Meet John Marshall, the coach behind Coaching Business Launchpad
I help new coaches bridge the gap between coach training and real client conversations — with structure, clarity, accountability, and a business-building approach that actually fits who they are.
Coaching Business Launchpad was born from my own winding path into coaching, business ownership, and mentorship. It is the program I wish I had when I first stepped out of corporate life and began building a coaching business of my own.
9 weeks • 90-minute live sessions • Real deliverables • Direct feedback
From the Practical Path to a Deeper Question
When I think about my journey into coaching, it actually starts when I was young.
Where I came from, there were a few clear options if you wanted to be successful. If you were good at math and science, you became an engineer, a doctor, or a lawyer. If you wanted to make money and build a stable life, you followed one of those paths.
So I did the practical thing. I studied engineering and finance, which eventually led me into a corporate sales and business development career in the energy industry.
In many ways, I had everything my younger self thought I wanted. I was making good money. I was ranked as a top performer. I had a prosperous career path in front of me. I had built the life I thought I was supposed to want.
But something was missing.
At the time, I did not know exactly what it was. I only knew that the “work hard, play hard” lifestyle was not enough. I wanted something more meaningful. Something more human. Something that felt connected to who I actually was.
The funny thing is, when I was younger, I used to say that if money were not a factor and none of the practical stuff worked out, I would probably be a teacher and a coach.
Now, that is exactly what I am.
I train and certify new coaches. I mentor new coaches. I coach individuals and leaders. I own a coaching and leadership development company. In many ways, the path has come full circle.
The Practice That Opened the Door
Around that time in my corporate career, I found yoga.
I went to my first yoga class in January 2016, and I taught my first yoga class in January 2017. In between, I completed 500 hours of training and went deep into the practice.
At first, the physical practice pulled me in. But the philosophy, the self-awareness, and the mind-body connection are what changed me.
Yoga gave me the space to start asking questions I had not slowed down enough to ask before:
Who am I, really?
What do I actually want?
What am I passionate about?
I remember sitting at Whole Foods after a yoga class with a friend. I was telling her about my corporate role, and I said something like, “It’s great for now, but I’m not really passionate about it.”
She paused and asked me very plainly:
“What are you passionate about?”
I sat there and realized I did not know how to answer.
That question stayed with me.
Seeing the Gap Between Values and Behavior
At the same time, my company was going through an organizational restructure and culture change initiative. New values and frameworks were going up on the walls, but the actual behaviors were not changing where it mattered most.
When the pressure was on, when deals were being executed, when real business decisions were being made, the same patterns continued.
That experience shaped something in me.
I started to wonder: Is this really the way work has to be?
Through yoga, mindfulness, and my own self-reflection, I began seeing the gap between what organizations say they value and how people actually behave. I started becoming deeply interested in behavior change, self-awareness, leadership, and the human side of business.
Around that same time, I was teaching yoga at ExxonMobil, and my students nominated me for an internal TED-style speaking series called EM Talks. That opportunity pushed me to articulate what I had been learning about self-reflection, personal goals, and taking time to understand what you truly want.
The response I received from that talk showed me something important:
There was something here I needed to pursue.
One of the people in that speaking cohort was a certified life coach. That was one of the first times I heard about coaching as a formal profession, and it immediately caught my attention.
Discovering Coaching as a Method of Change
As I began developing the idea for Humessence, I became obsessed with the science of behavior change.
Humessence was founded around a simple idea: bringing the human essence back to modern business. I wanted to help organizations create the kind of culture, leadership, and behavior change that I wished I had seen more of in my own corporate environment.
Through that research, I discovered coaching.
Coaching was not just a nice conversation. It was not just encouragement. It was applied positive psychology. It was a method for supporting long-term behavior change, self-awareness, and meaningful action.
Once I understood that, I went deeper.
I completed my first life coach certification through Life Purpose Institute, the same program where I now train and certify new coaches. Later, I completed professional coach training through Wellcoaches after a mentor introduced me to their work in positive psychology and coaching.
When I fall in love with something meaningful, I tend to go all the way in. That was true with yoga. It was true with coaching. And it became true with the business I was building.
The Hard Lessons of Building a Coaching Business
When I left corporate life, I had the passion, the training, and the desire to serve.
But I did not yet have the clarity I needed to market and build the business well.
I had created Humessence as a brand to serve organizations through coaching, training, and consulting. But instead of clearly positioning it that way, I started using it as my personal coaching brand too.
That created confusion.
Humessence was not meant to be only my personal coaching business. It was built to serve organizations. But because I was trying to make one brand do everything, the message became unclear.
I also tried to bootstrap my way through almost everything. Website. Marketing. Messaging. Positioning. Content. SEO. Offers. Sales. I learned a lot, but I also wasted a lot of time.
