Why do most coaches struggle to build a business?

Marcia Reynolds says most people get into coaching without recognizing they have to build a business. They expect a consulting firm or coaching company to hand them clients, or they hang up a shingle and wait for people to come. As a solo practitioner, you are the business. You are the marketer, the salesperson, and the coach. That is an identity shift most people never make, and the ones who refuse to make it do not last.

How should a coach think about selling without feeling pushy?

Reynolds reframes it completely. If you have something important, you are not selling to people, you are offering them a gift. When you genuinely believe coaching helps people, withholding the offer is the selfish move, not making it. The job is to be clear on the benefit you provide and put it in front of the people who need it.

How does a coach stand out in a market this crowded?

There are over 65,000 ICF-credentialed coaches worldwide. Reynolds says the answer is not a better credential, it is a clear answer to one question: what is your unique selling proposition and what are the benefits you give people. Define your focus, lean on the expertise you already have, and you do not even have to call it coaching. Call it what your buyer actually wants.

Does AI threaten the coaching profession?

Reynolds argues the opposite. AI solves the surface problem, like whack-a-mole, and the problem comes back another way. Coaching does a root cause analysis of what is really going on and helps people discover it on their own. The more AI handles the surface work, the more valuable an hour with a real human becomes. She calls it a great plug for coaching, not a threat to it.

Marcia Reynolds on Selling, AI, and the Business of Coaching

Q: What is reflective inquiry in coaching?

Reflective inquiry is Marcia Reynolds' approach from Coach the Person, Not the Problem. Instead of hunting for the perfect question, you act as a clean mirror: summarize what the client said, name the shift you noticed in their expression, and surface the contradiction between what they say they want and what they actually do. The client hears themselves think, often for the first time. Reynolds says most coaches make coaching too hard, and the real value is creating a safe space where someone can put their thinking on the table without being judged.

You leave corporate. You get certified. You hang a shingle. And then you sit there, waiting for clients who never come.

Marcia Reynolds saw that pattern coming before most of us had heard the word coaching.

She signed up for a coaching school in 1995, on the last day of her last corporate job, after someone emailed her an article about this new thing called coaching. There were a couple of schools in the world at the time. The ICF did not have a competency model yet. Her school helped start the ICF. She went on to become its fifth president, write six books, and coach and train in 47 countries.

So when she talks about what it takes to actually build a coaching business, she is not theorizing. She lived the wild west version of it and came out the other side as a coach’s coach.

Here is what stuck with me from our conversation.

You Are Not a Coach. You Are an Entrepreneur Who Coaches.

I asked Marcia what trips up most of the coaches she meets. She had the answer ready.

“So many people get into coaching, not recognizing that they have to build a business.”

They are drawn to the work because coaching helps people, and they want to help people. Then they figure a consulting firm or a coaching company will hand them clients. Or they hang up a shingle and wait. If everybody is waiting for the same thing, the math does not work.

Marcia put it plainly: there is an identity shift that has to happen. From a corporate person with a title to a coach who has a business. She said it is not just the doing of it. It is recognizing you have to make the shift at all. And the ones who do not want to make it usually do not.

She has it easier than most, she admitted. Her family ran businesses for generations. Her father built a distributorship out of the trunk of his car. So the entrepreneur part was already in her bones. Most coaches do not have that wiring, which is exactly why they get blindsided.

Don’t Run From Your Corporate Years. That Is Your Moat.

Here is the mistake I see constantly, and Marcia sees it too.

A coach burns out in corporate. The environment was toxic, the glass ceiling was real, they hit the wall. So when they leave, they want nothing to do with that world. They drop their industry, rebrand as a life coach, and chase a completely different audience.

Marcia’s response to those coaches was direct. She told me she has said it for years:

“But you have expertise. Go back in and help it. You have credibility that other coaches may not have with your years in corporate. Build on that.”

Your corporate years are not baggage. They are the credibility, the language, and the network nobody else can copy. Build on that first. Once you have, she said, you can shift the focus of your coaching in any direction you want.

Starting from zero credibility when you have fifteen years of it sitting in your back pocket is not reinvention. It is throwing away your edge.

