SeeShell Consulting and the International Coach Coalition: An Entrepreneur’s Expansion Dilemma in the Gig Economy

All figures in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted.

In 2022, Shelley Langille launched the International Coach Coalition (ICC) website to serve as a platform for connecting executive coaches and clients. The ICC value proposition for ICC clients focused on providing them with access to the profiles of vetted and qualified executive coaches with a broad range of specializations and credentials to choose from to meet their needs. Through the platform, the ICC coaches gained a source of contract work and determined their own fees. Langille received a percentage of the coaching fee in exchange for the marketing, promotion, client introductions, and invoicing services provided by her company SeeShell Consulting.

Upon the launch of the ICC website, twelve of Langille’s executive coaching colleagues joined the ICC platform. Langille had developed relationships with a network of executive coaches during the Executive Coaching Program she completed in May of 2021 at Royal Roads University (RRU). Langille had launched SeeShell Consulting (SeeShell) in July 2021, a sole proprietor executive coaching and consulting practice, initially focused on career transitions for people who had lost their jobs, where she further developed her relationships with other executive coaches and clients.

In working with the executive coaches, Langille recognized the opportunity for growth of the ICC platform, explaining that “coaches needed a way to connect with clients, and so I decided to develop a solution to fill this gap.” Langille explained that building an online presence by developing a platform that would match a curated selection of executive coaches with potential clients provided an opportunity to expand her business, increase the profile of executive coaching in Canada, and generate significant new revenue streams. Langille explained, “The vetting and curation of the coaches is the key characteristic differentiating the platform from other coach/client matching services.” To engage her current network of coaches, Langille indicated that she wanted to move quickly and be early to market to leverage the network she had developed and the novel characteristics of the platform.

Langille decided to give herself “one year to focus on this opportunity to create and grow her online platform and execute her business plan.” Langille identified the design and further development of the platform itself as a technical challenge which she could outsource to an IT web development firm. In her view, the “biggest challenges focus on developing a brand, a profile, and marketing the business, and what social media strategies might work best to help expand the ICC startup in this executive coaching ‘gig’ industry.”

Shelley Langille

Langille was born in Middleton, Nova Scotia and spent her school years in Port Alberni, British Columbia, for grades one through twelve.  After high school, she worked for Alberta Government Telephones as a directory assistance operator for a year and a half before returning to Vancouver Island, where she held a series of increasingly responsible positions in the hospitality industry.  After working on the successful conversion of a prestigious Victoria hotel from a manual to a digital environment with computerized finance, human resources, inventory, registration, and booking systems, her newly acquired technology skills facilitated her transition into an eight-year stint in technology sales and training, managing all aspects of the marketing, sales, and delivery of technical training and certification programs.

Langille then began a long-term 17-year engagement with her last employer prior to starting her independent executive coaching practice. She had originally been hired to conduct Microsoft training but quickly transitioned into the role of director of business development.  Langille explained that she “flourished in this role, consistently growing revenues and levels of client engagement.” Her role involved serving as a liaison between the institution and members of the military, and various first responders in law enforcement and fire prevention. However, in 2020, her position was declared ”surplus to needs” and Langille was terminated without cause.

Langille’s Entrepreneurial Journey

Langille indicated that she was surprised by the termination of her employment, commenting, “I was shocked! I was only six years away from retirement, and, as such, I had never put any thought into what I would do if my current role came to an end.” Shortly after her employment was terminated, Langille registered in a nine-month post-graduate level certificate program in executive coaching that culminated in her certification as a professional coach by the International Coaching Federation. She believed that the program would provide her with the perfect credentials to lend credibility to her new plan to become a self-employed executive coach.

Langille explained that she found the coaching program to be “an inspirational and eye-opening experience that provided great mentorship along with a cohort of highly engaged and talented participants that quickly bonded.” Langille indicated that “the members of her cohort were an interesting, skilled, and diverse group of people who were intelligent, mature individuals in mid-to late-career, united in their belief that their newly acquired coaching skills would be of benefit to themselves, their clients, and/or their organizations.” Langille described her experience,

One of the characteristics of the group that really struck me was the collaborative nature of the participants; they were all eager to help each other, regardless of their different paths, and there was never any feeling of competition, envy, or jealousy.

Langille commented that she was “convinced that once the coaching program was completed and the International Coaching Federation (ICF) accreditation obtained, developing a coaching and consulting practice was next on the agenda.” Langille described the ICF certification as “contributing to my success as it provided added credibility and active involvement in the ICF would provide professional development opportunities and access to an international network of executive coaches.”

