The Indian Coaching Industry Is Going Through A Reset Phase

[00:00:00] The coaching industry in India is going through a major reset phase right now. Because 2018, nobody knew. 2020, everybody joined the party. Many coaches grew in 2023, but the bloodbath is just starting. And in this podcast, I'm going to tell you exactly how you can get out of this. Hey guys, Siddharth here. Welcome to the yet another episode of the Freedom Business Podcast. And I'm so happy to be back on this episode after a while because the last few months, I've just been cooking on multiple things in the coaching industry.

[00:00:28] And of course, working on many other areas of innovation. And as I've been working with the cream of the coaching industry, like right now in my quantum club alone, we've got more than 100 members. In that, the top 30 members are generating an average of 28 crores in a single month. And that's a very, very small group of people. And the total amount generated by this top 30 is over 400 plus crores. And the impact that we've had in the coaching industry ever since we started today

[00:00:57] is easily over a thousand crores. If I just look at the documented numbers and the awards that are given so far. Having said that, I just want to say that this is a very important podcast because the way things are going to be moving from now into the future is going to be very different. And the Indian coaching industry is going through a major reset phase. Because in 2018, when I started this journey, nobody even knew about this. In fact, I was one of the first people to start this entire journey,

[00:01:25] transitioning from affiliate marketing and then getting into digital products. I started to sell courses and stuff at that point of time, which nobody was doing. And in 2020, everybody joined the party because there was no other choice during the COVID days. And many people started in 2020. They have ended up making more than 10 crores in this coaching business, which we have awarded many of them. And in 2023, many of these coaches grew.

[00:01:49] But now from 2025 onwards, we are seeing the start of the bloodbath or what I call as the reset phase. While there is a small category of coaches that are doing phenomenally well, I'm also going to break down the patterns on what is making them work because I'm working closely with them on a one-to-one basis, right? And they're also part of my mastermind. And I'm going to tell you where many people are falling through the cracks

[00:02:15] and what kind of models are going to be sustainable in the future. And also, what are the factors that are contributing to this kind of slowdown in most people's coaching business and a speed up in that top 4% or top 20% of the coaches. In fact, it's not 20%. I would say the top 4% to 5% only are the ones who are going to be really, really playing the game on a totally different level. And my intention of this podcast is not to scare anyone of you,

[00:02:45] but is to make you aware of where you should position yourself, how you should approach this game, through what lens should you look at this entire journey, and so that you can be on the right side. You can be on the side that is on the winning side. Okay. Now, I just want to share an analogy. I was listening to one of the podcasts recently, and there was a very powerful principle there that was shared on the concept of sailing.

[00:03:12] Now, when the wind is going great, right? When the winds are blowing beautifully, all the sailors, they kind of go at the same speed. All those who are sailing the sailboats. But it's when the winds get slow, that is when the true sailors emerge. That's when the skills come in. How can you sail through even if the wind is not blowing at the speed that normally it blows? And you can't complain about the wind being less.

[00:03:41] You can't complain about the sun. You can't complain about the water. So this whole thing, what is happening now in the industry for many of the coaches who are not innovating, and I'm going to give you the whole bunch of stuff that most coaches who are going down are experiencing is they've really not reinvented themselves over time. So the market has also evolved. The market is also maturing. The market is also changing. The market has different needs and different wants and desires, which they're not able to cater to.

[00:04:10] And suddenly they're able to see a major drop in the entire business and profitability. And many of them were started like two, three years ago. Now it's time for a major reinvention. And that's what I'm saying. We are going through a reset phase right now. Now the sailor analogy I gave is very apt for this moment because true businesses and true entrepreneurs are created and true businesses are built when things are going slow. Okay.

[00:04:38] Now, as far as the Internet Life Cell Hub is concerned, we have never slowed down at any point because anytime I could see a slowdown, at least two, three months in advance, I used to start preparing and start planning and start accelerating the growth. And we've been able to overcome many phases in the business. And though we've had some brilliant moments, some mega huge months,

[00:05:05] we've also had some months where things were going very, very slow. And it is in those slow months where we rebuilt different systems. We re-engineered the entire marketing process. We analyzed different elements of our funnel and looked at how we can bring back the numbers or even accelerate the numbers. And we have accelerated the numbers. So just want to tell you that this podcast is going to be really, really important for you. So let's get into the factors first. Okay.

[00:05:34] In fact, I want to share there are five factors that will make your coaching business sustainable. Number one is your product. If you are not continuously serving your students and understanding what they really want, and if you're not improving your product, like how Apple continuously improves their products, if you look at Google, I'm really inspired by Google the way they have taken on OpenAI and they have completely innovated their AI product suite.

[00:06:04] And I feel at this moment, when I'm recording this podcast, Google is actually winning the AI race across the world. Okay. Compared to OpenAI because they have innovated so fast and they've really taken this forward. The second factor is brand. A lot of coaches who have, even who have been with me right from the year 2020, many of them have not 100% followed my system. They've not built their brand. They have not documented their success stories. They have not written a book. They have not documented the stories of their students into books.

