Inside the world of dodgy online coaches

Or, that time I got scammed out of $5,700

Summer 2020 was a wild time for small business owners. Apart from the small matter of navigating a global pandemic, social media was abuzz with a shiny new character: the online business coach. Of course, business coaches have been around forever, but in 2020, the proliferation of online businesses and freelancers meant these coaches had more potential business than ever. It wasn’t just business coaches: my network was full of money manifestation coaches, confidence coaches, joy coaches, motherhood coaches…you name it, there’s a coach for it. Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the concept of life/business coaches. Plenty of people—myself included—have benefited greatly from working with experienced coaches who give us that push towards our goals. The problem back in 2020 was that the vast majority of these coaches were peddling services they have no experience in—and there was no vetting process in place to verify their claims.

Mixed messages, to say the least

Want the shortcut to becoming an online coach? Here’s your basic formula.

1. Pick a niche—anything from manifesting, joy, time management, creative—and come up with a cute little name for your Instagram handle.

2. Come up with your basic services, usually a 1:1 package and a group program that lasts for 4 or 8 weeks. Bonus points if you give it a name like “The Ultimate Stress Busting Confidence Booster Container.”

3. Run a few trial calls with people in your network in exchange for testimonials.

4. Launch your new business, no accreditation required. Voila, you’re a coach.

There are a lot of problems with this system. First, it devalues the work of coaches who’ve spent a lot of time and money becoming accredited with a well-regarded regulatory board like the ICF. It’s also risky for you as a customer: you’re essentially taking advice from someone who hasn’t been trained in what they’re teaching you. You’re putting your business at risk following advice that’s potentially damaging to your customer base and reputation, and you’ve got nowhere to turn if things turn sour. If you’re working with a therapist, let’s say, and they behave in an unethical way, there are systems in place for you to raise your complaint. With Insta-coaches, however, this usually isn’t the case. 

Back in 2020, I was about 6 months into running my business full-time. Things were going well, but almost a little too well: I had zero strategies in place, no long-term plan, and was on the verge of burnout. It just so happened that I came across an online coach who was rising in popularity with every day that passed—she had run a group project that I’d taken part in and really enjoyed, and we had a quick call to discuss working together.

The lure of €15k months and €50k launches

Now for a little bit of context: as everyone turned to remote work and monetising their creative side hustles at the start of the pandemic, businesses like mine (at the time, teaching content and social media workshops) experienced an unprecedented boom. It wasn’t unusual for fellow small business owners to make €15,000 a month working from their parents’ spare bedroom, or for friends to make €50,000 (sometimes much more!) launching a 6 week course. The numbers bandied around by these coaches (typically around €5,000 total for 3 months of weekly sessions) sound eye-watering now, but at the time, they honestly seemed reasonable when coaches assured you you’d make back your investment within the first month of working together. These people were part life coach, part business coach, with a bit of manifestation thrown in for good measure. Coupled with the whole ‘invest in yourself’ and ‘you’ve got to spend money to make money’ energy, it seemed like a sound business decision at the time. You hire a coach for €5,000, they spend a few months helping you set up some systems and processes, and like magic, you’re suddenly making €20,000 a month. I mean, it definitely sounds like €5,000 well spent.

I told my would-be coach on the phone that I had a specific lofty income goal in mind. Her response? “This is the problem with women—we underestimate ourselves. I’d say you should double that goal.” Ambitious to the point of delusional, yes, but if she thought she could help me get there, sign me up. I was naive in that I knew I would never exaggerate potential results to clients (underpromise and overdeliver is my motto, baby), because that just seemed like a recipe for disaster, and I assumed others would take the same approach. It turns out some people will say whatever they need to on a sales call in order to get you to sign. Woops. 

Ambitious to the point of delusional, yes, but if she thought she could help me get there, sign me up.

So I signed up, in part because this coach said she’d help me implement systems and process in my business, and also because she said she would blast my services & profile on her own social media regularly—and as someone with a big audience of my target customers, this would have been very valuable. Safe to say, this was yet another promise that never materialised. 

From bad to very bad

Our 12 weeks working together went from bad to worse.

I had outlined specific goals from the beginning, including setting up the processes I needed to scale my business. In our initial sessions, we only talked about mindset, and when I raised my concerns, I was told that she always spent the first few sessions talking about mindset, and the ‘real’ business coaching would begin from week 5.

One of the most damaging things this coach told me to do was to stop my regular networking coffees because “they don’t make you money.” At the time, 90% of my business came from these interactions and ensuing referrals, so I felt uneasy about following the advice, but I figured I’d paid so much, I should follow her advice to the letter, and I’d see results. I stopped the coffees, and sure enough, my income dropped. Her advice centred around showing up on Instagram stories chatting to the camera endlessly—which worked for her, because she was essentially an influencer. Unfortunately, my audience wasn’t too interested in my soliloquies, so by this point, I was making substantially less money than I had before I started working with the coach. 