SeeShell Consulting

Langille described her position at her former employer as “a liaison with military and first responder (police, firefighter, paramedic, etc.) organizations, helping them to recognize and fulfill the educational, training, and development needs of their members in areas such as leadership, management, disaster/emergency management, business administration, and justice studies.” She described taking “inventory of her collective assets in terms of skills, abilities, experiences, and other attributes.” Langille emphasized that her “engagement in this line of work, as well as previous experiences in hotel management and in the technology field, had allowed me to build a significant network of professionals, many of whom had come face to face with significant career transitions, disruptions, and traumatic experiences.” Langille realized the benefits of “helping to guide professionals through these disruptions and transitions in ways that would facilitate informed and intentional decision making around choices that would affect their professional futures” and indicated that even before her executive coaching program had ended, “she began to conceptualize an independent sole proprietorship coaching and consulting practice.”

On July 1, 2021, Langille launched SeeShell Consulting, a sole proprietor executive coaching and consulting practice, initially focused on career transitions for people who had lost their jobs. She hired a web developer to assist in developing SeeShell’s website and social media presence, focusing mostly on platforms such as LinkedIn,^[1] Facebook,^[2] and Instagram.^[3] SeeShell posts were focused on professional and inspirational messages on leadership, organizational wellness, and the career journey. Langille explained that it was through SeeShell consulting that she “realized the opportunity to develop a platform to connect executive coaches and clients.”

Langille had planned to start soliciting her network for contracts, however a number of her professional acquaintances contacted her directly even before she had the chance to reach out to them. Langille had always been good at networking, and business development came easily to her. She was careful and selective with respect to the contracts she entertained, not wanting to take on more than she was prepared to handle. Soon, she had what she felt was the right amount of work that provided her with sufficient income and the kind of work/life balance that she valued.

As SeeShell Consulting evolved, Langille added additional specialties along with job loss, including coaching professionals through various career transitions, such as advancements, changes, and retirement, and coaching organizations on how to communicate with new and parting employees and in the employment space between. She facilitated workshops on career transitions, leadership, communications, relationship management, trust, and organizational culture. She soon began acquiring a significant body of clients, which included five to ten individual clients, fluctuating depending on client needs, as well as three or four professional associations that would call on her to support their members. Completing her coaching program and receiving her International Coaching Federation (ICF) accreditation, had put her in a position to further grow and develop her coaching and consulting practice.

In reflecting upon her SeeShell Consulting startup experience, Langille explained, “I had discovered a number of important truths about myself since I started the practice and embarked on my solo career. Firstly, I discovered that there was a demand for the kind of services that SeeShell Consulting had to offer and secondly, I realized that I was highly effective at promoting and delivering these services. I also realized that there was an opportunity to build something that would help my executive coaching colleagues connect with clients beyond simply relying on their own network connections.”

Executive Coaching

Langille saw executive coaching as a professional development process designed to help executives improve their performance as leaders and managers and achieve their professional goals.  Executive coaches engaged with executive clients in confidential meetings, helping them identify their strengths and areas for growth and assisting them in aligning their goals with their organizational or leadership objectives. The executive coach’s role was not to give advice but rather to guide executives in developing their own strategies for achieving their desired professional outcomes.  Much of what Langille had read supported her view that executive coaching was effective in improving executive and leadership performance.^[4]

Langille’s enquiries informed her that executive coaches charged between $200 to $500 per hour for their services depending on their level of expertise and the levels of clientele they were dealing with.  She estimated that a reasonable number of billable hours that an executive coach could expect to book would be between eight and ten hours per week. Langille attempted to determine the number of executive coaches operating in Canada; however, this proved difficult as there was no central registry and executive coaches could operate under several other monikers such as business coach, life coach, or other variations thereof.  However, the International Coaching Federation, the largest professional coaching association, reported over 50,000 members internationally.

Langille realized that “the majority of executive coaches operated as sole practitioners, operating as small service businesses handling their own administration, marketing, and business development along with their coaching activities.” There were also a “growing number of coaches that engaged in coaching as a way to supplement the income from their full-time jobs and these coaches were likely to be constrained in the number of clients they could take on.” Organizations were also beginning to recognize the value of having employees with coaching skills, with several professional firms such as law, consulting, and accounting firms offering in-house coaches and coaching programs to support their professional employees.5

Similar to her own experiences, Langille discovered that “many executive coaches tended to specialize, searching out niche market opportunities where they had specific expertise and the ability to differentiate themselves. These niche opportunities could be industry, sector or profession focused, positioned around the level of seniority of the client, or focused on a particular set of circumstances.” SeeShell consulting specialized in mid-to-late career transitions through job loss, retirement, or career advancement specifically targeted at the military and first responder professions.

