EP 396 - What to Expect for Coaches in 2027 (AI Can’t Replace You)
If you’re a coach wondering what AI means for the future of coaching, how AI is changing the coaching industry, whether AI is making coaching obsolete, or what to expect in coaching in 2027, this video is for you. If you want to know how to stay relevant as a coach in the age of AI, you’re in the right place.
AI can answer almost any question your future client asks it, but it can’t be you. In this video, I’ll show you exactly why I believe coaching is about to see more growth than it has in years, and where your real value sits now that information is free.
We will discuss why people are paying for results now, not information, and the four things AI can never do for your future clients. We will cover why your client’s quiet weeks usually mean something very different than you think, why knowing what to do and actually doing it are two completely different things, how to find the one piece of value that only you can offer, and the three questions that reveal your premium as a coach.
You don’t have to compete with AI, and you don’t have to become a tech expert to stay relevant. What the online world is actually starving for right now is what you already have, life experience, judgment, and the ability to look someone in the eye and know what they really need. That is the premium nobody can automate.
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TRANSCRIPT
Do you feel like it's you against AI sometimes? This episode is for you.
I'm gonna talk you through exactly what I think is happening with AI and where you stand as a coach. Because here's the truth, AI can answer almost any question your future client asks it, but it can't be you. It can not know her, it cannot notice what she's struggling with, and it's never lived a single day that your client is actually living. That is not a small gap, my friend. That is an entire business. If you have been worried about AI, If you think that it is making coaching obsolete, I wanna show you why I believe that it is the opposite. By the end of this video, I'm not only gonna have three questions at the end to ask you, I'm gonna help you see exactly why the premium piece that you have to offer is you. This is a piece that no AI tool can give her. If you're new here, welcome. I am Debbie Shadid. I help women over 50 build profitable boutique-style coaching businesses without paid ads or complicated tech. I have been in business since 2000. I have generated over $10 million in sales with a very small following, without complicated funnels, and I'm telling you what, I have been able to raise my daughter without daycare. I have done so many things, including taking care of my grandkids now. I believe business has changed more right now than it's ever changed, and I think this is one of the most exciting times that I have ever seen in my 26 years. If you wanna build a coaching business without tech overwhelm, subscribe and hit the bell. And we're gonna keep talking about this. I was watching Think Media recently, and there was an interview with Sean, and he's one of the hosts, and he had a guest named Marissa on it. Marissa has built this huge online education business, and she said something that really has got me thinking. She said, " People are not paying for content. They're paying for results." Now, I have taught the same version of that, but hearing it right now with AI everywhere, it kind of landed differently. and this is what I've been saying all along, and this woman with this really big business confirmed it. think about what's happened. AI gives information away for free. Your future client can type in any question, and in seconds it gets an answer back. So why would she pay for information? Well, she won't. your person wants a result, and that is what your coaching provides. That's where you come in. Here's what I see happening. The coaching market is not shrinking. In fact, I think the coaching world is getting ready to have more growth than it's had in a long, long time. The thing that has driven me in my business is to help women learn how to market themselves so they can be respected as coaches, so they can be seen as professionals, so they can make a good living, so they can be treated equal to therapists, equal to counseling. I truly believe that coaching is magical, and that has been my mission, is to help coaching become something that is a normal conversation among girlfriends out to dinner, that doctors are referring coaches. That it's just common that you work with a coach. So I think right now we are at a turning point, and now people are seeing more than ever that coaching is essential. Because right now, there is this endless supply of AI content. It's fast, it's free, and it is everywhere, but there's nobody behind it. And then there's this side where the coaches are, and those are real people, just like you, who really care. They're trusted guides who show up. They walk with someone until they get to where it is they want to go. So I genuinely believe there's gonna be growth there, big growth there. Can you see what the divide is? I think having AI and all that access helped coaches. I really do. It has made it more obvious than ever that people need accountability. They need their handheld. They need that specific information and guidance that only a coach can give them. In this interview, Sean was talking to Marissa, and Marissa said, "You know, people are gonna get tired of half right answers. That is what AI is giving them." And I was like, "Yes, that's true." You can only get a partial answer from AI, because here's the deal, you don't even know what you don't know, so you're not even asking the