What a Decade-Long Coaching Career Taught Me in One Conversation
I recently had a conversation with a fellow alumnus, Mac Ling, who has been an Executive Coach for years — across industries, countries, and organizational types. He didn't pitch me anything or tried to inspire me. He just told me the truth about what building a coaching practice actually looks like.
I walked away with more clarity than I'd gotten from most of the coaching content I'd consumed online. And as I sat with what he shared, I realized — almost none of it was just about coaching. It was about building any kind of career, or life, with intention.
Here are six lessons I learned. You will see each lesson starts with what it means for being a coach, and ends with how it applies to broader settings.
1. Being good at the work and being visible for the work are completely different skills
You can be a gifted coach — present, insightful, transformative in a session — and still fail at building a sustainable practice. The craft and the business are separate muscles. Most coaches only train one of them.
The business side means knowing how to market, how to sell, how to position yourself, how to manage cash flow, how to have a pricing conversation without flinching. None of that is taught in coaching certification programs. And without it, even the most talented coaches burn out — ironically — trying to make their practice work.
This wasn't discouraging to hear. It was clarifying. It told me exactly what I also need to be better at.
Beyond Coaching
There are people in every organization who are brilliant at their jobs. They are deep experts with reliable delivererables. Their team depends on them. However, many of them also are those who keep getting passed over for promotions, bigger projects, or leadership opportunities. It is not because they lack the skill. Instead, it is because they haven't developed the other skill: knowing how to communicate their value, build their reputation, and make their work visible to the people who make decisions. Being excellent in the room isn't enough if no one outside the room knows you exist. The craft and the career are both learnable — but you have to be intentional about developing both, not just the one that comes naturally.
2. Diversifying your income isn't a side hustle strategy — it's a resilience strategy
Mac's revenue picture surprised me: The majority of his income comes from organizations — corporate coaching engagements, workshops, speaking. Coaching individuals makes up only about 10% of his revenue.
He didn't arrive there by accident. He built multiple income streams deliberately, in part to de-risk the unpredictability of any single source. One corporate client can be worth what twenty individual clients generate — with far less acquisition effort once the relationship is established.
For me right now, individual coaching is the right starting point. But hearing how intentionally he had diversified his income made me think differently about what a sustainable practice looks like long term.
Beyond Coaching
The parallel for most professionals is stark. We're taught to equate financial security with a stable salary — one employer, one paycheck, one source of everything. And for a long time, that works, until it doesn't: a layoff, a restructuring, or a toxic environment you feel trapped in because you have no other options. Diversifying doesn't have to mean quitting your job or building a side hustle overnight. It can start with developing skills that have market value beyond your current role, building a professional reputation that lives outside your company's walls, or simply saving and investing in ways that give you more choices. The goal isn't multiple jobs. It's optionality — so that no single door closing ever shuts everything down.
To take it one step further, your life should also be diversified. You are not just your work or your title. You also have your community, relationship, hobbies, passions, outside of your professional life.
3. The work can be remote. The relationships can't.
He currently lives in Chiang Mai, but he travels to Hong Kong regularly — not to coach, but to maintain relationships. To stay in the room with the decision makers (e.g., Head of Leadership Development, HRs, Educators) who renew contracts and open doors to new ones. The coaching itself can happen on Zoom. The business happens in person.
This was a useful grounding for me. In an age of remote work and digital-first everything, it's easy to assume that presence doesn't matter anymore. But for a service business built on trust, it still does. Don't forget about your community.
The question isn't whether to show up in person — it's where, and for whom.
Beyond Coaching
Today, many people tend to go all the way for either Return To Office (RTO) or Work From Home (WFH). Many people are convinced that because we can do our jobs from anywhere, we can also build our careers from anywhere. But relationships — real ones, the kind that lead to introductions, opportunities, and someone going to bat for you — are still largely built face to face. A Slack message doesn't replace a lunch, and no, virtual lunch meeting doesn't work. A document feedback doesn't replace a conversation. The people who are thriving professionally aren't the ones who went fully digital. They're the ones who figured out which relationships are worth showing up for in person — and then showed up. Networking isn't a dirty word. It's just investing in people before you need anything from them.
