Online business coaching to fast-track team growth and results

Skill shortages. Shifting priorities. A work landscape that’s evolving faster than your quarterly targets. Post-pandemic business isn’t just challenging—it’s complex. From AI to hybrid work dynamics to keeping your top performers engaged, the pressure on today’s leaders is relentless.

Once upon a time, you’d turn to a coach, mentor, board member, or late-night coffee with a trusted peer. But now? You’ve got something better. Online business coaching has redefined access to development support—making personalized coaching available anytime, anywhere.

At Marlee, we’ve helped teams from more than 90,000 companies unlock their potential through our AI, Coach Marlee. Grounded in two decades of research linking motivation to venture success, Marlee’s coaching programs are tailored to your work style and take less than 15 minutes a week.

Whether you’re building a startup, leading a team, or scaling a business, Marlee will help you trust your gut, initiate projects faster, and fast-track sustainable growth—for you and your team.

What does an online business coach actually do?

Think of an online business coach as your personal sounding board—minus the hefty fees or scheduling hassles. They help you cut through the noise, clarify your vision, and bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Whether you’re navigating growing pains, team dynamics, or big decisions, a great coach helps you pause, reflect, and act with intention.

But here’s the real magic: coaching isn’t just about solving surface-level problems. It’s about uncovering what truly drives you—and then helping you build a fulfilling work life around it.

Meet Marlee: Your online coaching AI teammate

At the heart of Marlee is a powerful AI teammate, backed by 20+ years of motivational research. Your journey starts with a free work style motivation assessment. With more than 90% accuracy, it reveals how you’re wired to work best—measuring 48 different motivations that influence how you lead, collaborate, and grow.

After your assessment, you’ll create your Individual Results Board—a beautifully visualized dashboard revealing your unique work style insights. It’s designed to help you play to your strengths, build self-awareness, and uncover blind spots that might be holding you (or your team) back.

A Marlee My Results Board showing highest motivations

Need a nudge in the right direction? You can tap the Ask Marlee button to explore your results further or get instant insights about your team’s dynamics, collaboration styles, or decision-making patterns.

Ask Marlee, "What are my strengths?"

From there, you can start your first free online coaching program—short, actionable sessions designed to help you grow, one step at a time.

All of our programs are delivered via chat-based coaching. You’ll complete two 5-10 minute sessions a week. The best part is, the session times are 100% flexible, so you can fit them into your schedule no matter how busy you are.

Marlee's online coaching programs coach to more than 1,000 different goals

Your sessions will be with our incredible AI, Coach Marlee. Developed by expert coaches and scientists, Marlee delivers personalized coaching to suit your unique traits and goals. With a satisfaction score of over 4.2+ stars (out of 5), Marlee’s coaching is rated higher than the average real-life business coach. Each of your coaching programs will go for 4-9 weeks, and 90% of our users achieve their goals in that time.

If you're a leader, you can invite team members to take the assessment and add them to your work Space. With your team Space, you’ll get a birds-eye view of the motivation styles that make up your team. And they will gain greater insight into themselves. Talk about a win-win.

👉 How to create a team work Space in Marlee

Who can benefit from online coaching sessions?

Anyone who owns a business — or works for one — can benefit from online coaching. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the early stages of your career or have already climbed to the top of the corporate ladder. Everyone needs guidance, support, and a sounding board.

Here are some of the types of people we work with at Marlee.

Online business coaching for aspiring executives

Stepping up into the C-suite requires an entirely new set of skills. Marlee helps you take that exciting next step with confidence.

Online business coaching for entrepreneurs

Building a successful business calls for a bulletproof mindset and razor-sharp instincts. Whether you’re going at it solo or building a team, Marlee will set you up for lasting success.

Online business coaching for enterprise business leaders

With our coaching platform, you can improve enterprise hiring outcomes, quickly design high-performing teams, and build a strong company culture.

Online business coaching for accelerators and VCs

Investing in early-stage startups is risky, but Marlee helps you leverage data to identify entrepreneurial talent and lucrative opportunities.

Online business coaching for high-growth ventures

Rapidly scaling companies come with their own unique set of challenges. Marlee coaching will help you navigate sustainable growth without sacrificing team culture.

