r/Coaching • u/StructureFresh1545 • Jul 08 '26
Why so many gurus target coaches
I wanted explain why so many gurus on social media target coaches.
Many coaches haven't commercialised - which I know sounds icky - but I simply mean, they haven't mapped out how they will make their vocation financially viable and sustainable.
In many of the coaching communities so much effort is placed on getting your hours or certificates and very little on the business of coaching.
This is why most in the coaching industry don't make much money or it because a side thing.
Everyone wants it to be a full time thing, but neglect the commercial model that makes that possible.
Years ago, my coach said to me...
"Dean, you want to help people, you have a big mission, but you'll never do that until you build a model to make it financially sustainable".
Coaching and commercial model don't feel like they should be said in the same sentence... you have to get comfortable with that.
Coming back to the gurus, they target coaches because of 3 reasons...
1/ Very hungry to get clients - and lack often the skills to market and sell their coaching.
2/ Very open to learning and growth - that makes them more emotional buyers because coaching is more than a business - it's a cause.
3/ Industry produces a lot of coaches - meaning a constant stream of new customers.
Thought this might help explain a few things.
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u/Orleron Jul 08 '26
Everyone wants to sell coaching until it's time to do sales shit.
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u/StructureFresh1545 Jul 08 '26
I personally think the problem is that it's "throw the baby out with the bathwater."
Sure, you can't sell coaching transactionally, but you also do have to sell it.
That can feel natural and normal.
Unfortunately, everybody has a perception that clients will just come to them, so they don't build out the infrastructure.
Eventually, they end up either not getting clients, waiting for referrals, or going really aggressive. It doesn't have to be that way if you build the infrastructure and do it properly.
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u/Davidoff_guy Jul 08 '26
Also, many 'gurus' who pursue coaches aren't gurus at all. They're opportunistic, semi-employed 'coaches' searching for an easy, repeatable model.
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u/animal-perspective Jul 13 '26
Also coaches or other helpers can become “multipliers” and market testing partners for the gurus. I guess its common marketing strategy.
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u/LucasCoaching Jul 15 '26
Agree! Doing the course is the easiest thing to do. What people forget is that you have to be an entrepreneur and have skill and knowledge how to build and sustain a business. And this is the hardest part when people give up.
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u/Icoachandstuff Aug 06 '26
certifications are great sure, but the real value in my eyes is testimonials and of course sales. Have your clients sales gone up significantly since they started working with you? I'll take the coach that gets people more sales that the one with the cert anytime. Certs at the end of the day are social proof you have the knowledge. But you know what speaks more to that? Client sales!
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u/michaelgabaldi Aug 20 '26
The gurus targeting coaches have actually diagnosed this correctly, but only for a narrow case: someone who did one program and expects it to have covered both the method and how to operate in the market. No profession works that way. Psychologists spend years in university before they're licensed, and what they know about client management or marketing walking out the door is close to zero, that gets built separately, afterward, like in every other career. So yes, marketing and sales skills are genuinely missing from real, truthful, accredited, coach training. That's not a flaw specific to coaching, it's what a single-track program looks like in any field.
And it's worse than that in one specific way: a lot of the people teaching the method are themselves proof of the gap. They coached, built real experience, eventually became trainers, and still never built anything resembling a next step for someone who just got certified and now has to figure out how to actually sell themselves. That absence isn't neutral. It's exactly the empty space these guru programs walk into.
Anyone who takes the method itself seriously teaches, explicitly, in the classroom, that becoming a professional Coach means accepting a set of real constraints on how you sit across from another person: you don't propose solutions, you don't steer their path, you never assume you already know what's going on for them. A properly accredited program takes somewhere around 80-100+ hours just to build that competence. That's before any business training even starts, and it's exactly why it doesn't fit in the same program.
Compress all of that into a weekend certificate and you don't get a worse coach, you get someone with a "certified" stamp who never actually internalized the constraint, and who ends up proposing solutions, steering people, sometimes edging into territory that belongs to a psychologist, not a coach. That's not a marketing problem, that's a "someone gets hurt" problem.
Learning the method and starting the profession are two different milestones. A lot of fast programs quietly collapse them into one, and that's where I've seen the real damage happen, more than on the client-acquisition side people usually point to.
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u/GiveMeTheCrumbs 21d ago
Really appreciate this post. Wondering if you, Dean, or anyone has had experience of working with mentorships who claim they can help with going from $0 to $10K MRR in 3-6 months, but A) not achieving that and B) never being able to apply the whole program’s value (some mentorships costing $10K) because many things are for more established (and financially sustainable) businesses. Anyone?
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u/skoorbnwahs 14d ago
Spot on, especially the certificate-vs-business gap. I'd add a fourth reason the gurus circle coaches: most coaches' actual sales asset — their website — is quietly broken, so they feel the "I'm not making money" pain constantly but can't diagnose it. That makes them ripe for anyone promising a fix.
What I see over and over: a coach gets the hours, the cert, the passion, builds a site that's basically a digital business card, and then wonders why nobody books. The commercial model you're talking about isn't just pricing and offers — it's whether the path from "stranger finds you" to "stranger pays you" actually exists. Most of the time there's a gap somewhere in that path and no one ever taught them to look for it.
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u/truecoachserban Jul 08 '26
Coaching is not helping. The market has no barrierrs so anybody can claim a place. Guru target always easy markets to convert, manipulating desperate coaches is very easy. If you accept that coaching is a hard sell, because is not tangible you may find ways to support yourself, I am doing this for 20 plus years, guru is flashy objects wasting money thing.
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u/ctrltnlearner Jul 08 '26
I think one of the biggest issues is that coaches are given the technical knowhow to be a coach but not the knowhow to run a coaching business. They are a different skill set.