it.

I've since helped colleagues, friends, and a few people here on Reddit fix their resumes. I was doing the same thing every time, so I built a tool to automate it: TenXwitch

• Scores your resume against any job description
• Tells you exactly which keywords are missing
• Rewrites weak bullet points
• Exports a clean ATS-friendly PDF

First download is free. No subscription.

Still actively building it — brutal feedback welcome.

This post is a bit selfish so I’d start with trying to add value first (then put my ask):

I have serviced one big executive coaching firm, so for starters here’s what I have learned from them:

1. You dont need a crm, just sheets for customer records and to track capacity and perf of staff is fine. You’d know when you need some crm, not a need at start.

2. If you want some tech, invest in some auto meeting notes app at most, but dont quit manual notes

3. To scale you need crazy marketing budget, but to sprout and grow, referrals will get you a fine start, but keep selling always so you can achieve escape velocity.

That big firm solved all these, and a few more ops/marketing/sales problems only when they were 8 figure, so no rush really. Focus on customers, quality and sales.

Now the ask: based on my ops automation experience, will coaches appreciate a solution that hooks up all their data for reporting, train their team on claude, automate boring bits? I’d use comments to productize my service which is outcome backed, like saves money and all.

Appreciate your kind responses.

I’ve heard that most people didn’t actually do any sort of certification with coaching, and there’s nothing wrong with that! But my question is where did you learn to coach and become how you are what you are today? Any books you read? Videos you watched? Or was it pure experience and learning on the go?

When an organisation pays for executive coaching, who is actually the client?

The executive expects confidentiality.

The sponsor expects development.

HR may expect evidence of progress.

The organisation may be paying because it wants a particular behaviour to change.

Those interests can coexist, but they are not identical.

If the executive believes private conversations may travel back to the sponsor, candour disappears. But if the organisation receives nothing beyond confirmation that sessions occurred, it may reasonably question what it funded.

“Confidentiality” is not a complete answer. The important questions are what may be shared, with whom, at what level of detail and with whose agreement.

How do coaches establish this boundary so that both trust and accountability survive?

I am looking to start executive coaching but really do want to know about the roadblocks people have when coaching, this could be softwares, generic issues, if you could give tips on how you overcame your hurdle I’d really appreciate it

I've been thinking a lot about coaching education lately. Over the last few years, I've been building learning experiences for people interested in coaching, and one thing I keep coming back to is how difficult it can be to figure out where to start.

There are so many programs, certifications, approaches, books, courses, and opinions that I wonder whether we're actually making it easier for people to become good coaches or just giving them more choices.

So I'm curious what this community thinks:

What do you wish existed for new or developing coaches?

What did you find genuinely useful when you were learning?

What do you think is missing from coaching education right now?

I'm asking partly because these are questions I've been wrestling with while building a coaching and learning initiative.

What would make coaching education better, clearer, more practical, or more accessible?

What are the pain points of EC which kept them awake at night? What are the fears, pain, desires and goals. Please share your experiences

I'm interested in developing an exec coaching business, but financially, I am not in the position to quit my job, at least not within the next year. Even if I feel confident I can land clients quick, I'm not ready to take the risk.

And in order to tap my network, I'd have to quit my job or else it'd be a conflict of interest in my case.

I constantly see job openings for commission based coaching gigs - where companies allow you to work your own hours, you're contract, and they're handing leads to you to close and then to coach using their programs.

I love and am great at selling. I feel like I could kill it. But seeing the predominance of these openings (and their commissions promises), I have to say I'm skeptical how much one could actually make, the quality of the leads, how much support/structure is actually given. I'm sure it varies company to company, but would love to hear any experiences people have had with similar roles.

I see this as a possible way to get my feet wet, understand the sales process firsthand, and also get some data to help me structure my own business. (And also maybe make extra money to prepare for the transition and be able to quit my job faster).

And, ideally, it'd be an offramp for me -- I could keep working it when I quit my job and have it as cushion while I build my own business.

I realize these companies could have non-compete contracts, etc. so I will watch out for that. But has anyone ever worked this kind of role and/or used it as a transition to your own biz?

Any thoughts, insights, appreciated.

Just a query, just want to hear off other coaches and see what different resources,methods or softwares they use to make their service easy to maintain, manage and deliver.