Online business coaching for startup founders

Building a successful startup can be challenging and lonely, especially if you’re wearing all the hats. Marlee can shepherd you through every stage of the process, from fundraising to hiring and scaling.

Online business coaching for university and research partners

Universities are hotbeds for top-tier talent. Marlee equips you to identify opportunities and blind spots, so you can get the best out of students.

👉 Read our case studies

In the past, these individuals might have engaged a business or executive leadership coach. However, this form of one-on-one coaching can be quite expensive and time-consuming. Online business coaching programs such as Marlee are significantly more flexible and accessible. This means that not only can top leaders and executives access online executive coaching, but entire organizations are now able to.

How can an online coaching program help me?

The biggest problem business coaches solve is helping clients navigate blind spots. Even the most experienced and self-aware leaders have their limitations.  Due to cognitive biases, it's impossible to consider all possibilities and perspectives in a given scenario. As the expression goes: "You don't know what you don't know." A successful business coach helps coachees broaden their horizons and see the bigger picture.

This is particularly important in our current climate, with executives and C-suite leaders facing more ambiguity than ever before. Some of the biggest post-COVID leadership challenges include leading remote teams, maintaining employee engagement, and adapting to new AI technology. A DDI study of more than 100 different organizations found that 75% of respondents are investing in leadership development to address these challenges¹.

In these fast-changing times, it's not surprising that the demand for coaching has skyrocketed. Britain’s Financial Times reported that the number of coaches registered with the International Coaching Federation jumped from 33,594 to 56,076 between 2019 and 2020².

But, does an investment in coaching actually pay off? The evidence suggests yes — coaching yields an impressively high ROI. A recent study surveyed 87 companies that had hired business coaches. The vast majority of respondents reported that the coaching experience had returned on the investment³. They also found that the programs met five of the six pre-defined executive coaching outcomes.

Some of the most important reasons to use coaching in organizations include:

• Soft skill development: Research shows that investing in soft skills such as communication and problem-solving increases performance by 12% and has an ROI of 250%⁴.
• Decision making: Coaches ask the right questions, to ensure decisions are intentional and based on well-rounded evidence.
• Accountability: The impact of a business coach can be as simple as supporting you to implement a more effective daily routine.

Online coaching programs can provide an even stronger ROI, as they tend to be more affordable than in-person executive coaching programs. But, do they provide the same transformation? These testimonials from Marlee clients speak for themselves:

Melanie Perkins, Co-founder & CEO Canva

“We’ve been using Marlee since Oct 2017, and have implemented it across our entire organization in onboarding, as well as when forming new teams to help us understand our team and the dynamic between them. In our commitment to help our team grow and develop, Marlee helped us to launch a successful internal coaching program. Coaching has proven to be a great way to help our leaders scale themselves, as Canva scales.”

Dianne Gatto, Change Management Specialist and Marlee coach

“Marlee is a tool that practically sells itself. It's one of the most powerful ways of gaining insight on how to best create strong and high-performing teams."

Your path to success: Five online coaching programs to help you achieve your professional goals

Whether you spend most of your time behind a cubicle or in the boardroom, Marlee has a program for everyone. Here are five of our proven coaching programs for business success.

Goal Catcher

Inspiring others requires a strong vision of where you’re headed. This program walks you through a solid goal definition process, so you can envision and reach your destination.

Personal Power

Essential for anyone looking to level up their influence, this course redefines what ‘power’ means within organizations. You’ll learn how to confidently step into the role of a leader, and navigate ‘politics’ with grace and ease.

Big Picture Thinker

Great leaders are also visionaries. This coaching program will teach you to ‘zoom out’ and get a big picture view of any situation, without losing sight of the finer details.

Vital Wellbeing

In order to operate at your best, it’s important to feel your best. This health coaching program will give you the tools to increase your energy, vitality, and general wellbeing. It will also equip you with the resilient mindset required of a high-performer.

Trust Your Gut Feel

There’s an important place for logic and data in business, but leaders must also learn to follow their instincts. This coaching program provides you with practical strategies to tune into and hone your intuition.

How can I find qualified coaches?

