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CEO Coaching

What would you attempt with a coach who's already run your play?

CEO coaching at CEO Coaching International is one-to-one coaching with a former CEO who has carried a number at your scale. The cadence is two ninety-minute sessions a month, built around one written plan and one scoreboard, with the coach reachable between sessions for decisions that cannot wait.
For CEOs running $5M to $1B+ companies who are the reason the business is growing and, on the hard days, the reason it isn't.
One-to-one coaching with a former CEO who has carried your number, in a monthly cadence built around one plan, one scoreboard, and the two or three moves that actually change the year.
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3,500+
CEOs Coached
CEOs and senior leaders coached, combined all-time client figures, 2008-2025
How we measure this
22.8%/yr
Avg. Revenue Growth
average annual revenue growth, clients engaged 2+ years, 2008-2025
How we measure this
37.5%/yr
Avg. EBITDA Growth
average annual EBITDA growth, clients engaged 2+ years, 2008-2025
How we measure this
Victra
2.4x EBITDA. 26 months.
A retail operator rebuilt its store economics and went from cash-tight to the largest independent Verizon retailer in the country.
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The Engagement

What an engagement actually looks like

The cadence

How often we meet

  • Two scheduled sessions a month, 90 minutes each, on your calendar for the year.
  • Between sessions your coach is reachable by phone and text for the calls that cannot wait two weeks.
  • One annual planning day and one mid-year reset, run by your coach with your leadership team in the room.
The session

What 90 minutes looks like

  • Open on the number. What moved, what did not, what you decided since last time.
  • Work the one issue that is costing the most, usually a person, a price, or a plan nobody owns.
  • Close with commitments that have a name and a date. Those get reviewed first next session.
The match

How you get your coach

  • A 30-minute session with our team to get the real picture, not the pitch version.
  • We shortlist two coaches who have operated at your scale and in your kind of complexity.
  • You meet both, you pick. If the chemistry is wrong in the first 90 days, we rematch you.
Month one

What happens first

  • Week one: a full read of the business, the plan, the numbers, and the leadership team.
  • Week two: agreement on the single number that defines the year and the three constraints in the way.
  • Weeks three and four: a one-page plan, owners against each priority, and the first hard conversation you have been postponing.
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Your Bench

Coaches who have run this play

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Mary Naylor

Mary Naylor

Senior Coach
Two-time successful founder, CEO, and board member with 30 years of go-to-market and growth leadership.
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Sheldon Harris CEO Coaching International coach

Sheldon Harris

Partner · Executive Leadership Team
Multi-unit operator, franchise builder, and partner on the CEO Coaching International executive leadership team.
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Edward Hughes

Edward Hughes

Senior Partner
Two-time CEO with 30+ years across chemicals, advanced materials, and consumer products, and 12+ M&A transactions worth $2B+.
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Lisa Tanzer

Lisa Tanzer

Senior Coach
30+ years as a brand-building CEO and CMO at Gillette, Staples, Hasbro, Life is Good, and Katie Couric Media Marketplace.
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The Definition

CEO coaching is not executive coaching with a bigger title

Most executive coaching is built for leaders who report to someone. It works on communication, presence, influence, and the behaviours that get a strong VP promoted. That is useful work, and it is not this. CEO coaching starts one level up: you are the last stop. Nobody above you catches the decision you get wrong, and nobody in the building can tell you the truth without calculating what it costs them.
So the agenda changes. A CEO coach works the things only you can move: the number the year hangs on, the two or three constraints holding it back, the executive you have known for six months is not going to make it, the pricing decision you keep deferring, the capital structure that decides whether the next acquisition is possible. Behaviour still comes up, but it comes up because it is costing you revenue, margin, or a person you cannot afford to lose.
The second difference is who is in the chair. Business coaching for CEOs is a crowded category, and much of it is delivered by people who have studied companies rather than run them. Every coach here is a former CEO, president, or founder who carried a number at scale and lived with the consequences. That is not a credential we put on a page for decoration. It is the reason the conversation gets to the real issue in the first fifteen minutes instead of the third month.
The Format