right questions. Think about it. The only things that you're typing in there to ask about, even your business, are questions that you know to ask. You don't know what you don't know, and I know when it comes to your coaching niche, you also know that your client has a lot of gaps too, There's a lot of things that your client doesn't know that they could be doing or should be doing, or the obstacles that they're gonna face. AI gives you an answer, and it sounds really good, but you know what? AI doesn't know if it's right for me or right for you. But you know what is right for your client. And here's what I love about this. The more AI there is, the more valuable you're getting to be as a coach. This is why I believe there is going to be this massive expansion. People are valuing that input from a coach so much more. AI can give out generic information, but it cannot be the woman who actually knows you, who cares about you, and who wants to make sure that you succeed. So AI is not shrinking the value of coaches. I know that we thought that in the beginning of AI. We're thinking, "Uh-oh, this is really gonna impact the coaching world. People are gonna go to AI and get support." well, that didn't work. I can tell you now, I truly believe that people want the support. So I'm gonna walk you through the four things that I think AI can't do, or maybe I should say the four things that I know that AI can't do. So as I go through these, think about your own coaching, because each one of these is something that you can do right now with your offer. Then I'm gonna follow that by the three questions at the end to help you see where your premium value is. The first thing that I wanna talk about is that AI can never know your client. AI answers questions that your client asks. You can answer the questions that she didn't ask. Now, did you hear me on that one? AI answers the questions that your client asks, but you answer the questions that she didn't even know to ask. So let me tell you about something that recently happened. One of our clients had just moved her email list to a brand-new platform, and it was a pretty good-sized list. She was super excited about it. She wrote her first email, and she sent it, and she even sent it to me, and when I went looking for the email, I found it in my spam, which was very odd because she and I email each other regularly, so it should not have gone to my spam. Immediately, I was like,"Okay, wait a minute." I started asking some questions, and I realized she sent that big list for her very first email out of this email platform without warming up the list. Now, AI would have said, "Hey, yeah, go ahead and send your first email. It looks good." You know, maybe you check it in AI, or you have AI write it for you. go ahead and hit send. But what I knew, and I wish we would've had the conversation before she hit send, was you have to warm up your list. So when you have a brand-new email provider and a new list, if it's a list that's over fifty people, you need to send a few emails to a few people on that list for a few days. It's called warming up your list because you're building up credibility with the Internet, basically. I'm making this in simple terms for you, but that's a perfect example. This woman worked so hard to get that list together. She wrote the emails, hit send, and guess what? I can bet that most of them went to spam, which is a sad shame. That is the difference, though. You can have a conversation that's so personalized that I could have said,"Oh my gosh, do not send it that way. Make sure you do this, this, and this." AI would never have known that. And that makes sense as I'm sharing it now, but think of how many examples you could apply this to with your coaching. Think of how many times there is something that your client could ask AI about that they would not get the answer that they actually needed You are the one who can give the best answer because you know your client. That's what coaching is for. You don't know what you don't know until it's too late sometimes. AI doesn't know what you don't know either. Your future clients have the same thing in your area. There's a step that they're gonna skip that they don't even know that exists. You know it exists because you've lived it. The second thing AI can't do is notice. It can't notice what is going on, and AI never wonders where you went. So if you stop typing, it just sits there and waits. And I'll tell you what I do in my own business, to notice what is going on, and I'm sharing something my clients don't actually know. But I keep a client tracker. Every single month at the end of the month, I go through our client roster, and I write down who came to calls. I have a little spreadsheet, and I check to make sure who's coming, what's happening. And the people who don't come, every week or so, I send them a message, a private email, and it's personalized to them to say, "Hey, how are you?" I reach out Not to scold them or to make them feel bad, but to let somebody know I care, that you're important to me, that every person that works with me is important to me, just like it is to you And here's what I've learned about the women who stop showing up. Most of the time it is not what you think, like, "Oh, she's quitting her business quietly." You know? Like she sort of disappeared because she doesn't wanna actually do the work. Most of the time, the women that I work with, they're in this season of life where they are caring for everyone. Sometimes it's kids, grandkids, aging parents. Sometimes it's all of those. So typically, when my client goes quiet, there's so much more going on, and maybe it's something like somebody really got critically