Photo by Clark Tibbs on Unsplash

Disclaimer: I think life coaches, health coaches, business coaches — the good ones anyway — are worth every penny they’re paid to help people feel good about themselves and what they are accomplishing. However, so many of them have the same thing in common. I’ll get to that in just a moment.

My wife is a health coach, and a pretty good one at that. She has a large clientele. She has made helping people find purpose in their health journey her mission. She has been blessed with a gift for relating to people. I applaud her for her work.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife was on a training with her team lead. I happened to walk into my wife’s office while the team lead was talking. The team lead made a comment that gave me pause:

I love helping people more than anything.

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that phrase, particularly in the health coach biome, I would have paid my CR-V off in nickels by now.

It’s a common phrase. People use it routinely. It’s a go to phrase for coaches of every ilk.

Sometimes, for added emphasis, they’ll phrase it this way:

I love helping people more than anything else in the world.

Here’s the thing: for approximately 100% of them, it’s a lie.

The thing is, most of them make money doing what they’re…