u/endofapril

I spoke with a senior coach this afternoon that I met on Reddit. The conversation was rather uplifting and he encouraged me to seek out community as I build my coaching business. He made the excellent point that society used to do a much better job of helping us maintain social bonds by default (church, family, small villages), and that now we need to be more conscious about building our own communities.

I had a positive experience a decade ago finding mastermind partners on Reddit. I was running a marketing agency at the time and found someone of a similar age who was at a similar stage to me, in a niche that had very little to do with mine. We spoke with a few other people as well, but he was the main person who walked with me on my journey. 11 years later, we don't have our mastermind anymore, but we're still close friends.

So I'm looking to create a group of coaches that meets weekly in a mastermind format. Ideally, you're at the same stage as me, or slightly further on. A bit about me:

- Mid-30s, British, living in Eastern Europe.
- First career was in marketing
- 2 years of part-time experience in the coaching industry
- Have a nice-looking website and a clearly thought-out niche
- Done about 100 hours of 1:1 coaching and organised about 30 local in-person events in my niche
- Don't have an ICF certification, but am considering doing one
- Main problems: consistent client acquisition, difficulty focusing on the business due to money worries

Comment if you're interested, or send me a DM. I'm looking for at least one other coach, potentially up to 4 or 5. If you profile sounds like a good fit, I'll suggest a call to get to know each other as a next step.

I've been coaching part-time for about 2 years. I've done about 100 hours of 1:1 coaching, plus group coaching at about 30 different community events that I've organised locally. It's been a blast.

I've reached the point where I want to take this more seriously and make a full-time living from it. So I'm considering doing an ICF ACC accreditation and using it to find work on platforms like Spring Health, Ezra and Strawberry. I recently spoke with one such platform and the only reason they didn't take me was because I was missing a certification.

My question: how easy is it to be accepted by these sorts of platforms once you have a certification?

Note: I'm an expat living in Eastern Europe, so I don't need to worry about making a US-level income from these platforms. But some extra cashflow would be nice as I transition away from my old career in marketing and seek to stabilise my coaching work.

I was raised by a narcissistic family and have been no contact for many years.

My family was really big on image -- like most narc family systems, I guess. I had to be the good boy, and I played heavily into that image to maintain the family structure. So I got good grades, played an instrument, did sports, all the things that "good middle class boys" do. My parents loved it and milked the image of the happy, successful family with their parents and in our community.

Going through therapy, I discovered that this was all one big façade. I became very suspicious of people who are focused on maintaining their public image. I got very into inner work, and am able to see through posers in two seconds flat. I also started to notice that there are lots of people who have the trappings of success (eg fancy qualifications and certifications, or a high salary) without providing much or any value or knowledge. I took an instinctive dislike to such people and have spent my life building skills, rather than trumpeting to the world that I was building skills. I strongly dislike virtue signaling. I also don't like posting regularly on IG or other social media channels.

I've recently been wondering whether I over-compensated a little in my recovery process. To be clear, I still value substance over image, and I think that's healthy. But I also see that some level of certification (showing others that you have knowledge) is important in most careers, for example. Or I see that some level of staying fit or buying clothes that suit you is helpful. Or that sometimes it's valuable to play the political game in the workplace. Or that the businesses that succeed are frequently telling the world about how awesome their product/ service is online.

Historically, I've had a dislike for all of those things. They felt less important than working on myself internally, or learning to deliver actual value. But I wonder if I overdid it.

Curious if anyone else who's several years into this recovery journey has had a similar experience.

Alright, I've been browsing this subreddit for a few weeks now and wanted to share my experience. A bit of background:

- 36M, living in Eastern Europe
- Master's degree in languages from a good university
- Previously ran a content writing agency
- Freelancing in content writing/ strategy for the last 5-6 years
- Mostly worked for US companies, some UK, some German
- Usually get work from a mixture of job ads and networking (about 50/50)
- Several entrepreneurial side-projects in my life, currently experimenting with coaching

I was last doing well career-wise about 18 months ago. I had two nice contracts and was enjoying both of them. Then project 1 let me go because the startup had financial issues. Project 2 let me go because my manager wanted my work for himself so that he could make more money (he literally told this to my face).

For the last 18 months, I've been surviving off a mixture of savings and freelance scraps - like small projects that would pay poorly and last a few months. I was hoping that my coaching would take off, but it hasn't. Honestly, the whole process has really worn me down.

The freelance work dried up 2 months ago and I've been applying and networking frantically, since money is fast running out and I can't go home to abusive family. I've sent about 90 applications, that doesn't include networking. Had 7 interviews so far, one of which I'm still in the running for. (Not so) fun experiences include:

- Being interviewed by an AI for the first time. Seriously, wtf is the world coming to.
- Getting extremely positive feedback from two senior interviewers, feeling like I've as good as got the job, and then having funding rerouted by the CEO so that hiring got delayed. The VP who interviewed me was just as pissed as I was.
- Going through 4 interviews and counting for the enterprise role I'm still in the running for. Is this really necessary?
- Getting rejected many times for roles I know I'm extremely qualified for.
- Getting rejected after a friend of mine made a warm intro to a CEO. That one really hurt.

10 years ago, I would usually get 1 offer for each 10 applications. Now most of the sites I used to get freelance work from have dried up (thanks to AI's effect on the writing industry). There's much more competition and fewer serious jobs. I've been focused on strategy and management jobs, still finding it really hard going.

So yeah, this is the hardest market I have ever looked for work in. Hopefully I can sort something out by the end of the year, otherwise I'm going to have to move in with friends. As someone who has worked hard his whole life, what a depressing thought that is.

Curious if anyone here can relate to this journey or has any advice for me.