10 Fears That Stop Teachers From Becoming Executive Function Coaches (And How to Overcome Each One)
- Sean G. McCormick
- May 12
- 11 min read
Fear is often loudest right before teachers make a career move that can change their life for the better.
In this post, you’ll learn the 10 most common fears that stop teachers from building an EF coaching practice and what actually helps them move forward.
Table of Contents:
If you’re a teacher who has ever thought about building an EF coaching practice, you’ve probably talked yourself out of it at least once.
Maybe more than once.
Over the past several months, I’ve had hundreds of conversations with educators considering this transition including:
special ed teachers
school psychologists
educational therapists
speech language pathologists
teaching assistants
Different backgrounds, different locations, different life situations.
But the fears that stop them? Almost identical every time.
This article names those fears directly, shares what I’ve heard real teachers say, and explains what I’ve seen work on the other side of each one.👇
Fear #1: “I’ve Never Charged a Client Directly in My Life”
This is the fear I hear most often, and it makes complete sense.
If you’ve spent your career as a salaried employee, the district has always been your client.
You showed up, you served, you received a pre-determined paycheck.
The idea of sitting across from a family and saying
“my rate is $150 per session”
can feel completely foreign...even threatening.
One school psychologist I spoke with had spent 25 years in education, was board-certified in her field, had presented at conferences, and was deeply respected in her community.
When it came to working independently, she told me she had never charged a client directly and didn’t know how to position herself as an expert or justify her rates.
This is a context problem.
You’ve been operating in a system where your value was assigned to you.
Transitioning to independent work means learning to name your own value, which is a skill, and it can be learned.
The starting point is recognizing that your rate isn’t a reflection of how much you like money.
It’s a reflection of how seriously families should take your service.
A $30/hour rate signals something very different than a $150/session rate even if the coaching itself is identical.
I'd encourage you to hear Carly's story, a graduate of the EF Coach Certification Course, who raised her rates when she realized that honoring the time, care, and expertise it takes to do this work well also meant valuing her services accordingly.👇
Fear #2: “My Area Won’t Support Those Rates”
I hear this one constantly from teachers in rural areas, small towns, and lower-income communities.
The mental model goes:
People around here pay $20/hour for tutoring, so I’d never be able to charge $100 for coaching.
One teacher I spoke with lived in rural California.
She told me locals pushed back on $60/hour tutoring, and expected $15–20.
She’d already concluded that real coaching rates weren’t realistic in her market without ever testing that assumption.
I have a colleague who runs a thriving EF coaching practice in rural Idaho.
Full roster.
$100+ per session.
Her town is smaller than yours probably is.
The difference is that she stopped comparing herself to local tutors and started serving families online.
Your market isn’t your zip code.
It’s every parent in the country who is watching their capable kid fall apart and hasn’t found anyone who can help.
That parent is not making their decision based on whether you live in their neighborhood.
Fear #3: “I Don’t Have Formal EF Coaching Credentials”
A music educator I spoke with had 28 years in her school, a master’s in curriculum and instruction, and had been supporting around 120 students academically for years.
She told me she was done with imposter syndrome, and that this felt like the right next step.
But she still asked the credential question.
An experienced EF coach with 20 years of teaching and an Orton-Gillingham certification came to me specifically because the regulatory environment in her area had shifted, and her existing Level 1 certification was no longer considered sufficient for using the word “certified.”
Here’s what I told both of them:
No certification is legally required to practice as an executive function coach in any U.S. jurisdiction. EF coaching is unregulated. Any program is a private credential, not a legal authorization.
What families are paying for is your ability to help their child build the internal systems they’re missing and your teaching background is one of the strongest foundations for that work that exists.
Credentials give you confidence.
They don’t give you the skills.
Most of those skills, you already have.
Fear #4: “I’m Not Tech-Savvy Enough”
An educational therapist with 25 years of experience and a board certification in her field described herself to me as “old school” with limited tech skills.
Her comfort zone with technology was basic Zoom calls during COVID.
