By: Curious Fortune Media
Coaching keeps growing. The International Coaching Federation’s 2025 Global Coaching Study counted 122,974 coach practitioners worldwide and estimated annual industry revenue at $5.34 billion, up 17% from 2023.
That continual expansion makes sense in a field where almost anyone can print “business coach” on a card. Dave Labowitz, a business coach who spent years as an executive in venture-backed startups, describes coaching as an industry with zero regulation, and he draws a firm line through the middle of it. “There are a lot of people who call themselves business coaches, but they’re really only skilled to be life coaches for business people. They might be great at mindset work and facilitation, but if they don’t have the business chops to help your business grow, then they’re not truly business coaches,” says Labowitz. In his view, business coaching should start with the business itself: sales, marketing, operations, finance, and product, with mindset work handled as it comes up rather than as the opening move.
Two Skill Sets, One Order of Operations
Labowitz breaks business coaching into two skill sets: experience building businesses, and the facilitation of personal development. Both matter. The question is which one leads.
Instead of leading with soft skills, Labowitz leads with strategy and tactics, and addresses personal growth issues when they surface in the course of that work. The result is roughly an 80/20 blend of brass tacks to soft skills.
“If a founder’s problem is cash flow or a stalled sales pipeline, starting with how they feel about it doesn’t fix it,” Labowitz says. “We work the business problem first. The mindset work still happens, but it shows up when it’s actually holding you back, and then it’s much easier to see where the opportunity is for change.”
His clients range from founders who need help knowing what they don’t know to experienced leaders who want to be pushed out of their comfort zone or need a senior-level confidant for strategy. Their companies run from pre-revenue to $350 million, and include bootstrapped startups, venture-backed companies, and larger private-equity-owned businesses, along with solopreneurs, and the occasional actor or rock star.
The CEO Hat
A core method he teaches comes from the Monday mornings of his startup years. Each week, the CEO brought the executive team into a room. Every executive reported on their department, asked for the support they needed from the other departments or the CEO, and left with a cohesive plan for the week ahead.
Labowitz coaches clients to run their businesses the same way, whether or not they have an executive team. He calls it putting on the CEO Hat: thinking like a CEO, then working through strategy and tactics for each of the five departments every business has, which he defines as sales, marketing, operations, finance, and product management or engineering. A solo founder holds the meeting with themselves, one department at a time. This approach is designed to keep all parts of the business moving forward together.
An Unconventional Route to the Corner Office
Labowitz did not take the expected path to the boardroom. He dropped out of high school at the beginning of 10th grade, earned a GED, and won his diploma in a bet with the school district. After a semester of community college with a 4.0, he transferred to a four-year college and graduated magna cum laude with a BA in psychology.
He worked briefly as a software and database engineer before falling for startups, then earned his MBA in 2006 from Pepperdine’s Graziadio Business School. His executive career in venture-backed startups spanned four companies, three of which ended in exits. In 2016, he retired from that career and transitioned into coaching.
“I loved building companies, but the startup hours could be brutal,” Labowitz admits. “Coaching let me cut back on the 70-hour weeks while keeping the part I enjoyed most, which was watching people learn, grow, and get it right.”
Deep Impact Over Wide Reach
His online course, “Essential Lessons for First-Time Managers,” has been taken by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide and is required training by the Philippines Department of Education for all school principals and head teachers. His coaching practice, by contrast, stays deliberately small.
Labowitz does little to nothing on social media, which he sees as overwhelmed with AI-generated content, and he does not need it. His work comes through long-term clients, referrals, and SEO. He would rather have a deep impact on a few clients than a minor impact on a wide audience.
That choice fits his style and values. In an industry growing as quickly as coaching, he is betting the clients who matter most are not looking for the loudest coach, but for someone who has sat in the Monday meeting, knows what each department should be reporting, and can tell them which number to fix first.
