The contractor model.
Most firms engage coaches as 1099 contractors, capped at a handful of clients, told to keep other income streams, structurally prevented from ever being all-in. You spent a career as a principal. They're offering you a gig.
For former CEOs, by invitation
CEO Coaching International invites a small number of exited CEOs each year to coach the fastest-growing chief executives in the world, as partners in the firm, not contractors. It's an elite roster with room for the right players.
Of the candidates who begin the process, roughly 1 in 10 will ultimately graduate as a coach. New cohorts are announced periodically; qualified candidates join a private waitlist.
CEOs and senior leaders coached
In combined client exit value
Countries
Industries served
The question every exited CEO eventually asks
You did the thing almost nobody does. You ran a real company, real payroll, real complexity, real stakes, and you built it into an outcome. Then you signed the papers, and the calendar went quiet.
You tried the version of retirement everyone recommends. It lasted about two months. You don't want the remote control, and you don't want another tour of duty as a CEO. You want your judgment, the thing you spent decades sharpening, to keep compounding in the lives of people who are where you once were.
The obvious answer is coaching. The obvious versions of it are built for someone else.
The three models we did not build
Most firms engage coaches as 1099 contractors, capped at a handful of clients, told to keep other income streams, structurally prevented from ever being all-in. You spent a career as a principal. They're offering you a gig.
Others hand you a title and a logo, then expect you to hunt your own clients. You didn't exit an eight-figure company for a sales job with a coaching title.
Weekend certifications and life-coaching frameworks, built for people who have never sat in the seat. Your clients would know the difference in the first ten minutes. So would you.
A different structure entirely
We are the only coaching firm we know of where every coach is a K-1 partner to the firm.
01
You join as a K-1 partner, exclusive to the firm, invested in it, aligned with it. Not a contractor with a cap on your ambition.
02
You are expected to bring zero clients and zero leads. The firm's engine generates 100% of your client flow. Your job is to be excellent in the room.
03
Take as many clients as your life allows, or as few. Coaches build practices around their lives, and the work is virtual, aside from planning sessions and time with clients where it matters.
04
The entire training and development program is provided at no cost to you. You invest effort. The firm invests everything else.
Who qualifies
Before any conversation begins, four things must be true.
Chief executive of a serious company for seven to ten years or more. Not adjacent to the seat, in it.
Eight figures or more in revenue. Enough size that you managed genuine complexity: leadership teams, capital, boards, consequence.
You built the company into something and converted it into an outcome, a sale, a monetization, an exit. A demonstrated ability to create value, not just occupy a title.
The first three are binary. This one is where most accomplished people fail. The coaches who thrive here are the ones still hungry to be coached themselves.
If all four describe you, keep reading. If they do not, this particular seat is not the right one, and that's a fair outcome. Finding out now is better than later.
The process, in the open
Accomplished former CEOs enter conversations
Advance to interviews with the firm's leadership
Are invited into a cohort
Graduate as coaches
We would rather run small cohorts and excuse strong candidates than put anyone in front of a CEO before they've earned the room. The people coaching our clients are the ones who survived this process, and the process is the point.
The making of a coach
"World-class" is a claim. Here is what it actually costs to make one.
Stage 01
Ten weeks, every week, in structured sessions with the firm's head of coach training. A methodology refined across engagements with 3,500+ CEOs and senior leaders, not a binder, a discipline.
Stage 02
A structured learning platform of coursework, video, and required reading between sessions. Candidates routinely invest 20 to 30 hours a week. This is a job before it is a job.
Stage 03
Twenty live coaching sessions with working coaches, and not on mute. Coaches pull candidates into the conversation in real time, in front of real clients.
Stage 04
Six in-person planning sessions, watching veteran coaches lead a management team through strategy, budgets, and alignment from the front of the room, the room you will one day run.
Stage 05
Graduation is the beginning. Every new coach is mentored weekly for a full year by one of the firm's senior coaches, through your first client, first planning session, first crisis, against a defined framework of the essential skills of a coach.
Total investment: roughly a year of your life. Total cost to you: nothing but the effort.
What a coach's life looks like
New coaches have typically built practices of roughly ten CEO clients within their first year, with every client sourced by the firm.
Ongoing coaches' meetings, weekly skills development, continuous education, and a bench of strategic partners. The sharpening never stops, for anyone.
Cohorts form tight bonds that last years. Every coach here has a handful of fellow coaches on speed dial, people who have run companies, who answer the phone, and who have seen your exact problem before.
Questions
Cohorts are announced periodically and are intentionally infrequent. We are not currently onboarding. Qualified candidates who request consideration join a private waitlist and are contacted directly when a cohort opens.
Nothing. The firm funds the entire program. Your investment is time and effort, and it is substantial.
Expect 20–30 hours per week across the ten-week core program, plus in-person planning sessions, followed by a year of weekly mentorship alongside your growing practice.
No. The firm generates 100% of client flow. We assume you arrive with none.
No. Coaches are exclusive K-1 partners to the firm. That exclusivity is precisely why the model works.
Partner economics are discussed candidly during the consideration process.
Tell us who you are and what you built. If the fit is real, you will hear from us directly.
Submissions are reviewed by the firm’s leadership, not a recruiting team. Discretion guaranteed.
NEWSLETTER
A free weekly newsletter for growth-focused CEOs, strategy, exits, and what's actually working.
Unsubscribe anytime. We never share your email.
Request a session
Tell us where to reach you and when, we’ll route you to the right coach.
By submitting you agree to be contacted by CEO Coaching International. No spam. Confidential.