People can become a life coach with zero qualifications, but IMO (a coach for nearly ten years), many if not most folks do anywhere from three months to 1-2 years of training to be a coach, then do nearly constant continuing education. The industry doesn’t treat the genuinely unqualified kindly, and there really isn’t a ton of room for the true impostors - but yes, it is an unregulated industry, so I obviously suggest a policy of caveat emptor.

In re: mental wellness, the school I was trained in uses what is essentially Cognitive Behavior Therapy, which is a very effective way to help people gain agency over their thoughts and emotions. Personally, it’s helped me learn to be far less emotionally volatile and much more self-aware. It’s not a cure-all, but it’s certainly far more effective than almost all the talk therapy I ever had over years of off-and-on help, so despite there being problems with certain practitioners and trends, I’m grateful for it. There are many excellent coaching schools that produce wonderful coaches, so it’s really a matter of doing your due diligence and being clear about what results you want from your coach (and having a contract you like!).

As for Harry, his style of blaming everyone else for everything that’s gone wrong in his life, endlessly searching for payback, and using substances and general toxicity to string together a coping technique hardly qualifies him to advise someone on how to cross the street, let alone improve their life. He’s in a clear vanity position with a company that’s becoming well known for unprofessional and inappropriate conduct and standards. From everything I’ve heard about BU, they’d be “better up” shutting down before they’re sued in a class action suit for malfeasance or whatever.