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What Nobody Tells You About Becoming a Coach

  • Writer: Renée Motley
    Renée Motley
  • Apr 21
  • 10 min read

Updated: Jul 26

Every few weeks, someone from my network sends me a version of the same message. A former colleague, a GSB classmate, or a founder I know from the VC world. The subject line varies, but the question is always the same: "I've been thinking about becoming a coach. Can we talk?"


I genuinely love these conversations. While I would love to connect one-on-one with everyone, the demands of being a solopreneur (more on that below) make it challenging. My time is money, after all. That said, I believe in good karma and generosity, so this post is my attempt to pay it forward!


The Appeal is Real


The lifestyle pitch writes itself. You spend your days having interesting conversations with fascinating people. You read books that genuinely excite you and call it professional development. You set your own hours and take calls from wherever you want. You build something that is entirely yours.


All of that is true. I won't pretend otherwise.


But here is what does not make it into the "I am a coach" highlight reel. Yes, you are a coach, but you are also the CEO of a one-person business. You wear many hats: the VP of Sales, the executive assistant, the accountant, and the person who remembers to send the invoice. If work is not getting done, you are the bottleneck. Your early days will look like periods of feast and famine, with more time spent in famine than you expected. You eat what you kill.


And the hardest part? The one nobody really warns you about? Every "no" feels personal in a way that selling a product never does. When someone passes on your vegan collagen peptide gluten-free kombucha brand, they are passing on the kombucha. When someone passes on working with you as a coach, it feels like they are passing on you.


I share this not to discourage you but because I wish someone had said it to me. If you can stomach it, truly stomach it, this is the most meaningful work I have ever done. After years of searching for purpose across finance, venture capital, startups, and even a brief stint as a yoga teacher, I can say without hesitation that I have found it. People often ask me what I want to do next. The answer is simple: this is it. I am a coach.


How I Got Here


I first encountered executive coaching as an analyst at J.P. Morgan. I watched managing directors work with coaches to navigate organizations running at enormous scale. As a psychology-turned-economics major, I understood intuitively the business case, though I filed it away and kept moving.


The real lightbulb moment came at Stanford GSB. I took the flagship Interpersonal Dynamics course and was selected for the Arbuckle Leadership Fellows Program. This was my first real exposure to how coaches actually work. In my second year, I had the opportunity to coach first-year MBA students through everything from building a personal brand to navigating a bad breakup to managing imposter syndrome as a first-time founder. That was the moment I knew I had found a career that aligned with how I am wired and what I genuinely care about.


After graduating, still unsure if now was the right time, I joined Robinhood as a strategy and operations lead as the company expanded and prepared to IPO. Moving to the operating side of the table made sense on paper after a career in investing.


One moment from my Robinhood years has stayed with me. After I presented in a meeting with the CEO and executive leadership team, two associates reached out asking how they could develop their own communication skills and executive presence. It stopped me for a second. I had spent years sitting across from investors writing million-dollar checks, navigating the dynamics of Wall Street, and learning to hold a room. Those experiences had shaped something in me that I had not quite named yet.


Public speaking did not come naturally to me. I was painfully shy throughout high school. The idea that one day I would volunteer to speak in front of hundreds of people was absolutely foreign to me. What changed was not just technique; it was a mindset shift: I have something worth saying, and people will want to hear it. That realization around inner self-talk is one I now help my clients work through every day.


After the IPO, I spent time coaching with a firm focused on cofounder dynamics before deciding I wanted to work with a broader range of leaders. Cofounder coaching remains some of the most exciting and nuanced work I do (I often joke that it is couples therapy for startups), but I knew my practice needed to reflect the full range of leaders I could and wanted to serve.


RM Coaching was born from that decision. My practice today reflects a simple belief: coaching is one of the most powerful tools available to anyone in the middle of a meaningful transition. The leaders I most want to work with are the ones who are intentional about seizing these opportunities for growth.


A Quick Note on What Coaching Actually Is


The question I get asked more than almost any other on my intro calls is: what is the difference between coaching, therapy, and consulting? The short answer is that coaching focuses on what's next, consulting on how to, and therapy on why it happened. Clients come to coaches for a specific future goal, to consultants for an answer to a defined problem, and to therapists for support with mental health and deeper psychological work.


The longer answer is more nuanced and worth understanding if you are serious about entering the field. These three pieces do a good job of laying out the distinctions:


On Getting Clients


The number one question I get, right after "what does a coach do," is how to find your first clients.


The answer is sitting right in front of you: your network. Who do you know, and who do they know? Your first clients will almost certainly come from people who already trust you. Mine did. Do not let fear get in the way of putting yourself out there. You have something genuinely valuable to offer. The only way to grow as a coach is to actually coach, which means you need to start before you feel ready. So send the email blast, post the sign-up on LinkedIn, and text your old classmate. You are asking your future clients to stretch outside their comfort zones. You can do the same!


On Certification


I think about coaching certification programs the way I think about business school. You will get the most out of them if you arrive with real experience to which you can apply the learning. Abstract frameworks land differently when you have actually managed people, sat in high-stakes meetings, or watched a company scale through chaos.


