What Coaches/Mentors Can Learn from Calling Bullshit
Reggie Okafor had used the same testimonial slide for years in his coaching sales calls, a chart showing clients hitting their goals faster after working with him, built from a handful of his best success stories. A prospective client asked, politely but directly, how many people the chart actually represented and whether anyone had not improved. Reggie felt his stomach tighten, because he genuinely believed in his coaching, but realized he had never actually counted how many clients the slide left out. That night he pulled his full client list and found the real picture was still good, just less dramatic. He rebuilt the material honestly, expecting fewer sign-ups. Instead, clients who joined after seeing the honest version trusted him faster, because the number matched what they eventually experienced.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Naming the real sample behind a success story
Reggie's testimonial slide is a textbook version of a self-selected sample: showing only the clients who succeeded loudly, while the quieter or unsuccessful ones simply disappear from the story. The habit worth building is naming, honestly, how many people are actually represented by any success claim and how they were chosen.
Small coaching practices genuinely have few clients to draw from, so demanding a large formal sample before saying anything can silence honest, if limited, results. Practice: before using any testimonial or success number, write down how many total clients that number is drawn from.
Before using any testimonial or success number, write down how many total clients that number is drawn from.
Building a results chart clients can actually trust
A chart showing only the fastest improvers, with no indication of the full range of outcomes, invites a viewer to assume everyone gets those results. Reggie's decision to show the honest range, including slower cases, gave prospective clients an accurate basis for deciding whether coaching was right for them.
A small number of extreme outliers can distort even an honest range, so context about what is typical matters as much as showing the full spread. Practice: alongside any highlighted success story, show or describe what a typical, more ordinary result actually looks like.
Alongside any highlighted success story, show or describe what a typical, more ordinary result actually looks like.
Separating your coaching from everything else that changed
When a client improves after starting coaching, it is tempting to credit the coaching entirely, ignoring their own effort, other life changes, or simple timing. A claim about coaching's effect is more honest when it names what else might explain the same improvement, rather than claiming sole credit by default.
Coaching relationships are personal and hard to isolate from a client's whole life, so some causal claims will remain a shared, honest guess. Practice: when describing a client's success, name one other factor in their life that also likely contributed.
When describing a client's success, name one other factor in their life that also likely contributed.
Modeling honest doubt as part of the coaching relationship
A coach who can admit uncertainty about their own numbers teaches clients something valuable beyond any specific technique: that questioning a claim, even a flattering one, is a form of respect rather than an attack. Reggie's willingness to rebuild his own sales material honestly signaled to every future client that his coaching would hold up under the same scrutiny he now applied to himself.
The sharpest tension for coaches is between the confident, inspiring framing that motivates clients to commit and the honest accounting of results that protects them from disappointment later. Reggie's approach was keeping his motivational language for the coaching relationship itself, while holding his marketing claims to a stricter, checkable standard, since a prospective client evaluating whether to sign up needs different information than a client already mid-journey needs to stay motivated.
Name one thing, honestly
- How many clients actually stand behind the success story you tell most often? - What would a prospective client think if they saw your full, unfiltered results rather than your best ones? - Where in your coaching practice have you let inspiration substitute for an honest number?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
When describing a client's success, name one other factor in their life that also likely contributed.