54. My 10 predictions for the coaching industry in 2026

It's 2026. What does this mean for coaches? 

Is AI coming for our jobs? Is the market oversaturated? Here's what I actually think is going to happen — and what it means for people building practices right now.

Listen to hear more about:

• Why the coaching market isn't going anywhere, but the term "coach" is becoming meaningless as a category
• The bifurcation happening in both coach trainings AND the market itself — and why the middle is getting squeezed from both ends
• What AI will threten, and what it won't
• Why "culturally neutral" coaching is becoming a liability, not an asset

These shifts are already happening. What's your move?

Transcript

My 10 predictions for the coaching industry in 2026

Welcome to another episode of Liberatory Business. I'm your host, Simone Seol. Thank you so much for listening.

This is the first episode of 2026. Happy new Gregorian calendar year. I really celebrate the real New Year's during Lunar New Year, which is coming up in February. So I'm gonna say Happy New Year again then. But here's the first Happy New Year.

As the first episode of the year, I thought I'd like to make some predictions about the coaching industry that we're gonna start seeing in 2026 and beyond. Here are my forecasts. Let's see if I end up being right or wrong.

Prediction 1: The market for coaching isn't going away

My first prediction is that the market for coaching isn't gonna go away. There's always going to be a market for coaching, and here's why. I think that there will always be a market for people who are seeking guidance, wisdom, healing, shorter timelines for learning new skills, unlocking new ways of being, and getting more of what everybody wants in life—health, happiness, abundance. Because people are never gonna stop wanting these things and be willing to pay for them, there's always gonna be a market for coaching. I don't think this industry is going away anytime soon.

There are certain macroeconomic and political conditions that have to be met. The world economy has to function above a subsistence level where people have some disposable income and discretionary time to invest in human needs beyond just survival. As long as we have that kind of economy at a basic level, and also as long as there's collective belief in a viable future and a hope for a better future, there is gonna be a market for coaching.

Sure, we're dealing with things like climate anxiety, political instability, AI disruption. All of these are sowing some kind of nihilism in certain demographics. And yes, it's true—the middle class is shrinking in many places in the world. The middle class is having a harder time. That does impact the coaching market. Really catastrophic disruptions can occur like a war or another pandemic or economic collapse. These things could happen. But historically, over the long term, the conditions that I named—disposable income, discretionary time, hope for the future—these have held steady across most of modern history in developed economies, and I don't think that's collapsing tomorrow. So coaching will persist.

Prediction 2: "Coaching industry" will become less meaningful as a category

My second prediction is that I think the whole term "coaching industry" will become less and less meaningful as a category. If you think about it, the term coach already covers a million different things. You could be a life coach or you could be an executive coach, a performance coach, a somatic practitioner, business strategist, creative consultant, book writing consultant, accountability buddy—that is way too big of an umbrella to be coherent.

I predict that people are gonna increasingly identify by their specific methodology, their specific lineage, the specific result that they're facilitating, rather than lean too heavily on the generic title "coach." It's gonna be like one of those things where if someone says, "I work in tech," it's like, okay, working in tech could mean a million different things. What do you actually do? Are you a UX designer? Are you a software engineer? Are you in tech marketing? Are you an investor? It could be so many things.

The good news that I think comes with that is that the stigma around the word "coach" is gonna thin out as well. This is something that I've been telling people for years—embrace whatever cringe you think the term coach comes with. You have to just decide that if people wanna think you're cringe, that's fine. You have to just run with it. I have coached so many people on this, and I am very ready to stop coaching people on this because I think the word "coach" will carry less and less of a charge in any direction. It's gonna be too big, too broad, too much encompassing of different things to be coherent as a category.

Prediction 3: Barrier to entry will remain low

My third prediction is that the barrier to entry is already low and it's gonna remain low. Unless coaching becomes regulated by the government, which I don't think it will anytime soon, anyone can claim to be a coach. And so just about anyone will claim to be a coach, and increasing numbers of them will. Here's why: I think the numbers will increase with traditional employment becoming more and more precarious and the industries that we think we know changing fast as a result of AI and other forces. People are gonna increasingly look to work that offers them autonomy, meaning, flexibility, self-determination, and low startup costs. Coaching offers all of that. So I think a lot of people are gonna attempt to join the field and no one's gonna stop them. No bureaucratic red tape's gonna stop them. It's gonna have more and more people calling themselves coaches.

Prediction 4: Coach trainings will proliferate, but the best coaches won't come from them

Which leads to my fourth prediction: coaching trainings and certifications will continue to proliferate, but the best coaches won't come from them.