sick, and maybe she's helping with a brand-new grandbaby. I've done all those things, which makes you exhausted. When you reach out with something like that, sometimes you can help and sometimes you can't, but what really matters is that person knows that somebody cares. And sometimes I can encourage them to come back to the community and engage with the women that are there to support them as well. That is what you bring to your coaching that AI cannot. That is the piece that I truly believe that people are desperate for. That's why people are seeing now, "Okay, AI really can't give me the support that I need, and I need a coach." So you are not responsible for your client's results. You can never be. I want to be clear about that. You can't do the work for them, but you can really show up, like as a partner to them, and that's what I think of when I think about my own coaching clients. I will say to them, "I'm gonna care about your business more than you care about it, until you can care about it as much as I do." I know how valuable a coaching business is, and sometimes coaches are afraid to kind of bet on themselves, and I'm like, "I will hold the space for you. I will hold the belief for you until yours catches up." That's a way that you can care about somebody and almost partner with them. And I always say, "You know what? I feel like I'm in it with you." Who doesn't want something like that? So it's important to let your clients know that, "I'm here to support you. I'm in this with you." AI can never send that message. That is only a message that you can send, the one where I see you, I care about you, and I hear you, and I wanna be supporting you any way that I can. The third thing AI cannot do is care about whether you actually do anything. We all want to believe that once someone knows what to do, they will do it. And guess what? That's not true. I have watched this play out for twenty-six years. Think of how many courses you've bought, how many videos you've watched. You knew what to do, but knowing it and getting it done, that is two different things. Information is so easy to get, and AI makes it just at your fingertips, free. The hard part is doing things, taking the step, getting the feedback, adjusting, and trying. Nobody needs to know how to lose weight. We all know how to do it, and yet think of how many people are in the weight loss business. Think of how many people need support with weight loss, right? We all know what we need to do. stop eating so much and do some movement. two simple things, but that's a perfect example of where we need support. That is what people pay for. Not the knowledge. They pay for the person who is like,"Look, I'm in it with you. I'm gonna actually be there to help you overcome the obstacles. I'm gonna partner with you to get you to where you want to go, to get you to that result." I'm going to show up and help you, and when you do your part, I'm there with you, and when you don't do your part, I'm gonna still be there, That's what you're paying me for. On the days when your client is running on empty and tapped out, you are still holding the vision for them. You're still saying, "Hey, listen, I've got you. I've got your back." AI can never do that for you. The fourth one I'm gonna talk about is my absolute favorite. AI gives you information. It looks at everything that's ever been written on a topic. It pulls it together whether it is true or not. I know I've gotten some things where I'm like, "Could you fact check that for me? Because I don't think that's actually true." Knowledge is different. Knowledge lives inside of you. It comes from trial and error. It comes from mistakes, from what you've tried, what didn't work out, what you tried again, how you figured it out. That is the most expensive education out there, and AI has never paid for any of that. I'm talking about the education of us experiencing our life. That is how we've truly learned. That is what you get to do when you serve somebody. I have to tell you an example from my own life. I raised my daughter as a single parent from the time that she was one all the way through middle school without daycare while I built my business during the same time. Later, I cared for my mom and my grandmother through all those years of their life. AI could not give me a time management template for that. It can't tell me what I should do in my business while my mom is dying. It cannot tell me what I should let go of and what I can't let go of. Only I could decide that. Only I can help you decide what are the essentials in your business and what you can let go of. I could do that while I was taking care of my mom and grandmother because I have two decades of experience. Now, think about you. You have wins and failures and the things that almost broke you that you figured out anyway. That isn't information. That is wisdom, and it only lives inside of you, and it is the one thing that your ideal client needs So please hear this from me. So many women over fifty are waiting. I don't know what you're waiting for. Stop waiting. You are ready today. Stop being worried about making a mistake. The ones who win don't quit. That's what I always say. So you gotta get started. You will learn how to do this, and I'm telling you what, the information and the knowledge and the wisdom and the experience and the compassion and empathy that you can have for a client, it's immeasurable. So if you are telling yourself, I cannot keep up with the tech right now. I feel so behind. AI seems to be moving faster than I am." Well, guess what? It doesn't matter. What I can tell you, my friend, is I'm sixty-two years old, and I am more excited about the possibilities of