[00:06:33] They have not really conducted mega like events. Even if not mega, they're not conducted really events to bring out the brand. And those who actually have followed my system and replicated my things, they have actually not only enhanced their brand, but they have also reduced their customer acquisition costs due to increasing of their brand. Okay. Or improving their brand. That's the second factor. The third factor is trust. You can buy attention in the marketplace, but you can't buy trust. Trust has to be earned.

[00:07:03] And how do you earn trust is by actually delivering value and getting results for your students. And while most of these coaches, while the wind was blowing really hard from 2020 to 2023, 2024, while they were getting results for themselves, they stopped focusing on getting results for their students. I mean, they were great at sales. Many of them were charismatic sellers and they were very good at packaging stuff and launching stuff and doing mega launches and everything else,

[00:07:33] but not keeping the focus on what about the student? How can they win? How can they move? How can they get the result? What they paid for? And all of these coaches in the industry who started back then, who neglected the student results, their trust started to go down. And I can see many of them, you know, they're literally rebuilding and now they're starting to go through this. So the third factor is trust. The fourth factor, as I already mentioned, is results, student results.

[00:08:02] Are you documenting student results? The small results, the big results, the small wins, the big wins, everything adds up. Even if you go to internetlifestylehub.com and just check out the stories over there, you, like right from day one, I have been very, very focused on gathering and capturing the feedback of the students as they're getting results. On one side, we have Trustpilot where we have thousands of reviews over there and it's at five star, which is really hard to get. And even if you read the reviews and even if, when I'm going through the reviews,

[00:08:31] I want to also understand what aspect of my product has my student been impacted with? And I want to make sure that I'm building on those results. Now results also, if you see in ILS, we've documented so many one crore, 10 crore champions and, you know, people have come up in this industry and as I've already mentioned, we've done, we had a thousand crore impact in the coaching industry of our students crossing over thousand crores. And that is a fourth factor. And the fifth factor that is going to make it sustainable is innovation. So innovation at all levels,

[00:09:02] product innovation, sales innovation, innovation in advertising, innovation in customer acquisition, innovation in lead generation, innovation at the product level, innovation in the journey of your students. So all of these factors are what is going to be helping a coach move out from the, you know, onto the high, on the highway zone. Okay. Now, if you look at the problems right now that we are able to see predominantly in the coaching industry in India specifically

[00:09:32] is the rising customer acquisition costs because, you know, many people are running ads. What it used to be two, three years ago, now it's very different. The platforms, the algorithms have changed. So meaning, even if you build a great product or even if you have a very good sales process, the one variable that really messes up the entire number and the equation is what is your cost per acquisition? Okay. How much are you, what is your return on ad spend? So basically, if you're going to be putting X amount of money on ads, how much are you going to be getting as a return?

[00:10:01] And those coaches who have been able to nurture their communities well, who've been able to nurture their lists really well and who have been able to really accelerate their organic brand building and organic, you know, side of the game, I'm talking about Instagram and, you know, powering up on YouTube, they have been the ones who've been able to keep the costs low because of building and many creators also, those have been influencers. I've seen many influencers also stepping into this bandwagon of courses and coaching and everything else. But again, the problem with most of the influencers is they're only selling courses.

[00:10:31] They're not focusing on student outcomes. They're not implementing gamification. They're not really, they may have a good number of sales of their products and courses, but they're not able to really nurture vibrant learning communities because they are so busy creating content for the platforms. And it's going to be very difficult for many of those creators to actually come back and do something as a community level because to even nurture and grow a community requires a completely different mindset. So, the one big problem is rising customer acquisition costs

[00:11:01] for the traditional coaches. I mean, I'm talking about the actual coach coaches who are doing this. And also, most of the coaches who are not coming from the ILECH ecosystem, they are selling knowledge as a commodity. Even somebody would have come into ILECH or gone into other systems. They've kind of been, you know, sold this idea of, okay, just, you know, sell more, close more, convert more, and more in that zone without understanding that knowledge as a commodity is not the game.

[00:11:30] It's all about community and even community, the activation happens at different levels. Okay? So, now, the question is, what do you need to do? Okay? So, if I were you, I'd be asking the question, what do I need to do right now if I have to get on the fast track? What do I need to do right now if I have to, like, beat the rising acquisition costs and all the other challenges when it comes to marketing and sales? And what do I need to do to cut through the noise and make sure that I actually become a brand

[00:11:59] and not just one among the crowd? And here's the focus points. Okay? Number one, start building a community the real way. You can't just call a bunch of customers as community. Don't loosely use the word community without knowing what it really means because, for me, community is, it has a lot to do with heart. It has a lot to do with mission. It has a lot to do with code of honor. It has a lot to do with value systems. It has a lot to do with rituals.