The low barrier to entry means that there's gonna be more programs popping up that promise to turn beginners into skillful and profitable coaches. More and more of them will pop up in response because capitalism—where there is demand, supply will emerge. Some of those programs will be excellent. Others will be mediocre cash grabs selling the perception of legitimacy to people who want a shortcut to legitimacy.

Coach trainings will bifurcate. There's gonna be cheap, fast, scalable AI-assisted certifications on the one hand, and then deep intensive apprenticeship-style trainings on the other end. What's gonna hurt is the middle—the ones that are not cheap enough to be super accessible, nor deep and substantive enough to be distinguished by quality and justified by the price. The middle is gonna get squeezed.

The most important part of this: there's gonna be more and more coach trainings, but the best coaches won't come from those trainings. The best coaches are gonna come from adjacent fields—fields that are adjacent to coaching, like therapy, business, athletics, ministry, the arts—or just people who have specific lived experiences and lessons metabolized through their real lives. If someone has those things, a high quality coaching training might really round out their skills, might give them a boost of confidence. But the thing that makes them good, the thing that distinguishes them in the market and defines their impact, it's not gonna come from the coach training. It's gonna come from somewhere else.

Prediction 5: Barriers to sustainable success will be higher than ever

My fifth prediction is that barriers to sustainable success as a coach will be higher than ever. As trends come and go, bubbles pop and fads pass, I think most people are gonna enter the field of coaching and eventually fizzle out.

But there's always gonna be a minority of coaches who make steady sustainable money and impact. These are gonna be the people with a body of work that speaks for itself, not just flashy marketing. They're gonna have a genuinely distinctive point of view that they came by honestly, as opposed to a point of view that they borrowed from whoever they paid to learn from, or are copying or are inspired by. These are the people who have a network of real relationships that hold their business, not just algorithmic reach. They're gonna have exceptional skills and results that generate referrals and repeat purchases. And these people will have a business that they treat like a business, not a magic vending machine or a hobby.

Someone who has all of these characteristics has a very high likelihood of making steady sustainable money and impact. And as you might have noticed, none of this is easy or quick or linear. Building a body of work, having a genuine point of view that is earned, real relationships, exceptional skills—these take time. They're not linear, they're not easy to earn, and most people are gonna want what's quick and easy and linear. So therefore, it's a minority that's going to make it. Barrier to sustainable success: higher.

Prediction 6: The coaching market itself will bifurcate

My sixth prediction is that just like coach trainings, the coaching market itself will bifurcate.

What's gonna proliferate on one end is commoditized low-cost AI-assisted coaching for straightforward goals like accountability, forming habits, basic skill building. I think some people are really gonna master this business structure of low-cost AI-assisted coaching, and they're gonna profit highly from it. It's not gonna be me—it is not my business. But I think some people are gonna really run with this and make something with AI that genuinely offers value to people, and the market's gonna respond to that.

On the other hand, there is gonna be high-investment, highly specific work with practitioners who bring depth, specialized knowledge, lived experience, and genuine wisdom that resonates deeply.

These are two opposing poles. I think that the need is gonna be real and sustained for both. On the one hand, people will want accessibility. On the other hand, humans will want specificity and depth. One is not gonna replace the other.

But once again, what I think is gonna happen is that the middle is gonna get squeezed. If you charge 200 bucks an hour for work that isn't dramatically different from what somebody could get from paying 20 bucks a month for an app, or from advice from a really thoughtful friend, I think you're gonna have trouble.

Prediction 7: AI will change some things, but not everything—what it will kill is thin coaching

Speaking of AI, my seventh prediction is that AI is gonna change some things, but not everything. But what it will kill is thin coaching.

Like it or not, AI is here to stay. It can already provide accountability, information, reflection prompts, good questions. And it's actually surprisingly good at pattern recognition. If you're paying attention, which I have been, you're gonna see that AI is already handling what a lot of people used to turn to coaches for.

Don't get me wrong—I'm not saying that AI can fully replace a human coach. Not yet anyway. I don't think AI is there. I would be surprised if it ever gets there. But there are some things that it works for. So if your skill goes as far as asking basic coaching 101 type questions and following the templates that you learned in coach training, I think your job is gonna be under threat.

I don't think humans are ever gonna stop hiring other humans as long as they're certain that they're getting something that AI can't give them. So what is that? Things that people can't get from AI: human presence, discernment, transmission, lineage. Wisdom that has a body, a history, a DNA trail, ancestors, and knowledge of its own mortality.