4. What you charge — or don't charge — signals how seriously you take your own work
We talked about pro bono coaching and whether it makes sense early on. His view — and it echoed something I'd felt but hadn't fully articulated — is that 'free' tends to undermine commitment. When someone hasn't invested anything for the coaching, they're less likely to do the hard work between sessions, less likely to show up fully, and less likely to see results. I was fully with him, until he challenged me.
"Maybe you didn't see the value — but did the client?"
That was awakening for me. My sense of low value in a pro bono engagement might have been my own projection. The real question isn't free versus paid — it's what creates the conditions for real commitment. A paid rate is one answer. But so is clear expectations, structured accountability, and authentic actions. However you price your work, the container needs to feel serious, and it does not change how much effort a coach put in for their clients.
Beyond Coaching
This applies to anyone who prices their own expertise. How you charge — or don't charge — is a signal. Underpricing doesn't just cost you money. It shapes how others perceive your work, and over time, how you perceive it yourself. Whether you're a consultant discussing a contract, a freelancer setting rates, or an employee preparing for a salary conversation/negotiation — what you ask for tells the room what you believe you're worth. Are you supposed to get paid less because you are doing a good job? Price yourself like you mean it.
5. Slow seasons are structural — don't let them shake your confidence
Coaching can be seasonal. Q4 and Q1 are high seasons when people are reflecting on the year, setting new year resolutions, making changes. Summer tends to be quiet. When the weather is nice, personal development goes on the back burner.
That's also another reason why he diversified into organizational work partly to smooth this out. Companies run on fiscal calendars, not personal motivation cycles. A twelve-month leadership contract doesn't pause because it's August.
For those building an individual practice, the practical takeaway is simple: plan for slow summers financially and emotionally. A quiet July is not a verdict on your direction.
Beyond Coaching
Almost every career and industry has seasons — salespeople know Q4, teachers know summer, PMs (like me) know the sprint before launch. The problem isn't the slow/busy season. The problem is when you don't see it coming and don't prepare for it. A quiet stretch can spiral into self-doubt or restlessness if you're not anchored in the understanding that maybe it's structural. Plan for the valleys, save during the peaks. And when things slow down, use the space intentionally — rest, build, prepare — rather than panic.
6. In a noisy world, credibility is your most valuable asset
The coaching industry is largely unregulated. Anyone can call themselves a coach — and many do, without training, methodology, or accountability. This creates real noise for people trying to find trustworthy support, and real headwinds for serious coaches who get compared with bad actors.
Mac's take was honest: you don't get the benefit of the doubt just because you're professionally trained, certified, and serious. You have to earn it — through your story, your credentials, your process, your network, and your consistency over time. In a crowded, noisy space, calm professionalism goes a long way. The bar for standing out isn't actually that high. Most people aren't willing to play the long game.
Beyond Coaching
We live in an era where everyone has a platform, everyone has a title, and credentials are easy to fake or inflate. In almost every field, there's noise. The question is how you cut through it. The answer is the same: You EARN TRUST, through doing what you say you'll do, showing your process, and showing up the same way whether or not anyone is watching. If you're willing to play the long game, that alone is already a differentiator.
What I'm taking forward
This conversation didn't give me a roadmap. But it gave me something more useful: an honest picture of the terrain.
A few things I'm holding onto:
The craft and the visibility are both learnable — be intentional about developing both, not just the one that comes naturally.
Optionality is freedom — don't let any single income source, employer, or opportunity become the only thing standing between you and your choices.
Show up in person for people and relationships that matter — remote work is a gift, but it's not a substitute for human presence.
Price yourself like you mean it — what you charge signals what you believe about your own value.
Slow seasons are structural — plan around them, not against them.
Trust is built over time — through consistency, honesty, and showing up the same way whether or not anyone is watching.
The most reassuring thing about this conversation wasn't any one specific insight. It was the tone. He didn't glorify his journey. He talked about failure — including his own entrepreneurship that didn't work out — with honesty and humor. He didn't make it sound easy, or inevitable, or guaranteed. He just made it sound real.
And that was exactly what I needed to hear. Thank you to Mac Ling for the honest conversation that inspired this post. You can learn more about his work at https://www.macling.com/ .
I'm a life and career coach for burned-out professionals who would love to ditch the grind and build a life they love.
