Choice Coach didn’t start as a tech company, idea, or a business plan. It started with a feeling. Watching people I care about struggle to grow the coaching practices they love.
Before I ever thought about building this platform, I was on the client side of coaching. I’ve hired coaches for personal development, health, and fitness. I’ve had deeply transformative coaching relationships, and I’ve seen how powerful the work can be when it clicks.
But more than that, I’ve spent years close to the industry. My wife is a coach. Many of my closest friends are coaches. Some are just starting out. Others have been doing this work for over a decade. I’ve had a front row seat to the challenges they face.
And as someone with a background in economics, I started to see some patterns in the coaching world that weren’t just frustrating. Economics gives a unique lens into the structural organization of industries from a purely objective point of view.
The “Dismal Science” as the study of economics is often known is a fitting title, the lack of feeling can provide valuable insights. Using that perspective, combined with the polar opposite, my heartfelt and emotional experience of the coaching industry has given me a unique and constructive view of the issues faced by coaches.
The issues were structural. Issues that, unless addressed, would continue to hold good coaches back. Economics gives a unique lens into the structural organization of industries.
Some of the core problems we saw in the coaching industry, specifically the online coaching industry were misalignment between coaches and their clients, lack of transparency about quality and expertise areas for clients, and coaches experiencing burnout from marketing fatigue with little results. We built Choice Coach for this.
1. Misalignment
The first and biggest issue I kept seeing was misalignment between coaches and clients. Great coaches were ending up with the wrong clients. Not because they weren’t skilled or experienced, but because there was no infrastructure to help people find the right fit. Clients were often choosing based on visibility or vague impressions, not true compatibility. That meant sessions that didn’t land, relationships that didn’t stick, and burnout for the coach.
2. Lack of Transparency
The coaching industry doesn’t have a central governing body or standardization. That’s part of what makes it great. People can bring new modalities and perspectives without being gatekept. But it also means there’s no way for clients to reliably gauge quality before they hire a coach. That leaves the door open for bad experiences, and it makes it harder for good coaches to stand out.
3. Marketing Fatigue
As coaching becomes more niche and specialized, which is good for outcomes, it gets harder for coaches to market themselves. They often spend as much time trying to be visible online as they do actually coaching. Many aren’t trained in marketing or don’t want to be. But without a clear pipeline, they end up chasing leads that go nowhere or attract clients who aren’t ready to engage.
These aren’t just annoyances. They’re real friction points that keep the industry from working better for coaches and clients alike.
What if there were a better way to connect the right coach with the right client?
That’s where the idea for Choice Coach came from. A neutral, independent platform that could make better matches. A way for clients to actually find someone who fits what they’re looking for. Not just someone who happened to be good at Instagram. A place for great coaches to focus on their craft without being forced to constantly hustle for visibility.
So, I started imagining what that would look like. A structured marketplace with a matching process based on coaching style, specialty, and values. A space where transparency and trust weren’t an afterthought. They were built in.
That’s around when I met Brian. He’s a career web developer. We met for coffee, and I shared the idea. He offered to help me scope what an MVP might look like. What was realistic to build and test. We started with conversations, then wireframes, then a prototype. Over time, he went from helping out to becoming a co-founder and partner in the business.
We’ve worked together for over a year now building the product and aligning on how we want to work and why. We care about doing this in a way that reflects our values. Things like working with local people when possible, choosing community-minded partners, and building a business that does not replicate the burnout cycles we’ve seen in tech.
We’re not trying to make a splashy tech startup. We’re trying to make a better environment for coaches to do what they do best.
Here’s what we’re building:
It’s not AI-powered yet. It’s not trying to automate coaching. It’s a human-centered platform built to reduce the noise and make better matches.
We’re not selling features. We’re telling a story that resonates because it’s true. Let’s keep building this in a way that makes the coaching world better. Not noisier.
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