Coaching Is Dead (Unless You Can Do What AI Can’t)

If you're a coach, it's quite possible you have no idea what your clients look like today. Welcome to the show. Tired of the hype about living a dream? It's time for truth.This is the place for tools, power and real talk, so you can create the life you dream and deserve your ultimate life. Subscribe, share, create. You have infinite power. Hi. Welcome to your ultimate life. This is a special coaching edition. The Thursday editions.Usually I have two coaches on here and I've been doing that for seven months now. October, November, December, January, February.Yeah, and once in a while, three or four of them I've done with myself and one of them I did with Joy are the other co author. But anyway, I wanted to do this as a solo. I've got more episodes coming with two coaches. But here's what the deal is.It's very possible, in fact, it's not possible. It's absolutely certain that the people coming to you are completely different.That are potential clients, prospects, clients, even clients you already have or have had for some years are completely different. And here's why. The AI revolution. I wrote this book, Coaching and the Rise of AI.And if you're a coach or if you are receiving coaching, this is the most essential book for you to read in the universe. And I say that with absolute certainty. If you're a coach and you don't know what's in that book, you're finished.You'll be out of business by Christmas. If you're a client and you want to know how to get the most out of your coaching, read that book. All right. So much for the advertisements. Not really.It's true. There's nothing else been written that is on the market today that explores this, like this, like this book does. And here's what's happening.AI is just a tool, right? It's a technology. It's a mirror. It reflects, it synthesizes, it grabs information from everywhere.But if you're using it in the context of coaching, which is giving information or reflection or ideas or synthesis to help someone achieve something, I mean, that's what coaching is, right? We are in the business of elevating people. We are in the business of.I use the acronym whipos, helping people realize their worth, identity, possibility, ownership and sovereignty. WIPOs. Why? Well, for the purpose of living the ultimate life.More powerful, create more money, be a better father, mother, you know, be a better person, more satisfied, more content, more effective, more powerful, more influential, more or better at something. That's what coaching's about. Sports coaching.Performance coaching, musical coaching, piano coaching, which I've done boatloads of decades and so forth. So all of those things are what coaching's about. And the real, the real power in coaching doesn't come from ideas or frameworks or tools.And that is passed for coaching now.For decades, the last two decades, 20 years, mostly coaching's been about frameworks and tools and ideas and accountability and check ins and good questions and so forth. Those are useless, they're gone, they're finished. And if that's what you're using, you're out of business by Christmas.And if you're mad at me for saying that, that's fine, read the book and then have an opinion. Really read the book and then have an opinion. Because if you haven't, you don't get to have an opinion yet.So now that I've said all that scary stuff that's either made you mad or curious, one of the two, and I've said that in the book and with coaches that have been on the program today is about what this, this technology, this artificial intelligence, these large language models, whether it's Grok or Claude or ChatGPT or, you know, whoever else the name is, they're coming out all over the place. What is that doing to your prospects and your clients who are looking at it and using it?When I started doing these interviews in September, lots of people were either not using it much or, or using it superficially, like write some emails or do a little better search than Google does or write some, you know, landing page copy and that kind of thing. And that's great. It's good at all that stuff because it has access to, you know, Albert and Dan Kennedy and Yo Mama production and everybody else.And that's fine, but that isn't even, doesn't even begin to tap the possibilities that this tool offers.And now, seven months later, since I started this podcast series, and it's been a year, not quite a year since I decided to write the book, it was May of 25 and this is April. So almost I realized that 95% of coaches will be out of business by Christmas of 26, which is now nine months away.And I was thinking to start with, from the point of view of what is it doing to coaching, meaning the process of helping people discover who they really are, feel more powerful, get out from underneath the weight of old stories and beliefs and, you know, unstuck and get out of your own way and all of those hackneyed, worn out phrases that are all true, but they've become almost meaningless because they're overused.And then the people that I've talked to now have transformed over these seven months into saying, you know, what's really matters is I'm going to use the word presence.But that is the ineffable or indescribable process of us being together for a minute or for an hour or for two hours, being in the same place energetically, spiritually, powerfully being that together. That's what matters. And that's all that's left.Because all of the language and words and frameworks and tools and checklists