Bonus 2: Caller Episode

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Hey, dream listeners.

if you like this podcast, you're gonna love the book.

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Welcome to The Dream.

You're about to hear one of my favorite kinds of episodes that we like to do every season on this show.

It's the episode you made.

And I'm not just saying that because it gives me a week off, because it doesn't actually, but it is fun to hear your stories.

So, we put out a call a few months ago for your life coaching stories, and boy, did you deliver!

Here's a selection of the voicemails you left us and a little interview at the end.

Enjoy.

I stopped being

really close friends with a long friend because she became a life coach.

It happened over the pandemic.

We had already both graduated from college.

We went together and she started following this TikTok life coach who is mostly selling a lifestyle rather than actual coaching materials, but she kept talking to me about how

she paid $3,000 to this woman who was then going to teach her how to become a mindset spiritual business coach.

And my friend kept saying that she thought this was better than going to college because it's only $3,000

and she's going to learn how to create a business online.

And when I was asking her, like what this woman's credentials were or what the tangible guaranteed outcome was,

she would get really, really defensive and say that I was not supporting her in her new career.

I was like, well, what credentials do you have to be a life coach?

Like who are you to be charging people for advice?

Especially since the structural setup of this woman's coaching business that she was advertising advertising was very much like an MLM.

I went to her website.

This woman's not licensed.

She just advertises being sexy and traveling the world, which of course everyone would like to be doing or be.

I felt like she was advertising a lot of really unhealthy lifestyle choices of, yeah, you know, drop everything you're doing and spend all of your money on coaching.

And if you give me money to be a coach, then you can also start being a coach.

And that will give you fulfillment and happiness and everything like that.

So basically we stopped being friends

especially when I was dealing with some of my own things and mentioned to her in passing that I was having a rough time and her advice to me you know as a coach now was well maybe you should go climb a tree.

Hello, my name is Liam and I'm going to share an instance of where life life coaching kind of snuck into my health clinic.

So I'm a trans man, and I had a really hard time after I graduated from college because my family cut me off financially, emotionally, all that stuff.

And I went to a job training program that they put on and essentially the person there just did like a life coach thing and said, oh, you guys just got to be happy and got to wake up in the morning and put a smile on your face and believe in yourself.

And it was so useless, I just stopped going, especially considering most of us there were trans and most of us were people of color, including myself.

So

I'm not too fond of life coaching because I often feel that it overlooks the circumstances that people are going through.

We live in an unequal society.

I love the show.

Also chronically ill microneur here, so I can relate to a lot of your experiences.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Hi, my name is Sarah.

I have a PhD in sociology, and when I was in my first year on the tenure track, I hired an academic coach.

I absolutely loved my coach.

Her name was Moira.

I think she's still in the coaching industry.

She helped me create a five-year plan to go up for tenure.

She helped me see that I wasn't working hard enough, which now I look back on and think, hmm, I wonder about that.

But

she gave me some great tools to help me plan out my time and tried to help me figure out work-life balance.

So I was spending time with my two kids as well.

I ended up getting tenure.

I think I hired her for a couple of years.

So that's my experience.

I have loved your show all three seasons and I was really, really happy to see the new seasons.

So keep making them and thanks.

A few years back my employer flagged me as a high potential colleague and that meant that I got perks.

The main perk was one-on-one career coaching with a professional who had actually worked in my field.

And to be honest, it was one of the best things that my job has ever given me.

It was basically like a work therapist.

We laid laid out my situation, which frankly was pretty challenging at the time.

And we just talked through situations that I faced and what I could be doing and what my ultimate goals were.

And it was awesome.

I felt like I took a step back.

I thought about the really important stuff.

And I had someone in my corner who understood the situation.

So they helped me through a really tricky professional time period.

And hey, I've been promoted like a bunch of times since then.

so it was awesome

I just want to say I'm absolutely loving the podcast so far and

really

resonating with

where Jane is in her life and feeling a lot of compassion and love for her because I have been in a similar position for the past several years

just not being able to find happiness and I have actually had a very positive relationship with a life coach over the last two years.

She kind of recruited me.

I met her through a workshop I did at work and she helped me to identify just like really what is next for me, like what is the next move I should make.