For years, I listened to so much noise about how I was supposed to market:
Post every day.
Be everywhere.
Use Instagram.
Use LinkedIn.
Use TikTok.
Create more content.
Be consistent.
Do it this way.
Do it that way.
Some of the advice was useful. Much of it was not useful for me.
The real shift happened when I stopped trying to market the way everyone else told me to and started asking better questions:
Who is the actual audience?
Where are they already looking for help?
What problem are they trying to solve?
What is the one channel that makes the most sense?
What kind of marketing can I actually do consistently?
For Humessence, the answer became clear. It was a business-to-business brand. The right person was usually an HR leader, training and development professional, or organizational decision-maker looking for a specific vendor, workshop, training, or coaching solution.
So we doubled down on search engine optimization and building a website that could be found by the people already looking for those solutions.
That became one of the best decisions we ever made for Humessence.
Personally, I also discovered the way I market most naturally: through conversation. That is why podcasting works for me. I host The Present Professional Podcast, and that conversation becomes a web page, a blog-style resource, and content that can be repurposed into other formats.
I learned that the best marketing strategy is not always the loudest one. It is the one that fits your audience, your strengths, your capacity, and the way you naturally build trust.
The Gap I Kept Seeing for New Coaches
As my work continued to grow, I started teaching at Life Purpose Institute and mentoring coaches through Wellcoaches.
That is when I saw the same pattern again and again.
New coaches would go through training and become wonderful coaches. They had heart. They had skill. They had the ability to support people in meaningful ways.
But after the training ended, many of them lost momentum.
Not because they were not capable.
Not because they did not care.
Not because they lacked potential.
They simply did not have the structure, accountability, and business-building container needed to keep going.
Coach training teaches you how to coach. And that matters deeply.
But new coaches also need support learning how to talk about their work, clarify their audience, test their niche, build visibility, create real conversations, and develop confidence in the business side of coaching.
That is a different kind of learning.
And it cannot be solved by another generic marketing formula.
How Coaching Business Launchpad Was Born
Coaching Business Launchpad was created to fill that gap.
It is the program I wish I had when I launched into my post-corporate coaching life.
I wish I had a group of peers building alongside me. I wish I had a place to test ideas, report back, receive honest feedback, and stay accountable. I wish I had support in discovering how I naturally market instead of trying to force myself into someone else’s formula.
That is what Coaching Business Launchpad is designed to provide.
It is not here to tell you that you need to become a content machine.
It is not here to tell you that your business has to look like everyone else’s.
It is not here to force you into one marketing channel, one niche formula, or one version of success.
It is a small-group container where you clarify your audience, refine your message, test your market, build momentum, and stay accountable to the work of actually putting yourself out there.
The goal is not perfection.
The goal is movement.
What I Believe About Building a Coaching Business
I believe your niche gets clearer through real conversations.
I believe visibility is a practice, not a personality trait.
I believe you do not need to be everywhere. You need to understand where your people are and how you naturally build trust.
I believe new coaches need structure, feedback, and action more than they need more scattered advice.
I believe your business should be built around your strengths, values, audience, and actual capacity.
And I believe that if you are going to commit to this work, you should go all the way in — not by burning yourself out, but by taking the process seriously and giving yourself the support to keep moving.
Even if you are still working a 9-to-5.
Even if your niche is not perfect yet.
Even if you are still figuring out your message.
Start building now.
Do not wait six months after coach training to begin marketing your work. Use the momentum you already have. Use the transformation you experienced in your training. Stay connected to the energy that brought you here.
The Experience Behind the Program
Today, I am an ICF Professional Certified Coach, mentor coach, coach trainer, yoga and mindfulness teacher, podcast host, and founder of Humessence LLC.
I have built and sold coaching, workshops, leadership development programs, and organizational training solutions. I have worked with individual clients, new coaches, corporate leaders, and organizations.
I have also made many of the mistakes new coaches are trying to avoid.
That is part of what makes this work meaningful to me.
I know what it is like to have the passion and not yet have the message. I know what it is like to be trained and still feel unclear about how to find clients. I know what it is like to waste time chasing strategies that do not fit.
And I know how powerful it can be when you finally begin building in a way that feels clear, honest, and aligned.
A Personal Note to New Coaches
If you are a new coach, I want you to know this:
You do not have to figure everything out alone.
You also do not need to wait until your niche, website, offer, and marketing plan are perfect before you begin.
You need a place to practice building. You need feedback. You need structure. You need real conversations with the people you hope to serve. You need momentum.
That is why I created Coaching Business Launchpad.
It is a place to discover your way — not everyone else’s way.
If you are ready to move from coach training to real client conversations, I would love to support you.
Ready to Build Your Coaching Business With More Clarity?
- 9 coaches max
- 9 weeks of live accountability
- Accessible cohort pricing: $597 or three payments of $225