and, you know, ways to do things and advanced Gantt charts and, you know, all the things, even stuff I wrote about in the book the Results Equation, which is the best book in the world about how to get things done, make accomplishments happen, especially for small, small business and solopreneurs, even those, you know, AI can help with dramatically, just like it's changing work all over the place. So what I want to talk about today is what I just said. What is it doing to the prospects and clients?Because we've been talking about coaching changing and coaches needing to adapt and coaching models and capability gaps. And the most fundamental truth of all of that is if you as a coach and me are not the embodiment of what we teach.Like, if I'm not the embodiment of worth, identity, possibility, ownership, sovereignty, if I'm not creating purpose, prosperity, including cash and joy, then I have no business leading and guiding people in that direction. So. And that's always been true. It's just, it is now more exposed.It's exposed, it's laid bare because you can buy 95% of what passed for coaching for the last 10 years for $49 a month. So why would people pay a thousand or two thousand or five thousand or ten thousand dollars a month or fifteen thousand?You know, I, I know coaches that have charged that.Some are still able to, most are not because they're not good enough at what they do, that that matters, which is that presence, holding, being in the place with authentic and true people are scared of it.And they, for, for good reason is if I'm a coach and I'm trying to hold a powerful space and I haven't walked this road and blood bled on the floor, and I haven't done these things that I'm teaching, I got no power. So what is it doing to our prospects and clients? Well, here's the first thing. They're using AI already. They're using it.Some of them really well, some of them in the dabbling and learning mode, some of them in the write my emails mode. And those are all good.Write my landing page, give me some marketing hacks and messages, and write me a series of 10 emails and, you know, analyze these, you know, talk to it and tell me and analyze where I'm speaking poorly and where I'm speaking well. You know, all those things are just the beginning, just the surface level.But lots of people especially, and this is important, especially those who are in the self development or personal development game. I'm not talking about coaches.I'm talking about clients or potential clients who want to grow, people that are yearning for the glories of growth and the prize of fulfillment, people that are wanting that. They're digging into AI and they're exploring what it can do, and they're being blown away by the capabilities over and over.I, I talked to somebody the other day who said I worked with AI for an afternoon and it did more for me than my previous coach had in a year. I want you to hear that either AI's magic or the coaching wasn't very effective, or both.And that's what I mean when I say coaches are not going to be able to make a living, partly because they aren't adapting. And we've talked about that. What we're talking about today is the clients are different, the prospects are different.So we're talking about not the world, but the very small subset, I say 5% or less, that are actually digging in to the personal growth stuff and they want help and they're turning to AI. And they should, and they will. And as AI gets better, that will be more and more valuable and powerful.Which means if you're going to get a person to coach you for that space and that presence and that magic stuff that AI can't do, you me, we're going to have to be better and better. We're going to have to have absolute presence and power on flipping demand. That's what I want to talk about today.All right, so they're using AI already. Your prospects are getting advice, you getting processing problems.I had another example, besides the one I just gave you, of someone else who told me they had an argument with their wife. And they explained they went to bed. You know, you're not supposed to go down, go to bed on your anger. But they did.And he expected to have to deal with it the next day. And the next day his wife was cool, everything's fine. And he said, what happened?He said, well, I coached Myself through it with chat, and he was absolutely floored. He sat down and like, boom, that's happening. That is. And I want you to think about it. So here's what people are using AI for now, not only, but lots.And I want you to think in terms of prospects who might be your clients, meaning they're of the group who are looking for growth. They are.Have had coaching or they are in some kind of container and they're intentionally trying to be more than they are, be better, be more thoughtful, powerful, kind, attractive, attraction, marketing effective in their business, whatever it is, all the way from cash to spiritual stuff and everything in between. All right, they're using it for. I made a list here. They're using it for decision making. Help me analyze the alternatives here and make a decision.Now, A is not perfect and it hallucinates. And so don't start down that path with me because we already all know that.And if you work with it, you can get past all that and get really good help with it. So if you're going to, you know, get stuck on the hallucination thing, you're missing the boat.Because while that's true, it's not important, except you have to work with it till you get past that. Okay? They're