This is Part 1 of a 3-part series on the collapse of outdated leadership models. We’re looking at where it’s failing, why it’s crumbling, and most importantly, what we’re building instead.

The Coaching Industry Promised Freedom. Instead, It Replicated Everything Broken About Leadership.

I got my start in coaching through an MLM.

AdvoCare sold itself as the path to financial freedom, along with its weight and health supplements. Big-name speakers at conferences, motivational slogans, and the intoxicating promise that if you just worked harder and believed more, you could retire your husband and live life on your terms, all while helping people.

But the deeper I got into it, the more I saw troubling patterns:

• When the products didn’t work, it was blamed on the customer.
• When people struggled to recruit others, it was never because the model was flawed.
• The message was always: "They just don’t get it."

There wasn’t room for… maybe this wasn’t for everyone. And the women at the top? They looked different from corporate CEOs, but they led the exact same way.

When I Found Life Coaching, I Thought I’d Found Something Different

After leaving MLMs, I discovered mindset coaching through The Life Coach School by Brooke Castillo. And it blew my mind.

• Your thoughts create your reality.
• If you just master your mind, you can master your results.
• There are no limits except the ones you believe in.

This was it. The missing piece, both for my clients' struggles and for my own growth.

Here were the patterns I didn't see right away:

• When people struggled, they were told their thoughts were wrong, not that the model might be flawed.
• Wealth was the ultimate marker of success. And if you didn’t want that? You had a ‘thought error.’
• It was still the same hierarchical, exclusionary leadership, with better marketing.

The FOMO model worked on me, and I was deep in it. And then I found yet another mentor who took everything I’d learned from The Life Coach School and ramped it up to "a little bit culty" levels.

• If something wasn’t working, you needed to work on your self-concept.
• The answer was always to buy the next program, invest in the next level, and keep going.
• If you left? Why would you ever leave?

And I was one of the top students. I was proof the system worked. Until it didn’t.

The Leadership Model That Was Never Meant to Work for Everyone

Here’s what I see so clearly now: This was the same broken leadership structure I’d seen in corporate, just repackaged as “women’s empowerment.”

• It was less about creating real transformation and more about scaling a model that required as little customization as possible.
• It was less about helping individuals thrive and more about allowing for individualism as long as it conformed to the pre-approved playbook.
• It was less about building something that worked for different kinds of people and more about selling one-size-fits-some leadership and blaming the people who didn’t fit.

This isn’t a leadership model that works for everyone, and many coaching spaces, particularly the online coaching space, are experiencing an extinction burst because of it.

When leadership does not work for everyone, it eventually dies out. But that existing leadership will double down, insisting their way is still the best.

And we see many of the biggest players still making millions, but with cracks showing as they adjust their offers to consumer backlash and people asking hard questions.

What looks like strength is really a death rattle - the last gasp of a leadership model that refuses to evolve.

This conversation isn’t about the collapse of an industry. It's about the collapse of a leadership model that claims to be for everyone but blames those who ‘don’t have what it takes’ when it fails.

And that’s the part we need to talk about.

Up Next: Why This Leadership Model Is Crumbling Everywhere

The extinction burst isn’t just happening in coaching. It’s happening everywhere.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about:

• How Target’s DEI backpedal is the perfect example of leadership that claims to be different—but folds when it’s challenged.
• Why the Lean In → Burn It Down cycle is a trap that keeps us stuck in reaction mode.
• The bigger truth: We’re great at rejecting broken leadership, but what are we actually building?

Because if we’re not building something better, then we’re just playing a different game in the same old system.

And I refuse to do that.

Here’s what I want to know:

• What’s hitting for you so far?
• Where else do you see dying leadership models holding on for dear life?

Drop a comment and let’s have the conversation.

This is Part of a 3-Part Series: The Leadership Model That Brought Us Here Won’t Take Us Forward

A 3-Part Breakdown of Why Old Leadership is Crumbling. And What Comes Next.

Part 1: The Burn - How Coaching Exposed the Limits of Old Leadership
Part 2: The Extinction Burst - How This Leadership Model is Crumbling Everywhere
Part 3: The Blueprint - What We’re Building Instead