They spent their life savings on life coaching
To an outsider,
In many ways, Mullett, who lives in
"I'm an intelligent human being," Mullett, 46, said. "We all think that it'll never happen to us. That's the really scary part."
She is part of a growing cohort speaking out about the opaque underbelly of life coaching, an unregulated industry with an often-hefty price tag, and a significant cost reaching far beyond funds spent.
With early roots in the late-20th-century pull toward self-improvement, life coaching broadly encompasses a program of goal-setting and talk-therapy-style sessions aimed at improving an individual's circumstances and well-being.
Business is booming.
And while many operate with integrity, providing thoughtful and structured advice to their clients to help them through challenging times, the unregulated nature of the industry can make it easy to take advantage of people.
An expensive dream
In 2018, Mullett was tiring of the grind of the corporate world and struggling to form a blended family with her now-husband when she discovered life coaching.
"My friend recommended a podcast, and I immediately felt that this was what I'd been looking for," she said. "The host was talking about how our thoughts impact our emotions and our behaviors. I was hooked."
Mullett started to watch videos on the host's website. The host, a life coach who Mullett asked not to be named for fear of retaliation and harassment, combined the language of successful businessperson with the promise of a new career in which women could be in control of their own work and schedule, help others and improve themselves.
There were videos "talking about how your brain is the most valuable thing you can invest in," Mullett said.
She withdrew
The course wasn't what she expected. Mullett described a confusing and low-quality program of online lessons - one hour per week for six months - in which aspiring coaches discussed chapters they had read outside of class and practiced coaching one another. She said that students were often belittled and that questioning the wisdom of the coaches who led the course was discouraged.
But Mullett remained hopeful and believed she had learned some valuable things, for example, that she had an ability to focus only on the things in her life that she could control. She had spent an extraordinary amount of money on the certification and clung to the dream that had been sold to her: earning good money while fulfilling her passion for helping others.
"It's hard to let go of that dream," she said.
After completing the program, Mullett was certified by the school and hoped to start coaching. But although she had initially been told that her certification would give her "everything I needed to make my first
"How can you sell someone on the value of coaching if you're not paying for coaching yourself?" she said she was told.
Mullett felt pressured to increasingly spend substantial sums on coaching classes and business mentoring, supposedly to help bolster her fledgling career. She started with a
"I wasn't making money," she said. "I was spending money."
Vulnerable to exploitation
Máire O Sullivan, a lecturer in marketing at
"The boom is being fueled by an appetite for life coaching, but it's also being fueled by artificial means," O Sullivan said. "There is a problem in the industry of coaches who coach coaches to become coaches."
Although surveys suggest that coaches charge an average of
This may be by employing other life coaches and taking a cut of their profits, creating what is known as a downline, or by selling things like coaching certifications to their follower base.
For Richards, this was the beginning of six "emotionally and financially devastating" years. She upgraded her course to one that cost around
"The industry eats itself," she said. "There were celebrity coaches, and then there were the rest of us, and the rest of us were competing for coaching space."
Although Richards became skeptical of the industry, she said that her stubbornness made her stick with it. "I'm not a quitter," she said. "I saw the issues a long time ago, but walking away was too difficult."
O Sullivan said this experience was common among people who found themselves pulled into life coaching's expensive offerings. "Life coaching attracts people who are vulnerable to exploitation," she said.
The pinnacle of this exploitation has been exposed by recent high-profile legal battles and criminal charges against several coaching organizations. In
In
"Coaching is a self-regulated industry, which means that anyone can establish a coaching practice regardless of their training or professional background," said
Abner said that coaches with credentials from the
An industry
with two sides
Stories like Richards' are familiar to
"They bully people for money," she said. "You're not allowed to question the main coach. You're not allowed to dissent."
Collins, who lives in
Collins believes that many trained life coaches are legitimate and are doing good work, but said the industry also had a serious issue with scammers.
"Most people get into life coaching because they love helping and supporting people," she said. "They don't start out thinking that they're going to mess people up, or take all their money. But sometimes, that's what happens."
For Mullett and Richards, the process of removing themselves from the world of life coaching has been long and difficult.
Mullett said she had to seek therapy for financial and emotional damage. And after leaving the industry last year, she has struggled with the guilt and shame of having spent so much time and money on what she now views as an elaborate scam.
Richards estimated that she spent well over
"Coming to terms with finally letting go is emotionally devastating," she said. "This was going to be my dream. I went from six figures with benefits and a 401(k) to desperately trying to find a minimum wage job, at a time when I thought I would be at the pinnacle of my career. I didn't think I would be trying to start over at 52. This was not how I saw the story ending."
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