The idea of running a digital coaching practice felt like a barrier she might not be able to cross.
This fear shows up in different forms:
I don’t know how to build a website
I’ve never used a scheduling tool
I don’t understand how online payments work
But the underlying concern is the same: technology will expose me as out of my depth.
Two things are true here.
First, the tools required to run a basic EF coaching practice are genuinely simpler than most people expect.
A scheduling link, a payment processor, a video call platform. That’s most of it.
Second, your students and clients are often less tech-savvy than you assume.
The framework requires you to be about 10% ahead of the person you’re coaching.
You don’t need to be a digital native. You need to be one step ahead.
Fear #5: “I Don’t Have Time to Build Something New Right Now”
A teaching assistant I spoke with had a full school day from 8am to 4pm, five kids’ activities filling her evenings, and was homeschooling her own children.
When I described the live cohort schedule, she told me an immediate start felt unrealistic.
She could see a 45-minute lunch window and some Sunday time — but building a business on top of her current life felt like one more thing on an already impossible list.
This is real.
I’m not going to pretend that building a coaching practice takes no time.
It does.
But there’s a difference between building something and launching something.
Most of the teachers who have gone through my certification program found their first paying client before they felt “ready.”
They took one step:
one outreach email
one conversation with a neuropsychologist in their network
one parent who already trusted them
and that step generated momentum the schedule couldn’t.
EFCA graduate, Sarah Zeilstra, launched her coaching practice while teaching full-time. She didn't rush it, but rather moved strategically one step at a time.
Twenty focused minutes a day, five days a week, gets most people to their first client within three months.
Fear #6: “I Don’t Know How to Get Clients”
A speech pathologist I worked with had presented EF training to over 1,200 district staff, had a network of school psychologists, child psychologists, and special education teachers across her town, and had weekly teacher inquiries about student support since her training.
She came to me thinking she needed to figure out marketing.
What she actually had was already a referral network.
She just hadn’t framed it that way.
A music educator in another conversation was worried about marketing conflicting with her current employer.
She didn’t want to be visible on social media. And she didn’t need to be.
The referral partner model — neuropsychologists, ADHD therapists, special education attorneys, independent educational consultants — doesn’t require a single social media post.
It requires one-to-one relationship building with the professionals who already serve the families you want to reach.
For more on how I found clients without using ads, watch this👇
Most teachers are sitting on a referral network they don’t recognize as one.
The fear of getting clients is usually a fear of cold outreach, and cold outreach is rarely the most effective path anyway.
Fear #7: “I Can’t Afford to Lose My Job’s Benefits and Security”
A special ed teacher in Colorado was weighing whether to sign her district contract for the following year.
The health insurance question wasn’t a factor for her since her husband’s federal employment covered the family.
But the income question was real.
She needed to replace roughly $52,000 in take-home pay.
When we mapped out the math together, she needed about 12 clients at $150/session to hit her target.
That’s a manageable client load for someone working part-time hours.
The question was whether she could build to that number before her contract decision deadline.
For teachers where benefits are a genuine concern, the answer is almost never “quit and figure it out.”
It’s build the practice while employed, get to a client load that covers your needs, then make the transition with income already in place.
The decision point isn’t today.
It’s when you have enough to make the jump with confidence.
Fear #8: “I’m Not a Business Person”
A special education teacher I spoke with was passionate about helping families, deeply skilled with challenging students, and had a clear sense of her calling.
When the conversation turned to business ownership, her comfort level dropped immediately.
She told me she preferred the model of working for someone else, finding an existing EF company to work for rather than building her own practice.
That preference is legitimate and worth examining.
But it’s often driven by fear of the unknown rather than a genuine preference for employment.
Running a small coaching practice doesn’t require being a business person in the way that phrase usually implies.
It requires being organized about a handful of things:
how you find clients
how you structure sessions
how you collect payment
and how you track progress
The teachers I’ve watched build the most successful practices weren’t the ones with business backgrounds.
They were the ones with deep commitment to the work and a willingness to learn the mechanics as they went.
The mechanics are teachable.
