AI versus Marshy - Coaching versus AI Coaching

I’ve been thinking a lot about the value of journaling and how it’s helped me over the years. As someone who’s been writing and braindumping since I was 17, I’ve always found it to be a powerful tool for gathering my thoughts and clarifying my mental health. But with the rise of AI, I’ve started to wonder if there’s a new way to interact with our thoughts and share them with others. Let’s dive into the world of AI coaching and see what it’s all about. I have blogged and braindumped since I was 17. I have digital copies of things from that time, self-published a memoir at 29 (?!), have a steady and consistent “back catalogue” of braindumps from the last 10 years, and there’s not much time that goes by where I’m not clariying my thoughts repeatedly with writing. I’ve always got value from this process. It helps me think, it’s a powerful tool for gathering my thoughts, and there’s no question its assisted my mental health. I was fascinated by the early note-taking tools like Evernote, impressed by the term “ pensieve ” in Harry Potter, and went deep on Tiago Forte’s Second Brain method for creating “systems” for capturing thought and helping me think better. Like a magic wand but techy But I promised weird. So then AI started coming and I thought to myself - there’s something in this . One of the “early” movers in this space was Delphi - the idea being that there’s enough people out there with large online footprints (public or private) that want a way to interact with their thoughts (or share) them with others with what’s capable with AI. I’d been obsessed with this idea - so to grab the founders attention I sent a big pledge through his Substack, got a call with him, and hashed out the idea: ​ For the record I got in before Sequoia They weren’t ready to absorb something like that at the time. Dara was (quite correctly) targeting influencers. They’re doing okay - and raised a Series A with Sequoia recently . You could think of this as a form of “self-coaching”. There’s also another product out with a similar style but focused on outcomes/outputs (and sounds a lot like coaching marketing - which is a terrible vortex to get stuck in I will add). It’s called CoachVox.ai and here’s an influencer pimping it . Post was defnitely AI-generated too. I feel like this kind of use of AI is more “personal trainer-esque” than the kind of coaching I respond to. I was heartened by some of the comments too: Maria the Master Coach chimed in with a great take: This post is gaining a lot of traction—and that’s exactly why I feel compelled to offer a pause for reflection. I’m also surprised to see how many credentialed coaches have liked it. That tells me this conversation is not just timely, but necessary. As an ICF Master Certified Coach, I believe in integrating innovation, including AI, when it serves our clients. But I also believe in preserving the essence of professional coaching: a co-created process that respects client agency, complexity, and timing. Simon also articulated a heuristic that we need to be really aware of when engaging LLMs with personalised content: AI tells you what you want to hear mixed with what is culturally normal. It’ll get it right most of the time until it doesn’t. Like the guy going cold turkey that AI recommends taking just one hit to feel better. It absolutely does tell you what you want to hear and is engineered to be appealing. That’s not rational, dispassionate thinking (which is just as important for our fallible brains) and if we’re not critically thinking about this it’s a slippery slope. For another way to go about these lines of thinking I suggest watching this video on the “master prompt” method that Tiago talks about with Hayden Miyamato. Who thought looking at a video of how to use text could be interesting? This is clearly a growing area, and I have benefited immensely from working with my own human business coach. The last video I wanted to share on this is a bit cringe I Replaced My $700/Hour Coach with NotebookLM – Here’s What Happened . Bold statement + Surprise next statement = Hook But I loved the take and distinction between human and AI coaches near the end: What it’s n Originally appeared in newsletter : AI versus Marshy 64 - open versus closed, AI coaching, and webinar debut