Whatever you care about, there's probably a market for it. Coaching for adult siblings managing aging parents together. Coaching for standup comedians working on their first hour. Coaching for plumbers scaling their businesses. If there's a specific human problem that's a real problem, then someone's gonna pay for help with it.

But if you've got no real depth, no skillset forged through painful years of humbling apprenticeship, no point of view that costs you something to hold, no lineage that you're accountable to, no body of work that tells a story of a continuously engaged and evolving mind—if all you've got is tips and tricks and techniques and frameworks and borrowed language about transformation—you're probably fucked.

Prediction 8: "Universal coaching" will become a harder and harder sell

My eighth prediction is that "universal coaching" is gonna become a harder and harder sell.

Culturally neutral coaching, if there is such a thing, is gonna continue to work for some areas like straightforward skill building, accountability, simple goals. But for certain kinds of coaching that deal with real meaty transformation, that deal with spirituality, that deal with identity—cultural neutrality is gonna increasingly become a liability.

This sort of generic "we're all human, we all face the same constraints and opportunities" framing that once felt normative in the coaching world is going to increasingly start to come across as evasive, incomplete, out of touch, out of date.

People seeking deep work—whether it's spiritual work or pragmatic work or creative work or working on their bodies—they're gonna seek practitioners who are from somewhere. Who have a cultural location, a lineage, a tradition, a community that they're accountable to. Coaches who think they can float above particularity, who assume a voice that isn't marked by specificity, that doesn't belong to anybody—I think those coaches are gonna be trusted less and less. And chosen less and less. And paid less and less.

I don't think this is gonna affect everyone equally. Those whose context is the culturally assumed default—white, western, middle class—if you are all those things, you might not notice for a while what's changing. But the default that you are benefiting from is going to change. I think it's going to change faster and faster. So get ready.

Prediction 9: Community will be increasingly important

My ninth prediction is that community is going to be increasingly important.

Isolated practitioners who are coming from a vacuum of context and community, competing for individual clients—they're gonna have a harder time than those who are firmly and obviously embedded in communities. Community provides referrals, reputation, feedback loops, collaboration, and stability. When algorithms inevitably change and trends shift and markets go up and down, the lone wolf coach relying on just the personal brand that's all about themselves and a funnel—I think that person's gonna be more vulnerable than the coach who is woven into a web of genuine relationships.

So how do you find a community? You don't build it overnight just 'cause it'd be useful for your marketing. How you find a community, how you plug yourself into community: you join something that already exists without immediately trying to take over or trying to extract value from it from day one. Or you let people organically gather around your work that you've been sharing for a long time. You collaborate with people, you shoot the shit with people. You host gatherings. You go to gatherings that other people are hosting. You drive the distance, you share the meal. You give more than you receive sometimes. Sometimes you receive more than you've given other times. You show up. You show up when it's not fun. Show up when it's awkward. Show up when there is nothing in it for you. Show up through fractures and repairs. Keep loving people through their imperfection. And keep loving people through your own imperfections.

This process is inefficient, it's slow. There's no universal foolproof formula. And this is the only way real community is ever gonna happen.

Prediction 10: The most sustainable coaching practices will have offline grounding

That brings me to the 10th and final prediction: the most sustainable coaching practices will have offline grounding.

My bet is that increasingly people are not only gonna crave to be offline more, they're gonna gravitate towards people who are clearly grounded in their offline life and purpose. Especially when it comes to coaches. Think about it—if you're trusting someone to help you build a life and your goals in your life, shouldn't it be obvious that they have a life off screen? I'm not saying a perfect life, but a life that's really lived in and engaged earnestly and skillfully. Where it's clear that the values and principles they preach online are the same ones they're accountable to at home.

The coaches who are gonna burn out are gonna be the ones whose entire existence is online. Every moment optimized for content, always performing, always posing, always dependent on strangers' words and popularity and profit metrics online for their sense of wellbeing.

On the other hand, coaches whose work is grounded in real life lineage, community, web of responsibilities, projects offline—they will be at an increasing advantage. Why? Because they're gonna do better work and they're gonna last longer. Because they have something that keeps them honest—connections to things and people that matter more to them than how well their latest reel did, or how well their latest launch did. Something that roots and replenishes them in places where the internet could easily destabilize and deplete people.

So those are my predictions for the coaching world in 2026 and beyond. What do you think? I would love to know what your predictions are and what you think about mine. We'll all see if they come true. Time will tell. I hope you found that interesting and helpful.

Thank you so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next time. Here's to a wonderful 2026.