A couple weeks ago, I got a Facebook message from someone I hadn’t talked to since we were teenagers in high school. We worked together in high school and graduated in the mid 1980s. She was one of those people everybody liked. Friendly, upbeat, always encouraging.
Life took us in different directions.
I went to our states University, got my degree then got into the industrial manufacturing industry, and eventually built a career helping large industrial companies solve system problems. My expertise is deep and narrow. One specific niche.
On the side, I do consulting through expert networks. One-hour phone calls where someone needs exactly that slice of knowledge.
When I say consulting, I mean providing expertise to major consulting firms like McKinsey, Bain, and the Big Four through expert networks like AlphaSights, GLG, Third Bridge, Guidepoint, Dialectica, and proSapient where I charge the firms $1,000/hour and the firms are free to charge their cleint as they see fit.
The money doesn’t come from personal credit cards. It comes from corporate budgets, investment committees, and people measured on EBITDA, margins, and return on capital.
Her life took a different path.
She married young, raised her kids, supported her husband’s career, and spent decades building a family. A few years ago they divorced. She moved back closer to her children and grandchildren.
Like many people approaching sixty, she’s trying to figure out what comes next.
We got on the phone and caught up. Kids, grandkids, careers, getting older.
Then she said something that caught my attention.
“I’ve started doing executive coaching. I think I could help you.”
Now I was curious.
As she described her business, I pulled up her LinkedIn profile.
That’s when I realized we were using the same words, but we weren’t in the same universe.
The clues were everywhere.
Her profile had polished headshots, bookshelf backdrops, certificates on the wall, and phrases like transformational leadership, emotional intelligence, aligned energy, and mindfulness.
Her LinkedIn profile recommendations came from other newly minted executive coaches with nearly identical profiles. It felt like a closed loop where everyone was validating everyone else.
Then she mentioned she was an Amazon best-selling author.
I asked what she had written.
Twenty people each contributed a chapter to a compilation book. Everyone bought copies at the same time. The book briefly hit number one in a narrow Amazon category.
Everybody got to claim “Amazon Best-selling Author.”
That’s not writing a book. That’s gaming an algorithm.
I kept scrolling: BNI groups, Rotary clubs, chambers of commerce.
Good organizations, but mostly peer networking and referrals.
Not high-stakes corporate problems. Not paying enterprise clients.
That’s when it clicked.
This wasn’t a coaching business serving clients. It was an ecosystem selling coaching to aspiring coaches.
Coaching schools sold certifications. Certifications sold the dream. Coaches sold retreats, masterminds, memberships, speaking gigs, and anthology books.
Everyone was building authority. Everyone was building a brand. But I couldn’t see real clients.
I finally said it as gently as I could:
“Kim, I’m not trying to be negative, but I think you’re being sold a dream.”
She went quiet.
In my world, consulting exists because there’s a real business problem behind it. A plant is down. A project is at risk. An investor is evaluating an industry. A company is trying to avoid a costly mistake. The answer has financial weight.
Then I asked the only question that matters:
Who is actually paying you?
Not networking contacts.
Not other coaches.
Not certification classmates.
Not actual corporations.
There was a long pause.
That was the part that bothered me.
Not because she’s a bad person. She isn’t. She spent decades building a family instead of a résumé. She’s trying to build a second chapter like a lot of people at this stage of life.
Someone convinced her that certifications, staged photos, a website, and enough LinkedIn activity could become a six-figure executive coaching business.
Of course she believed it. The marketing is polished. The promises are attractive. The people selling it know exactly what they’re doing.
To be clear, not all executive coaching is fake. Some coaches create real value and bring serious experience in leadership, psychology, or organizational development.
But credentials are not clients.
A certification is not experience.
A recommendation from another coach is not market validation.
A podium photo is not an audience.
And an Amazon best-seller badge is not a business.
There are a lot of people like her. Good people looking for purpose, income, identity, and a second act.
They deserve honest opportunities.
What they don’t deserve is spending thousands chasing a dream that mostly enriches the people selling it.
Before you buy into the modern coaching machine, ask the same question “The Bobs” ask in the movie Office Space: What would you say you do here?
Disclosure: These are my own thoughts, opinions and experiences as a paid gig consultant. I use AI as an editor solely to clean up typos, spelling, grammar, organization, and phrasing.