I recently read an article in The Guardian about the burgeoning – and totally unregulated – life coaching industry. The article focuses on the queen of life coaching- Brooke Castillo.
She founded the Life Coach School in 2007. Its central idea is that anyone who works hard can build a thriving career as a life coach. “Last year, with more people than ever anxious, indoors and online because of the pandemic, the company made $37m in gross revenue.”
That’s 37 MILLION. How the hell did Castillo earn that much? The Guardian gives us a breakdown:
Castillo offers two streams. One stream is called Self Coaching Scholars. The cost? $297 monthly membership program. Not sure what you get for that. Initially, those who wanted to become coaches could take a six-month online course for $15,000. “The current course is three months long and costs $21,000; by comparison… tuition for Georgetown University’s professional certificate in life coaching runs $13,995.”
This queen of life coaching adapted ideas from other self-improvement gurus. “From inspirational speaker Byron Katie, she learned not to blame outside circumstances for her problems. From channeler Esther Hicks, she learned about the law of attraction (later popularized through the book and film The Secret), and practiced vibrationally aligning herself with tens of millions of dollars. From entrepreneurial guru Tony Robbins, she learned to claim her personal power and transform her life from ordinary to extraordinary,” the article says.
While I’m a proponent of the idea that our thoughts and beliefs create our personal realities, I’m not a proponent of this kind of bullshit, where you pay someone else an extravagant amount of money so that you, too, can rip off the gullible. The desperate. I don’t believe a life coach guru can coach you into making a zillion bucks. Or becoming a successful entrepreneur. You’re the only one who can change your beliefs and attitudes. No one else can do that for you. We all have the creativity and intuition to do what we need to do to achieve a dream.
As the article points out, Castillo’s rapid rise raises questions about an unregulated industry “at a time when the demand for mental health services is outpacing supply.”
The article covers Castillo’s beginnings, quotes women who have taken her courses and become disenchanted, and talks about one riveting incident that had a cascade effect.
“Then, last spring, after George Floyd was murdered and businesses scrambled to prove their antiracist bona fides, LCS was conspicuously silent. Castillo’s staff pushed her to issue a statement, or at least a Facebook post, decrying racism and voicing support for their Black members, but she refused. Instead, on 1 June, LCS published a vague Instagram text post –“Love is always the answer” – that seemed like an attempt to sidestep the national reckoning on race. It had the exact opposite effect. LCS social media was flooded with furious comments; on the internal Slack channel, coaches called Castillo out. The school was inundated with cancellations and demands for refunds.”
The article is riveting.
Because of the mental health angle, I sent a link to the article to Chris Mackey, a clinical psychologist in Australia who is also in the synchronicity group I meet with via zoom. Here was his response:
“Around ten years ago I remember Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology, saying that the coaching field was like the Wild West. It was an interesting comment as the numbers of coaches attending positive psychology conferences was dramatically increasing.
“Sadly the coaching field is completely unregulated, but it’s easy to learn a lingo to exploit vulnerable people and to make it sound as though you have sophisticated ways of helping people change. Most lasting change comes down to persistent hard work. Most of the principles and strategies that Brooke Castillo refers to (taken straight from CBT) are outlined in free web-based programs. It sounds like she exploits the lure of the “law of attraction”, related to synchronicity, to add some extra colour and appeal.
Brooke Castillo does sound a bit like a cult leader. She reminds me of Elizabeth Holmes who sucked in so many people with her company, Theranos, that pretended to have wonderful new ways of doing all sorts of blood tests using just one drop of blood. But at least that claim had an objective way of being disproven, whereas Brooke Castillo can just blame people for having negative thoughts as a reason for their dissatisfaction with the product. Concerning stuff! Thanks again for sending the link.”