And most importantly, she helped me get out of a very toxic relationship with

a

narcissist who was emotionally abusing me for years.

And while most of my work with her is really focused on my professional life, when I finally opened up to her about my personal life, she just really helped me see so much that I was choosing not to see.

So I have great things to say about my life coach, and I recommend it to anyone who needs support.

I think life coaching is so much more beneficial than talk therapy.

It is very action-oriented and I've been in talk therapy for years and haven't really gotten much out of it, but just in the short time that I've been working with this coach, like I've just really made some positive changes in my life and reflected on my patterns and thoughts and behaviors.

And so yeah.

Thank you so much for the work that you all do.

This is a really wonderful podcast.

Hi, Jay-Marie.

My name is Sarah.

I live here in Mosul East, and I've done coaching two ways.

One, forced through work.

I do not recommend that at all, miserable.

But also, I chose to do life coaching last year coming out of the pandemic, depressed with little to no self-confidence.

It was

something that I probably would have made fun of for a long time doing life coaching.

And then I realized I felt sad, lonely.

I'm single, getting older, getting fatter,

and

felt like life was terrible.

I saw somebody on Twitter who said they were a life coach and thought they were saying it as a joke and then I realized they weren't joking and I made fun of it for a second until I thought, well, maybe it'll work.

I did 12 sessions to start feeling better about myself.

They talked with me for an hour, you know, each time, gave me homework to do at home.

And I have to say, it worked.

It was just little exercises to get me out of my brain and my way of thinking.

Anyway, after about 12 sessions, I did start feeling better and I got out of the house and started volunteering.

And now I am in actual therapy working on the same thing.

probably in a more informed way than the life coach has.

But, you know, it's now a year or two later.

I'm still 46, 50 pounds heavier than I want to be and single, but I'm feeling in a much better place about it and getting much better help.

Anyway, I'm loving the new series.

Thank you.

Bye.

Hi, my name is Emily and I am a licensed mental health counselor in the state of Washington in the United States.

I don't have a lot of experience with coaching.

However, as a mental health counselor, I can tell you that coaching

definitely has got this weird overlap that makes me very concerned.

Mostly I'm concerned about people who go straight into coaching programs and then they advertise as if they are qualified to do the kind of work

that I end up doing on a daily basis that I have a lot of training to do.

And one of the things that is especially upsetting to me lately are health coaches because they essentially just repackage diet culture in a way that seems sort of like it's healthy and therapeutic.

And I actually ended up, out of curiosity, doing some sessions with an acquaintance of mine that I know in the community who was getting hours for her coaching certificate.

And I can tell you that basically every session was just trying to check in to see if I had exercised.

And there was no skill or ability that she had, or at least maybe wasn't allowed to, to address the fact that like exercise to me was trauma.

I didn't necessarily need to work through my trauma with her, but it makes me very nervous.

So the type of clients that I see, if they're going to go to like a health coach, for example, or a life coach that's going to coach them on any element of their like health,

it's just not sufficient.

So anyway, those are my thoughts.

And if you can use them great.

Hi, my name is Lori.

And to answer the question, I have taken coaching classes myself.

I have called myself a pragmatic and resiliency coach.

I have been coached.

At certain points in my life, it's been really helpful.

Some of it has been bullshit.

Some of it I really question.

And these days, I don't really call myself anything.

I do have clients that I see.

And if anything, I sit and I listen really deeply to people and do my best to just I'm a yoga and meditation teacher at heart.

I don't know.

Being human is really difficult and challenging.

And at the end of the day, if there's some certain tools that help you feel a little bit more peaceful and content inside yourself,

then

choose wisely.

Life is complex.

That's all I need to say.

Thank you so much for your show.

Have a great day.

Hey, so I'm calling because I'm in the hate life coach of camp.

And

the main thing that I think really bothers me about the life coaching industry is that there's absolutely no entrance costs.

There's none whatsoever.

And I've known multiple people who go into life coaching.

When I talk to them, I'm like, I don't really think that you have life figured out.

The last person who I knew who went into life coaching, she went to a synagogue that I attended for a while.