using it for problem solving. I've got this problem. It might be a marketing problem, it might be an emotional problem.It might be a communication problem. It might be a problem with your teenager, it might be a problem with your spouse. Like the example I gave.Okay, they're using it for emotional processing. I've used it for that. I feel this. You know, I had. I was working yesterday in music. Now, you guys know I've got a lot of songs.I've got 90, almost 100 songs in commercial release. I've got three that'll be finished in the next month or so, three more. And I'm already working on a fourth album that.Finish those three, finish another album I'm working on. But I'm starting on a fourth album, and I. I want it to be different. I want it to be, you know, certain thing, whatever.And I was working with ideas with my chat bot, which I've trained deeply, thoroughly now for months, months and months, and have over 5 million words of my books and things in there. So.No, my point is it knows me really well, knows what I'm trying to do, my mission, my purpose, everything in my other albums, all the lyrics, et cetera. So it was effectively communicating with me about what I was trying to do. And then it Said some things and reading those things were, was emotional.It triggered something deep in me and I started to get emotional. I was weeping and I said, so I said, I gotta stop right now. I'm weeping in this. I need to just move through this and process this stuff.And it came back and said some very insightful things. And it said, we're going to stop now, but understand this. And then gave me some thoughts.And it was very helpful in emotionally processing my, my experience, what I was experiencing. So my point is it's effective. It's being used for brainstorming a lot. And again, you need to have good guidance. Garbage in, garbage out.But if you work with it and give it good guidance, it's flipping good at this and using it also for validation. If you've got an idea and you're putting it in there, it pushes back on me hard. You know, I've done some validation stuff. What about this? This? This?Yeah, this and this is good. But this part's weak. You know, that really sounds like you're not sure, et cetera, et cetera. And it's pushed back on me in a way that is helpful.Some people complain about it being too affirming, it's too nice, and it does, it's programmed to do that. Well, that's the greatest idea in the universe. And I say back, no, it's not. Stop saying that.And so, you know, it'll straighten up for, you know, half a dozen threads back and forth. And I have to remind it again because one of the fundamental tenets is be nice, be encouraging, but it'll be helpful if you make it and tell it to.It's also doing things like these kind of examples. Should I leave this job? And it might ask questions, especially if you tell it to, how do I handle this conflict?Another one I wrote down is what's the best strategy for this situation? And as long as you work with it, it's doing really well.Now my point in saying all that, none of that's probably news to you, but my point is your clients or prospects, before you even get them are using it for that. Because those that are seeking personal growth are already digging.And so the key insight for you here is your clients are coming, or potential clients or existing clients, they're coming in pre processed in the old coaching model, the old way. Clients came in confused, stuck and you know, overwhelmed, underwhelmed, unclear, you know, I don't even know why I'm stuck.And you may still have people that are coming that way.And the Likelihood is they are not ready for deep coaching because working with AI can clear all that stuff up and get them to a much more elevated place. Well, if they're coming in a much more elevated place, that means you and me, we gotta meet them in that elevated place and get ready to go.And that means we have to be the embodiment of that. Because the coach in the confused, unclear and overwhelmed world.And then they were just helping them think and helping them decide and helping them get organized. That is all done. So that means 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 coaching sessions is all handled already.And you've got to start at 70% instead of at 20 in terms of, you know, the growth process, which means you and I have got to be way better, way better beyond way better at what we do. So here's the real, the real truth. People are coming pre processed.And so you and I as a coach, we are no longer the first layer of thinking, maybe not even the second layer of thinking. We start below that. If you're going deep or above that, if you're, you know, working from above, how are you frame it?But AI is now the first coach and maybe the second and you're next. It's the same thing that is that happened when people started looking on Google for diagnoses for their medical conditions.You know, people used to go to the doctor without a lot of preparation this and this and this is wrong. And everybody just said, oh, the doctor says X so it must be right. Okay, duh, you know, that was how it was. And Dr. Was God. That's not true anymore.And I've got a perfect example of that.My wife Joy, who is an angel and she has a direct connection to heaven, so she's probably better than most, but she does research like nobody's business about every condition.And this is before, you know, when she, when her father passed away with cancer in 2005, which was, you know, in the much earlier days of the Internet, she