I figured I’d paid so much, I should follow her advice to the letter, and I’d see results.

Other top-notch advice I received was to work out daily at 6am and send her a photo, arbitrarily increase pricing, and drive myself to burnout in a variety of fun ways that, once again, had zero positive impact on my career. At the same time, this coach was making a killing running one-off online workshops (€200ish a ticket, 250ish participants... you can do the maths). Suddenly, if you can make €50,000 chatting on Zoom for a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon, it’s not that exciting working with VIP clients like yours truly, and her other coaching clients and I slipped to the bottom of her priority pile. 

I imaged I’d be throwing around cash (and donating to great causes, obvi) à la Kim K after working with a business coach

At one point, she generously offered me a deal to sign on for a year’s worth of coaching for over €20,000 (I know). I pointed out that I hadn’t even started to make back my investment on the initial 3 months’ coaching, and that I wanted to know what she thought my income trajectory could look like over the course of a year. I never intended to sign up (I didn’t have the money to begin with!) but was curious as to what she thought my business’ potential was. Cue a 5 minute voice note interrogating me as to why I thought she was responsible for my income, and that I wouldn’t be successful if I put responsibility on others. It was so intense that I had to get my boyfriend to listen to it and paraphrase it for me… #girlboss.

At one point, she generously offered me a deal to sign on for a year’s worth of coaching for over €20,000 (I know).

In the final few weeks, our phone calls had gone from twice a week for a total of about 1.5 hours, to once a week, for 25 minutes if I was lucky. I didn’t have anything to say, and nor did she, so we would have a bland conversation about something tangentially related to my business, and then she’d have to run off to another call. After our final session, she messaged me asking for a video testimonial.

I was working up the courage to reply saying I didn’t feel comfortable promoting her services because I hadn’t received what was promised, but in the meantime, her business imploded after it turned out she’d been running a group program with a questionable individual. They cancelled the 6 month program, issued something along the lines of €100k in refunds and she tumbled from grace at breakneck speed. I didn’t feel like contact from me would add anything at this point, and her reactions to people asking for refunds on coaching intimidated me into silence. 

At this point, I was in full burnout mode thanks to my summer of 6am workouts and stress, and wanted to put my head down and work on building my business back up.

The problem here? I went to business school. I have a Masters degree in Entrepreneurship. I know how to run a business—and maybe more importantly, how not to run a business. But the cult of the Insta-coach had got to me, and I had put excitement about the potential of my business ahead of common sense, and learned a very expensive lesson in the meantime.

The murky undertones of the online coaching world

With this tale in particular, there were multiple darker undertones: I heard stories of people being encouraged to use divorce settlement money to pay for coaching, and of others going into debt with the promise of more money down the line. At times, the idea of coaches coaching people to coach other people was giving pyramid scheme. And when everything imploded and I posted a few Instagram stories vaguely detailing my experience without referring to the coach by name, I got endless messages from others in the same boat who recognised their story in mine, and who had no one to turn to. One woman was too nervous to admit to her family how much she’d paid. Another was so scared of the repercussions of talking about this coach by name in a private message to me that when I asked who she was talking about to ensure it was the same person, she replied with “can you say it first? I’m scared of saying her name.” 

Am I turned off coaching for good? Not necessarily. I’ve since worked with a mindset coach and had a few sessions with a career coach, and had great experiences with both. It’s important to note that one of these coaches was accredited, and one wasn’t—and I had the best experience with the one who hasn’t got any formal qualifications in coaching. So you never know, sometimes you just get unlucky. I also have lots of great friends who are amazing coaches, and who constantly get amazing feedback from their clients.

This scandal had very real and very negative consequences for a lot of people, and it still makes me sad to think about. As for me, I was a 24 year old wannabe bossbabe who got a bit carried away, but who at the end of the day had zero kids and zero mortgage, and could afford to lose the cost of a very luxurious Caribbean holiday with business class flights on failed business coaching. It still stings when I picture myself lying on the beach with a mojito, and realise I instead chose to spend my savings getting aggressive voice notes telling me to jog through the park at the crack of dawn, but that’s life, right? I got over my burnout and eventually built a stronger business thanks to the experience. 

More importantly, I’m passionate about protecting the people who get roped into business coaching under false promises when they really can’t afford it, convinced by highly dodgy and flawed arguments like “if you wanted it enough you’d find a way to pay.” We need a way of holding these online coaches to a standard, and safeguarding the people who choose to work with them. I don’t have all the answers, but as we live more and more of our lives online, it’s crucial to ensure people don’t fall for these damaging schemes.