She had a daughter who was born severely disabled,

and

she just like sent her away like sent her to an institution because she was so horrified by the idea of taking care of her her other children were adopted because she didn't want to run the risk she wanted to pick basically what babies she had in the future I didn't even know of the existence of her first daughter for years because she didn't even live in the same state.

And then next thing I know, this woman is becoming a life coach.

And I'm just like,

girl, you

do not have your deals figured out at all.

Maybe you need a life coach.

All the life coaches who I know seem to follow that pattern of just having the

audacity, it feels like, to think that they can tell other people how to live.

Hey there.

I've been a fan of the podcast for a few years now and really appreciate the light that you're shining on

these different kinds of MLMs and coaches and things like that.

I have been a mentor to a lot of young entrepreneurs.

So I would say a mentor is life coach adjacent, right?

But it's really challenging for me because there's a lot of coaching in the space.

There's a lot of mentors.

There are people who I look up to in some ways and yet feel this simmering rage because

a little over a decade ago, my mother,

who is,

you know, in her 70s,

was groomed by Bob Proctor before he passed

and spent

close to $200,000 on product

that she was convinced by these coaches she could sell.

So she got caught up purchasing all this inventory that she couldn't sell, squandering her retirement.

You know, now I spend her money to help her just straight by.

And then I look at people who I want to look up to who have successful businesses, talk about mindset and positivity, and cutting out negative words and, you know, always reframing problems as challenges or opportunities.

And they're promoting and sharing videos from your Bob Practice of the world.

Life coaches, can they be valuable?

Yes.

Can they really take advantage of people and are there nasty ones out there who will groom people and

basically swindle them out of money?

Yes.

And as with most things,

a lot of it can be what you make out of it.

And you just have to be really careful.

So excited to see where the rest of the pod goes and take care.

Hi, my name is Nikki and I'll be up front.

I'm a licensed mental health counselor and so when it comes to life coaching I am inherently biased but I think episode five really solidified why I am so biased against life coaching is that there is an innate vulnerability that comes with sharing yourself and your struggles with another person.

And without the boundaries that therapy or counseling has, or at the very least the lack of boundaries that life coaching has is that people are really set up to get hurt.

You know, I hope your experience with your life coach went well, but when I hear her say we're going to be friends at the end of this, my red flag goes up inside of how can you say that and how can you build authenticity into a real friendship when you are

shaking money off of somebody's pain and vulnerability.

Yes, you pay a therapist, but a therapist isn't your friend, and we're very upfront about that.

I just have such an ick when it comes to life coaching.

Honestly, when someone tells me that they want to do it, I really instead try to find out why and refer them to do health coaching instead if it's appropriate, because health coaching at least has boards you have to set for.

They have guidance of what to do when something's out of scope and referring on.

And so, yeah, I think there's so many other avenues that are so much safer for people in their emotions and their journeys.

But I love your show and I really hope you're doing well.

Bye.

When I was younger, much earlier, like in my teens, my mother bought, she and I, a three-day, like a thingy for this guy named Marshall Silver, who is a vagus hypnotist who had like a spot on Letterman.

And it's, you know, like he's around.

And I remember the three days was, you know, big hype sales.

We're all in a room with the Orlando airport, big room.

And they're coming up and telling us that we're going to change our futures and all the stuff that I've been hearing on the show.

And then on day two of it, I remember it was just people coming up and selling their little product.

Like, here's a way to win on the stock market or things like that.

And I was supposed to have individualized coaching, but every time I did it, it made me feel uncomfortable.

This wasn't like a cohesive program.

It was just some bullshit.

But even to this day, a bunch of stuff that they said still worked for me.

Like he would say that, you know, value is what you create.

Or like instead of saying but, say, and.

So even though I was only there for three days as a teenager, it's really pervasive and it still stuck with me.

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It's just these people are very good at being salespeople, and so much of what I experienced that weekend is what you guys have been talking about for the last three seasons.

Hi, I am not entirely sure how to condense my experience into one voicemail.

I

do have a story regarding coaching and how it affected my partner, former partner at this point,

the stress that it created in our relationship, and

the very,

in my opinion, fleazy world of coaches who coach coaches for big dollars.

