Just over a year ago, I posted the first in my series about the Instagram business coaches. At the time, I was fascinated by how there were suddenly so many women with minimal qualifications suddenly claiming to be experts on how to help other women make tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars through marketing, coaching, and deployment of high profile vibes.
It remains some of the work on this site that I’m most proud of and some of the most popular pieces I’ve written.
At the time, I believed that the whole model was suspect, that that the faux feminist girl boss language was actually hiding some really gross patriarchal messaging, and that most coaches were unlikely to be actually making the kind of money they claimed to be (and remember, this is an unregulated industry, so they can claim whatever the hell they want).
I did months of research before I wrote the series, including doing deep dives on 15 coaches and following over 30 coaches for six months, to watch how they marketed their businesses, what they were trying to sell, and how much their businesses were growing, based on shifts in their social media counts. In an attempt to see the whole range of the coaching industry, I followed coaches who had as few as 200 followers (and who were offering classes and products that cost hundreds of dollars) and coaches who had tens of thousands of followers and whose products were $25,000 or more. At the time, I found that their product offerings, the aesthetics of their Instagram pages, and their financial claims were all pretty much the same… just with different dollar amounts claimed and promised.
After my series posted, I continued to follow a handful of the coaches out of curiosity but unfollowed the majority, largely in an attempt to get my Instagram feed to be a less toxic place for me to visit. In the year since, I’ve seen some coaches talking about how the “vibes” of the industry have changed, how worried they are about the quality of the coaching out there (only about other people’s coaching, of course, their coaching is always fine, the best, so worth it). I’ve seen a shift away from Instagram to more activity on TikTok. I’ve also noticed that there has been an awful lot of quiet quitting among the coaches I followed, which no grand “I quit” messages but lots of talk about making “pivots” and “shifts”1.
For example, Roxy Valade, who talked about business coaching as a manifestation of sexual energy (and who encouraged women to let their favorite sexual position be a guide for business strategy), still has around 20,000 followers on Instagram but hasn’t posted since September 2023. She now describes herself first as a public speaker instead of a coach. Meg Keene has taken her Practical Business School account private and is now marketing herself as a romance author (and unpaid, un-critically thinking, propaganda spreading2) foreign policy expert about the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Erica Reitman is still in the coaching game, and has grown her TikTok following to over 62,000 (she was at 59,000 back in February 2023) but has shifted from offering courses to writing newsletters and creating a membership program that she calls “Soho House meets Netflix”, a pivot she says she made because the “online coaching space has felt boring AF to me for a long damn time…and don’t get me started on the MLM vibes”. She’s also talked about wanting to build an Airbnb empire, which is interesting timing given the current backlash against Airbnbs and the havoc that business model has done to the housing market, and wanting to start her own line of eyeglasses chains. Stephanie Anne Hugson, who I think might be the most egregiously scammy of the coaches I followed, now claims to be a “Multi 8 fig biz mentor” but the multiple Reddit threads dedicated to how much she lies suggests that her income claims are no more believable than they were last year.
Some of the coaches are still around, still throwing out the same tired content but almost none of the original 30 coaches on my list have more Instagram followers now than they did last year. Some of them, like Amy Saunders, are gone completely from social media. Alaya Hertzel, who marketed herself primarily as a sex and relationship coach more than a business coach, still has an active website and over 34,000 followers on Insta but post a soft quit message to the site in November 2023. Good news for people looking for “a holistic virtual dance party for women where healing meets play” though, she said people can still email her for coaching or to set up a Goddess Dance Party, if you want something more than the $33 option to do it on Zoom.
A few coaches are now down to less than 100 followers and have gone from posting daily to posting once a month or less. I’m hopeful these folks are getting out before they lose more money.
It may be too early to call it, but it seems like the bubble has burst on this business model. While I don’t want to be the kind of person who wishes career misfortune on anyone, I can’t say that I’m surprised or disappointed to see something that was based on predatory and misleading foundations start to crumble.
***
Here is a quick roundup of some of the things I thought were interesting this week:
This is either someone’s DREAM JOB or WORST NIGHTMARE. Apply only if you are a UK citizen who likes penguins, doesn’t need personal space, and are cool with pooping into a bucket.
I sincerely hope this man never knows a moment of peace. Also, WTF, parents who let their kids attend a school where he is teaching? CW: police violence against Black men, the murder of Philando Castile
Oh, goodness. Threatening to sue over a job offer is an actually terrible, terrible idea. What is this person thinking?
A silly but iconic competition: who wins for best hockey hair in the Minnesota boy’s state hockey tournament?
A Peloton class with an excellent playlist that was a solid ride, but not a brutal one
I should note that as I write about these coaches and this industry, I always have incomplete information. I don’t know how much they actually sell. I don’t know how much of their business, if any, happens off of social media. I can’t audit their books (though YES PLEASE I WOULD LOVE THAT), so I could be wrong about how the economics of this unregulated field work … but I don’t think I am from what I can see.
Meg’s account frequently posts misleading headlines, sound bites taken out of context, or “news” stories that are unverified or later found to be wrong. She also sometimes prints accurate accounts of anti-semitism experienced by others and her own fears about the safety of Jewish people writ large, which I think is a valid topic of discussion that I see other people having in smart and nuanced ways. For the record, I 100% agree with her belief that anti-Semitism is real, vile, and on the rise. It is something we should all be alarmed about and fighting against. I also agree that Israeli hostages should be released. But any discussion of the current conflict that doesn’t include an honest reckoning with the role that Israel has played and continues to play in the slaughter and human rights abuses of Palestinians isn’t an honest discussion.