[00:12:29] It has a lot to do with vocabulary. What vocabulary are you using? It has a lot to do with your ability to connect with every person in that community at a heart-to-heart or even at a soul-to-soul level. And this kind of a community building, it requires a different, it requires a totally different thought process and the way you operate as an entrepreneur, as a coach. Okay? So that's the first focus is build the community the real way. And if you're not a part of the internalized sell-up community,

[00:12:59] please join my tribe and understand the depth of what community building really is. Now, I was telling you about the top 30, top 40 people are doing an average of 28 crores a month, in combined revenue. These guys have been following my system to the T, like at every single step. Right from the word go in the webinar what we say to as soon as somebody comes into the community how we orient them, how we onboard somebody, how do we get them excited in the game

[00:13:29] and we don't sell our knowledge as a commodity, we sell the journey to, you know, to the award that we want to give people as they're hitting different base camps and getting to that. So, we basically are, I'll come to the gamification part later but, those who are doing really well now are the ones who are building a community the real way. Second is, you've got to relentlessly improve your products the hard way. It takes effort. Now, what do I mean by that? Is, are you regularly conducting surveys with your community

[00:13:58] to find out what are their problems? Are you continuously reinventing your courses to make sure that it's catering to their needs? Are you simplifying? Are you identifying all the courses that you've done so far and are you simplifying the journey for them? Or are you just bloating it up with more and more content? Are you identifying exactly why are your students not getting results and finding out ways on how you can make it simpler and how you can make it faster for them? Now, that's what I mean by innovating your products. The third is, you've got to serve your tribe with heart. Now, what do I mean by that is, are you showing up

[00:14:28] every single week to answer their questions? Are you conducting challenges to make sure that you're pushing them outside their comfort zone and you're actually making them move forward? And, are you really expressing your intent with them on a weekly basis whenever you meet up with your community? And, are you being vulnerable and transparent with your community at every stage of this game? That's what I mean by serving your tribe. Number four is, are you growing your brand organically and strategically?

[00:14:59] So, I already gave some examples. Now, you can start by, say, writing a book and launching it with your tribe. You can even do podcasts. You can get on different people's podcasts. You can start to build an organic Instagram reach or YouTube reach. And, one of the ways that I've also built my brand is through live events. I do a live event every six months and we capture those moments. We put them on my YouTube channel as Freedom Talks, even though we may have less number of views, but it really builds the brand because now the perception of what people have about me is very different and that actually

[00:15:28] helps me reduce my acquisition costs. Next is, are you embracing AI at all levels? That means, are you infusing AI into your ecosystem in terms of customer support, in terms of coming up with your strategies? Basically, are you making AI as your co-pilot to ensure that you're able to give great experiences for your community and your tribe? Next is, the other focus is, are you expanding into new markets in a strategic way? Meaning, you may have

[00:15:58] your core market like your top five, top 10 person market, but what are you doing about the, you know, that mid-segment market who are, your 50 person market who are warming up to come into your system? Okay, so basically, when I did my analysis on ILH, you know, my customers, I came to know that more than 80 person of my customers didn't even think about becoming a coach. They are the ones who just were casually browsing the internet, clicked on my ad and they just got sucked into this vortex of digital coaching and that itself shows

[00:16:27] that the way that I have been marketing is to cater to people who are from the broader markets but somehow got them excited to get into this journey and that's how we built a community of more than 35,000 people. So are you expanding to new markets using messages and hooks that really connect with them in an emotional way and in a very strategic way? And finally, what should be your focus? Your focus should be to sell the game, not your knowledge because your knowledge is just,

[00:16:57] today people can get knowledge anywhere. They can go to ChatGPT, they can go to Google Gemini, they can go to any of the platforms and get whatever they want as a knowledge. Anyone can say, give me five steps to do this, six steps to do that, three steps to do this. What do people really want? They don't want knowledge. They want to be a part of something bigger. So the question is, are you selling the game where learning becomes the outcome, where learning becomes a byproduct? So these are the approaches and those coaches who are following this framework, whatever I shared,

[00:17:27] are the ones who are going to be getting through and who are going to be right at the top of the pyramid, right at the top of the top 4%, top 5% of the people who are in the coaching industry. So if you are a part of the ILH community, I just want to thank you for listening to this podcast and thank you for being in the system and understanding how this game really works and I hope this podcast has inspired you. Now if you're not a part of my community, just go to my website sidatharachika.com register for my webinar and join my community and you'll get to understand the deeper insights

[00:17:57] about this. But if you're already in my community, I would highly recommend if you're a Silver Gold member to jump up your game to Diamond because that's where the real game is. In Silver and Gold there's a lot of knowledge, a lot of support, a lot of action happening. Diamond is where I hold the accountability on the next level and that's where I'm actually going to help you build trust. I'm going to help you understand how to refine and scale and build something that is sustainable. Wish you all the best and I'll catch you in the next episode.