The commitment to the work is usually already there.
Fear #9: “I Don’t Know What I’d Actually Do in Sessions”
A college counselor who also did EF coaching on the side was one of the most honest people I’ve spoken with about this.
She had strong instincts, strong relationships with her students, and genuinely good outcomes.
She also told me directly that she was “winging it every session” — checking the planner, watching homework, rebuilding her approach from scratch every time.
Students had noticed.
Plans kept changing mid-engagement.
She couldn’t articulate her own process.
This is the fear underneath most of the other fears on this list.
When you don’t have a repeatable framework, every session carries the quiet anxiety of someone hoping they won’t be found out.
And that anxiety bleeds into every other aspect of the practice.
The fix is a session structure you can follow from the first five minutes to the last, a way to establish a baseline at the start of an engagement, and a method for tracking visible progress over time.
In my certification program, I go in depth into how to structure coaching sessions, track progress, and connect with your student. But if you want a preview of what an effective session can look like, I recently gave a webinar on this topic.👇
That shift from winging it to following a process is what makes $150/session feel justified rather than terrifying.
Fear #10: “I’ll Feel Guilty Charging Families Who Are Already Struggling”
This one runs deeper than pricing strategy.
An EF coach I spoke with had been coaching for two years, had a solid client base, and knew her rates were below market.
She told me she struggled to raise them because she was committed to helping families who couldn’t afford more.
She didn’t want coaching to be something only wealthy families could access.
That instinct is not wrong.
It comes from exactly the kind of person who becomes a great EF coach.
But sustainable generosity requires a sustainable practice.
A coach who burns out charging $40/hour helps no one.
A coach who builds a thriving practice at $150/session, and designates two sliding-scale spots for families who genuinely need them, helps far more families over a career than someone who undercharges everyone into exhaustion.
The families who need you most aren’t well-served by a coach who is depleted, resentful, and struggling to pay their own bills.
Charge what the work is worth.
Protect a few spots for the families where it matters most.
That’s a sustainable model that serves everyone.
The Bottom Line
Every fear on this list is real. None of them are permanent.
The teachers who successfully make this transition aren’t the ones who had no fear.
They’re the ones who recognized that their fear was based on a gap — in framework, in pricing mindset, in understanding of the market — and filled that gap with something concrete.
You’ve already spent years developing the skills this work requires.
The calling is there.
The question is whether you’re willing to build the practice that lets you use it on your own terms.
If you want to fill your fear gap, take the small next step of applying for certification to get a free mini coaching session with me so we can map out your steps forward together.
Hope this helps!
FAQs
Do I need to quit my teaching job before becoming an EF coach?
No. The safest path is usually to build your practice while you are still employed, then transition once you have enough clients and income to make the move confidently.
Can I charge higher rates if families in my area are used to cheap tutoring?
Yes, because your market does not have to be limited to your zip code.
Online coaching allows you to work with families who understand the value of executive function support and are willing to pay for outcomes.
What if I do not feel confident running EF coaching sessions yet?
That usually means you need a repeatable framework, not more years of experience.
Once you have a clear session structure, baseline process, and way to track progress, coaching feels much less like winging it.
I teach exactly this in the EF Coaching Certification.
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About Me
Hey! I'm Sean 👋
I'm a former public school special education teacher who realized that executive function skills are more important than knowing when George Washington crossed the Potomac.
Since then, I've made it my mission to teach anyone who will listen about how to develop these key life skills.
In 2020, I founded Executive Function Specialists to ensure all students with ADHD and Autism have access to high-quality online executive function coaching services. We offer online EF coaching and courses to help students and families.
Realizing I could only reach so many people through coaching, in 2021 I started the Executive Function Coaching Academy which trains schools, educators, and individuals to learn the key strategies to improve executive function skills for students.
In 2023, I co-founded of UpSkill Specialists, to provide neurodivergent adults with high-quality executive function coaching services.
When not pursuing my passions through work, I love spending time with my family, getting exercise, and expanding my brain through reading. You can connect with me on LinkedIn.