“Artificial Intelligence won’t replace managers but managers who use AI will replace managers that don’t.” Erik Brynjofsson and Andrew McAfee, AI pioneers.
Substitute coaches for managers in the above quote. It’s equally true. The marriage of coaching and artificial intelligence has been on the horizon for a while but is only now coming into full view. Coaching is growing in importance to business people, athletes, Millennials, Gen Z’ers, health seekers and those on a career journey. Over the next decade, artificial intelligence tools will augment the strengths of executive, life, health, and sports coaches around the globe.
Every industry has pioneers, early adopters, and laggards. Pioneers see the future. While early adopters can’t necessarily see the future, they know it’s coming, it portends change, and so they adopt new thinking to stay alive. Finally, there are the laggards. They’re not sure the business will ever change and are slow to accept significant change opportunities because they have always been successful just as they are. Unfortunately, because of the blistering pace of technological change, the gap will only expand in the next five years. Consequently, laggards will find it increasingly difficult to keep pace.
Artificial intelligence presents a world of promise. It presents a new environment teeming with ideas, hopes, and dreams. Nevertheless, what makes the current environment so very different than in the past is the amount of investment currently being poured into the technology. Trillions worldwide in large corporations and new start-ups, research, training, academics, and innovation. We can now leverage new computer storage capabilities, processing speeds, stronger algorithms, and pools of AI talent to design new solutions inspiring us to find new and practical ways to use these tools to help when coaching your own clients.
By investing in the increasing alignment of AI and coaching you are demonstrating your pioneer tendencies. You are proactively providing your coaching business with a leg up on the competition. I’m not suggesting you become a coder or programmer. In fact, the opposite. AI tools, straight off the shelf are becoming available to enhance your coaching expertise. If you’re a coach (or are aspiring to be one), and you are looking to differentiate your offering to the marketplace, your existing clients, and your potential clients, then pursue digital coaching. By augmenting the human interaction of coaching with tools that make the interaction easier, more fulsome, and more exciting, artificial intelligence becomes the coaching partner of the future.
Look for Brians’ second of 10 posts in the series here next month.
ROCKY.AI is featured in Brian Lenahan’s new book “Digital Coaching: Coaching in the Era of Artificial Intelligence”.
Brian Lenahan is the author of Amazon published books “Artificial Intelligence: Foundations for Business Leaders and Consultants” and “Digital Coach: Coaching in the Era of Artificial Intelligence”. He is the Author-in-Residence of the Toronto-based AIGeeks meetup community, a graduate of MIT’s AI Strategy program, and a former executive of top global bank.
Rocky listens and interjects questions to guide you in achieving your best self.
Reflect on your day and strengthen your mindset to effortlessly reach your goals.
In your daily reflection, your contribution can either be inspired by Rocky or you can share directly your thoughts.
Rocky keeps you motivated whilst you grow.
Rocky helps you track your progress and set follow-up tasks, which holds you to account in an encouraging, fun and uplifting way.
Rocky rewards you at the end of each session with bite-sized learning pills, taken from hundreds of books.
This specific content is tailored to your unique growth path and will refine your soft skills, boost your wellbeing and leverage your personal and professional success.
Rocky rewards you at the end of each session with bite-sized learning pills, taken from hundreds of books.
This specific content is tailored to your unique growth path and will refine your soft skills, boost your wellbeing and leverage your personal and professional success.
You do. Your content stays exclusive to your app and is not used to train models for other customers.
Stated plainly, because vagueness here costs deals:
For a coach or consultancy this is existential rather than administrative. Your methodology is the business. Handing it to a platform that folds it into a shared model would mean funding your competitors' capability.
If you're evaluating alternatives, make this a written question rather than a verbal one, and read the answer carefully. "We don't train on customer data" and "your data is secure" are different claims, and only one of them is the one you need.
Creator plans start at $29/month, with $99 and $199 tiers adding included seats and the ability to sell to individuals and businesses. A 14-day free trial is included.
The tiers map to business stage rather than feature-gating for its own sake:
For context: a single human coaching session can run several hundred dollars. The entry tier costs less than one session per month and serves an unlimited audience.
Yes. The $99, $199 and enterprise tiers let you sell your branded app to individuals or businesses, with a coach panel, analytics, SSO and GDPR posture that corporate buyers require.
Three business models fall out of this, and they're not mutually exclusive:
The entry product. A subscription AI coach running your methodology, sold to people who could never afford your 1:1 rate. Fully automated, and a natural funnel into your premium work.
The retention layer. Existing clients stay engaged with your method between sessions. Results improve — coaching that stops at the end of the call mostly doesn't stick — and renewals improve with them.
The enterprise offer. You license your branded AI coaching software to corporate clients. This is the one that changes the size of the business: you stop being a coach they hire and become a platform they license.
That third model is why the compliance features matter to a solo coach. SSO and GDPR posture are what let you answer a procurement questionnaire without disqualifying yourself.
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