Although many of the clients seeking executive coaching services were individuals, Langille discovered that there was a “growing market for companies or professional associations wishing to procure executive coaching services for the benefit of their employees or members, respectively.”

The Role of the International Coaching Federation

The International Coaching Federation (ICF),^[5] founded as the International Coach Federation in 1995, was a global coaching community whose mandate was to provide credibility and a unified voice to an emerging body of professionally trained coaches. Upon becoming the world’s largest organization of professionally trained coaches, the ICF embarked on rebranding its services as an ecosystem reflective of the numerous aspects of the coaching industry.

The ICF was a professional body providing professional certification, continuing education and professional development for its members, advocacy for the coaching profession, maintenance of standards of professional performance and conduct, philanthropic activities, and ongoing thought leadership contributing to the growth, development, and recognition of the coaching profession.

The different aspects of ICF’s new ecosystem were categorized as follows:

• ICF Professional Coaches: the membership organization for trained professional coach practitioners.
• ICF Credentials and Standards: provided oversight and management of the credentialing of individual coach practitioners.
• ICF Coaching Education: provided oversight and management of the accreditation and approval of coaching education providers.
• ICF Foundation: the philanthropic non-profit arm of the organization.
• ICF Coaching in Organizations: tasked with expanding ICF’s scope and the range of opportunities for professional coaches into businesses and organizations that use coaching.
• ICF Thought Leadership Institute: tasked with creating, developing and influencing the future of the coaching profession by facilitating interactions between innovators, researchers, venture capitalists, technologists, journalists and influencers to construct the most comprehensive body of intellectual capital on the art and science of professional coaching.

The Opportunity

While she was one of the few participants in her RRU executive coaching program who was contemplating executive coaching as a career move and a full-time occupation, Langille discovered that many of her fellow cohort members were “looking at coaching as a tool to be adopted within their own organizations or as a way to supplement their earnings from their full-time employment by taking on coaching clients independently.” Langille was able to live off her severance package while developing her coaching and consulting practice and also had the time to devote to business development and acquiring clients. Langille explained that many of her cohort colleagues who were engaged in full-time work told her that “while they could manage the time to take on coaching clients, they felt they could not devote adequate time and resources to marketing their services and prospecting for business.”

Near the end of the RRU executive coaching program, through discussions with alumni coaches, the cohort was introduced to several online referral services or platforms that might help match coaches with clients. While several of these services existed, Langille realized that many of these platforms were “excessively broad in nature with a greater focus on ‘life coaching’ rather than on the more specific executive coaching with specializations in career, leadership, and performance areas.” Langille added that she and her classmates were “interested in executive coaching specialized professional areas rather than broader life coaching.”

Langille explained that her career transition to founder of SeeShell Consulting was accompanied by the realization of the opportunity to scale the practice by acting as a conduit to help match executive coaches to potential clients using an online platform. Already in possession of a fledgling network of executive coaches from her executive coaching program cohort who were keen to attract clients and develop their own networks of professional connections, Langille believed “SeeShell Consulting was in an opportune position to assist these individuals in procuring clients.” Most of her peer executive coaches were unable to devote sufficient time to promoting themselves as they were already engaged in full-time employment and were essentially looking for contracts to gain experience and generate additional income. Langille recognized that having access to an online platform that could promote their services could be a win-win situation for the individual executive coaches and for SeeShell Consulting.

Langille believed that the opportunity to scale her practice by implementing an online platform that supported a group of executive coaches could be “differentiated by having the selection of coaches curated by SeeShell Consulting.” This process of curation of participating service providers in a platform providing a specific skill set was attractive in that it facilitated the maintenance of quality along with measured and controlled growth.^[6] The value proposition provided clients seeking an executive coach with access to the profiles of a number of vetted and qualified coaches to choose from, who also possessed various specializations and credentials to meet different client needs. The coaches, in turn, would have a flow of contract work coming through the platform and would be able to determine their own fees.

