From Coach to Founder: Why I Started a Technology Company for Coaching
I was 20 years old when I started my first company. Still in university, the business was booming and I found myself catapulted into a leadership position; expanding a business with two co-founders, navigating dynamic and intricate relationships with franchise owners, hiring and scaling teams of peers my age and older.
It just so happened that at the same time I was going through two judicial court cases after being raped and, later, attacked in my own home.
One minute I would be on crown court conference calls, have mere moments to gather myself, then turn around and be in the details with my people, leading teams.
Coaching got me through that time; it asked me to challenge my sense of leadership, understand what authentic leadership looked like and what it was going to mean for me to bring the fullness of who I am to the workplace and integrate everything going on in my personal life into that experience.
In The Family
That stint wasn’t my first foray into receiving coaching (or guidance, as I like to call it). Sure, being brought into the world by a coach meant I grew up around the culture and the industry. And while I didn’t always appreciate ‘coaching conversations’ when I was a teenager, it did give me a solid foundation. Coaching would support me, as life expanded in more directions than I could have imagined.
Was it having a coach as a mom and some pivotal conversations in my early 20s that ignited the fuse behind Sphere? Not quite.
Like most ideas and every single delicious pastry I can think about — it needed to bake.
And it just so happened that it popped at 2:00 a.m. while my family was fast asleep around me and I was clicking away on my laptop working to solve a problem that had been plaguing me and my coaching business.
Solving What Cripples Coaches and those Seeking Guidance
Five years after starting Blo as my co-founders were negotiating a sale, I was backing out of daily operations, and my calendar was clear for the first time in years. It didn’t last for long; involved with local mentorship programs since the inception of the business, new founders and owners seeking to scale their teams, sales and impact began to reach out. Before I knew it, I had an active coaching business bringing in 80–90% of my income.
That small but thriving business offered me the flow and flexibility to move across the country, fall in love, start (and grow) our family, eventually landing in the trees and mountains of Whistler.
Six months after having our second baby, I started to ramp my practice back up. I was ready to expand my reach and turn it into something meaningful, efficient, effective and engaging from end-to-end. I was keen to connect with clients across the globe. And one question kept cropping up:
‘How are we going to find each other?’
And in doing so, I came up against a handful of hurdles that got my gears turning:
- How can people seeking guidance find experts that are vetted and approved by some system other than paying their way to the top of search results? Sorry Google, you’re just not good enough. And it’s why the coaching industry is still fuelled by word-of-mouth referrals.
- Coaching is unapproachable and inconvenient. How can we democratize guidance so it’s available to everyone? Not just C-Suite executives. How can we embrace technology to make it on-demand?
- Lastly, as a coach, I invested a massive amount of time & money into a handful of tools I stitched together to run a digital practice. I spent 40%–60% of my week learning, optimizing, implementing and managing each…none of which had much concern for the user interface or the client experience. Just saying.
It hit me: there is no consumer platform for the coaching industry.
Sure, there are directories that still require so much work. And old-school coaching consoles and bulky CRMs still exist. And then there are a handful of B2B software players that are method-focused, meaning they are not inclusive of all coaching approaches (and there are a ton of excellent certification & training programs out there).
There wasn’t a way for prospective seekers to find best-fit guides other than those who had paid their way to the top of Google rankings — which didn’t guarantee a match. No marketplace that connected coaches and those seeking coaching seamlessly. Nothing that asked you what areas you want to grow in and where you are stuck — whether it be in your career, wellness, leadership or your personal life and relationships — and then no algorithm to intelligently match you with a sphere of coaches best suited to you.
As a coach, there were zero options when it came to integrating business development, admin and management into one branded experience, and platform. Nothing that took care of finding you clients, scheduling, hosting, invoicing, client charts and conversations in one central place, specifically and intentionally built with clients and coaches in mind.
And what could it mean for the industry if all these features and functions existed in one beautiful end-to-end technology?