business, not just for me, but for everyone right now, for everyone over fifty. What the online world is starving for right now is exactly what you have, life experience, judgment, the ability to look at someone and look at them in the eyes and know what they really need. They are looking for a woman who's raised a family, built a career, cared for aging parents, and come out the other side, like, with wisdom to share. That is the premium that you bring. It has never been easier to put yourself out there. I know that you're thinking marketing is complicated and that you need to be a tech expert. You don't. You need to talk to people. That's what you need to do. It is so much simpler than what you are making it. So let me bring this back to you. What does this actually mean for you, what I'm talking about today? If people don't pay for information anymore, your offers can't just be information. They cannot be a pile of videos or worksheets. That is not what somebody is going to buy. Had to take a doggy break. This is what you get to do when you work for yourself. I have recorded trainings. I have templates in my program. I actually give our clients access to anything that I have. Anything. If you want to use something that I have created, if you want to follow an example that I have, all you have to do is ask. All of that is available to you, and right now, I'm actually teaching live, more than I ever have before because I know people need to have live experiences. They learn better when they're, in person with you on Zoom instead of watching one more video. So right now, that's the premium, not the content. It is the guidance through it. One of the things I tell our clients is,"I'm gonna give you access to everything, all the videos, all the documents, all the templates, but that could take you a lot of time to go through that. So what do I bring to it for you? Well, I'll tell you exactly what to do. I'll say, 'Watch this,' or, 'Skip that,' or, 'You don't need this.'" That is the wisdom and the knowledge that I bring. I save people time. I save people overwhelm. I know what people need specific to their niche. This is exactly the same as you. That is the premium that people get when they work with me. So again, the guidance is what people want. So grab a pen because this is the part that I wanted to get to. Three questions. First, what result can you help someone get? It doesn't have to be an earth-shattering transformation. It has to be a real result, and it has to be one that is yours. Often, it's something that you've lived. People have already come to you for it. What is that thing? Write it down. Okay, the second one, where does she get stuck? Your ideal client, where do they get stuck? What is a step that she skips, that she doesn't even know that she skipped? What is that? Only you know that. Write that one down.
Okay, and the third question: 18:38
What does she need from a real human that AI can't give her? That third answer is the premium piece. That's what you build your offer around. I cannot wait to connect with you and see what your answers are. Drop them in the comments. What result do you help women get? I would love to see what you're building. And if you're thinking, "Debbie, I don't even know what result yet I could give somebody," that's okay. That's exactly what I do with the women that I work with. I help them figure out what's next, like what really makes the most sense. If you want to have a call with me and talk through your business idea, there's a link in the description, But stay with me because there's one more trap I want you to avoid, and I'm gonna say something that might be hard for you to hear. I'm saying it because I care about you. If you've spent weeks researching for the perfect platform, for the perfect tech setup, for the perfect editing app, that's not work. I know that kind of hurts, It feels like progress, but let me ask you gently, do you have any clients yet? The real work is conversations with somebody who needs your help. The work is teaching what you know in your own words to one person, to a small group, and then staying with them until they get it. That's what AI cannot do, and that's why it's worth so much more to have you involved. You don't have to get this perfect. You just have to start. This is not just meant to be a pep talk. It's how I build businesses and it's how I teach. I teach the profitable coach framework. It takes you from getting clear on who you help, to the offer that you love, to the marketing that you do without paid ads, and to how you build a business where you have freedom on your terms. But this framework doesn't work unless you do the work. What makes it work is that I'm here with you. I'm in it with you. I answer your questions. I help you catch the steps that you didn't even know to ask. it's not just you quietly moving along. I'm there to notice what's happening. In other words, I do for you exactly what I'm asking you to do for your clients. All right, my beautiful friend, thank you so much for being here. If you would love to have a conversation, let's connect debbieshadid.com/schedule. Bring your business idea, even if it's a messy one. Even if you're not sure what to do yet, I'll ask you some real questions, the ones that AI cannot ask you. We'll find where you're stuck and I'll help you see your next steps. That's what happens during our business assessment. Head over to debbieshadid.com/schedule. Pick your time. Here's what I want you to remember. AI can give you the answer, but it cannot be you. You are the premium piece and the world needs what you have lived. Have a beautiful day, my friend. We'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.