After investigating other coaching platforms and consulting with coaches in her network, Langille determined that she could reasonably request 25 percent of a participating coach’s fee in exchange for the marketing, promotion, client introductions, and invoicing services she provided. She tested this proposed fee with some of her fellow participants in the coaching program, who found it to be acceptable. Langille would have the added benefit of being able to control the quality of the coaches working as part of the network and keep a handle on the volume of business that flowed through the website. Langille described her motivation for developing the ICC platform, “The real appeal was the opportunity to either sell the business at some time in the future or to have the ability to generate passive income as I transition gradually into retirement.”

Langille presented her ICC platform business idea to her fellow participants in the executive coaching program. She explained, “A significant number of my colleagues enthusiastically endorsed the idea, with several expressing the willingness to begin immediately!” Shortly following the ICC launch, one of Langille’s coaching colleagues secured two contracts through the ICC, and Langille began her ICC platform hosting revenue stream from the ICC startup.

The International Coach Coalition (ICC)

In 2022, Langille decided to launch the International Coach Coalition (ICC). The similarity of the name to the International Coaching Federation was no accident; the intention was to have the ICC come up on the same web searches as the ICF, creating a reputational brand “rub.”  She contracted her web developer to help her with the ICC website and populated it with the profiles of twelve of her cohort members who were eager to participate.

The launch of the ICC website occurred just as Langille was building up her roster of SeeShell Consulting clients. Langille explained that her “focus was on Seashell Consulting rather than on building ICC at this time.” As SeeShell Consulting’s client base started to stabilize, Langille began to focus on the opportunity to aggressively build up ICC. For the first time, she had just provided one of her coaching colleagues with two contracts received through ICC. The client was happy, the coach was pleased to get the work, and Langille received her first taste of passive income through the ICC site.

The ICC website was still in its early days, and Langille had chosen to promote ICC through social media posts and during conversations and presentations at conferences. Langille reflected, “I was beginning to feel that it was time to raise the profile of ICC and the talented group of coaches that its platform would make available to clients but wondered where to start.”  Langille explained that she “felt that ICC was a completely different type of opportunity than SeeShell Consulting.  With SeeShell, I was marketing and selling myself and my skills and abilities, which I was comfortable with. If SeeShell succeeded (or failed), it was entirely my responsibility and no one else’s. With ICC, I am depending on a combination of promotional activities as well as the work of the coaching team for its success. Granted, I had control over who participated as a coach on the ICC platform, which gave me some control over quality, but ICC required a lot more coordination and reliance on others to make it work.”

The Competition

Using an online platform to match clients to providers of products and/or services was becoming popular in the employment sector, with job seekers presenting themselves to prospective employers and employers seeking talent and searching for employees with specific skills or attributes. There was an increase in the use of these platforms prompted by the growing trend towards gig work and other forms of non-traditional employment both in North America and globally.^[7] This trend was further amplified during the global COVID-19 pandemic when significant portions of the workforce were either let go or decided to walk away from traditional permanent employment relationships. Gig work had become a catch-all phrase for numerous different types of non-traditional work arrangements ranging from platform-based piece work where workers log into a platform and complete several often low-level or basic online tasks and receive payment for the number of tasks completed to higher-level skilled work in coding, graphic design, law, or accounting, to more specialized (and often more traditional) contractual consulting work.^[8] Workers engage in gig work as full-time work, to supplement their full-time job or simply to make some casual income.^[9] Many of these short-term “gigs” were accessed by prospective workers on online platforms that matched temporary labour with short-term contract employers.

While an internet search revealed several online coaching directories and services that could be used by those looking for an executive coach and some that would even match coaches with clients, Langille explained that she could find “none that offered a selection of executive coaches that had been carefully curated by the platform provider to ensure quality, integrity, experience, as well as the appropriate credentials.”  She also found that “these platforms catered to a very broad audience looking for executive coaches, business coaches, life coaches, wellness coaches, and so on.”

Langille was convinced that the opportunity for her to differentiate her platform relied on offering a select range of specific executive coaching services provided by a vetted and curated group of qualified coaches to a select group of clients with specific and well-defined needs.

While Langille had found what she believed was a need in the market for online matching of executive coaches with clients, she was certain that others would soon also recognize the opportunity. This provided further impetus for her to move to action and bring her platform to market.

