I’ve been working in the therapy and hypnotherapy space for 15 years. Fifteen years. And I’ve just discovered-in week one of my ICF coach training-that I’ve been absolutely clueless about what coaching actually is.
Not vaguely confused. Genuinely, fundamentally wrong.
Here’s the thing: I’d built up this mental image of coaching as this shiny, corporate thing. Business coaches helping people close more deals. Sales coaches teaching people how to squeeze more profit out of their clients. Motivational types barking affirmations at ambitious people in their corner offices.
And I was against it. Genuinely against it. Because in my world-hypnotherapy, NLP, therapy-we’re about helping people heal, transform, find peace. Not hustle harder.
So imagine my surprise when I started learning what coaching actually is, and realised: I’d been getting it completely wrong. And worse-so have most people.
The Real Picture
Here’s what nobody tells you: coaching isn’t for corporate types chasing money. It’s for everyone.
A parent trying to navigate difficult conversations with a teenager. An athlete wanting to perform at their peak. A self-employed tradesman juggling cash flow and anxiety. A doctor drowning in burnout. A graduate starting their first job, terrified they’ll mess it up. A builder managing a team for the first time. A person going through divorce. Someone switching careers at 40.
All of them-all of them-would benefit from coaching.
The reason is simple, and I learned this in my first week: the core coaching skills transfer across every single life context.
I asked my trainer early on: “Do I need to find a niche?” Because everyone talks about niching in coaching. You hear it constantly. “Pick your niche. Own your niche.”
Her response was brilliant. She said: “A marketing person would tell you yes, because it helps us market. But the skills you’d use to work with someone going through divorce, working through addiction, changing their career path, navigating family issues-these all use the exact same fundamental coaching skills.”
That moment clicked something into place for me. Coaching isn’t a specialist service for a specific problem. It’s a framework-a set of deeply transferable skills that work because they’re built on a simple truth: the person sitting across from you already has the answers. They just need help finding them.
Why We’re Confused
So why does everyone think coaching is this narrow, business-focused thing?
Part of it is marketing. Part of it is the internet being good at selling us stories. But the biggest part? The coaching industry has a very real problem: it’s saturated.
I spend time in Facebook coaching groups-lots of them. And they’re fascinating places. You get genuinely brilliant people doing serious, accredited work. You also get people who’ve read three books, had one transformational experience, and now they’re offering “life coaching” or “relationship coaching” or “mindset coaching” to anyone who’ll listen.
There’s no consistent standard. The term “coach” means wildly different things depending on who’s using it. Someone might say, “I went through a narcissistic relationship, and now I coach people through relationship trauma,” and what they’re often actually doing is mentoring-sharing their own experience to help others navigate similar situations. Which is valuable. But it’s not coaching.
This is why ICF credentials exist. The International Coaching Federation is the gold standard in the coaching industry, worldwide. An ICF credential means someone has completed rigorous training, logged hundreds of hours of real client work, passed assessments, and committed to an ethical code. It’s not a participation trophy. It’s verification that someone actually knows what they’re doing.
The point isn’t to be snobby about it. It’s that when an industry becomes this noisy, having a standard matters. It matters for you-the person considering whether to invest in coaching-because you can actually know what you’re getting.
My Personal Education
About two weeks into training, I had my first experience as a coaching client.
I was exchanging roles with another trainee-I was the coach for part of the practice, then we swapped. When it was my turn to be coached, I brought something I’d been sitting with: my relationship situation. The reality is, I’m fully committed to this training, to building my practice, to my work. And I just don’t have the bandwidth for romantic relationships right now. I knew that intellectually. But there was this low-level guilt about it-like I should be doing both.
Thirty minutes of coaching changed that.
My “coach” didn’t tell me I was right or wrong. Didn’t share their own experience with relationships. Didn’t give me advice. They asked questions. Powerful, simple questions that helped me look at my own situation clearly.
And something shifted. I developed a real acceptance-not resigned, but genuine-that I shouldn’t be on dating apps when I’d only be hurting people and wasting their time. Because my last relationship ended precisely because I couldn’t give that person what they needed from me. And doing that again would be unfair.
Thirty minutes. One focused conversation. And I went from carrying guilt to feeling at peace with a clear choice.
That is coaching.
What I Already Knew (But Didn’t Recognise)
Here’s where my 15 years in this field becomes relevant again.
One of the things I’m most proud of is my work as a listener in prison. I spent time dealing with people in crisis-people who were genuinely suicidal, or who’d just been brought out of their cell after a suicide attempt to speak with someone.
The skills that work in that environment are: empathetic listening. Not giving advice. Building rapport. Holding confidentiality. Meeting people where they are. Asking questions that help them think more clearly about their situation.
Sound familiar?
Those are coaching skills. I’ve been using a foundational coaching framework for years-just in a different context, with people in acute distress rather than people who are functional but wanting to grow.
The difference is the starting point. In prison, I was working with people in crisis. In coaching, you’re working with people who are already functional-they’re not broken-but they want to move forward. They want clarity. They want to live differently.
Same skills. Different application. Same respect for the person’s ability to find their own answers.
So What Is Coaching, Actually?
After all this, here’s what I’ve learned coaching is:
It’s a structured partnership where someone helps you think more clearly about your life. Whether that’s your career, your relationships, your health, your parenting, your business, your spiritual path-doesn’t matter. The coaching skills work everywhere.
It’s not therapy (which is about healing past wounds). It’s not mentoring (which is about learning from someone else’s experience). It’s not consulting (which is about getting expert advice).
It’s specifically about helping you access your own wisdom, your own resourcefulness, your own answers-through skilled, focused questions and genuine listening.
And here’s the thing that surprised me most: everyone would benefit from it. Not because everyone’s broken or stuck. But because everyone deserves to have someone in their corner-a trained listener, someone genuinely interested in your thinking, who helps you see what you’re already capable of.
It’s like having a close friend who’s the perfect listener. Except they’re trained. And they’re available when you need them. And they’re not going to make it about themselves.
What Now?
If you’ve been thinking about coaching and assumed it was just for ambitious business types trying to make more money, let me gently challenge that.
Coaching might be for the parent navigating a difficult phase with their kids. For the self-employed person drowning in overwhelm. For the athlete wanting to perform at their best. For the person rebuilding their life after a major change. For you.
The only real question is: would it help to have someone in your corner, asking the right questions, so you can figure out what you already know you need to do?
