Make Me a Life Coach

As of 2023, the life coaching industry is worth $1.5 billion, with almost 23,000 coaches in the US alone. In Bali that figure is unknown, but if you've been to Ubud or Canggu lately you'll know it's quite possible that life coaches outnumber bottles of Bintang.

This episode is not about any coach who has actually conscientiously trained themselves to provide a specific, solid service. It’s not about coaches who are mindful about duty of care, or who will refer people on to medical or mental health professionals when faced with issues outside of their skillset. Nope. It's the frauds and the flakes we’re coming after. The coaches who are tapped into a system designed to instil fear that you’re not enough, and con you into thinking they're earning six or seven figures. Every Instagram post follows some nonsensical word-salad script. They've got a big emphasis on abundance and manifesting wealth, but offer no tangible advice. They come up with an absolutely astronomical price for their coaching and then urgently reduce it (for two days only!) to make it seem like a bargain. They use trauma (often in inverted commas) as a hook, and quite likely they'll be living and working illegally in a cheap country that's long had the boot of white people on its neck.

Our guest this week is Marko Randelovic. He’s a documentary maker who has lived in Bali for years and has made it his personal mission to mercilessly meme the local life coaching industry. You can also check out his excellent reel, The Birth of a Bali Life Coach, inspired by The Coaching Masters' self-confessed psychopath life coach Lewis Raymond Taylor, who comes under discussion.

Hey, we all wish we could have someone to make our decisions for us sometimes, or to be our personal cheerleader, particularly when we’re at a crisis point. But listening to this episode might help you to choose that person wisely… 

A Sonder X Production.

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