1591 – The Coach in Your Pocket with Coach Hub’s Yannis Niebelschuetz

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0:59with us right now it's janice niebelschutz did i say that correctly janice yeah close close in my best american accent uh again founder or founder and ceo coach hub you're found on the web at coachhub.com thank you so much janice for joining us thanks for having me josh originally I think from Germany or now have been in New York for some time. But tell us about Coach Hub. Sure. Yeah. So yeah, as you said, originally from Germany, as you can hear from my fantastic accent, I live in New York now for a while. So we have big operations in North America right now. So what is Coach Hub? Coach Hub is the global leader in digital coaching.

1:43So what we do, We have a global pool of over 3 ,500 certified business coaches. These folks usually bring 10, 20, 30 years of experience in business. And we match those coaches with employees of companies of all sizes. We match them through AI. The coaching itself is done through an app or through web. So it's basically, you can imagine the coach in your pocket. So you can work with your coach whenever, wherever you want. It's an unlimited model. So you can, for a full year, you have access to your coach. And we help companies of all sizes to, you know, develop their people, unleash their full potential, grow them as individuals, as leaders, improve company culture, improve company performance.

2:31um because if you um maybe remember for yourself like if you if you've been through any um classroom trainings in the past where you know teachers going to tell you for two three days how you should behave as a leader we all know if you forget this there are statistics 80 of that content is being forgotten within two weeks and so real behavioral change requires you know ongoing training just like learning the piano you have to practice practice practice and that's what we do at scale. So a few numbers, if you're interested. So we're globally 700 full-time employees. We raised more than 330 million in venture capital, have offices in 15 countries.

3:12So we're truly global and help clients all across the globe to scale the coaching efforts. Yeah, that's amazing. Congratulations on your Series C, 200 million. Not bad. That's some good budget to work with. True, true. True. Yeah. So think about what Coach Hub is. So it's a platform, right? That coaches any... Well, can you explain kind of like logistically how this works? Yeah, sure. So yeah, you're right. So it's basically a two-sided model. So on the one hand, we do have our coaches, as I mentioned, highly vetted. Sometimes we're joking, it's harder to get into the Coach Hub platform than it is to get into MIT, because we take less than 2 % of our applications or of the applicants who want to join us.

3:57And yeah, we matched and those coaches with employees of all sides. So you can imagine if you as a business owner, CEO, or in an HR department decide, hey, I want to offer coaching to my workforce. Let's say it's, I don't know, can be 10, 20, 100 ,000 people. You need a solution that's scalable, unified and measurable with the same quality all across the globe. And then you come to us and say, hey, Janis, I want to try this out. So you sign up, you get access to the platform, you upload or you register your colleagues and they go through this matching process. And we are leveraging AI to do the matching process.

4:38And then the employee can choose their coach. We have a couple of selections there. I can see videos and everything, and then they can kick it off. And usually every other week you talk to your coach on the mobile phone, as I mentioned, or on laptop, however you like it, wherever you want it. And yeah, and that's how we really make sure people change their behaviors for the better. Yeah. Well, congratulations on your success and how quickly you've grown. Where did Coach Hub start from? Well, originally we're from Berlin, Germany, but the majority of our workforce is global now. So we have 150 people plus in the US alone.

5:19So we're pretty global right now. And as I mentioned, I live in New York City right now. Yeah. I mean, so like, where, what was the inception? Like, how did you get this put together? And how do, how are you able to get traction? Yeah. So maybe I can quickly share why we decided to, to create Coach Hub. So it all goes back more than, unfortunately i have to say 15 years when i uh um had my first company that i co-founded with my brother who's also my co-founder right now we were fresh out of uni and we founded our first company um and guess what you learn all kinds of things in uni um you know you read books you write papers but what you don't learn is how to lead others and definitely not how to lead yourself so we were around 30 employees when kind of everything exploded um you know we were completely lost uh strategy uh processes conflicts were starting to arise uh and also conflicts with my brother who uh you know is not only my business partner but also my best friend and you know over the time we got in so much trouble and and so many internal conflicts that it was you know the whole relationship was was was jeopardized at some point and then somebody recommended a coach to us that's 15 years ago right so we're pretty much early adapters in that in that phase and this guy changed everything so how we interacted with each other how we prioritized how we dealt with our emotions and yeah so that's that's that's basically what sparked the the initial passion for coaching um we both worked at other companies in between and then we met five years ago in dublin i worked for linkedin in dublin in the emea headquarters and we we walked the rainy streets of dublin and we we told ourselves hey we are entrepreneurs we want to build things we want to build good things um and we mean good in two in two senses and it's you know the one part is obviously the commercial uh you know viability there might it has to be a big market you know we have to make money at some point and and all these things but also we said we don't want to set up a new company that just you know sells technical stuff without huge impact on on the individuals who want to change lives want to change um hopefully a little bit society as well uh through coaching then we said hey this is our old passion how can we bring um our passion for coaching um and marry that technically with with technology and yeah that's that's the beginning and we started off in our living room basically so we had a two geeks and a computer uh in our living room and we just you know worked very very hard um and uh we we uh reached out to clients we we called them we we uh we had you know we got a lot of no's for for i would say at least a year and we were about to give up many, many times.