As the coaching industry has exploded in recent years, there are thousands of coaches to choose from. However, it's important to note that not all offer the same coaching experience. There are a few crucial considerations, to cultivate a strong coaching relationship. Here's what to look for:

Years of coaching experience

A successful business coach doesn’t need to have CEO experience. Nor do they need to have made seven figures in coaching. However, it is essential that your coach has at least some business experience up their sleeve. Ideally, you'll want to hire a coach who is a few steps ahead of you on your career path. This way, they will be able to draw upon their personal experience to help you work through business challenges.

Key question to ask: How many years of formal coaching experience do you have?

Coaching niche

The term 'business coach' is broad, and there are many different types of coaching. For example, a leadership coach typically works to develop the talents and skills of coachees. Meanwhile, an executive coach might focus on productivity and peak performance. There are also business coaches that work specifically with leaders in certain industries. For example, there are marketing coaches who help early-stage startups find leads and build their email lists. It's important to get a feel for their specific coaching style, to ensure it's the right fit for your needs.

Key question to ask: What is your coaching niche, or who are your ideal clients?

Past results

Having an MBA or another relevant business certification is great. But, the best way to truly assess a coach's expertise is to look at the transformations they have facilitated for past and current clients. A mix of quantitative and qualitative insights will be helpful here. Ask for data about client success rate, as well as testimonials and reviews.

Key question to ask: Can I see some case studies from past coaching clients?

Price

The average cost of business coaching will depend on experience and coaching niche. Typically, you can expect to pay $500 to $5000 per month for traditional business coaching services⁵. However, virtual executive coaching is considerably more affordable. For example, Marlee's first online coaching program is free for individuals and organizations.

Key question to ask: What coaching packages do you have available?

A successful coaching relationship begins with honesty, so don't be afraid to ask your potential coach as many questions as required.

Your action plan for Marlee online business coaching

Marlee uses science to help you quickly improve team trust, soft skills, wellbeing, and performance. It’s the secret weapon the world’s top companies use to attract and retain all-star team members.

Marlee has personalized coaching options available for both individuals and teams. Here's how it works:

1. Take our free motivation analysis, which measures individual work styles and motivation.

2. Create your Individual Results Board to understand what drives you, and identify opportunities for self-growth.

3. Ask Marlee a question such as "What are my strengths?"

4. Start your first free online coaching program - 15-minute coaching sessions with our AI, Coach Marlee.

If you're looking to use Marlee with your team or wider organization, you can set up a team Space after you complete the assessment. Invite each team member using their work email address, and they will receive a link to complete their motivation analysis.

Once they take the motivation analysis, they will be able to see their individual results and start their coaching program. In the Marlee team Space, you'll be able to compare team members’ motivation and communication preferences and get a snapshot of the overall feel of the team culture.

A Marlee team Space showing the greatest similarities and differences

The most significant team differences reveal potential sources of friction within your team. You can then Ask Marlee to find solutions to support one another’s differences. Often, differences become team strengths once identified.

Ask Marlee about team conflict

Understand where your team stands on important soft skills and identify opportunities for improvement.

A Marlee Soft Skill Insight Board

Companies who use these powerful insights for team hiring and development see 725% return on investment in the first year. They also see a 62% reduction in turnover, and require 90% fewer interviews to hire the right candidate.

Still need a more personalized coaching program? We’ve got you covered. We have both AI and human coaching available on our Enterprise pricing plans, in addition to other premium features. Schedule a demo with one of our experienced coaches.

Unlock Your Team’s Potential with Online Business Coaching That Scales

Whether you’re leading a fast-growing startup or navigating change in a larger organization, the right support can be a game-changer. With Marlee’s online business coaching, you’ll get personalized, research-backed programs to boost performance, fast-track team development, and create a thriving culture—without the cost or complexity of traditional coaching.

Ready to see what your team is truly capable of?

Start for free with Marlee and unlock your Individual Results Board today. Your next level starts here.

Frequently asked questions

When to hire a business coach?

The best time to engage the services of a coaching business is when you have a problem to solve! This applies to almost anyone, whether it's their first day in business, or 1000th.

Why do you need a business coach?

Whether it's online executive coaching or in-person sessions, the benefits of a business coach are endless. A successful coach will help you build key skills, make better decisions and motivate you to reach your biggest goals.

Who needs a business coach?

Anyone can benefit from hiring a business coach. However, it's absolutely essential for executives, C-suite leaders, and anyone making high-level organizational decisions.