We all have a story of a coach that has significantly impacted our lives. My first truly impactful experience with a coach occurred when I was nine years old and had decided to try out baseball for the first time. His name was Moises. He was from Puerto Rico and had played baseball semi-professionally back in the day. From the moment I started working with Moises I knew that he saw something within me that I didn’t see in myself. I went from a complete amateur in the sport of baseball as a nine year old to the top ranked player at my local baseball league in Chicago when I was 13 years old.
My name is Peter Gustafson and I'm passionate about developing the next generation of leaders and expanding access to high-quality coaching. I’m an aspiring entrepreneur and have over a decade of experience working at fast-growing B2B SaaS startups. In the fall of 2023 I found myself frustrated, unsure and in need of support. I sought out and started working with an executive coach to help me map out a long-term plan and vision for my career. My long-term goal had always been to start or co-found my own company but at this point I just didn’t feel like I was ready.
After working through the long-term career planning exercise with my coach I realized that I was ready to take the leap of faith and start my own company. Working with an executive coach was truly a life changing experience for me.
Just as this breakthrough occurred I got laid off from the tech startup that I was working at. I had reached an inflection point in my career.
While working with my executive coach I noticed that they used a hodgepodge of tools to manage their business; Squarespace for their marketing website, Convertkit for email marketing, Calendly for scheduling, Square for payments, DocuSign for electronic documents, Google Drive to share/edit documents, etc. The more I worked with my executive coach, the more I started to think about why they weren’t using an all-in-one platform to manage their business and clients. The first startup I worked at built a similar platform designed for service-based businesses like CrossFit gyms and yoga studios and I personally loved helping small business owners grow and scale their business while expanding their impact in their local communities.
At this point I started to do market research on the growth of the executive coaching industry and the online coaching space as a whole. I was initially intimidated by the platforms on the market today; Kajabi, Teachable, etc. However, as I've done more research and have talked to more and more coaches, what I've realized is that these platforms are expensive and complex and oftentimes aren't a great fit for career coaches and executive coaches.
My hypothesis is that there's a gap in the market for a simple all-in-one platform that’s designed to enable career coaches and executive coaches to grow and scale their business. My vision is to create an ecosystem that will allow coaches to thrive. Beyond technology and tools, I want to build out a community and support system that will help new coaches build their business and experienced coaches scale their business. I envision a world where everyone can have access to a high-quality coach that’s catered to their specific needs.
"I know why you got into coaching. To help others. To build the lifestyle that you wanted. To make a difference in the lives of your clients. You got into coaching to support others. Let me support you."
If my story resonates with you I’d love to connect to learn more about your coaching business and share more about what I’m building.