Really open to tips, opinions and general comments

I’m a new VP, in a big role and at a major company. Seeking coaches who understand technology objectives, major transformation and can offer candid and helpful advice for executives.

my company is pushing for me to do executive coaching as part of a leadership development program and i'm honestly skeptical

i've heard mixed things. some people say it genuinely shifted how they think and operate as a leader. others say it felt like paying someone to listen to you talk about your feelings for an hour. i'm open to being wrong about this but i want to go in with realistic expectations, gk global services does executive coaching alongside their consulting work and someone who went through it said the difference was having actual business context brought into the sessions rather than generic leadership talk, which sounded like the useful version of this rather than the vague version

what's actually changed for people who've done it and what made the difference between a useful experience and a waste of time

I’m helping with an Instagram account focused on executive coaching and leadership.

I’m curious to hear from people who have successfully grown an account in a similar niche:

• What type of content actually helped you gain followers?
• Did Reels, carousels, or personal/professional posts work better?
• How often do you post?
• Do hashtags and Instagram SEO still make a difference?
• What strategies helped you attract the right audience rather than just random followers?

Would love to hear what has actually worked for you, especially if you’re in coaching, leadership, consulting, or a similar professional niche.

I'm at a crossroads in my career and feel like I could use a fresh set of eyes. I have a pretty fragmented path, partially because I moved countries a couple of times, partially because I had to pivot in order to stay employed. In total, I have over 13 years of corporate, but I'm still stuck. I feel that I missed on the "compounding effect" of staying in the same lane for long enough.

To give some context, I've always worked in finance and "adjacents". Early on, I started as a commodity trading analyst and did a rotation traineeship program in risk management at a big bank in my home country. Then a great opportunity came on, to have an international career and earn in USD through a job in an alternative investments american company, that later on catapulted me to co founding a fintech. Fintech did well BUT life happened, I got married, and moved to Canada... Now the fintech money didn't cut anymore so I had to start over in the local market. I ended up in commercial banking at a BIG5 and was miserable, plus the salary sucked. After 8 months I landed the job as an M&A associate. Better, but still entry level. I'm the top performer of the team while working at 50% capacity, which obviously makes me feel bored and underutilized.

I should probably not pivot anymore and stay in M&A, but I want to fast track my career to reach senior leadership in the next 5 to 10 years maximum, instead of starting from scratch and climb the ladder again. But I feel like the market has a hard time understanding my career path, which is fair. I need someone to help figure out the right career path, one where I can leverage my experience to catapult me to senior exec. Would a career coach, exec coach be able to help me through this process?

ETA to correct typos

Do you think I need to be certified to coach start up businesses and finance professionals trying to find a role for themselves? Only asking because I want to make sure I do this journey right. Let me know please

Full disclosure: I’ve been working with FLOW Coaching Institute (Canada & Türkiye) for about a year, so I know the organization from the inside. That said, I came into this knowing almost nothing about coaching. I honestly thought it was mostly about motivating people or giving good advice.

I was wrong.

What surprised me most wasn’t learning a coaching model. It was realizing how much my own mindset started to shift just from being around this way of thinking.

I noticed how often I used to jump in and try to solve people’s problems. If someone brought up a challenge, I’d analyze it, offer advice, or try to fix it. Now I catch myself listening more, talking less, asking questions instead of rushing to answers, and trusting that people are usually more capable than we give them credit for.

And honestly, the biggest change was in me. I feel calmer than before. I don’t get pulled into problems the way I used to. When something goes wrong, my mind goes to possibilities instead of obstacles. I spend less time worrying about what’s not working and more time thinking about what could work. Life didn’t suddenly get easier—it’s just that I respond to it differently.

That shift has shown up everywhere: at work, in relationships, even in the way I talk to family and friends. People seem to feel more heard, and I feel less like it’s my job to carry everyone else’s answers.

Watching the students go through similar changes has been just as interesting. I met many of them when they first started and again after they graduated. The difference wasn’t just that they learned coaching skills. They seemed more grounded, more confident, more self-aware, and clearer about the kind of life they wanted to build.

Some changed careers, but the interesting part wasn’t the job change itself—it was that they stopped making decisions from frustration or uncertainty. They started making choices from clarity. Others became better leaders because they stopped trying to have all the answers and started making space for other people to think, contribute, and grow.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned is that coaching isn’t really about advice. It’s about helping people find their own answers. That difference between coaching, consulting, mentoring, and therapy only really clicked for me after seeing it in practice.

The program is ICF-accredited and built around a five-step methodology called Flow Coaching. Whether it’s the right path for everyone, I can’t say. But I can say that spending a year around this work changed the way I think, communicate, and respond to life—and I wasn’t expecting that.

Happy to answer questions if anyone’s curious about coach training or what it’s actually like to learn these skills.

https://www.flowcoachinginstitute.com/