You hired a business coach when the revenue stalled. You might have hired a trainer when your back started talking to you. But when the pressure of running an agency started showing up at the dinner table, who did you call? On Unscripted Small Business, relationship coach Anil Gupta put it plainly: “A lot of people want to earn more money, so they get a business coach.” Almost nobody does the same for the relationships that hold the whole thing up.
This list covers eight coaches for founders and agency owners, sorted by what’s actually breaking: the business, your head, or your relationships. Every one of them has been a guest on an Unscripted podcast, so each entry links the interview where you can hear how they think before you ever book a call.
Match the coach to what’s breaking first
The fastest way to waste a quarter is hiring the right coach for the wrong problem. Before you look at anyone below, figure out which of these sounds most like your week:
- The numbers are the problem. Leads leak, pricing is too low, you’re the bottleneck on every decision. You want a business coach.
- The numbers are fine and you still feel off. You hit the goal and went looking for the next one inside a week. You want a mindset coach.
- Work is leaking into home, or home into work. Short fuse with your partner, guilt with the kids, a cofounder you’ve stopped talking to. You want a relationship coach.
Most founders under pressure have some of all three. Start with the one that’s costing you the most sleep.
The relationship coach founders forget to hire
1. Anil Gupta, The Love Doctor
Best for: founders whose stress is spilling into their marriage, their parenting or their own head.
Anil Gupta is a relationship coach who goes by The Love Doctor. His site, meetanil.com, describes nearly three decades in love coaching, and his about page says he has run relationship and mindset workshops in over 18 countries, translated into 8 languages, for audiences of over 10,000. He’s also the author of Immediate Happiness, which carries an endorsement from Jack Canfield of Chicken Soup for the Soul.
His coaching covers three areas: you as a couple, you as a parent, and you with yourself. That last one is the one founders skip.
When he came on Unscripted Small Business, he walked through what he calls the right shoulder rule. If someone asked you to rip off your right shoulder and hand it over, you’d refuse. “What if you had the same rule for your happiness? Under no circumstances will I give my happiness away. But we readily do.” For an agency owner, that’s the client who sends a snippy email at 9 p.m. and takes your whole evening with it.
His other idea that carries straight into business is “Languaging is everything.” The labels you put on a bad week shape how you react to the next one. That idea gets its own write-up in customers are meaning-making machines, because it applies just as much to how you talk to clients.
Working with him: his call page says he isn’t taking new one-on-one coaching clients right now, but you can leave your details and he’ll prioritize you when an opening frees up. So ask about a call rather than expecting a slot this week, and watch the full interview on YouTube while you wait.
Business coaches for the sales and systems side
These five work on the business itself: how you sell, how you price, and how you get yourself out of the way.
2. Mitchell Wilson, Coachbirds
Best for: owners of trades, professional and local service businesses.
Coachbirds offers one-on-one business coaching for tradies, professionals and local service business owners across Australia and New Zealand, built around Simple Sales, Smart Systems and Savvy Strategy. You can start with a free Breakthrough Session if you qualify. His interview, more leads won’t fix a leaky sales process, is the one to hear if you keep buying traffic to cover a follow-up problem.
3. Neil Thubron, executive mentor and coach
Best for: founders who now lead a sales team and need to sell on value instead of price.
Neil Thubron offers executive mentoring and coaching, value sales training and strategic growth workshops. His site lists 120+ leaders coached and 25 years in corporate leadership, and he draws on a background as a business owner, a senior sales executive at a large US company and an endurance athlete. Hear his take in logos, pathos, ethos: three kinds of value.
4. Alan Lazaros, Next Level University
Best for: founders scaling a team who want a coach and a community.
Alan Lazaros is CEO and co-founder of Next Level University with Kevin Palmieri. Their one-on-one consulting is pitched at everyone “From new business owners looking to get started on the right foot, to established CEO’s,” and there’s group coaching and free monthly meetups if you’re not ready for one-on-one. His episode on delete, delegate, double down is about what changes when the team grows.
5. Ann Carden, Expert In You
Best for: consultants and agency owners who are undercharging.
Ann Carden is founder and CEO of Expert In You and works as a strategic growth advisor for consultants and expert-led firms, which describes most small agencies. Her interview asks the uncomfortable question in the title: are you going low when you should be going high?
6. Louis Swart, Iron Brij
Best for: owners who’ve become the bottleneck in their own business.
Louis Swart coaches business owners on positioning and sales, and his book The B Myth is about “How Successful People Accidentally Build Businesses That Steal Their Lives.” He offers a free consultation. Start with the $100/hour rule that ends $10 busywork — if you’re still doing your own invoicing at midnight, that one’s for you.
Mindset coaches for founders who are winning and still uneasy
7. Colby Wegter
Best for: agency founders who hit the number and wonder what it was for.
Colby Wegter exited his multi-7-figure digital marketing agency in 2024 after serving 1,200+ clients in his marketing career. His site is unusually honest about who he’s not for: “If you want someone to help you go faster at what you’re already doing, hire a good coach.” His work is for “The founder past a million who quietly wonders what the next million is for.” He takes a handful of ongoing clients a year, starting with a single refundable session. His interview on why most freelancers fail at scaling breaks it into money, time, energy and identity.
8. Dr. Julika Novkova, Juls’ Psychology
Best for: founders who want the psychology behind their decisions, not pep talks.
Dr. Julika Novkova runs Juls’ Psychology, a business psychology consultancy with a Peak Performance for Founders & Leaders service alongside team and operations work. Her episode, the human side of small business, is about debugging your mindset and why rigidity kills creativity.
Choosing a coach for founders and agency owners: questions to ask first
Listen to the interview before the sales call. You’ll learn more from 30 minutes of someone thinking out loud than from any testimonial page. Then ask yourself a few things:
- Is the thing keeping you up at night a pipeline problem, a meaning problem, or a people-at-home problem?
- Does this coach work with businesses your size, or with the founder you were three years ago?
- Would you take their advice if a friend gave it to you for free?
And if every honest answer points at home rather than the P&L, you already know which entry on this list to start with.