had done tons and tons of research and effective research, not just to argue with doctors and even specialists, but for protocols and things to do in between.And in fact, it was so effective that when her dad started receiving chemo treatments and she was doing some organic Y stuff that I'm not going to pretend to know about, he came in with better blood work than he had before. And the nurse said to Joy, are you a cancer nurse? Like, what are you doing that's so good?Because they couldn't understand the results that she was getting. And it made. And he eventually did pass away. But the time was much healthier, and the effects of the chemo and stuff were a lot less.So that was then, and that was 20 years ago, 22 years ago. And so 21 years ago, I guess only 26. It put that on steroids. Amplified by 10, 20, 50, 100 patients come into doctors now fully loaded.Well, I look this up, and I look this up, and I look this up, and this is what it said. And it used to be in the first years, the doctor said, well, you know, you can't do that anymore. And doctors take it seriously.Now, if they're worth their salt, well, clients or prospects are going to come in fully loaded. I looked up this. I tried this. What about this? What about that?And they're going to have all kinds of ideas and things already in their pockets, in their binders, in their. In their folder about what's possible and what's the right thing to do.And our job is to honor that, to love them, to be fully present with them so they feel enveloped in our attention completely. And then, and only then will we have enough credibility to work with what they've already learned and elevate them further.And I want you to hear that. Okay, here's the danger. Here's some danger for coaches. This is where you have to pay attention.Because if you're coaching today consists mostly of asking questions, helping people think through things, organizing ideas, giving frameworks.Even if they're frameworks that you know and you've used and they work, you are competing with something that is faster, cheaper, and available anywhere and everywhere, you're gonna lose, period. So then you might be saying, okay, what, what, ah, what's left? Embodiment. And embodiment's a fancy word that's getting used too much these days.But it simply means you are the truth of what you teach. If you teach integrity, your integrity is impeccable. And if it's not, that is your area of work as a coach.Because the truth is transmitted through ways we don't understand. And if we're not carrying the truth of what we teach, we're useless. People are coming in. At least my experience and what I know is happening.80% Coached, 80% with ideas, and the. The dross is discarded. We're working on that deep 20% to start with. And if you're not there, you're done.And by there, you might be saying to yourself, well, of course I only work in that 20%. I'm already all that. You're dead. You're finished.Because if that is the way you feel about it, then you're not treating it with the sacred love and listening and service that it deserves. Pure love is the is the box. Listening is the first creation. Love is the box. And I say love. I love you completely exactly as you are here now.Create space for imagination to blossom and creativity to explode and serve you fearlessly and in your best, highest and best interest. Well, that creation, the first creation, is listening. How you listen to someone is creating them.If anything about your listening is not full, energetically congruent, absolutely focused and totally grounded in love. It doesn't create the kind of power you need to access the top stuff. It just doesn't. So I want you to let that sink in.Clients are getting 80% of the way there from AI and it's going to only get better. And they question, they're wondering, is it worth paying especially high fees for that last 20%? And it depends on who you're being.Who are you as you show up? And you as a coach or me, we might feel pressure to justify the value. You're finished if you do that because they're coming.AI doesn't push back, argue, get upset, get threatened or anything else. It's just there and it reflects and it does a great job. So what do we do? Well, if your value, this is going to hurt.If your value is your thinking, you're already being replaced, you're out of business. So if that's true, holy crap, what is left?Well, all that I said before is not bad news, actually good news, because it's going to get rid of all the chaff. It's going to get rid of all those that are pretending to coach.It's going to get rid of all those who took those courses that say, be a life coach who can work from anywhere and make a real difference. They're done. And that might sound harsh, but it's true. And they won't be able to make a living.And I define arbitrarily making a living as 100k US just because that's a good number. And if we're not making that, we're not going to make a living. We either have to have another job or a partner that works or something. So.But I know you don't want to be there. You want to be in that top 5%. So I am and I know you are or want to be. So what is it that we have to do? What they need now isn't any of those things.It is pure embodiment where we, you and me, we are the truth of what we teach. Meaning eliminating blocks. We have our blocks eliminated. We are never self conscious but always self aware.We are creating them with the love and the listening. When I say create space for imagination to blossom and creativity to explode. The first creation