Coaching for your inner and outer projects

Why would I hire a coach?

Hello, I’m Walter Freiberg, and today I want to talk about something I sometimes get asked:

Why would I hire a coach? Why would you hire a coach? Why would anyone do it?

I want to begin with a key distinction: the difference between coaching and therapy. And what I’ll share comes only from my personal experience, which is the only thing I can truly speak about with authority.

Coaching vs. Therapy

I grew up in Argentina, in a family where psychology and psychoanalysis were talked about from the time I was very young. I chose to go to therapy on my own at the end of my teenage years and throughout my youth. I went through psychotherapy with a Jungian therapist, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and also psychoanalysis. I even studied psychology at university for three years… and there we basically only talked about psychoanalysis.

All of that was useful to me. And later I discovered the world of personal development, which I place within the world of coaching.

I like to explain it this way: therapy is about recovering something in me that needs healing. Coaching is about discovering something new I want to create. They are different realms, each with their own timing, each with value and a rightful place.

To put it simply: therapy works on the past, coaching works on the future. In coaching we focus on the future you want to create, instead of reliving the past over and over and staying trapped in your “default future”: a version of your life that’s just more of the same, with minimal variations.

My First Coach

My first coach was named David, from England. I was 26 years old and had already been into personal development for a while, wanting to explore different areas of my life. What I was looking for was to improve my social skills and connect better with other people.

What resonated deeply with me about David was that he was passionate about learning and languages, just like me. I was surprised by the experience of having that kind of support: having another person help me move forward in something that was truly meaningful to me. That year became one of social exploration and the discovery of meditation, and the support of coaching was key to making those experiences have a long-lasting impact.

High Performance and Multiple Coaches

Over time I realized that in sports, music, or acting, the higher the level, the more coaches you have. Not because the coach is “better” than you at what you do, but because two minds see more than one, and someone from the outside can notice things you don’t.

In my case, I’ve worked with vocal coaches, accent coaches, language coaches, chess coaches, and even coaches in sports like paddle tennis. For example, around 2020 I set out to improve my English accent and pronunciation, thinking ahead to offering coaching to international clients. I worked for more than a year and a half with American accent coaches, both individually and in groups, simply to sound the way I wanted and present myself more professionally.

I also received German coaching before my first trip to Europe, to gain confidence in situations I found stressful. And there were times when I received life coaching in English or Spanish from people who weren’t native speakers, and that wasn’t a limitation at all. Even though I was the native speaker and the “expert” in the language, it didn’t matter: the value was in their perspective and questions, not their linguistic mastery.

How Coaching Helped Me in My Business

When I started out as a coach, one of my biggest challenges was my professional identity. At first I only wanted to offer language coaching, and when I began expanding into life coaching I felt there was a conflict: as if I had to leave language behind in order to fully dedicate myself to the other.

I had conversations with coaches who helped me integrate both and offer them depending on each person’s needs. What mattered most was gaining internal clarity. I remember starting a five-month group program for coaches, focused more on the business development side. Before joining I asked the facilitator (his name was Jonny) if, I being a “language coach,” qualified for that group. At that point I didn’t feel ready to declare myself a “life coach.” He said: “If you want to declare yourself a coach, you are a coach. All coaches are welcome here.” That one sentence opened up a whole world of possibilities for me.

I did many roleplays with coaches. One in particular stayed with me: practicing introducing myself to strangers as a “life coach,” without excuses or explanations. It might sound silly, but for me it was a big leap. The easy path was to say I was a “language coach,” where I felt confident and safe. The other terrified me. And that exercise gave me the confidence to do it later in real situations and start presenting myself that way. Coaching compresses time. Those conversations saved me months, even years.

When it came to limiting beliefs, there was an important one I identified in my role as a coach. It was: “I know what’s best for you, you don’t know anything.” This came from my training as a piano teacher and my passion for teaching. Coaching gave me the opportunity to trust more in the wisdom of the other person and remember that those who hire us already have all the resources they need. We only facilitate the process.

Creating the Future from the Future

A key concept in coaching is creating the future from the future. I like to explain it the way Ben Hardy does in his book Be Your Future Self Now: when we create the future from the future, we’re not limited by what we’ve done or who we’ve been in the past. We imagine what we want, we raise our floor, and by doing that we automatically raise our ceiling: what we believe is possible for us.

In 2012, I decided I would live off passive income and not depend on an “active” job. I set specific goals and took action. Years later, I made that real with my digital products for Spanish learners, the Spanish Novels. The same happened with learning languages: every time I set a fluency goal, I was clear I was going to achieve it, and I created it from there. I never thought about it based on my past experiences. In fact, that wouldn’t have encouraged me much. In elementary school, I had to take private English lessons for a while. There were times when learning a second language felt hard and overwhelming. But later I planned these learning journeys not from my past, but from my future.

I also saw the difference between a “normal” year and one designed from the future. 2015 and part of 2016 were stable work years but without much change. Then, at the end of 2016, I attended my first live personal development workshop in Las Vegas. That was a turning point: I met people far ahead of me in the areas I wanted to grow in, and I chose to be inspired by them as if they were my “future selves.” That, combined with group coaching throughout 2017 and 2018, took my online business to a whole new level.

Why Hire a Coach?

So if someone asks me today, “Why hire a coach?” I’d say: to explore the edges of what’s possible for you, to reach your true potential, and to grow faster and more sustainably.

Coaching compresses time. It gives us the chance to create things in less time and in a more sustainable way. It requires work, commitment, and action: being willing to get comfortable with discomfort… and it’s worth it.

I’ve seen clients achieve profound transformations:

• One client had studied Spanish for more than ten years but couldn’t hold a conversation because of fear and shame. After three months, she was attending weekly language exchanges, introducing herself with confidence, enjoying conversations in Spanish, and making new friends.

• Another woman, dedicated to wellness therapies and meditation, had lost touch with her spiritual practice. She was anxious, resentful of her family, and felt overwhelmed by responsibilities. After our work together, she was able to enjoy her family more, share meaningful moments, and reclaim spiritual practices that grounded her and allowed her to perform better professionally.

For me, coaching is an opportunity to create genuine, lasting happiness, based on what you truly want for your future, without being limited by your past.