If you had told us back in 2019 that we’d be running a coach certification program, developing curricula for medical institutions, and building tools to help people change their lives from the inside out…well, we would have choked on our diet cokes.
Not because we didn’t believe in the work. We believed in it deeply. We just had no idea how we were going to pull it off.
Here’s the honest version of how The Coach Firm came to be.
We got certified. And then we got stuck.
Jennifer and I both went through a coaching certification program around the same time. We were excited, we were motivated, and we were ready to change lives. We paid a significant amount of money, we did the work, and we walked away certified.
It was frustrating that we had spent so much money getting certified and still felt lacking–our clients deserved better.
The program we went through taught us one powerful tool. And it was genuinely valuable. But one tool does not a coaching practice make. We had no curriculum, no roadmap, no structured way to take a client from where they were to where they wanted to go. We were just supposed to show up, ask what they wanted to work on, and figure it out from there.
After certifying, Jennifer and I went our separate ways. Life moved on, and honestly, staying in touch just hadn’t happened.
I (Sarah) went to work as a corporate coach while Jennifer tried her hand at coaching teens. We had both been out there trying to make something work with incomplete tools and we both wanted to be able to offer our clients more.
A serendipitous conversation that changed everything.
As bizarre as this might sound, one night out of nowhere, I had a dream that I should call Jennifer Markoff. I woke up thinking it was a little strange — I didn’t even have her phone number.
That same day, I sat down with my website developer. Somewhere in the conversation she mentioned that an old friend of mine had reached out to her about building a website. She said her name was “Jennifer M-something.”
I stopped her. “Jennifer Markoff?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“That is so crazy,” I told her. “I had a dream last night that I should call her.”
She didn’t miss a beat. “You totally should.”
“I don’t have her number.”
She gave it to me. Now what?
I had to decide if I was one of “those people” that reached out out of nowhere. It had been almost two years, and a random text out of the blue felt a bit strange. I don’t remember what I said, but I was definitely not prepared for what happened next. That simple reaching out turned into daily long Marco Polos and an unexpected friendship of a lifetime began. [Will someone please pass me a tissue.]
Our conversations didn’t stay surface level for long. We started going deeper about our family life, career paths, the coaching industry, where we’d each landed after certification, what was working, what was frustrating us and honestly our dreams of making a difference. And somewhere in that conversation, we realized we were on the same page about a lot of things. We both had ideas. Good ones. And it was hard to ignore that maybe we were put together for a reason.
Within a few months we decided to become partners. We had no idea what that was going to look like. We just knew that what we had built independently wasn’t enough and that together we might be able to build something that was.
It turned out to be the best decision of our lives. We haven’t looked back since.
We started with our own clients.
At that point, we weren’t trying to create a certification program. We were just trying to be really good coaches. So we started developing a curriculum for our own one on one coaching practices — a structured, session by session framework that would ensure every client got exactly what they needed, in the right order, without anything falling through the cracks.
And it worked. Really well.
Our clients started describing their experiences as nothing short of life changing. Not because we were doing anything magical but because we had created something that addressed the whole person. The way they thought. The way they processed emotions. The stories they were telling themselves that were quietly running their lives. The gap between who they were and who they wanted to become.
We had accidentally built something really good. And we were over the moon.
We tried to sell it to other coaches first.
Our first instinct was to share what we had built with other coaches. We thought that if we had needed this, surely other coaches did too. So we started reaching out, showing coaches what we had created, and offering to sell them our curriculum.
Nobody was interested. Shots to the heart.
And honestly we get it now. Coaches who have already spent thousands of dollars getting certified don’t want to hear that they might be missing something. It stings a little. We know because we lived it ourselves.
So we pivoted. Instead of selling our curriculum to other coaches, we decided to certify our own. And The Coach Firm as people know it today was born.
What we set out to fix.
When we sat down to design our certification program we made a list of everything we felt was missing from the training we had received and from other programs we had studied. It was a long list.
Most programs teach you information. We wanted to teach practical application.
Most programs are digital. We believe in the science of old school pen to paper approaches and created hard-copy workbooks.
Most programs leave you to create your own coaching framework. We wanted to hand coaches a complete, scripted, professionally designed curriculum they could use from day one.
Most programs teach you what to say. We wanted to teach coaches how to show up with compassion, curiosity, and genuine human connection because that’s where real change actually happens.
Most programs don’t know you by name. At The Coach Firm, we believe firmly in no one falling through the cracks and everyone has a dedicated mentor from start to finish.
And most programs certify you and send you on your way. We wanted to walk alongside our coaches from the moment they enrolled to the moment they certified and beyond.
That’s what we built. And we are genuinely proud of it.
Where we are now.
Nearly a decade later The Coach Firm has certified coaches across the country including medical professionals, physicians, nurses, parents, and everyday people who simply felt called to help others and needed the right framework to make it real.
We have taken entire institutional cohorts through our program. We have watched people transform not just as coaches but as human beings because that’s what happens when you take yourself through this curriculum. You don’t just learn how to coach others. You become a living example of the work.
And now we’re expanding.
Because the truth is the skills we teach in our certification program — emotional resilience, self awareness, intentional thinking, the ability to understand yourself and create your life on purpose — aren’t just coaching skills. They’re human skills. And not enough people have them.
After creating a successful certification program, our greatest desire is still getting this information into the hands of as many people as possible to alleviate suffering. Because the truth is, not everyone wants to be a life coach, but everyone wants to feel better.
That’s why we created the Coach Yourself podcast. That’s why we’re building programs like Becoming. And that’s why we show up every single day committed to the belief that when people truly learn to understand themselves, everything changes.
We built The Coach Firm because we needed it ourselves.
And we’ve spent the last several years making sure you don’t have to start from scratch the way we did.
Welcome. We’re glad you’re here.
Sarah and Jennifer
