Two Types of Coaches
There are two types of life & meditation coaches:
Coaches who want to help people and make money.
Coaches who want to make money by helping people.
Sound the same, but they're different.
Let’s call them Coach A and Coach B.
Coach A gets into coaching because they feel a calling to help people. They likely underwent a personal transformation and want to give back what they received.
Coach B sees coaching as a business opportunity to capitalize on. They desire a lifestyle that can afford them more financial and time freedom.
Coach A is more focused on the service of helping people.
Coach B is more focused on building a coaching business.
Coach A doesn’t have a lot of business interest.
Coach B loves marketing strategies and learning about sales.
Neither is inherently good or bad, but it’s worth considering where you stand.
I believe Coach A’s will be more fulfilled in the long term.
However, Coach B’s tend to have more success in the short term.
My Experience
No judgment—I've been Coach B.
In 2018, I got a gig training school teachers on bringing mindfulness to their classrooms. That gig paid $2,200—more lump sum money than anything I had earned up until then. As Coach B, I saw the opportunity.
I went all in on mindfulness in schools—built a website, created a curriculum, and started hustling. I had a skill and passion for mindfulness. I enjoyed the work but mainly saw it as a way to make a sustainable income.
While it was rewarding, getting new gigs was a slog. Plus, I didn’t feel working with kids and teachers was my dharma—I had to hide parts of myself in a secular setting.
Starting this business wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t coming from the purest place. After a few years of getting momentum, I wasn’t excited about it and started phasing it out of my work.
If we’re not coach A, we won't stay in the game for the long haul. We won’t suffer through the hard parts because our why is not coming from the deepest place.
Another Coach B Example
I was on someone’s podcast years ago who promoted himself as “Life Coach Dave.” I saw on Instagram the other day that his business is helping people make more income by working remote jobs. Clearly, he wasn't in life coaching for the long game. He was more about creating the business, and that’s ok.
How can you tell which coach you are?
You can ask yourself these questions:
What can I not do? : Coach A feels a calling, a vocation—a voice asking them to step forward in some direction. It feels like something you can’t not do, and it often feels big and scary.
Would I do this if I knew it would fail? (You read that right.) I learned this from Seth Godin—it points to what’s worth doing for its own sake where the process and the skills we learn are worth it, even if it doesn't work out.
Would I do this for free? You often have to do it for free for a while. The work is not about the money, just like road trips are not about visiting gas stations. (However, you need both money and gas to keep going.)
If your answers align with what you are doing, you are coach A. You are my people.
The frustrating part is there are so many Coach A’s that have the pure calling yet can't get their business off the ground.
Rather than making one right and one wrong, I'm interested in being in Coach A service with a Coach B business.
Ironically, the place I feel most in pure service is my Meraki Mastermind—a group that stewards meditation teachers and coaches through the lonely journey of starting and growing a business.
Meraki Mastermind is for meditation teachers and wellness practitioners committed to a life of service, doing work from their hearts, work they would do for free—but know that's not sustainable.
They are for Coach A's who could learn a little from Coach B's.
We have guest experts on a variety of business-building topics: Content creation, Offer Packages, Presentation Skills, Marketing—plus the accountability of others like you.
If you feel called to join, Doors open back up in April.
Shoot me an email, and we’ll chat to see if it’s a fit.