The Biggest Names in Coaching Aren't Coaching You. They're Leading You.
I just turned 47, and I can't remember a time when Tony Robbins wasn't famous. That imposing stature and gravelly voice. Growing up, and maybe still, he was marketed in commercials performing in front of amphitheatres, talking into a Madonna-like headset, passionate and sweaty like a preacher at a tent revival, thumping his message to the crowd in that predictable MLK cadence … the crowd standing, cheering, crying, swaying in groupthink unison.
Us middle-income folk knew the tickets were expensive and that Robbins was making a killing. The themes were usually along the lines of 'building wealth / getting rich.' I enviously wondered what secrets those people were going home with that I didn't have. I wished a rich guy would teach me how to be rich. But I'd been dragged to enough tent revivals to know that 99% of the time, it's all kabuki, and by Tuesday, it's like it never happened.
I graduated from college in 2001, just after 9/11, and moved to Miami to live with a new girlfriend. The move doubled my expenses at a time when the job market crashed with those two airplanes. Three months of frantically searching for work on my beige Apple computer, a graphic designer with a new design degree, got me nothing but serving tables again at Gordon Biersch. Six months later, Miami was still a dead-end, and I went back to St. Pete, luckily with my girlfriend in tow. I also hadn't counted on how bilingual the job market was.
Back in St. Pete, sitting on a familiar patio with a longtime friend, she asked if I wanted to go to these meetings where they teach you about money. I hesitated. She said, 'They're free, c'mon, you'll learn a lot.' So I went. That 'money meeting' turned out to be a Primerica meeting, a financial services MLM that held sales and recruiting meetings twice a week. They taught you the rule of 72, revved you up about getting rich, and gave me my first foray into sales training and self-help. I was hooked.
Primerica gave us suggested reading, starting with 'Think Like a Winner.' I devoured it and kept going. I didn't last too long in Primerica, but for the next 15 years, I mostly read wealth-, business-, and mindset-oriented self-help books until the formulas were so painfully obvious and predictable that I couldn't take it anymore. That's okay. Instagram was suddenly there to keep serving up the hits.
I was early on the scene with Alan Watts, The Secret, and when TED Talks mattered. Then Lewis Howes, Tom Bilyeu and his braided wife, Joe Dispenza, and no one could hide from Gary V.
“The client still goes home with someone else’s answer, wearing their name on it.”
Then I came across my first real coach, Brooke Castillo, owner of The Life Coach School. I torpedoed through her content and still revisit her early podcast episodes. I was at the height of running a successful digital marketing agency, but I couldn't resist wondering if I should be coaching instead. When I signed up for Self Coaching Scholars (to receive coaching, not to train in it), I got access to a private podcast where I could hear her coach. It was riveting and pieces of those conversations are still with me today.
Now I sit here on July 1, 2026, six months out from earning my ACC (Associate Certified Coach) from the International Coaching Federation, through iPEC, one of the most prestigious coaching institutions in the world. Coaching has exploded in the last five years, and with it a new wave of celebrity coaches: Peter Crone, Byron Katie, Tony Robbins still impressively in the mix. I follow countless coaches online and consume podcasts almost daily. IG Reels have let me finally see behind the veil at how Tony coaches during his events. It's hard not to enjoy how pointed and ruthless he can be.
But what I see now, post iPEC, is that most of these heavy hitters aren't coaching their clients. They're leading them.
'Leading' here means exactly what it means in 'leading a horse to water.' You, as the guide, already know where the water is. In coaching terms, you have an instinct or opinion about where your client needs to go, and you ask questions designed to take them there. The client has an epiphany, and the coach is seen as having an almost spiritual gift, able to read a person so quickly and lead the lost to the answer.
iPEC trains us never to do this, and the reason is critical: leading the client presupposes you know where they need to go, and robs them of the chance to land on the insight that is actually right for them. The client already has the answers. Our job is to partner with them in uncovering those answers, following their energy, not asking them to follow ours. We stand next to the horse and find the water together. Their insight lands and sticks because they got there themselves. We all know when we hit our own truth. No one can hand it to us.
Almost two years ago, before iPEC, I told a new acquaintance that I was going to train as a coach soon. I was probably cocky enough to joke that I could coach now, but wanted the credential. She invited me to coach her that week, and I agreed. We started over brunch on Ossington Street in Toronto and continued meandering through Trinity Bellwoods Park toward my home on Dovercourt. I believed I could see her blind spot and methodically asked questions to lead her there. I felt a secret rush watching her inch closer to where I wanted her mind to go. As the session steered toward her childhood and kept going, I'd crossed a line, even though I’d checked in around consent. Coaching isn't therapy. Soon, I was caught off guard when she started crying. Clients cry in properly conducted sessions sometimes, and that's fine. But I knew before I'd taken a single day of coaching school that I'd messed up. Her tears were because of me, not her.
I held space, said nothing, then asked what was coming up and whether she wanted to continue. She wanted to stop, graciously saying she just hadn't expected to go there and it was too much for now. We were a few doors from my house, so it felt natural to close out there. After everything, we never got to where I was trying to take her anyway. I had no way of knowing what internal obstacles I'd be driving us into.
I get a certain value from watching Crone and Robbins do their thing. It almost feels like magic. The client utters a sentence or two, and they take them by the hand and lead them to the insightful prize. But I wonder if that prize evaporates, because it was never theirs. Like a tent revival, come Tuesday, it's like it never happened.
Some may argue that coaches like Crone and Robbins have earned the right to lead because decades of experience give them an almost clinical read on where a client needs to go. Okay. But instead of using that experience to lead harder and faster, that experience should instead inform their curiosity and expertise of how and when to ask the right questions. And experience doesn't change the mechanism. If the insight isn't the client's, it doesn't stick. The client still goes home with someone else's answer, wearing their name on it.
If this resonates and you’re curious what coaching that follows your lead looks like, book a free consult and let’s discuss it.
