CEO Coach in Sarasota for Founders and Owners
Everyone in your life has a stake in your answer. That's the problem.
I'm Christina Carey, a CEO coach in Sarasota, Florida. I work with founders, owners, and chief executives who have run out of people they can think out loud in front of.
Your leadership team can't hear you doubt the plan; you're the one who sold it to them. Your board wants confidence and a number. Your spouse loves you, which makes them the worst possible person to ask whether you should sell.
Your friends who run companies are competitors, or they're comparing, or they're doing the thing where everyone says the quarter is great. So you process it alone, in the car, at five in the morning, on a loop.
That's not a personality flaw. It's a structural feature of the seat. And it's expensive, because the quality of a company's decisions can't exceed the quality of the thinking behind them, and you've been doing that thinking without a single honest mirror.
What actually brings founders and CEOs to coaching
Nobody tells you the truth anymore, including you. Somewhere between fifteen and fifty employees, the information stopped arriving clean. Your team manages up, not maliciously. They just want to bring you good news. Bad news arrives late and pre-softened.
And the same filter has quietly turned inward: you've gotten skilled at the version of events where the problem is the market, or the hire, or the timing. You've lost your read on your own company, and you're the last person positioned to notice.
The company's ceiling turns out to be your ceiling. Growth stalled and the diagnosis keeps coming back structural: needs a better sales process, needs a real second-in-command, needs pricing discipline. But the thing blocking each fix is the same person.
You won't hire someone better than you at the thing you're proudest of. You won't let go of the loyal underperformer who was there at the start. You won't raise prices because some part of you isn't sure the work is worth it. Companies plateau at the exact height of their founder's unexamined beliefs, and they do it on schedule.
You hit the number and felt nothing. This one nobody says out loud. Revenue target, exit, the milestone you'd been aiming at for six years. And the relief lasted about four days. Then a new number appeared and the same restlessness came back.
Being told you're successful by people who can see your results, while privately waiting to feel like you've earned it, is one of the most common conditions I encounter at this level. It is also entirely workable, which most people who have it don't believe.
How CEO coaching works with me
One room where you don't have to perform. The first and most practical thing I offer is a place with no stake in your answer. I don't work for your board, I don't want your job, I'm not comparing my company to yours, and I'm not going to repeat it. For most CEOs that alone changes the quality of thinking within two sessions, because you stop editing.
We go after the belief, not the symptom. The refusal to hire above yourself is rarely about candidates. It's usually a belief that your value to the company is being the smartest one in the room, which was true for years and stopped being true without anyone announcing it.
Naming that is what makes the hire possible. Do the work at the level of behavior and you'll be renegotiating the same decision next quarter.
Then I hold you to it. This is the part your world doesn't provide. You have accountability for outcomes, because the P&L is merciless, and none whatsoever for the commitments that produce them.
Nobody asks whether you had the conversation you said you'd have. We define commitments specifically enough to check, meet every other week for six months, check in by text or email between sessions, and talk about it directly when something slips. Not punitive. Precise.
You don't have to bring the business plan. I'm not a consultant and won't pretend to know your industry better than you do. My work is the person making the decisions, which is the one variable in your company nobody else is working on.
If your issue is purely follow-through, accountability coaching is the more direct fit. If you want the inner work on its own, see mindset coaching for executives. If you're coaching leaders beneath you, leadership coaching covers that layer.
Common questions from CEOs and owners
- How is this different from Vistage or a peer group?
- They solve different problems, and plenty of people do both. A peer group gives you a room of other chief executives once a month: perspective, pattern-matching, the relief of hearing someone describe your exact problem. What it can't give you is sustained attention on you specifically, or anyone checking between meetings whether you did the thing the group told you to do. Coaching is the inverse: no peer perspective, total focus on you, and accountability every two weeks. If you're isolated and want peers, join a group. If you know what to do and keep not doing it, that's my work. If your calendar can hold both, they compound.
- How is a CEO coach different from a consultant?
- A consultant studies your business and tells you what to do. I work on the person deciding. If your problem is that you don't know the right answer on market entry, pricing model or org design, hire the consultant. If your problem is that you've known the right answer for nine months and haven't executed it, a consultant will just produce a second document you don't act on.
- Do you have to have been a CEO to coach one?
- Fair question, and my answer is no, for the same reason the best coaches in professional sport were rarely the best players. My expertise isn't running your company. You're better at that than I'll ever be, and I'll say so. Mine is seeing people clearly: finding the belief driving a decision, saying the thing nobody else will say to you, and holding you to what you commit to. I've done that with more than two hundred senior leaders. If what you want is someone who has scaled a company in your industry, hire an advisor. If you want someone who can tell you why you keep avoiding the same decision, that's a different discipline and it's mine.
- Is this actually confidential?
- Completely. You pay for your own coaching, so there's no sponsor, no board report, no summary to anyone. I don't use client names without written permission, and most of my clients I never name at all. The reason it matters here more than anywhere else on this site: a CEO frequently has information they cannot legally or decently share with their team, their family, or their friends. You need one room. This is that room.
- What does CEO coaching cost in Sarasota?
- Engagements are billed monthly, $2,000–$3,000 per month depending on scope, and run six months. That's meaningfully less than one bad hire, which is roughly the comparison I'd use. More on the coaching fees page.
- Do you work with owners outside Sarasota?
- Yes. I meet owners in person in Sarasota, Bradenton, Lakewood Ranch, and Venice; everyone else works with me over Zoom. For CEOs the choice matters more than it does for my other clients, and it's worth thinking about honestly. Sarasota is a small market. Some owners would rather nobody see a standing meeting on the calendar or a car in a particular parking lot. Those clients take Zoom and stop thinking about it. Others want the room, because the hardest conversations land better face to face. Both work. Tell me which you want on the consult call.
- I've got maybe an hour a week. Is that enough?
- It's more than enough. Two hours a month in session, plus a short check-in message between them. The work happens inside decisions you're already making: the hire, the conversation, the thing you keep rescheduling. I'm not adding a project to your plate. I'm changing how you handle what's already on it.
One honest conversation, no stake in your answer
Thirty minutes, free. Bring the decision you've been carrying around for months without resolving. You'll get an outside read from someone with nothing to gain from either outcome, which, depending on how long it's been, may be a new experience.