Some of the best money I have watched clients spend over the last 30 years went to coaching. So did some of the worst. The difference was almost never luck. It was whether anyone seriously vetted the coaching program before the check cleared.
I train coaches for a living now, which means I spend my days on the other side of the curtain. I know what a rigorous program looks like from the inside—and I know exactly how a flimsy one dresses itself up. Here is the due diligence I wish every buyer ran.
A Boom With No Gatekeepers
Coaching is booming. The International Coaching Federation estimated 109,200 coach practitioners worldwide in 2022, up 54% from 2019, generating roughly $4.56 billion in annual revenue; its 2025 study puts the count near 123,000 and revenue at $5.34 billion (ICF Global Coaching Study). And the evidence is promising: A 2023 meta-analysis in Frontiers in Psychology found workplace coaching had a moderate positive effect overall, with the largest estimate for skill outcomes.
Here is the catch: No license is required to call yourself a coach. Anywhere. A credential from a recognized body tells you a coach trained and practiced under supervision; its absence tells you to ask more questions. But the industry’s front door has no gatekeeper, which means the gatekeeper has to be you.
That matters because the real price of a weak program is not the tuition. It is the six or 12 months of momentum you hand over while you wait for it to work. Vetting is not pessimism. It is protecting the asset the program is supposed to grow—your time and your focus.
6 Questions That Expose a Weak Coaching Program
Ask these before you sign anything, and write the answers down.
1. What specific outcome do you produce, and how do you measure it? “Transformation” is not a metric. A serious program can name the change it creates and how it knows.
2. What is your method, and can you explain it so I can repeat it back? A real methodology survives translation into plain language. If it only works inside the program’s own vocabulary, you are buying vocabulary.
3. Who exactly will coach me, and what is their track record with people like me? The founder’s highlight reel is irrelevant if your sessions are with someone certified last Tuesday.
4. Who is this program wrong for? This is my favorite filter. Honest programs disqualify people. A program that is right for everyone is optimized for enrollment, not results.
5. What does a typical week require from me? Coaching is a practice, not a purchase. If nobody can describe the work between sessions, there is no work between sessions.
6. What are the exit terms? Refund policy, contract length, what happens if your coach is not a fit. Clean exit terms signal confidence. Murky ones signal the business model.
Read Testimonials Like an Investigator
The Federal Trade Commission’s guidance on coaching offers is blunt: guaranteed-income claims, pressure to act immediately, and walls of glowing success stories are the signature moves of a scam.
Testimonials are marketing assets selected for effect. So go around them. Ask to speak with two graduates: one success story and one person who did not get the headline result. How a program talks about its non-successes tells you more than any highlight ever will. If they cannot or will not connect you, that silence is the data.
The FTC’s other advice is worth stealing too: check for complaints with your state attorney general, get a second opinion from someone who has your best interests at heart, and remember that a clean record is not proof—it is simply the absence of a red flag. Treat the research like you would for any five-figure business decision because that is what this is.
Vet Yourself While You Are at It
Here is what I tell the coaches I train, and it applies double to buyers: The client’s commitment is the engine; coaching is the steering. The best program on earth cannot drive a parked car.
So before you buy, run the same audit on yourself. What will you actually do differently this time? What have you already been told to do that you have not done? If a stack of unread books and an unused gym membership are nodding along as you read this, the gap you are trying to close may not be a knowledge gap at all—a theme I unpacked in How to Close the Knowing-Doing Gap.
Then apply my 48-hour rule: never enroll inside the enrollment conversation. Sleep on it twice. A program that punishes a two-day pause with an expiring bonus or a closing-tonight price is answering question six for you.
Coaching changed my life and built my career, and I have watched it do the same for thousands of people. Good programs welcome hard questions—it is how they recognize a serious client. Ask all six, check the exits, talk to the non-successes and give it 48 hours. Then commit like the engine you are.