This story involves

a particular coach named

and how her teachings and influence affected my partner in her coaching business and $50,000 of credit card debt.

My phone number is.

I'm a huge fan of the show.

I really appreciate the information that's being brought to light.

And I would really love to have a conversation with you all one-on-one and tell you a little bit more.

Thanks.

We called Alex to give her the chance to tell the uncondensed version of her life coach story that effectively broke up her relationship.

My name is Alex, and I am a former nurse.

I spent 12 years working as a registered nurse in critical care, trauma, emergency medicine, and I spent 11 years in the military.

And I currently pivoted to small business owner and I live on the East Coast.

You called and left us a voicemail about

a life coach who

you kind of believe maybe ruined your relationship.

Will you tell me what happened?

Yeah,

I met my partner when she was a

marriage and family therapist, and she had talked about wanting to get out of marriage and family therapy and just leave therapy all you know altogether and she was very interested in becoming a coach and I was fully supportive of that and I really wanted to encourage her in that quest because I understood what it was like to

be in a place, be in a profession that you felt exhausted by.

So I, you know, I fully supported her and

she attended a training.

It was at the very early onset of her transition to the coaching world by

a big name coach and

that kind of set the ball in motion and, you know, she eventually resigned her license and transitioned fully to coaching.

She

then

was looking for a coach

to work with to kind of help her in this transition and

this particular coach that she ended up working with was billing herself as a business coach.

I really was concerned about like the tone that this coach was providing and I raised a lot of questions.

It created quite a bit of tension between my partner and I because she really believed in what this particular coach was saying.

Like the overall tone of

just charge what you're worth.

And I remember hearing that all the time.

And, you know, I kept thinking, well, what is, you know, how do you

put a value on this quote-unquote worth and then decide that other people...

you know, you need to sell this to other people.

And this coach was very, very much pushy on the sales side and just, you know, teaching this really aggressive sales tactic.

and like you know it doesn't matter if somebody says they don't have a thousand dollars to work with you for two weeks like you can get them to do it it was that kind of thought process yeah

icky and I I really didn't feel like I could support something like that and so I really wanted you know to have these conversations with my partner to kind of get her to see things from my perspective and why as just a regular layperson it felt really gross.

I had seen her as a therapist and I had seen her in the coaching realm and she's very good.

She had a way to communicate with people that really made them feel comfortable and confident and

she was great, absolutely fantastic at asking really pointed questions that were not like poking at people, but actually helping them rethink their concerns or or their hang-ups about whatever it is they might be working on.

Eventually my partner did

end the working relationship with that coach and she

had

started to ask some of her own questions and

the coach actually ended up calling her out almost publicly online.

and

it was not a very tactful

way way of of dealing with the situation did not use her name but definitely alluded in details to who this person was

wow

my partner started talking about this really awesome coach she like had these great results from

you know all listed on her website like clients that were making millions of dollars and

You know, I didn't think too much about it.

I was like, okay, you know, I'd seen her get excited about other things.

And

then

she mentioned the price tag for working with this particular coach.

And the price tag was $25,000 for six months.

Oh, my God.

And

I

thought, okay, wow, this is a lot for me to wrap my head around.

Is that like that for six months, that sounds like maybe like a very intensive university-style education and coaching.

Is that what it was?

So

it was actually a group call a week,

and then you could request peer coaching, which comes from inside the group, from the other peers, the other coaches in that group, or you can sign up for a session with one of the paid coaches that this

business coach that runs this $25,000 for a six-month program was paying to be on her staff.

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How this whole thing kicks off is they have a get-together at some destination.

One of the locations was Baja.

And

they'd go to this destination, whichever you know was chosen, and then they have like a three-day event in this just like almost like eight hours of non-stop what's billed as coaching, but it's really like sales and marketing

teaching, which if you listen to the podcasts that this particular coach put out or you watch the videos,

it has a very multi-level marketing theme to it.

There's no real way that you can actually put your finger on it and say, yep, this is multi-level marketing because there's only really one person at the top.

And, but the thing, the thing that feels

like a pyramid about it all is that you get to the end of one of these, you know, six-month sessions, there's no certification,

there's nothing that you walk away with, and people repeatedly sign up over and over and over again.

