We’ve All Hit Online Coach Burnout

Oh joy, another day, another email promising life-changing results from an online coaching program.

Just what we all needed, right? Because nothing screams “innovation” in 2024 like repackaging the same old regurgitated wisdom from four years ago and slapping a monthly fee on it.

Let’s face it — We’ve all hit peak online coach burnout.

When every Tom, Dick, and Harriet with a webcam, a basic understanding of Zoom, and a thin grip on their own skill set (and quite possibly reality) fancies themselves the next big thing in online coaching.

Just for the low, low price of $49 a month, you too can have access to generic advice repackaged in pretty PDFs, weekly ‘live’ sessions where your burning questions get lost in a sea of other subscribers, and can join a community of people that’s hosted on a free-to-run Facebook group who are all just as equally baffled by a lack of actual coaching.

It’s the digital equivalent of being packed into a sardine can, except you’re paying for the privilege, and the market has become about as saturated as a kitchen sponge in monsoon season.

2024’s online coaching model seems to have forgotten one tiny detail:

ACTUAL GOD DAMN VALUE

It’s become a hilarious parody of itself, where quantity triumphs over quality, and the real goal is not to help people, but to see how many can be duped into recurring payments for the illusion of personal development.

And let’s not forget the irony of preaching work-life balance, mindfulness, and stress management, while simultaneously spamming your inbox and notifications at all hours.

If there’s a recipe for serenity, this sure as hell ain’t it.

Suddenly, almost everyone who’s ever read a self-help book or attended a seminar considers themselves a guru. They throw around terms like ‘transformational’ and ‘groundbreaking’ with the same ease as a teenager uses emojis.

Qualifications? Experience? Who needs those when you’ve got a subscription to Zoom, a high-definition webcam, and a ring light?

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are some genuinely fantastic coaches out there — hidden gems amidst a sea of mediocrity. But for each and every one of the good ones, there’s a horde of people with about as much genuine coaching skill as my left shoe.

Digital snake oil peddlers of our time, and their poison?

A $49 a month membership which promises you the world and delivers little more than a map, a compass, and a set of instructions for you to push through on your own in so called self-paced learning.

But the reality is that without any real guidance you’ll take one step, maybe two towards your goal, have a question, get lost in the melange of others also trying to squeeze value and worth out of the coach, and then just… well… give up.

So what is it about online coaching that suckers people into shelling out expensive advice that they have to guide themselves through anyway?

When you boil it down, people are time poor… so they’re looking for a shortcut, a way to short circuit their way to the glory without having to slog through learning it all themselves.

WHAT A REVELATION, PEOPLE ARE LAZY.

But what’s the alternative I hear you ask?

For starters, how about we go back to basics and actually learn on your own terms, not someone else’s. Take pride in owning your own learning journey, be excited to uncover your own truths by actually digging in and holding yourself accountable.

Books are still a thing… remember those?

Yeah those things that are generally rather portable and hold knowledge… well surprise-surprise they still exist, albeit often in digital form.

They’re a treasure trove of wisdom, and guess what? Once you buy them, they don’t charge a monthly fee for sitting on your shelf while you ponder the universe.

Go check out reviews on Goodreads, Amazon, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn and more other places than you can shake a stick at.

YouTube Premium, get yourself around it

You could do a lot worse for your money than spending a few bucks on YouTube Premium.

Why you may ask? Because there is already an absolute shit-tonne of learning to be done on that platform, so much so that there is no other singular place online to gain access to the eleven-billion skills you’re trying to gain.

Sure, you may have to do a little sifting, but there are so many great people essentially giving away their entire box of secrets on YouTube you’d be hard pressed to get 0.0001% of the same worth out of a $49 a month coaching membership… and you’ll save a bucket of cash in the mean time.

Your existing communities

Yup, before you go reaching for your wallet, how about you reach out to someone you already know instead. There’s a high likelihood that they’ve been there, done that… or if they haven’t they probably know someone they can point you at who has.

Never underestimate the generosity of your existing network.

You’ll discover infinitely more worth finding someone from your own network to help you that you ever will from a ‘coach’ who sees you more as a pay check stuck on their endless carrot-and-stick train.

And you might even realise that the person you have pints with down the pub is much more than you ever expected.

Stop pissing about, and start learning

It’s time to shift our focus from passive consumption of overpriced bullshit content to active, engaged learning on your own terms that promotes real growth and development.

So stop being spoon-fed loosely hung together ‘training’ from someone who’s more eager to put new tyres on their BMW than teach you anything just because you have a Wi-Fi connection and a wallet.

Go forge your own god damn learning path, start taking actual ownership of what — and more importantly — how, you learn.

OWN IT.