The Ugly Side of Coaching

My True Hollywood Story as a Life Coach in LA & How to Avoid the Craziness that Ensues Working with Volatile People

Tristan S. Montoya
8 min readMar 4, 2024
Photo by Cedric Letsch on Unsplash

I once coached a schizophrenic Hollywood director who didn’t reveal his condition to me until we were 3-months into our work together.

This is my True Hollywood Story complete with warnings about how to avoid a harrowing experience like this one.

The first 3 months of our coaching relationship had gone splendidly. My client, who we’ll call “Steve” was beaming about his recent successes and ready to re-up for the next 3-month coaching contract. He was singing my praises and referring me to his colleagues without even asking.

I was a recent transplant to Los Angeles and just getting my coaching practice started. Steve had worked for a very well-known talk-show personality in LA for about a decade. After many monotonous years, he grew tired of his day-to-day duties producing the show and craved new experiences and creative challenges. He wanted to double his income with a new opportunity in his industry, and in his mind that meant leaving the show and his stable job.

I’ll never forget the day he texted me from a very famous movie star’s compound in Hawaii saying he’d been flown out there to close a deal to…

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Tristan S. Montoya

I help people stuck in the mind get into their hearts and experience the freedom of being self-expressed https://linktr.ee/t_montoya