One-on-one, because the hardest questions are not group questions

This is one-on-one CEO coaching. A single coach, assigned to you, who learns your business well enough to argue with you about it. They know your plan, your scoreboard, your leadership team by name, and the commitments you made when the quarter was still theoretical. Two scheduled sessions a month, ninety minutes each, plus the calls between sessions that cannot wait two weeks.
Peer groups and forums sit alongside this, not in place of it. A room of twelve gives you twelve opinions and no accountability once the day ends. A coach gives you one operator with no stake in the outcome besides your results, and a standing appointment where the first item is what you said you would do last time. CEOs who have run both usually describe the difference the same way: the room was interesting, the coach changed the year.
The engagement also reaches past you when it should. Your coach runs one annual planning day and one mid-year reset with your leadership team in the room, so the plan you built privately becomes the plan the company is actually operating. When a functional gap shows up, we bring in the coach who has solved that specific problem, whether it is a sales engine that stalls at $40M or an EBITDA story that will not survive diligence.
Who It Works For

The profile that gets the most out of this

The work fits CEOs running companies between $5M and $1B+ in revenue who intend to grow materially rather than hold steady. Founders who have outgrown the way they built the business. PE-backed CEOs on a clock, with a board that wants the plan defended quarterly. Second-generation and family-business CEOs scaling past the founder's shadow. Public-company executives balancing investor expectation against what the operation can actually absorb.
It does not fit everyone. If you want validation, a peer group is cheaper and kinder. If the company is in genuine distress, you need a restructuring firm before you need a coach. And if you are unwilling to be told, in plain language, that the person you hired two years ago is the reason your growth flattened, the engagement will frustrate both of us. Coaching is by application for exactly that reason.
What It Costs

What CEO coaching costs

CEO coaching cost is one of the first things buyers search, and the honest answer is that it depends on what the engagement actually covers. Here is how it is set.
How it is priced
By scope
Annual engagement, billed monthly against an agreed scope. There is no rate card, and there is no list price we discount off.
What moves the number
Scope
Session cadence, whether your leadership team is included in planning days, and whether specialist coaches are brought in for functional work.
What is included
No add-ons
Two 90-minute sessions a month, access between sessions, an annual planning day, and a mid-year reset. Travel for on-site days is the only separate line.
Engagement pricing depends on scope and cadence. We share exact pricing in the fit conversation, before you commit to anything. We quote once we understand the business, because pricing a small operator and a large one off the same page would be dishonest to both.
The test we hold ourselves to is straightforward: the engagement should be the least expensive line item that measurably moved your enterprise value this year. Clients who stay past year two are typically comparing the engagement against a growth rate roughly double the U.S. average, not against last year's coaching budget.
Straight Answers

The objections, answered

A board judges outcomes and a team depends on your decisions, so neither is a safe place to be uncertain out loud. A CEO coach who has run a company at your scale is the one person in the week with no agenda in the outcome, no career riding on your mood, and no reason to soften the answer.

Sessions run ninety minutes, twice a month. They open on the scoreboard: what was committed, what landed, what slipped and why. The rest goes to the two or three decisions that will shape the quarter, whether that is a pricing move, a hire, an acquisition, or a conversation with an investor you have been avoiding.

A consultant is hired to produce an answer and then leaves. A CEO coach builds your capacity to reach the answer and stays to hold you to executing it. Consultants deliver a deck; CEO Coaching International coaches carry the same weekly cadence with you for years, and are measured on your revenue and EBITDA, not on deliverables.

The first ninety days produce clarity rather than compounding: one written plan, a scoreboard the team actually reads, and the removal of whatever has been quietly blocking growth. Financial results follow the execution cadence. Across clients engaged two or more years, average annual revenue growth has run at 22.8%/yr, roughly 2x the U.S. average.

That is when coaching returns the most. A CEO in trouble is buying triage, while a CEO who is already winning is buying the next order of magnitude, which is a harder and more valuable problem. The engagements that produce the largest outcomes almost always start from strength, not from crisis.

Coach matching is built on operating history first. CEO Coaching International coaches are former CEOs, founders, and presidents who have run companies through the revenue band you are in now, across 160+ industries. You are matched on the shape of the problem and the scale of the business, not on who has availability that month.

Yes, and it is a large share of the practice. PE-backed CEOs carry a board with a clock attached, an explicit value creation plan, and a hold period that ends in a transaction. Coaches who have themselves run sponsor-backed companies work on that specific pressure, including the reporting relationship with the sponsor.

You say so and it changes. A mis-matched coach is re-matched at no cost, and if the engagement is not producing value, CEO Coaching International would rather end it than renew it. Engagements are annual precisely so there is a scheduled, honest decision point rather than an indefinite retainer nobody revisits.

The year is already decided by what you do in the next 90 days.

Apply, and we will put you in front of two coaches who have carried your number before.
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