For operators and investors specifically, there is a trap worth naming. When you are coaching someone who reminds you of yourself at an earlier stage, it is incredibly tempting to skip the coaching and go straight to advising. To problem-solve. To tell them what you would do. That instinct is not wrong; it is just not coaching. Structured training helps you find your line and make intentional choices about when to coach and when to advise. That discernment is one of the most valuable things I took from my own certification training.


The credential is almost beside the point. What a good certification program actually gives you is confidence and a cohort.

Other coaches at the same stage, learning the same things, figuring out the same problems. Some of my closest professional relationships came out of my training programs, and those connections have been invaluable. Because one thing about this career surprises almost everyone who makes the transition: you will spend your days in meaningful conversation with interesting people and somehow still feel lonely. You are a solopreneur. There is no team, no office, and no one to debrief with after a hard session. Your cohort becomes that.


My suggestion: start with free resources before committing to a full certification. Most major programs offer intro sessions and workshops at no cost. Coaches Rising and New Ventures West both offer excellent free live classes and demos. Co-Active Training Institute (CTI) has a standalone fundamentals module that lets you test the waters before going all in. When you are ready to commit, look for ICF-accredited programs. I completed my training through the Newfield Network and CTI and would recommend both.


On Finding Your Niche


The most controversial decision in the coaching world is whether to niche or not to niche.


My honest answer is you can build a successful coaching practice either way. If you are just starting out, start wide. Say yes to more than feels comfortable. Coach the first-year MBA navigating a career pivot, the founder who just closed their Series A, and the manager returning to work after extended parental leave. Pay attention to which conversations leave you energized and which ones leave you drained. That data is more valuable than any framework.


My own niche found me more than I found it. I started coaching GSB first years on everything from building a personal brand to getting through a bad breakup. Then I coached Robinhood colleagues on executive presence and communication. Finally, I focused on cofounder dynamics and conflict resolution for early-stage founders. None of it felt like a deliberate strategy at the time. Looking back, the common thread was obvious: leaders in high-growth environments making high-stakes decisions at pivotal moments in their lives and careers, which, not coincidentally, had been the entire arc of my own career.


Separate from niche is the question of fit. I can identify early on whether a potential client and I will be well matched. Are they at a real inflection point, not just a comfortable moment of curiosity? Do they have a vision for themselves as a leader? Have they already begun to build their self-awareness and reflection muscle? Do they take ownership of what is not working, or do they tend to blame others and circumstances? Are they hungry for growth and willing to have their assumptions challenged?


The clients I do my best work with feel a real sense of urgency about their own development. They know something needs to shift, and they are ready to do the work to figure out what that is.


You cannot think your way to a niche. You have to coach your way to it.

Do the Work


If you want to coach others, you have to be willing to do your own inner work first. This is not a "nice to have" or a "I'll get to it someday." The coaches I most respect are all, without exception, people who have looked closely at themselves, their patterns, their blind spots, and their edges. They all work with their own coaches, as do I.


These are the books that have shaped my own journey most:


  • Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown. Permission to let go of who you think you are supposed to be. Read this and check out her TED talks.

  • Daring Greatly by Brené Brown. On vulnerability as a leadership practice, not a weakness.

  • Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff. Especially important for high achievers who self-motivate via stick, not carrot (hi, it's me).

  • How to Do the Work by Nicole LePera. Practical and honest on the work of becoming more self-aware.

  • The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. I re-read chapters of this regularly. It never gets old. Highly recommend the audiobook and journal too.


I would be remiss not to include three works of fiction that have shaped how I think about life, purpose, and the choices that define us. They are not self-help books in the traditional sense, and that is exactly why they resonate.


  • The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. A classic. The whole book is an argument that the journey toward what you want changes you in ways the destination never could.

  • Life's Golden Ticket by Brendon Burchard. A chance find after I googled "inspirational fiction novels" during a difficult chapter many years ago. It is a parable about the moment you decide your past does not have to define your future. What would be possible if you made the conscious choice to stop living on autopilot and start intentionally building a life of meaning and joy?

  • The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. A novel built entirely around the "what if." What if you had made a different choice? What if you had taken the other path? It is a beautiful and honest look at what it actually means to choose the life in front of you, on purpose, rather than as a default.


The person who emailed me last week asking about becoming a coach is smart, accomplished, and genuinely curious. So are most of the people who reach out. What they are really asking, underneath the practical questions, is whether it is worth it.


My answer is yes. Unambiguously. Some decisions make sense on paper. This one made sense in my gut, which took longer to trust. Steve Jobs said it best in his 2005 Stanford commencement address, "you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future." Trusting that is what got me here. Taking the road less traveled takes courage. It is also the same work we coaches do with our clients every day.


The days when a client has a real breakthrough, when something actually clicks for them, those days make it all worth it.


That is why I am a coach.


The Full Reading List


Mindset and Growth

  • Mindset by Carol Dweck. The foundational text on growth mindset.

  • Atomic Habits by James Clear. My most quoted book. Systems, not goals.

  • Immunity to Change by Kegan and Lahey. The best framework I know for understanding why smart, motivated people stay stuck.

  • Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. On what it feels like to be fully engaged in work that matters.

  • Design Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. The most practically useful book I know for anyone navigating a career transition. Be sure to check out their new book How to Live a Meaningful Life!


Leadership and Navigating Organizations

Coaching Craft

Building a Practice

Certification Programs Worth Exploring

 
 
 

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