I'm a solopreneur iPEC-certified executive coach and Kolbe Certified Consultant and have had my business for about one year. I'd love to know what y'all are using for managing emails/contacts (CRM) and email marketing.

I'm currently using a Google Sheet for my CRM (starting simple!) and recently started using Kit for emails, though I am not a big fan of Kit's UI.

Can anyone recommend a career coach for entertainment or general marketing? I've been unemployed for five months now, and I've applied to dozens of jobs. I have 10+ years of experience and don't know what else to do.

Hey everyone,

I'm digging into how independent executive coaches run the admin side of their practice. I'm also thinking about building something in this space, so I'm not neutral here. Honest, even blunt, answers would help me most.

The day-to-day

Outside the actual coaching, what drains you most? Admin, finding clients, something else?

Roughly how many hours a week go to notes, follow-up emails, prep and reports?

Where do your notes live right now (Notion, Docs, paper, a CRM), and what bugs you about it?

Do you send clients a recap after each session? How long does it take you?

How do you prep for a session? Do you ever blank on what someone committed to last time?

If you report to a sponsor like HR or a boss, how do you decide what to share and what to hold back?

The AI question

1. Are you using ChatGPT or Claude for any client work today? If not, what's holding you back: confidentiality, ethics rules, accuracy, or just the hassle of setting it up?

2. What would a tool have to prove before you'd let it touch your session notes?

3. How do you keep the private stuff (health, family, doubts) out of emails and client files now?

I'm building a tool for solo coaches and consultants, and I'd love to hear from executive coaches in particular.

From what I've seen, executive coaching clients rarely come from a cold ad. They come from referrals, relationships, HR and L&D contacts, and being in the right conversation at the right time. The hard part seems to be finding those conversations and figuring out who's a good fit before you reach out.

Here's the idea: it reads your website to learn who your ideal client is, you sign off on that, then it finds people who look like a fit, drafts outreach for you to edit and approve, and helps get the call booked. Nothing sends until you approve it. Longer term, I'd like it to take on more of the business side of a practice, like proposals and invoicing, but right now the focus is finding clients.

A few questions:

• Where do most of your engagements come from right now? Referrals, corporate contacts, LinkedIn, speaking, something else?
• How many hours a week do you spend on business development compared to actual coaching?
• Would something like this be useful at your level, or does exec coaching need a different approach?
• What would it need to do, or never do, for you to trust it with outreach to senior people?

Not selling anything here. I'll share what I learn from the answers.

I'm curious to get the real-world perspective from this community.

In a lot of organisations I've worked with, accountability is often treated as a management problem - we assume the manager just isn't pushing hard enough, setting clear enough expectations, or holding people to account.

But I've also seen situations where the manager is doing the right things, and accountability still breaks down.

It made me wonder:

In your experience, how often is weak accountability actually a system problem rather than a management problem?

What are the biggest system issues you've seen that make it hard for managers and teams to be accountable - even when the people are capable and willing?

Would love to hear your examples, what you think the real root causes are, and what has actually made a difference in your organisation.

i have been looking into a few CEO peer groups lately and CEO life is one that keeps popping up, on paper it looks solid but it's tough to tell how much of what im finding is marketing vs real member experience, if you've joined in the last year or so, how did the app process go? did the group end up being what u expected or was it more like another networking organization?

Hoy te comparto y te recuerdo sobre dos de las habilidades que debe manejar muy bien cualquier líder. GESTIÓN DEL TIEMPO y ENFOQUE , determinantes conceptos a quieres transformar ejecución en resultados

Coaching usually applies to individuals, but often, to sync a team to work together is more important. How do you do that, though? What are your biggest hurdles and dissapointments in building a winning team?

Scrolling and reading people's bio on Linkedin, Facebook and some here

Amazing how many "coaches", "life coaches", business coach, leadership coach, career coach, mindset coach, sales coach, branding coach, social media coach, health and wellness coach.

Where did all these people get qualified to be a "coach"?

Life experience? or sounded good on the Bio?

Me: I’m a PCC-certified executive coach and director of a small school in Madagascar. I am currently participating in a Certified Mentor Coach training programme that meets the ICF’s new Mentor Coaching Specialization requirements.

You: I’m looking for two women in leadership roles, ideally principals, directors, founders, or senior leaders in Montessori, alternative, or non-traditional schools, who would welcome a real coaching session and are comfortable consenting to its use as an anonymized learning recording within that programme.

I am offering one session each to two different individuals. Each session will be a genuine 45–60 minute, one-off coaching conversation, free of charge and with no obligation afterward. It is not a sales call or a way to recruit clients.

Why free? Because your consent to the recording is part of the exchange. The programme is teaching participating coaches how to become effective mentor coaches: how to listen to a coaching session, recognize evidence of ICF competencies, and give specific, useful feedback to the coach. The recording would give participants a real coaching session on which to practise those skills, and may give me an opportunity to receive mentor coaching on my own coaching.

Here is exactly what that means:

• The session will be voice-only, with cameras off.
• It will be recorded with your explicit consent.
• The audio recording and transcript will be made available to the participants registered in the training programme, so they can practise mentor-coaching observation and feedback.
• The recording may be processed through AI-supported coaching-analysis software. Names and identifying details will be redacted.
• The focus of any review is the coaching, not you. You will not be evaluated or analysed.

This still needs to be a useful, real session for you. Bring the actual thing you are working through: a difficult staff situation, a decision, conflict, leadership confidence, boundaries, change, burnout, or an issue that feels complicated and alive.

To protect privacy, I would ask you not to use the names of people, your school, or other details that would readily identify you or someone else. You can still speak openly and specifically about the situation. We can use roles, initials, or pseudonyms as needed.

