On the State of Online Coaching
The coaching industry is booming with 12-15% YoY growth. Big players like BetterUp democratize coaching, while ICF sets quality standards. Exciting times!
This week is different.
I recommend an article by Josh Bersin on the exciting state of the coaching industry:
“The Flourishing, Surprising, Badly Needed Market For Online Coaching”
Josh is a brilliant contributor to the HR field. He has wide-market view of HR, learning and talent management. He is zoomed-out AND zoomed-in at the same time. And he looks at this practice with a focus on technology, which I enjoy a lot.
“An exploding, changing market.” This is how the article describes online coaching. Josh rarely writes specifically about coaching, but when he does, it is worth your time!
His main messages:
Coaching is a vibrant industry with year-on-year growth of 12-15%.
Some segments grow by over 100% per year (take note!).
The average coach makes about $47,000 a year (data from 2019).
There are way more than 70,000 coaches in the world and it’s nowhere near enough to satisfy growing demand for this intervention.
An exploding number of coaching technology companies are aggregating, coordinating and improving access to coaching.
My take: it’s an industry that matures and standardises. Which is great and badly needed. Let’s remember: ‘coaching’ is not a protected profession and anyone can call themselves a coach.
Hence, two things are so important in my view:
A body like the ICF (International Coaching Federation) sets high standards for coaching quality and enforces them with rigour (FYI, our coach training course at Intellicoach is ICF-accredited!).
Big players like BetterUP, Torch, CoachHub etc make professional coaching accessible to a much wider audience.
As a result, for companies, it becomes easier and easier to purchase great coaching as a scaled service. This will be a boon to democratising it, something which I am personally very passionate about.
What does this mean for new coaches entering the field?
My brutally honest observations and expectations:
1. Good coaching skill is only a small part of running a coaching business.
2. Most new coaches are quite bad at marketing themselves and underestimate the need to go out there, pick a niche and sell.
3. I observe that many coaches now work with one of the top players, like BetterUp etc. On the positive side, this gives experience, exposure, clients and a modest income. On the downside, people who leave the corporate world to become a coach then enter into another kind of dependency relationship. It can be a reality shock.
4. It will take the average coach at least 1-3 years to build themselves a name and client base.
5. I can count on one hand the number of coaches I know who live from coaching alone (and I did not even need all my fingers).
6. Lastly, I truly believe that this democratisation will increase the overall cake sizeably. There will be a larger ‘commodity’-like market for bulk coaching contracts through the big coaching players. And this grown awareness will at the same time increase the demand for bespoke, higher-priced coaching services.
All in all, it is a mixed and exciting bag and a vibrant industry to watch out for!