And I know my partner told me of people who had signed up, you know, four, six times in a row.

Wow.

And

membership.

Yes.

And technically it's not mandatory, but it's kind of like you get into this group and you don't want to get out because you know the vibe is so energized and you know it's it's a high energy quote unquote high impact environment.

That ultimate led me to coming back to my partner and saying, you know, I really don't understand.

Like

if you're paying $25,000 to go to this program and it's so great, why are you having to do it over again?

You know, what else?

It didn't make sense to me.

It was,

I don't like this word.

It was almost cult-like because everything was like

all about the leader of this, you know, coaching business and how she had provided great coaching and how she had said an amazing thing you know um

during

the

um the group meeting

and just more and more of the structure that i kept hearing about just kept feeling more and more like a multi-level marketing thing but there was nothing that i could put my finger on i i pleaded with her i was like please you know don't don't do this again like that twenty five thousand dollars is a lot of money and

I don't understand why you would have to go back into a thing that you've paid so much money.

It begs the question,

are you getting your money's worth out of it?

Because $25,000 is basically a year's worth of college education.

So

I...

I begged and pleaded with her.

It really started to create a lot of tension.

She basically had no friends outside of this group.

So everybody

was inside of this group.

Like all of her community was in there.

All of the advice she was getting was coming from inside the group.

All of the coaching that she was getting was coming from inside the group.

And one thing that really started,

one of the things that really started to bother me was how I was seeing how some of these coaches were selling coaching

for one thing or another to each other.

And like my partner partner actually got coaching, participated in this group coaching program for relationships from this other coach that was in the coaching program that she was in.

And it just really felt like an echo chamber, honestly.

And that there was.

Hang on.

Okay, let's not move past the relationship coaching thing.

You're in a relationship with this person at the time.

Was it a coaching program to teach them how to be relationship coaches or was it to no?

It was like

a coaching program to

help my partner have a better relationship with me.

Oh, wow.

And so that's

it was just like this big circle.

The coaches all got coaching from each other for their business related to this coaching program.

And then sometimes they would get coaching from each other for life stuff outside of the reason they were in this group.

And that's why to me it felt more like an echo chamber, like there was no outside,

I don't know, thought process, honestly.

I struggled with, you know, why?

Why can she not see

the

strangeness of this whole thing and on top of that

I was frustrated that a group would have so much influence on her and that I didn't have a way to

like match that influence as her partner.

And

I just, I didn't know how to reach her.

And I didn't know what to say.

And it really, like,

I did notice a huge difference by the end of the relationship between the person that I met, you know, five years prior

and the end result.

Because by the end, like, there wasn't a single podcast that she listened to other than the podcasts from the people in that group, from the leader of that group, from her friends in that group.

There wasn't any outside influence that she absorbed.

It was all coming from the inside.

Mm-hmm.

And was she achieving some level of success by doing this?

No.

This was the second round that she participated in, and she had not signed a client in over a year.

Whoa.

Yeah.

She goes away to

the,

I don't know, the group rendezvous meeting

and then signs up for another six months with this coach, the business coach,

because she was being offered a special deal.

And it was during this

second,

like leading up to the second sign-up, that my partner was coached

by the coach running the group into using her credit card to pay for the next round.

In her thought, she was like, I'm stuck because I want to join this next round, but I don't have the finances for it.

And

essentially what came out in the conversation with the group leader was, wait a minute, you have a credit card with how much of a credit limit on it?

And you're saying that's not accessible to your business?

Like you should be using your credit card to finance this.

So my partner signs up.

She goes through this whole other round.

Like, my disdain for the whole thing becomes a lot more evident.

I have very little positive to say about it all.

I tell her I don't want to listen to the podcasts.

I really have no interest in being around her friends.

So, this actually happened within the last month.

Oh, my God.

My partner and I both got sick.

I

was woken up one night night in the middle of the night, probably like 4.30 in the morning.

My partner shakes me awake and she says, I'm not feeling good.

I'm not feeling good.

Something's wrong.

Something's really wrong.

She's panicking.

And

I get up.

I'm groggy.

And I say, well, what happened?