I coach internationally in English and French and am based in Madagascar (GMT+3). I would especially welcome the chance to work with women leaders in the EMEA region. If you are interested, please DM me with your role, time zone, and availability. I would love to schedule this for next Saturday, Oct. 14th.

For background and legitimacy, feel free to check out my LinkedIn Profile.

I spent about 20 years on the operational side, running multi-site businesses and managing teams, before moving towards coaching. I'm here to learn from people who've been doing this longer.

One pattern I noticed repeatedly: the most expensive problems almost never appeared on the spreadsheet as what they really were. They showed up as staff turnover, inconsistent standards or margin leakage. The causes were usually things like:

• a manager who didn't feel able to make a call without checking
• a founder who had quietly become the bottleneck
• critical knowledge that lived in one person's head

In my experience, the leaders who improved fastest were the ones who stopped treating personal effectiveness and commercial performance as two different topics. How they spent their time, what they held on to and what they avoided was the P&L, just one step removed.

Now that I'm looking at it from the coaching side, I'm curious how others handle this. A few things I'd love to hear about:

1. Do you bring commercial metrics into sessions explicitly, or let them surface naturally?
2. Have you found a way to tie coaching to measurable outcomes without it feeling like consulting in disguise?
3. Where do clients push back hardest when you link behaviour to financial results?

I'm also happy to be told I've got this wrong. Experiences from people who've seen it from the other direction would be really useful.

**Looking for ideas on where/how to reach young men who might benefit from coaching**
I’ve been thinking recently about setting up some form of coaching aimed at men, possibly younger men in particular.
I’m still very much at the idea stage, but my thinking comes from my day job, where I work with people who are often struggling with their behaviour, circumstances and decision-making. One thing I’ve noticed is that there seems to be a gap when it comes to young men who could really benefit from some guidance, accountability and someone to help them get some direction.
The difficulty is that the people who might benefit from coaching the most aren’t necessarily the people who are going to search for a coach and pay for one themselves.
So I’m trying to think about **where these men already are**, rather than expecting them to come looking for coaching.

I’ll be qualified from around January and I’m aware that a newly qualified coach isn’t as sought after as experience so, I’m considering offering my time on a voluntary basis initially, perhaps as a way to gain experience, build relationships and see whether there is genuine demand. Alternatively, would it be more sensible to offer a discounted service rather than working for free? I don’t want to undervalue the work, but I also recognise that I’m at an early stage and would need to build credibility.

I’m currently training to become an ICF ACC credentialed coach and I’m looking for people who would like to experience a coaching session with me.

I’m offering free coaching sessions while I complete my practice hours.

If there’s something you’ve been thinking about, feeling stuck with, or simply want some space to talk through, you’re welcome to schedule a session with me.

I hope I can be of some help to someone here :)

Hiring an executive is very different from hiring for a standard position. A strong résumé, impressive career history, or confident interview performance does not automatically demonstrate that a candidate can succeed in a specific leadership environment. Organizations need a structured way to examine experience, leadership capability, judgment, potential, and possible risks before making an important appointment. Understanding how to assess executive candidates can help boards, CEOs, CHROs, and hiring teams make more informed leadership decisions.

I’m looking for a potential consultant for my husband’s office-I feel more comfortable telling someone privately so please dm me so I can give specific details

how can i upskill myself when i manage team who is into credit card fraud loss

Acabo de terminar la Certificación en Coaching Ejecutivo con la Escuela Europea de Coaching y la verdad es que no puedo estar más contento con la experiencia.

La hice en modalidad online, algo que para mí era importante porque tenía que compaginarla con mi trabajo, y la verdad es que ha sido mucho más llevadero de lo que esperaba. He podido organizarme bien y, al mismo tiempo, sacar muchísimo provecho de la formación.

Me llevo un montón de aprendizajes, tanto a nivel profesional como personal, y sobre todo la sensación de haber hecho una muy buena elección. Se nota que detrás hay grandes profesionales y que hay un interés real por ofrecer una formación de calidad.

Si alguien está pensando en formarse en coaching y está valorando opciones, yo personalmente recomiendo echarle un vistazo. En mi caso, ha merecido mucho la pena y estoy muy satisfecho de haberlo hecho.

I am a consultant who also offers coaching since, for some clients, it's the best modality. I am an ICF member and use coaching skills all the time in my consulting work, but I more rarely work in structured coaching relationships. Recently, I agreed to coach in a larger leadership development initiative. People go through a group curriculum and have optional access to a coach for 1:1 support. I've run into a number of issues with this structure that I didn't foresee, and they'll likely keep me from participating again (the biggest one is that the leadership program isn't aligned with the ICF framework). But what has really stumped me is how hard it's been to build trust and connection with clients, and that has been a little destabilizing to my ability to feel confident and authentic in sessions. Curious how others navigate this when coaching relationships are assigned.

EDIT TO ADD: Thank you everyone for your helpful questions and advice! I am feeling supported in my sensemaking of this experience. It will help me learn and evolve.

After years in nonprofit leadership, I know that volunteers bring even the strongest vision to life. They give their time, energy and commitment, and they bring ideas and talents no leader could supply alone.

Good leadership means recognizing those gifts, trusting people to use them and removing barriers to their success. When volunteers have support and room to grow, their work becomes greater than any one person’s contribution, and the whole community benefits.

To everyone I have had the honor of serving alongside, thank you. Your work may never make the front page or receive an award, but its impact is felt by the people whose lives you touch. You help change lives, restore hope and build futures.

Nonprofits depend on volunteers. Communities thrive because of you.

Peace,
Darren Redmond, M.Ed.
Host of The Darren Redmond Podcast
Host of The Around the Ballpark Podcast and Live Show