"Become a life coach and build a successful business!" screams an ad. You've seen this on Facebook. You've seen this in your email inbox. It makes you think that becoming a "coach" is an attractive business opportunity, especially in this time of pandemic and uncertainty.
The self-improvement business, which includes life coaching and associated online contents, is now a multi-billion-dollar industry. And probably you know at least several of them online.
But I predict that the coaching industry will soon implode.
There are a few reasons for my reasoning, which are:
Market saturation and over-proliferation of coaches; Too many copycats/lack of originality.
Low barriers to entry and low or non-existent professional qualification standards.
Tectonic cultural shifts currently underway.
"Fluff" industries may not survive the next economic downturn.
Too many coaches, too many copycats
The life coaches are a dime a dozen. It is already a crowded field with many players in this industry. A few very well-known ones are making six figures (but also spending at least $50,000 a year just on Facebook advertising), but the vast majority are barely breaking even. If this feels like another MLM or network marketing, you are not wrong. The lure of "becoming a coach" as a so-called business opportunity is quite similar to the recruiting pitch of MLM programs (and there is a big industry around recruiting wannabe "coaches" into training programs in which their customers pay a few thousand dollars for a coach training program). The vast majority do not recover the cost of this training, just as most MLM "independent business owners" never recover the money they spent on starter kits and inventories.
If the business model of online life coaching industry resembles multi-level marketing, then its contents are also copycats just like the self-replicating websites MLM companies offer to their distributors.
More often than not, these coaches look like they are plagiarizing each other (if there's any doubt about this, just sign up on some of their email lists using a throwaway email account and request their "free ebooks" and "free webinars"!). Their coaching programs and materials are very similar or nearly identical to other life coaches'. Some of this may be unconscious, while others are probably by design.
Market over-saturation also leads to an inevitable cannibalizing, with each coach having a smaller and smaller piece of pie as other coaches also target a similar or identical client base.
This also leads to...
Low barriers to entry, and lack of quality control
Life coaches are in demand when people are facing major life changes, crossroads in their careers, or in times of social upheaval. They routinely encounter clients under stress, emotional instability, and confusion. And they encourage their clients to be vulnerable.
Yet, coaches are not clinical counselors nor psychologists, and they often lack education and qualifications to handle the challenges of their clients' lives. While there are a few professional organizations such as the International Coaching Federation that accredit life coaches and establish professional and ethical standards, most coaches you find online are not members of such organizations. Some coaches, unfortunately, are know-it-alls and they simply dispense advice based solely on their life experiences or even worse, based on "gut feeling" or "intuition." Hence there is a risk of irresponsible and underqualified coaches misleading their clients into making erratic, irrational, and misguided decisions that could ruin their lives.
As it stands, anyone in the United States can call themselves a "life coach" and start their coaching business right away. Some unscrupulous people do, indeed, take advantage of this ease of entry and engage in harmful activities under the guise of being a "life coach," such as the New Jersey operators of otherwise illegal gay conversion therapy organization. It will be a few of these high-profile scandals (especially if such scandals involve sexual misconducts) that could cause the life coaching industry to implode (or be mostly regulated out of existence, allowing only a few with postgraduate degrees and state licenses to remain in business).
Culture is shifting, and that is not a good news for the self-improvement industry
Much of what drives the life coach industry came from the human potential and self-realization movement of the 1970s-80s. This was the time when the Baby Boomers shifted their focus away from the Hippie lifestyle and antiwar movement toward their own personal and career growth, often through New Age and pseudoscientific programs. The ethos of the 1980s (which mostly survived well into the mid-2010s) was that if you put your mind on something and "work on yourself," you can be anything and you can do anything; you can be rich and famous, you can have a happy family, and you can have a fulfilling life. The emphasis was mostly on one's self. The self ruled supreme, and the self was atomized -- in other words, "blaming" one's upbringing, parents, socioeconomic class, race, or anything other than your own character and "mindset" was looked down upon, hence people from underprivileged backgrounds were frequently gaslighted ("It's all in your mind! Just work harder!"). This line of thought also dominated in the U.S. politics as the successive presidents from Reagan to Trump pushed welfare reform on one hand and corporatist neoliberalism on the other.
The past five years saw a gradual cultural shift. With the election of Donald J. Trump as the president of the United States, and rapidly accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic and concurrent growth of Black Lives Matter movement, the younger generations in particular are adopting a more systemic and less individualistic view of society and themselves (and I believe the COVID-19 pandemic will further mainstream collectivism). The Millennials are now in their 30s, having witnessed how the exhortations they received in their younger years to "always work on yourself to be the best version of you" only led to an adult life with massive student debts, jobs with little prospect for advancement, and fewer paths to the kind of middle-class lifestyle enjoyed by the Boomers. They've learned to share their homes, form mutual aid networks, and use Venmo to send money to each other so their friends won't starve before the next pay day. The kind of life coaching messages that appeal to the Baby Boomers and even Gen-Xers ring hollow to the 20-and-30-somethings today.
And in general, clichéd coaching tropes such as "follow your heart/bliss" and "follow your passion" are in reality a pretty bad advice to give if someone's looking for a genuinely fulfilling life.
The trend, I predict, will be that the popularity of self-improvement and self-actualization industries will greatly diminish over the next several years.
Coaching is a "fluff" industry
In order for life coaches to make money, there must be a large client base with disposable incomes. Their programs and services tend to appeal to the lower middle class with white collar careers.
Currently the "post-COVID" economic recovery is largely propped up artificially by government policy and heavy public subsidies. But there is no guarantee it will continue this trajectory in light of inflation, end of eviction and foreclosure moratorium, and government stimulus. When the economy crashes, "fluff" industries such as life coaching will be the first to go down. While some people may use the free time caused by unemployment to "reinvest in themselves," unlike trade schools and colleges they can't get a financial aid for personal coaches, nor can they use health insurance unlike licensed psychologists.
This article may be freely used under the terms of the Cooperative Nonviolent Public License, version 7 (CNPLv7). All other uses require express permission of the author.
First published date: Aug. 22, 2021.
