In grift, as in life, brashness can be beguiling.
When bold claims promise to have all the answers—to success, to prosperity, to fulfillment—who doesn’t feel the pull? Sure, we’ll keep Co–Star on our home screens, browse bracelets charged with “energetic equations,” maybe invest in a German heiress’s foundation. There’s a certain appeal to outsourcing the existential, whether it bears out or not. At the very least, it’s fun to buy into a little bullshit.
But when fun grift becomes the stuff of all-out industry, journalist Jane Marie gets interested. The Emmy-winning This American Life alum is the host of The Dream, a podcast that dips into perfectly legal, institutional-level fraudulence—say, the pyramid scheming of multi-level marketing companies, or the hazy allures of alternative wellness products. The show’s third season, airing now, scrutinizes a different business: that of life coaching.
Sometime in the last century, so it goes, people began making a living by telling us how to live. And as Marie investigates, there are no limits on the shocking things they’ll do. Career criminals select self-help manuals as their golden goose; pseudoscientists peddle mindset psychology in five-figure trainings; motivational speakers discover there are millions to be made preaching personal development. Perhaps most startling of all is what happens when Marie takes a taste of the Kool-Aid herself: In the depths of depression, she hires her own life coach—and is taken aback to find it actually works.
The Dream isn’t just an examination of snake-oil schemes and the people that sell them. It’s also a gentle probing of why, exactly, we’re so willing to believe. Don’t we all want to look better, feel better, find career success and the money to match it? Isn’t that worth the six-week course or the seminar ticket? It turns out that self-reliant striving—or the tender heart of the American Dream, for which the show is named—is easy to exploit.
Quartz sat down with Marie to talk about how life and career coaching came to be, what makes it so susceptible to scammers, and why, most shockingly of all, it shouldn’t be rejected wholesale. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Quartz: Since you’ve started this project, you’ve tackled overt but legal institutional scams like multi-level marketing and the alternative wellness industry. What about life coaching made it compelling as the subject of your third go-round?
Jane Marie: Well, it was very natural—[coaching] was brought up a lot in our reporting on the first two seasons. But it was kind of difficult at the outset because, well, there’s no government body I can get really mad at [for not having oversight on the industry]. I can barely get mad at the life coaches themselves. But there’s obviously a scammy ethos to it that everyone can sense. How do you look at that when you don’t know where to point your finger?
What was also appealing to me is [that] it’s a more of a character study of life coaches and of us as Americans—our American exceptionalism and the idea that we live in a meritocracy. It’s a good lens through which to examine those parts of ourselves.
Totally. You also present how much of the coaching industry taps into an ethos that we need to be constantly working harder, doing more, always heading on journeys of self-improvement.
And optimization of ourselves! You listen to Mel Robbins or Brené Brown and even, like, Glennon Doyle, and on the surface it feels very like warm, fuzzy language. But once you just dig a little bit deeper, it feels very much like blame-and-shame [of] people who can’t get out of their own way or who aren’t putting the effort in to be their best self. Like, who has the time and energy? Anyway, they do, because they’re very wealthy people.
That’s a great segue to ask about money. In this season, you present how for centuries people have made a living telling us how to live. What is it about coaching that makes it so ripe for financial reaping?
Looking at life coaching, I could not really find anything other than weight loss and money that people hold as evidence that their life coach worked. The goal is not necessarily like, be more Zen and spend more time with your dog.
For almost all of the life coaches we’ve looked at, the measurement [of success] is looks or money. How many houses do you have, and how skinny are you? I think tapping into one of those is always the way for an industry to make money. People are willing to spend literally anything on either of those things.
One example you present is Napoleon Hill, whose Think and Grow Rich still has fans today. How did someone like Hill turn life coaching into big returns?
Napoleon Hill started writing Think and Grow Rich in the thick of the Depression, which I just feel is so evil. You’re really going to tell a bunch of people that just got completely fucked over by Wall Street that their attitude is bad, and that’s why they’re not rich? My grandma grew up in the Depression, and she would make rock soup. It would be potatoes and water and salt. I don’t think that she had the wrong mindset.
People are willing to spend gobs and gobs of money to maybe achieve one of those things, like immortality or fantastic looks or untold riches. Hill understood that [as] a complete scammer. He was going into the project of writing these books, knowing that he was scamming people. And it was brilliant, and it worked.
I don’t think it’s that much different from [life coaches] like Tony Robbins, to be honest with you. If Tony Robbins really, really worked, wouldn’t there be a bunch of people that are like, Hey, I’m happy, healthy, and wealthy because I took a Tony Robbins course? I didn’t meet any of those people.
The show also presents the legal holes in the industry: Life coaching is unregulated, and you don’t need credentials or certifications to be able to call yourself a coach. Why does that make it susceptible to bad actors?
There are a couple of organizations that do offer, quote unquote, “certification.” But it’s not required, and even when you’re certified, it’s not the same as a professional license. When you’re a dentist, you don’t get one degree and then just stay a dentist forever—you have to go to continuing ed. You have to continue to learn about your trade, and you have to stay up to date with the latest thinking on things. There’s nothing like that in life coaching; you’ll never get sued for malpractice or lose your license. And you can be teaching some really damaging techniques to people.
Early on in the season, you hold an arresting conversation about your personal life. The pandemic has pushed your studio to the brink; you’ve lost loved ones; under the strain, you broke up with your creative and romantic partner, co-host Dann Gallucci. It’s from a deep depression that you tell the listener you’re looking for a life coach—and you find one you love. By the season’s end, she tells you: “Instead of not believing, you’re open.” Would you say you got converted over the course of doing the podcast?
I wouldn’t say I’m a convert, but I did find value in it. I’m a single mom; I have a business; I’m absolutely utterly overwhelmed all the time. And [being coached] provided a space for me to not be doing those jobs. And that turned out to be really important.
I was much more open [to coaching] because I was in such a dark place. I’ve never struggled so much to sound like myself. I had already adjusted my meds; I was going to therapy every week; I was trying a bunch of different things and I was desperate to feel better. I don’t want to speak for all depressives saying, “Just get a life coach and everything will get better!” But it worked for me by forcing me to slow down and center myself a little more.
Something I’ve been neglecting for years was sitting down with myself and being like, “What would make me happy right now?” That’s what [coaching] did for me, which was great. What [my coach] provided for me was just the accountability and motivation to do things that I already know are good for me, like moving my body. It’s so hard to make yourself do them when you’re all by yourself and your bed is so comfy. I love my bed.
So what surprised you most in digging into the business of life coaching as a journalist—or as a client?
I was expecting to enjoy it, because I like a stunt. I like trying new things and being a guinea pig, essentially. But I wasn’t expecting it to work. I wasn’t expecting to develop feelings for my life coach, [or that] we could become friends. I’m talking to her all the time. We’re friends, and our kids are friends. We’re in each other’s lives now. It’s really nice.
Frankly, I was worried at the beginning of the season that we weren’t going to get anywhere, and that we wouldn’t be uncovering anything. Instead I feel like it opened up discussions around what our existence is. Like Matthew McConaughey said in one of his life coaching things. [Marie begins an impression of the actor.] “What are we doing…here?”