By Jake Mannino and Lyssa deHart
Published on August 26, 2026
We wanted to get together and talk about our why. Why did we start NEXGEN? We have a few different reasons.
When We Think We’re a Coach
Before Jake got into coaching and got actually certified, he thought he was a coach. And we hear this from a lot of people. Everyone I know comes to me for advice. “I am a born coach.” And, what most of us find out, Jake also found out, he was, in fact, just somebody that gave advice, or mentored people, or told people what to do. He went out to gain more expertise, he spent $100,000 on an MBA, and he thought that would develop his leadership skills and make him a better coach. But it wasn’t until he got into a coaching program, that he learned the competencies of what it is to become a coach. And as he was trained, and as he worked with other leaders, he found that there were such significant real-world gaps in the people who called themselves coaches and what it really takes to show up with people as a coach. That was number one.
The Competencies Weren’t Sticking
Coming out of a lot of coach training programs, mentor coaching, and the ICF credentialing exam PREP, one of the things that became very apparent to Lyssa was that people may be going to coaching training programs, but the information may be subtly baked into a lot of worksheets and trademarked teaching, and the understanding of the competencies themselves was not necessarily sticking. What she saw was people going into the ICF Credentialing exam having a lot of problems understanding the competencies or how to apply the competencies to actual coach behaviors.
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Seeing the need for a simplified training that uses the competencies cleanly. That makes it easy for coaches to see how the competencies weave together, the neuroscience of this coaching container, how that supports client agency, and helped coaches to be thought partners, seemed important.
Coaching Is a Different Kind of Business
Both of us have spent a lot of time talking to people who want to start a business. One thing we have heard was that people haven’t been getting real and useful support in building a coaching business. It’s very different from most other businesses. And, we thought, what better time than right now to integrate those experiences into a coach training program to help people actually explore how to develop their own brand, their own niche, and their own business in this industry.
That really aligns with Lyssa’s lived experience of building a coaching business. As coaches we’re not selling a tangible product, like a picture or a vase. This isn’t like having cool home goods in a store and you come in and buy it, and it’s a really clear, obvious transaction that we’re doing.
Coaching is also different from something like therapy, where insurance pays for it, people have co-pays, and the therapist has a built-in pipeline once they get on insurance panels. Also, people come to therapy because they have a significant need. Maybe their relationship is in trouble, their kid is in trouble, or they’re in trouble. Whether it’s that the person has a mental illness or they’re dealing with a lot of really hard things and they’re feeling depressed or anxious to a degree that’s greater than normal. There’s a sort of explicit pain point for somebody going to therapy, sort of like a doctor or a dentist. You don’t just go if you don’t need to go.
And coaching lives in a slightly different world, which makes it a little more difficult for us to communicate its value at times. And a lot of coaching schools really struggle with how to support the individual participants to learn how to communicate the value. We want to help with that.
Eradicating Toxic Leadership
One mission that both Jake and Lyssa share is the desire to leave the world a little better than we found it. One way is to eradicate the world of toxic leaders. We see one avenue for that to be through coaching. Helping people develop self-awareness, explore their own inner strengths, values, behaviors, and ways of being with others that lead to healthy teams, families, and individuals.
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Each of us comes with a lot of experience in being human, having taken on many different roles. For us, Jake brings a lot of experience as a business owner, as a person who has a team, and as a leader in a corporate setting. Lyssa has worked inside small business, State government, and the Military, as well as being a solopreneur for 20 years. And both of us have met, sometimes worked for some really not-so-good leaders. Through those experiences we felt that the world needed a better system for coaching leaders to become better leaders for their teams, for their employees, for their customers, and for their companies.
Our Why Keeps Evolving
Our why continues to evolve because things on the ground continue to evolve. And as we’re looking at the influx of so much AI into different professions, coaching’s going to be impacted by this. We don’t think there’s any way to say it’s not going to be impacted. So, what do coaches need to be paying attention to, in order to offer something that an AI coach cannot.
Given that we cannot control the world, it benefits each of us to consider what we personally want to focus on, so that our work stays relevant and useful.
Lyssa had a conversation with somebody who was hiring for a Fortune 25 company. And one of the things that they’re looking for, because knowledge is cheap, is people who have emotional intelligence, have the capacity to have difficult conversations, are curious, can listen, and can be challenging but also nice. People will need to develop, balance, and connect with other people to navigate the complexities of the times we find ourselves. AI has a lot of knowledge, what it doesn’t do well is support people to explore what’s in the gap between having all the tools and taking action toward their goals and dreams.
And that’s one of the things that we’re focused on in our school. It’s not just about the competencies; it’s about bridging that gap between insight and action.
· Where are you right now?
· Where do you want to go?
· What do you need to do to get there?
So, as a coach, how do you do it so that the thinker/client has buy-in? Our belief is that action comes from insight, it comes from inside of us, it requires us to investigate what’s getting in the way, in service of the dream we have to accomplish. So, how do coaches support people to look at themselves, their life, their successes and failures, and do a little Sherlock Holmes’ing, and really look at what happened, and not as though it’s a failure is forever, but for what can be learned from it, so that when we try it again, we take that wisdom and use it in a different way.
Those are really important points on why we’re creating this coaching program, so that we can support the next generation of coaches who are going to have to be navigating their own complexity, but also really supporting leaders and people in business and just people in general to navigate the complexity of the world that we live in now as well.
That Is Our Why
We are really aligned on the desire to have coaches be successful, to have a place for this profession in the world, and to have people who are capable to do the work to support human beings to be healthy, whole, and hopefully, and who feel they are purpose-driven in the work that they do. It’s crucially important to every next generation.
We’re happy that we’re jumping into this together. And we look forward to working with each of you as we navigate forward into this brave new chapter of this world we all live in. And last, but by no means least, coaching is a lot of fun.
And that is our why and if you align with this, let’s have a conversation.
By Lyssa deHart, LICSW, MCC, BCC and Jake Mannino PCC, MBA for NEXGEN Executive Coaching Academy
NEXGEN Executive Coaching Academy was founded in 2026 by Lyssa deHart (LICSW, MCC) and Jake Mannino (MBA, PCC) to address a specific gap in the professional coaching education market: the absence of programs that combine ICF-credentialed coach training with practical business-building skills.
According to the World Economic Forum, over 92 million jobs may be displaced by automation by 2030 — accelerating demand for human-centered skills like executive coaching.
NEXGEN's programs are designed specifically for accomplished working professionals who want to become credentialed ICF executive coaches and build sustainable coaching businesses — without leaving their current careers to do it.
Disclaimer: This article was originally published on LinkedIn on August 26, 2026.
