As of April 30th, Nudge Coach ceased all operations.  These last few weeks, we’ve had several soon-to-be refugees of another platform approach us, looking for an option to move to on the quick (this is apparently not yet public knowledge, so we’ll keep it classy and not name which one).

Wow.

So, coaching platforms can go out of business, just tell everyone “Sorry folks, show’s over.  We’re not gonna charge you anymore.  You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.”

Yeah, y’all remember the late 90’s, right?

To me this is super odd, downright foreign.  From our posture here at CoachAccountable, it is an utterly bizarre decision to close things down and tell all of your paying customers to go away, figure out something else.  To me, such a business has already done the hardest work of (1) getting the platform built, (2) finding the customer, and (3) having them still want to stick around.

Haven’t they already won?

This is of course, a naive take.  In the broader world, of course there are businesses whose operating state is some combination of the following:

• Big staff / high payroll
• High effort to support
• High effort to maintain / keep operational
• Impatient investors
• Low or negative margins

Realizing as much makes me proud of a simple but seldom-guessed fact:

CoachAccountable is a 7-figure business that can be run single-handedly.

To do it at the level of being awesome with our customers that I’m committed to, that person has to be pretty well trained.  But it doesn’t have to be me, the founder.

I share all of this not to brag (though admittedly it is a bit of a flex), but out of sympathy for enterprise buyers, whom we’ve seen a rash of, lately.  (And indeed parties of all sizes, who are looking to find a platform that they can depend on for running their coaching business.)  Because even though I’m tempted to look at someone sideways when they ask questions probing the long-term viability of CoachAccountable (or even roll my eyes: to be fair, they don’t know what I know about the waters we swim in here), they’re trying to make a big decision that will shape so much of the trajectory of their business for the years to come.

So I get and honor the thoughtful care that those questions come from.  And I wish everyone success (and luck!) in choosing the right platform, because it can’t be fun to get the notice that operations will be shutting down and you’ve got X months (or days) to pack it all up and find something else.

For our sake, CoachAccountable has cockroach-like staying power.  It’ll keep on running for so long as anyone is depending on it.