A Coaching One-Stop-Shop
It could hit all the pain points in accessing and delivering a coaching experience. It could be an inclusive and diverse space that welcomes in driven, growth-minded individuals from all walks of life, from all around the world. And not just C-Suites that pay a ridiculous amount for an exclusive, executive coach. Not only that, it would welcome coaching that is not dependent on the thoughts of one author, thought leader or ‘guru’. It could truly be the one-click-wonder for the coaching space.
So I opened my laptop and hashed out what would be the first business plan for Sphere. And since that first draft, to the time I first shared it with my mom, and through seeking investment and beginning to the develop the product and grow a team, things have changed. Some things, at least. But the core tenant and the vision is the same:
To democratize coaching.
To bring the experience of guidance out of the boardroom and into everyday life. To help connect individuals with their potential, and give them an unbiased thinking partner to achieve their goals, take leaps, spark change and play bigger. And, to empower coaches with owning and operating thriving practices where they have the most time possible to do what they love: help people grow.
It’s a whole new experience of checking-in on what I believe about myself as a leader, and how I see leadership. It’s a brand new chapter in living a powerfully integrated life. And it’s a tool, brand and company that I believe in with every cell in my body.
Coaching has and will continue to evolve over time. Its next evolution is harnessing technology, and giving a more global audience access to its power.
And Sphere is here to make that happen.
If you want to follow along with Sphere, subscribe to our medium, follow us on Instagram, and sign-up for our wait list.
Bringing on a Co-Founder, the Former GM of Headspace
As I began fleshing out the concept, articulating the brand, drafting mock-ups, along with all the magic that would bring Sphere to life, I drew parallels to the category defining concepts that I admired most. One of them was Headspace.
In the summer of 2017, I ended up on call with a brilliant woman; it gave me serious goosebumps. What was scheduled to be a quick connect, ended up becoming 3 hours of calls. We made plans to meet and the following week. We flew out to Seattle to spend the day together in real life
Fate and Facebook connected me with Shona Beats, employee №2, growing Headspace, the meditation app used by millions, as its General Manager. She joined Sphere as a Co-Founder and, having scaled a leading health-tech product, has brought a wealth of knowledge and experience to Sphere.
After Lululemon popularized yoga, and Headspace made meditation mainstream, coaching is the natural evolution in the health and wellbeing space. We’ve been in our bodies, sitting with our thoughts and now we want to be held accountable to articulate and make changes in our lives. Because it takes two people to reflect, develop and grow. You + high-impact conversations with an unbiased thinking partner.
Wait — Where is Sphere Now & What’s Next?
Maybe you’ve been following Sphere’s journey since I started talking publicly about it. Or perhaps this is the first time you’ve heard of us. Or maybe you’re somewhere in-between. Regardless, I want to tell you where we are and where we are going.
After months of research and development before hiring or writing a single line of code, to early investment, to hiring a small, but powerful remote team — I’m happy to announce we’ve built a skinny version of the app on IOS’ Test Flight. We only invited 5 guides & 10 seekers. Since doing so, we’ve learned a ton in the process, confirmed some hunches, finalized our immediate product roadmap, stack ranked some mission critical features and ultimately figured out what we need to build to make it Sphere better for beta — and then public launch.
And here’s what a couple of those early adopters in our private alpha are saying (to give you a taste):
“Coaching and guidance are big bodies of work, and finding someone to partner with can feel daunting. Where to begin and how to meet someone outside of your network can feel like challenging first steps; Sphere takes the guess-work out of finding a coach and curates a selection of potential coaches for you based on your preferences and goals. You leverage technology for just about every decision you make, so why not for a decision as important as finding a coach?”
“As a coach, 90% of my business comes through referrals. By using this platform I have access to an entire world of new clients seeking guidance and professional insight. Not only does Sphere promote my skills to a broad audience, the calendar interface makes it so easy, decreasing administration so I can focus on what matters.”
I welcome you with my whole heart to to follow our journey: subscribe to our medium👇, follow us on Instagram, and sign-up for our wait list.
With Gratitude,
Devon Brooks