8:24And we said, hey, this is not working. Clients don't want it. Screw it. Let's do something else. Let's go back to our corporate jobs. And I'm really, really, you know, I would say proud, but maybe we were just lucky that we didn't give up because at some point we had this turning point where one of our first business agents from a prior business joined us and said, hey guys, this is a great business model. I want to join. And since then, you know, the rest is history basically. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, and so today you have how many coaches in the platform? 3 ,500. Oh my gosh. And do you have room for any more?

9:00Well, we do. And we take applications. So on our website, there's an application link where people can join us. And you can also see the prerequisites. We do have like certifications, minimum hours of coaching, work experience and so on and so forth. But yeah, absolutely. We always are on the lookout for great coaches. And what are the advantages to the coach? So let's say it might be a coach that's just been working independently that, you know, they've had their own personal brand. So they start aligning or leveraging the Coach Hub platform. How does that impact their professional life? Oh, yeah.

9:35So, I mean, obviously, we're very closely aligned with our coaches. And I speak with them myself personally, also when I travel a lot. So I meet our coaches, and they just love us. and they say, you know, often they do coaching because they love to do coaching. What they don't love is to do sales. They don't like to cold call. They don't like to do all the RFPs of the technical things that you need to get into a large company. They don't want to know all the admin. They don't want to do the billing. They don't want to do the, you know, the whole scheduling and everything because it's everything what we, you know, we take that off their plate, right?

10:11And they say, hey, I joined CoachUp and out of a sudden I have like three, four coaches that I can work on now for the next years and they just love it, right? Because it's so easy. There's no strings attached. They don't have to pay anything to go into our platform. So it's really a huge win-win for the coaches. Yeah, that's fantastic. So when you go to coachhub.com and I want to kind of address the prospective coach and let's say they're listening to our conversation and they're still doing some research and they're like, okay, I'm in. how do I get into the platform? Like, what do they click on?

10:47What do they do? You mean as a coach? Yeah, as a coach. Apply as a coach. You'll find a link on coachup.com. I think it's in the top bar and this was in the lower part of the website where Tess applies as a coach. And then you just have to put in a few things, your application information, then we take it from there. So then usually somebody from our coach relations team will reach out and then we'll take it from there. Yeah. Yeah. And what types of companies should be connecting with Coach Hub so that they can get what they need? I know you've worked with the biggest brands out there on the planet, De Beers, Coca-Cola.

11:30There's a pretty significant Liz Lacoste, TDK. I'm just kind of going through Braun. I'm seeing a lot of companies I'm familiar with. yeah yeah so it's true i mean we work with a lot of very large enterprise companies and um you can you can check out there we have a section on the resource um part in the top navigation bar we have videos of companies and actually employees of those companies sharing their coaching experience and how much this has changed their lives and their careers so it's it's very inspirational for whoever's interested and and you know having a look at that um but yeah we work with companies of all sizes so we also have very small companies to say hey we think or small team of five people, we should, we should get coach.

12:13We believe in coaching and, and we should, we should, you know, we should go for it. And, you know, as a matter of fact, it's not only easier with coach up, not only is the quality higher than, than, you know, your regular coach around the corner, but we're actually also cheaper than, than if you went with this coach, you just Googled. So it's, it has only benefits of, of at least checking out what we're doing. Yeah. So I see a lot of like organizational employee experience, culture, leadership, executive coaching, performance, and talent. You serve nearly every industry here that I can see. Are there any that kind of coaching categories that are exceptionally popular, or you say, you might say are trending right now?

13:00So our coaching philosophy is that our coaches coaches help you as an individual to to grow and you basically uh you pick the topic and the coaches facilitates helps you on your journey helps you accountable to to attain your goals and and so we have a model um that you know covers two parts so it's first growing as a person so for yourself like the your own topics that you want to work on and then inspire as a leader how do I set a vision for my team how do I motivate how do I work with my team and training topics are um we actually have a section on our blog and the recent um blog post surface that you know the topic of uh well-being mental health is still very much uh top of mind for many it's conflict management so internal conflicts that maybe also arise due to this whole work from home and the remote situation where you cannot just have a coffee or drink with somebody.

13:58You want to just get something off your chest. And then time management, the classic, is still very, very popular. Yeah. Well, Janis Nibelschutz, again, congratulations on the remarkable growth of Coach Hub. Again, the website is coachhub.com. So again, either if you're a certified coach, obviously go there and you can click on, learn about the platform and the application process. And then certainly leaders of all stripes, it looks like it could just pretty much browse and it can indicate, hey, here's what we're looking for. And again, using the platform itself and, you know, again, the matching technology that can help get them great coaching candidates.

14:48Brilliant. I love it. Giannis has been fabulous having you as a guest. Thank you so much for this conversation. Anything else that folks should know about CoachUp platform or what you would recommend kind of those next steps be? Well, check out our website, coachup.com. So we have plenty of content. We have use cases, we have videos, we have statistics, we have white papers. So everything's for free, obviously. So I'm familiarized with the, if you're not convinced of coaching yet, check out what impact coaching can have on yourself and your organization. It's really mind blowing. And yeah, just browse and feel free to consume some of the content.

15:26Janis Niebelschutz, founder, CEO of Coach Hub. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Josh. It was a pleasure.

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