She's like, well, I took some over-the-counter medication and now I don't feel good.

And I sat her down on the couch and, you know, I was like, hey, I need you to take a deep breath, like try to calm down.

And she was really panicking.

She started vomiting.

And

next thing I know,

she just has this thousand-yard stare and is just looking off

insane.

I'm going to pass out.

I'm going to pass out.

And

she goes unresponsive.

She stops breathing.

She turns like this color of gray that I have only ever seen and witnessed in somebody who has died or is about to die

and

Then starts having a seizure

and I could not do anything except hold her and prevent her head from snapping around and causing injury and

Eventually the seizure stopped and I called 911

EMS shows up to the house and They check her blood pressure.

It is ridiculously low.

Like I know as a nurse that she needs, you you know, emergent medical care,

but she refuses.

And she refuses to be taken to the hospital.

And

I had started to get suspicious

that something was going on because she had been telling me she didn't have money for different things.

And so I was taking on more

financial responsibility.

And

I knew that she had signed up for two of these rounds with this coach at $25,000 each.

And I also knew that she had not signed a client in

a year or more.

And I started to kind of see the dominoes falling.

And that's what led me to asking her after the paramedics had left.

I asked her, you know, how much debt are you in?

She finally told me that she was $50,000 in credit card debt and that it was related to that program.

Oh my God.

How did she explain her refusal to go to the hospital?

She just said it wasn't necessary.

She didn't think that she warranted going there.

And I, again, as a critical care nurse, emergency nurse, having witnessed what I had just seen in her, knowing that she had nearly died right there in our living room,

I couldn't think of a single reason why you wouldn't go, but I couldn't make her go.

So I knew it had to have something to do with a financial issue and it felt like a gut punch.

I

just, I, again, it was just another moment of shock

that

here was this person I had trusted to be open and and honest with me

and they hadn't been open and honest about the debt and

Now I'm finding out about it in an emergent situation and I felt like I had been put in this place of

do I gamble with my partner's life

and try to mitigate the damage that she has done with her finances or do I go ahead and push for her to go to the hospital?

And it still makes me feel ill.

Like I,

right now I feel like I could throw up just talking about it and thinking about it.

But

I just sat there and was quiet.

I did not know what to do or say.

And it was just another moment of shock and disbelief that, you know, something like that was happening.

It took me a few days to kind of gather myself and that's when the anger and frustration really started

to be something that I could feel.

I had moved beyond the moment of shock and terror, and had like progressed to the point of

being so so

just angry, not necessarily at my partner, but angry that somebody would have taken advantage of her and her

desire to have

you know financial stability and

do something, you know, greater with her life.

And,

you know, part of that responsibility does lie on my former partner, but in the same hand,

it also lies with the coach that encouraged her to use credit cards.

And, you know, I told my partner that

she had to

take some pretty significant steps to start addressing the debt, such as she needed to move her office back into our home and that she needed to cut off all ties with that group and

that if she didn't do that, you know, our relationship was going to be on the line and potentially be over that very day.

She assured me that she was willing to make those changes, but within a few days she came came back to me and told me that she was leaving.

Oh my god.

So this is really recent.

How are you doing?

I thought for sure that she would pick us.

I thought for sure that she would

finally see my reasoning for concern of participation in this group.

And,

you know, I

felt like out of a sense of desperation, I had given those ultimatums

and that

she would understand where those ultimatums were coming from, a deep sense of caring, a deep sense of love, and

wanting her

to stay.

And

it just it backfired.

And

I

you know I had to accept that she she left

I begged I begged and pleaded for her to understand that

my

desire

to support her was outside of my willingness to support that group and her involvement in that group I very clearly told her that I supported her, that I

believed in her abilities as a coach and as a professional, that I wanted her to succeed, that I wanted to be there to see her succeed,

and I could not get her to separate herself

from this identity of not only being a coach, but a coach in that particular group.

The Dream is written, hosted, and executive produced by me, Jane Marie.

Our producer is Mike Richter, with help from Nancy Golumbiski and Joy Sanford.

Our editor is Peter Clowny.

The Dream is a co-production of Little Everywhere and Pushkin Industries.

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