A Reflection on Trust, Community, and the Need for Real Support in Isolating Times
Lately, I’ve been hearing the same thing over and over again both online and in my free connection calls:
💬 “Coaching is just another grift.”
💬 “I don’t know who to trust anymore.”
💬 “I need support, but I don’t want to be sold something fake.”
And sadly, I get it on an intimate level.
The coaching industry is full of big promises, vague transformations, and inflated price tags. There are people charging thousands of dollars for what amounts to a few vague affirmations and recycled self-help rhetoric.
There are people making more money selling courses on "how to be a coach" than they ever did coaching actual people. And there are plenty of "success stories" that gloss over the massive privilege it took to get there in the first place.
So when people say coaching feels like a grift, I don’t push back.
Because, in many ways, it has become one.
And yet, I also know this: The need for real guidance, real mentorship, and real community support has never been greater.
So, where does that leave those of us who actually believe in coaching... not as a get-rich-quick scheme, but as a legitimate form of support, care, and transformation?
The Coaching Crisis is a Crisis of Trust and Accountability
We are living through an era of deep institutional betrayal. Governments, corporations, and even many nonprofits have shown us time and again that their priority is not care, not justice, but power or profit. We see so-called "leaders" performing change at a national scale while enacting policies of destruction and leading an unprecedented grift. We see influencers peddling watered-down versions of systemic change while upholding the very structures they claim to challenge.
And then there’s coaching: an unregulated industry that is both an antidote to, and a symptom of, this mess.
Here’s the thing: coaching exists largely because traditional support systems have failed.
Indigenous and intact cultures throughout time have had elders, mentors, wisdom-keepers embedded in the community, people who didn’t charge money for support because it was simply part of the fabric of life and reciprocal, relational economies. Where traditional place-based ceremonies still exist, underlying cosmologies and ideas around "help" are often holistically different.
But colonialism and capitalism fractured that. It turned interdependence into individualism, mutual aid into a paid service, and leadership into an isolated, impossible role. In the vacuum of embedded eldership, the helping professions emerged including individual therapy, social work and now coaching.
Therapy and social work, as well as other licensed "helping professions," at least have legal and ethical accountability measures in place. The coaching industry does not. The closest that the industry has developed to a reliable regulating body is the International Coaching Federation, which I am on track to be credentialed by in the coming months (although I am already certified through an ICF accredited school). But some argue that this credential is merely symbolic in a system with no real accountability measures. And the truth is that all of these professions fall victim to oppressive practices without adequately embedded processes to counter racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia, etc.
Another challenge to assuming that coaching certification is the gold standard of practice for all non-licensed helping professions, is that it can diminish the validity and necessity of traditional, lineage-based and indigenous approaches to healing, guidance and support. In a neocolonial capitalist era (where systems and economies still operating under colonial principles), the audacity to regulate indigenous practices through colonial institutional standards embodies the ongoing suppression of traditional earth-based practices.
At its best, coaching reclaims some of what was lost: helping people feel seen, navigate change, and reconnect to their own inner wisdom. At its worst, it exploits that very need and sells people empty solutions. This is why trust in coaching has been so deeply eroded: because it is happening against the backdrop of a world that is full of exploitation, manipulation, and surface-level fixes.
What Makes Coaching Real?
In my own practice, I have sat with the weight of this question: How do I offer real, meaningful support in a landscape full of noise, deception, and overhyped promises? For me, the answer comes down to relationship, accountability, and depth.
It's about deep listening and co-creating the relationship.
It's about meeting people where they're at and not where I want them to be.
It's about being open to being wrong and giving and receiving honest feedback.
It's about being a co-learner and a partner in change.
It's about practicing ethical standards and critical self-reflection in my role.
In a lot of the work that I do with organizations, coaching is just one mode that I can step into. It is a skill and a container for a particular time and purpose. Sometimes its what is needed, while other times it is community accompaniment, deep learning, dialogue facilitation or straight up consulting advice.
So, it's important to know what coaching IS and what it is not so that those who want to engage can do so with informed consent around MY practice:
🌀 Coaching is not a transaction, it’s a relationship. It requires trust, real care, and a commitment to walking alongside someone, not just delivering pre-packaged wisdom.
🌀 Coaching is not about quick-fix success. It’s about deep transformation. I don’t offer “six-figure secrets” or “manifestation hacks.” I offer space, strategy, and reflection for people to find clarity around their own experiences and processes in a world that is designed to disorient them.
🌀 Coaching is not a replacement for community. While sometimes personalized and focused support is exactly what is needed, my philosophy holds that it should lead people back to community or be an embodiment of it. One-on-one support is powerful, but true change happens in collective spaces, in movements, in relationships with others. This is one reason I love group coaching spaces.
The Capitalist Game Has Turned Gifts into Grifts
I followed the calling of coaching as one part of my larger calling to cultivate community cultures of compassion and creativity. This is a continuation of the gifts given to me by my ancestors and elders: the gifts of healing, support, guidance and community building.
One of the deepest pains I carry is seeing true mentorship, healing, and guidance being diminished by capitalism into something transactional.
Coaching is not the only place where this is happening... it’s happening everywhere.
🔥 Healers are being forced to brand themselves like corporations just to survive.
🔥 Artists are being asked to package their creativity into marketable, consumable products.
🔥 Indigenous wisdom-keepers are being drowned out by posers with better SEO and ad budgets.
The people who should be leading us through this time are the very people being pushed to the margins by an economy that only values what can be commodified.
And so, I don’t blame people for distrusting coaching. I blame the systems that have forced people into this impossible position:
🚨 Do you jump through institutional hoops to gain legitimacy (often at the cost of your own soul and calling)?
🚨 Or do you try to carve your own path outside of the system (and risk being dismissed as a fraud)?
This is the tension of modern leadership.
And in this landscape, many well-intentioned people have chosen neither path. Instead, they’ve found a loophole: the unregulated world of coaching.
And some have done this beautifully: deeply training, mentoring, and honoring the responsibility of holding space for others.
But many? Many have simply found a way to sell certainty in an uncertain world.
And that is what erodes trust.
The Need for Real Community & Support
With all of this in mind, I have been asking myself:
🤔 What does true, accountable leadership look like in these times?
🤔 How do we create spaces that support people without replicating the very harm we’re trying to escape?
🤔 What would it look like to build community spaces where we can navigate these questions together?
That’s why I’m launching something different:
Mindful Motivation Mondays: A Space for Real Support
🌿 A weekly gathering space for leaders, visionaries, and changemakers who are done navigating your visionary work alone.
🌿 A place to ground, set intentions, get organized, and mutually motivate ourselves towards action in community at the start of your week without the pressure of productivity culture.
🌿 A space where support isn’t a sales pitch... it’s a shared practice.
📅 Kicking off Monday, February 24th
⏰ 10am-12pm CT | First session free with code CLEAR
This is not a coaching program. It’s not about me.
It’s about creating the kind of space I believe we all deserve in critical and chaotic times.
These are the times for us to gather and get grounded together.
Because coaching, at its best, is not about selling simple solutions.
It’s about creating the conditions for people to step into their own wisdom, leadership, and power.
And if that’s not what coaching is doing, then yes... it’s just another grift.
I refuse to be part of that.
Let’s build something different, together.
💬 Drop a comment if you’ve felt this coaching trust crisis too. Let’s talk about it.
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