Formats and fit
Online or in-person business coaching: does it matter?
Last updated 5 July 2026 · Reviewed by Nick Thorpe
The short answer
For one-to-one coaching, online works as well as in person and lets you choose a coach on fit rather than postcode. What decides results is the work between sessions. In-person earns its cost for group formats: mastermind days, deep-work retreats, hot seats. Most owners do best with a hybrid: remote one-to-one, in-person group days.
Does the format matter for one-to-one coaching?
No. For one-to-one coaching, a good session over video is a good session. The screen carries everything that matters: the questions, the numbers, the plan, the slightly awkward pause while you explain why last month’s commitment did not happen. Nobody needs a long drive up the motorway for a conversation that works just as well on a call.
What decides whether coaching works is the part nobody sees: the work between sessions. Did you do what you said you would do? Did someone check? A coach sitting across a table cannot do that work for you, and neither can one on a screen. The format is a delivery mechanism, and the delivery mechanism was never the constraint.
Why online widens your choice of coach
Because your shortlist stops being your postcode. Insist on meeting in person every month and you are choosing from whoever operates within driving distance of your office. The best coach for your business is unlikely to live down the road. Online, you choose on the things that matter: whether they have run a business at your scale, whether their method holds up, whether you trust them with your real numbers.
Picking a coach because they are local is like picking an accountant because they are tall. Convenient, possibly. Nothing to do with the job.
This is how I work. I split my time between Cornwall and Yorkshire and coach owners across the UK. Momentum, my one-to-one coaching partnership, runs remotely: a monthly strategy session, accountability between sessions, and direct access when something urgent lands.
Where in-person earns its cost
In-person earns its cost wherever a room full of peers is part of the product. Three formats genuinely change face to face.
Group rooms. Hot seats hit differently in person. People tell the room their real number rather than their LinkedIn number, and the feedback lands harder because nobody can hide behind a muted microphone.
Deep-work days. A full day out of the business, phone in your pocket, working on the business rather than in it, produces decisions you will never make between meetings on a Tuesday afternoon.
Retreats. Several days away with other owners changes the honesty level entirely. The energy in a room is different, and so is the quality of what people are willing to admit.
That is why The Cabal, my 12-month mastermind, runs its monthly calls and weekly accountability online and holds three in-person Cabal Days a year. It is also why the annual retreat is residential deep work, in person by design.
Online vs in-person: the honest trade-offs
The comparison looks like this.
| Factor | Online | In-person |
|---|---|---|
| Choice of coach | The whole UK and beyond | Whoever is within driving distance |
| Cost of your time | The session is the only time you spend | Add travel both ways, every time |
| Cadence | Easy to hold weekly or monthly | Sessions slip when diaries get tight |
| One-to-one depth | As good as the questions being asked | The same; rapport builds a touch faster |
| Group energy and honesty | Workable, flatter | Markedly stronger; rooms create candour |
| Work between sessions | Identical | Identical |
The practical default is hybrid
Hybrid is what most owners settle on once they have tried both, and for good reason. Keep the regular one-to-one work remote, where the cadence is easy to protect, and buy the room when the room is the point: group days, retreats, planning days. You get the wide choice of coach and the low friction of online, plus the energy and honesty of in-person where it actually pays.
That is how Core Business is built. Momentum one-to-one runs remotely. The Cabal adds the in-person days. The retreat anchors the year with deep work. None of it requires you to live near me, and none of it pretends a video call feels the same as a room.
How to decide
- Choose the format first, one-to-one or group, based on what your business needs. Geography comes after.
- For one-to-one, ignore location entirely. Judge coaches on fit, method and whether they have run a business at your scale.
- For group formats, ask how much of the value depends on the room. A mastermind with no in-person element is missing its sharpest tool.
- Whatever you choose, ask what happens between sessions. If the answer is nothing until next month, the format debate is irrelevant.
One caveat before you apply anywhere, including here: if you are pre-revenue, or you want a cheerleader rather than accountability, neither Momentum nor The Cabal is built for you yet. If you are an established owner and the hybrid balance sounds right, both are application only. It starts with a 30-minute call, no charge, no obligation, and I reply within one working day.
Nick Thorpe
16 years a British Army officer, then a decade building his own companies. Coaches business owners on the CoreOS framework. The story.