is listening. We listen them into being.We listen them into their greatness. We listen them and I'm leaving the two out on purpose. We listen to them into possibilities because they are created by the power of our listening.That's not all, but that's where it starts. Because that eliminates the doubts and the fear and the worries and puts us in a place where we then can communicate deeply.It puts us in a place where we are out of the picture and is not about us at all. There's nothing to prove and everything to give. So we have to be embodimentary. We have to be pure courage.We have to model and teach decision ownership. Not just decision processes, but how to own your life and your decisions.How to remind them powerfully with our embodiment that the ownership of life means that we create our life. One impression, one thought, one decision at a time. And if we are not living that, we got nothing to give because they're coming ready for that.It used to be that, oh, that was the advanced stuff. We got to get all this other stuff out of the way before we can even get to the advanced stuff. You're starting here.All that's gone for truth seekers now people can come completely broken who put no effort and they're looking for somebody to wave a magic wand. And if that's the kind of client you're looking for, I'm not talking to you.I'm talking to those of us who have known that this advanced stuff starts with life ownership, with love, with power, with self forgiveness.And we are now needing must absolutely, without question, we got to start there or we have nothing to offer because all of the rest of the stuff before that is and will be better and better handled by these models.I know several powerful coaches that are already making or have already made coaching bots by putting all their coaching sessions and books and things that they've done in there so that the LLM can be very effective at helping clients between sessions and that even puts more responsibility. I won't say pressure because you're in this business for love or you're not in it.You're not going to be in this business if it's not grounded and on love. Pure love, pure service. So the first creation we owe Them, Love, create, serve. The first creation is listening.The second creation is honoring them for who they already are. Divine beings with infinite gifts and talents, with a seeking and yearning and earnest heart. That's who they already are.They wouldn't be in front of you. And automatically that excludes all the tire kickers and thrill seekers and magic wand waivers and all the rest of it.The depth of true coaching is where you have now the opportunity to shine. So I think this isn't a warning. I think it's a beautiful thing. It's going to call out all the nonsense. Yay. Beautiful, powerful, Yippee.That means those of us who are committed to always self growth, honesty, forgiveness, improvement, eliminating pride, eliminating any mirrors, the light shining on me. But always loving and lifting. Listening to them, we have the opportunity to shine because clients are coming ready for that.And I want you to think about what that actually means. Okay? Because this is super important. All right? So here's the opportunity. The opportunity is for you to step up in your game.The opportunity is for you to be all the time what you may have been once in a while.AI is going to do the helping of people, think, but it cannot help them in the becoming, because the becoming, the soul level change takes place only in that container of love and power. That's the only place it can happen. Love is the foundation of growth. It is the foundation of safety, being listened to and honored.First creation is listening. The second creation is honoring them for who they are.The third creation is eliminating the masks, the sunglasses, the barriers that prevent them from seeing who they really are. Okay, if I listen you into existence till you feel loved and held.And second, if I honor you for who you are already, not what you've done, maybe some of that too, but who you are. The divine being, worth, identity, possibility, ownership, sovereignty. And then step three, if I.If I help you pull off the glasses, the fog that prevent you from seeing who you really are. Wow. That. That energy starts to light the room and people light up and they. They get excited not because of hype, but because they begin truly to.To see and then to believe. So that's the third creation. Listening, honoring, unmasking, and the fourth creation. And there's more detail to all these, of course.But the fourth creation is the encouragement, the powerful encouragement that they can depend on you as the bedrock for honoring, unmasking and helping who they are. That bedrock, they know how you see and feel about them. And they can land and stand on that. And then with that, they begin to love themselves deeply.And powerfully. Because it's only when we really love ourselves that we can love others. We can't love anybody else more than we love ourselves.As much as people want to argue with that just not true. So self love is the greatest honor we can do to the God who created us.He didn't create us to hate or to be angry or to be frustrated with ourselves, you know, and love God and love your neighbor as yourself. That assumes you love yourself.You know, if you read in, in Christianity, if you read John chapter 17, God says, Jesus says that God loves us just like he loved Jesus. That's pretty intense. That means God loves you and me with all his heart, might, mind