The ICC Business Model and Proposed Platform

The ICC used a free membership model, limited for the time being to graduates and alumni of the executive coaching program she had completed. As ICC became more established, Langille explained that she “saw the opportunity to generate revenue by moving to a paid membership model, with coaches on the platform being charged an annual fee to cover the maintenance of the website and provide resources for continued development.” Langille was committed to an “effective system for vetting of incoming coaches to ensure the quality of service would continue.” Langille estimated that she could reasonably curate and manage between 15 and 20 executive coaches on the ICC platform. Once up and running, she could consider increasing the number of coaches using the platform. Langille emphasized that “the platform would always be free to clients looking for coaching services.”

Langille believed that the key to ICC’s success would be the development of its offerings on the web-based platform. She envisioned the website as much more than just a platform for clients to find their ideal coach and coaches to attract clients. She described the website “as a one-stop shop for human resources departments who were looking for credentialed executive coaches to join their teams, workshop providers and certified practitioners in areas such as Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQi) assessment and other disciplines that help develop the leadership, culture, and staff development that enabled an organization and its employees to thrive.”

To further serve coaches and clients and to entice traffic to the ICC website, Langille planned to “add educational content that would help clients to understand the executive coaching profession, its philosophical approach, its mission, and its code of ethics.” The educational material would need to be vetted and curated for quality, relevance and fit, either by Langille or by a select committee consisting of executive coaches who were members of the platform. The material would be sourced from the participant coaches on the ICC platform and other members of the coaching community. Langille saw the website “as being another avenue for the participating coaches to be able to gain profile, promote themselves, and exhibit their expertise through their contributions to the educational material on the site.” Langille explained,

Providing useful, high-quality services and information is of the utmost importance to me. I see this service as a reflection of my personal and professional brand.

Langille had “many ideas for growing ICC” and recognized that its development was in very early stages. Langille explained that to build the ICC into an organization that she could be proud of, that would be a reflection of her personal and professional brand, and that would ultimately provide her with a source of passive income as she transitioned into retirement, would require careful planning and execution as well as an extensive and comprehensive marketing effort. Langille had just recently launched the ICC platform and facilitated the platform’s first matching of clients to coaches.

Langille explained that she was initially content to focus ICC’s marketing activities on Canada, leveraging social media and her own influence through conference participation and speaking engagements. The online nature of the ICC platform and the facility to use technology to offer coaching services remotely meant that expanding the scope of her marketing efforts could be easily scaled to an international audience in the future. She also envisioned that customer satisfaction with the service, together with a well-managed social media presence, would generate word-of-mouth recommendations, which would further raise the profile of ICC.

Langille described her concern about being able to commit the resources and time required to grow the ICC without stretching herself too thin. With a focus on social media to attract new business, she wondered how she could leverage her existing social media presence and what strategies she should implement to reach new prospective coaches and clients. Building a plan with appropriate timelines would be key to the organization’s success.

Marketing the Platform

Langille was certain that becoming first to market with her “innovative and differentiated approach would require a comprehensive marketing strategy.”  The ICC would need to attract a critical mass of highly qualified and credentialed group of executive coaches who saw the opportunity of participating in the ICC platform. In addition, the coaches and coaching services would need to be marketed to clients seeking executive coaching services, recognizing that these clients could be either individual executives or organizations seeking coaching services for their employees or members. Langille was confident that, through her professional network and her affiliation with the ICF, she could attract a sufficient number of suitable coaches.  She saw her “biggest challenge to be in defining both the target market for coaching clients and ICC’s specific services in a way that would facilitate an effective and targeted marketing campaign.”

Langille was eager to build the ICC into a viable business, but she was conscious that she only had a limited period in which to launch first before other competitors began to infringe upon her targeted niche. Where should she start?

References

Hirsch, P.B. (2021). The Great Discontent. Journal of Business Strategy, 42(6), 439–442. https://doi.org/10.1108/JBS-08-2021-0141

Kuhn, K. M., & Galloway, T. L. (2019). Expanding perspectives on gig work and gig workers. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 34(4), 186–191. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMP-05-2019-507

Nicolau, A. G., Constantin, T., van Gool, P. J. R., & Kleingeld, A. (2024). Can I improve my personal goal level through executive coaching over time? A randomized control trial study. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, 18(1), 62–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/17521882.2024.2397380

Ray, K., & Thomas, T. A. (2019). Online outsourcing and the future of work. Journal of Global Responsibility, 10(3), 226–238. https://doi.org/10.1108/JGR-10-2018-0039

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How to cite this case: Holmes, W.R. (2025). SeeShell Consulting and the International Coach Coalition: An entrepreneur’s expansion dilemma in the gig economy. Open Access Teaching Case Journal, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.58067/8bv2-ax35.

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