Selling Is Not a Dirty Word. It Is a Gift.

A lot of coaches freeze at the word selling. Marcia does not.

“Sell to people. Well, why not? If you have something important, you’re not selling to them, you’re offering them a gift.”

Sit with that for a second. If you actually believe coaching changes how someone lives and works, then keeping the offer to yourself is the selfish act. Not the pitch.

The best coaches do not pressure anyone. They offer clarity. They offer space. They offer the one thing almost nobody else in that person’s life is giving them, which is undivided attention with no agenda. But you still have to make the offer. The gift does not deliver itself.

In a Field of 65,000 Coaches, What Are You Actually Giving People?

There are over 65,000 ICF-credentialed coaches worldwide, Marcia told me, and that is just the ICF. So the old line about being found stops working. You have to stand out.

Her question cuts straight through it:

“What’s your unique selling proposition and what’s your benefits? Define that.”

She does not even insist you call it coaching. She told me she calls her own work whatever speaks to the buyer. For years she positioned around leadership, because that was the world she came from. Then the market told her coaches wanted her, so she let leadership go and became a coach’s coach. She defined her focus and stopped hiding behind the credential.

That is the move. Know who you want to serve, know the difference you want to make, and say it in language your buyer recognizes.

AI Solves Problems. Coaches Solve People.

This was the part of the conversation I keep coming back to.

We are swimming in tools. AI writes the email, builds the dashboard, spits out a development plan in seconds. We talked about how people now eat lunch at their keyboard so they can run one more AI task. The technology was supposed to free us up to be with each other. It did the opposite.

Then Marcia turned it on its head.

“AI doesn’t do that, it just solves the surface problem. It’s like whack-a-mole. But in coaching we do a root cause analysis of what’s really going on and help people to discover on their own.”

Solve the surface problem and it comes back another way. The why is always personal. It is identity, it is fear, it is a belief someone picked up at 22 and never questioned. No algorithm touches that.

So the more AI handles the what, the more an hour with a real human is worth. Marcia called it a great plug for coaching. For an hour, a couple of times a month, someone sits with a person instead of a machine and sorts through what actually matters. That is not a threat to the profession. She thinks it is the opening.

Reflective Inquiry: Stop Trying to Be Profound

Marcia’s method, the one behind Coach the Person, Not the Problem, sounds simple. It is not.

Do not analyze what they say. Do not hunt for the perfect question. Do not try to be clever. Be a clean mirror instead. Summarize what they said. Share the shift you noticed in their face. Name the contradiction between what they say they want and what they actually do.

She gave me a live example from a client who hated running the law firm he had built but kept running it anyway. She did not interrogate him. She reflected it back:

“So you’re saying that you’re gonna continue to run this firm that you hate running just because you built the firm and it would look weird to go back to being a prosecutor.”

And he heard it. He said, oh yeah, I am doing that, and that is not what I want. He ended up selling the firm and going back to work for the state.

Their brain stops them from doing that alone, Marcia said. Put the thinking out on the table and they can finally see it. Most coaches make coaching way too hard. The real value is creating a safe space where someone can talk without feeling judged. Sometimes the only hour in their week where they get to be themselves.

Presence Over Technique

Marcia has done this for 30 years. She wrote the books coaches study for their credentials. And the thing she keeps returning to is not technique or methodology. It is presence.

“I am here for you. I am with you.”

That is the foundation. Not I am here for you so I can prove something. Not I am here for you so you renew the contract. Just: I am here.

People are drowning in notifications, dashboards, and AI outputs. Almost nobody is helping them think. That gap is widening. If you show up with real presence, real credibility from the career you already built, and a willingness to make the offer, you are already ahead of most of the market.

So before you rebrand into something unrecognizable, look at what you already have. The expertise. The network. The hour you can give someone that no machine can. That is the business.

Listen to the full conversation with Marcia Reynolds here: youtu.be/hXppfMMtfWo.

Her book Coach the Person, Not the Problem (2nd Edition) is out now. You can grab it here: covisioning.com/coach-the-person-not-the-problem-2nd-edition.