and strength. Well, that's not a surprise.That's the first great commandment in that tradition. But even though I'm referring to Christianity, every tradition has a similar framework.And if we are not the embodiment of that framework, we don't have anything to offer them beyond what the AI already can and will be even better at doing. So your clients are coming pre processed. They're coming already with much of the work done. 80% Is an arbitrary number.But the real growth, the exponential part of all this happens in the last few percent. And you know that, you know there's gradual improvement and then there's that hockey stick thing right where it suddenly goes up.That's in that last few percent. So AI is radically changing your clients or your prospects. It's going to immediately filter out the dabblers.It's going to force, if we want to stay in the business, us to be absolutely the truth and embodiment of what we are, so that we transparently can compare, can transmit that love, that listening, that honoring, that unmasking and that radical support for self love and taking risks.One of the things I have in my own document is I help you elevate the substance, success and sweetness of life's journey by daring more greatly, experiencing more deeply, and leaning in more joyously. Every single thing is an opportunity for growth. It's an opportunity for love. It's an opportunity to bless those around us.And if we are not living that truth, then we cannot teach it effectively. We can say the words, but we're talking about that thing over there.So who we must become is the final thing, because the ground has shifted, the clients have changed, the whole world has moved. We have to move into presence. And presence is a wishy woo woo word, but it simply means the energy of love and focus and attention.We have to be that all the time 100%. We have to be truth. Truth carries its own power. We're talking about things that doesn't carry the power of truth. And you know what I mean.We have to also be able to confront directly, but with an outpouring of love, so that love is the basket and we have to be the embodiment of identity work. And what I mean by that is including shadow work and including the beliefs that we have.I wrote a book called the Book of Context, which is all about our identity. We have a context, straight jacket, so does everyone.But if we are not the master of ours and understand how to use it and call it out and eliminate the limiting stories, beliefs and all that. If we are not that, we cannot model that, okay? We have to be able to lovingly call out avoidance and hold emotional space.And that's a hackneyed phrase, okay, I hold space. Literally. It means the safe, loving silence where the chrysalis opens and the butterfly begins to emerge.We have to challenge inconsistency and anchor identity. And we can't do any of that with just words. We have to be that thing, I love you with everything that I am.And I'm sharing this because we've talked a lot about, you know, the coaching industry changing, and one of the profound things haven't talked a lot about until today is that the people floating around that might be clients are different because of this particular tool and how fast it's developing. Your job is no longer to help people figure things out. You know what it is?Our job is to help people become the people, become the person, each person become the person who can follow through with what they already know. Information is free, true, permanent, sustained transformation is priceless.That is what we have to be because the clients potentially prospects people walking around. And again, I'm talking about those subset of people that are yearning for growth. I'm not even talking about the others that aren't.Because our effect is first, foremost, loudest, biggest and strongest with those that are yearning and seeking.And they're looking for some embodied coach who can love them, listen to them, open their eyes, and support them with the love and truth of who they really are. At the core. Your clients are already being coached every day and heavily if they're using these tools a lot.So the question is, why would they even need you? I just sit with that, really. No hype. They only need you or me.If we can do something AI cannot do, love them, listen them into existence, into honor, unmask the truth. Not just words, but the truth of who they are and what they can have. Challenge them with love and with power.Call them forward, standing on the truth, if need be, of our belief at first until and as they learn to love themselves. AI isn't going to kill coaching, it's going to expose it.And everybody that's not willing to live the embodied truth of what they teach will be out of business. I love you.If I can help you get a hold of me yourultimate lifepodcast.com yourultimatelifepodcast.com There's a contact form for if you have a story you want to share, if you want to be interviewed on one of the coaching episodes, or if I can help you. This is all I do is love, listen, create and serve you. That is how come I live my own ultimate life back. And you'll never ask why. Open your heart.And this time around, right here, right now, your opportunity for massive growth is right in front of you. Every episode gives you practical tips and practices that will change everything.If you want to know more, go to kellenflukermedia.com if you want more more FREE tools, go here. Your ultimate life ca subscribe Share Stand with your heart in the sky and your feet on the ground.