What the SERP told me, and how it changed the page

I checked the "burnout coach" results before writing. Roughly half that SERP is people who want to become a burnout coach, not hire one: Kelly Swingler's master coach training, Coaching.com's certification program, the ICF's blog post addressed to coaches, Paperbell's "definitive guide to becoming a burnout coach." Related searches confirm it: burnout coach certification, burnout coach jobs, how to become a burnout coach.

So the honest read is that 260 a month is more like 130 in real client intent. Still worth the page, since it is the only nationally sellable service and it currently has zero, but do not expect the full number.

The genuine practitioners who do rank (Jacqui Meyer, theburnoutcoach.ie) are unlicensed coaches. Google's own AI Overview leads with the coaching-versus-therapy distinction as the thing readers need explained. Nobody on that page one can answer it from both sides.

Bob can. He is a licensed LPC and a former Google engineer. That combination is the page's whole angle, and it also happens to be the licensure disclosure he legally needs. The compliance requirement and the differentiator are the same paragraph.

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SEO Metadata

• Title tag: Burnout Coaching for Founders and Engineers | Bob Manthy (56 chars)
• Meta description: Burnout coaching for founders, engineers and C-suite leaders, anywhere in the US. Led by a licensed therapist and former Google engineer who knows the difference. (159 chars)
• URL slug: /coaching/
• Target keyword: burnout coach
• Secondary: executive burnout, imposter syndrome coach, burnout coaching for founders, coaching vs therapy

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Content

Burnout Coaching for Founders, Engineers, and Leaders

Available anywhere in the United States.

Most burnout coaches have never been trained to recognize the point where burnout stops being a work problem and becomes a clinical one. I have. I am a Licensed Professional Counselor, and before that I was an engineer at Google.

That matters more than it sounds. It means I can do the coaching work with you, and I can tell you honestly when coaching is not the right tool.

[Schedule a free consultation]

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The version of burnout nobody diagnoses

You are still shipping. Reviews are fine. Nobody at work has noticed anything.

And you have started doing the arithmetic on how many more years you can keep this up.

The exhaustion is not the kind that sleep fixes. You wake up already behind. Work that used to be absorbing has gone flat, and you cannot tell whether that is the work or you. You are short with people you love in a way that would embarrass you if you saw it from outside. Sunday evening has acquired a weight.

Meanwhile every external signal says you are fine. That is the part that makes it hard to name. Burnout in high performers does not look like collapse. It looks like competence, held together by an amount of effort nobody can see.

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What coaching actually does here

Coaching is forward-looking and practical. We work on what you are going to change, not on excavating why you are the way you are.

In practice that means:

Finding where the energy actually goes. Not a time audit. Most high performers are not burning out from hours, they are burning out from a handful of specific things: the relationship that requires constant management, the decisions you make alone, the standard you hold that nobody else asked for.

Boundaries you will actually keep. Advice to "set boundaries" is useless to someone whose identity is built on being the person who handles it. We work on ones that survive contact with a real quarter.

Separating the job from the self. For founders especially, the company and the person have often fused. Untangling that is not a mindset exercise, it is a specific piece of work, and it is usually the thing that makes the rest possible.

Deciding what you actually want. A surprising number of people arrive at burnout having succeeded, thoroughly, at something they chose at 24 and never revisited.

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Coaching or therapy: how to tell

This is the question the internet answers badly, usually because whoever is answering only sells one of them.

Here is the part most coaching pages leave out. If we start coaching and it becomes clear that what you are dealing with is depression, an anxiety disorder, trauma, or something else clinical, coaching is the wrong instrument and continuing would be a disservice. I will tell you. If you are in Colorado, we can move into counseling directly. If you are not, I will help you find a licensed clinician in your state.

Coaching is not therapy, and outside Colorado what I offer is coaching. That is a legal boundary, not a soft one, and I keep it deliberately.

⚠️ Bob, read this section before it goes live. I have written it conservatively, but the exact wording of a licensure disclosure is your professional call, not mine. Adjust anything that does not match how you describe your scope.

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Who this is for

Founders who cannot separate the company's bad week from their own, and have no one to say that to.

Engineers and technical leaders who moved from building things to managing people and found the second job costs something the first one never did.

C-suite leaders who manage up, down, and sideways all day, and have gradually run out of anyone who gets the unfiltered version.

Anyone who tried therapy and found it slow. Long silences, vague prompts, the sense you were driving the session. That is a real failure mode and not proof that nothing helps. Coaching is more structured and more directive. Some people need that instead. Some people need it first.

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Why a licensed therapist as your coach

Two things I bring that a coaching certification does not.

I know what I am looking at. Burnout, depression and anxiety overlap heavily on the surface and need completely different responses. Getting that wrong wastes months. Clinical training is the difference between guessing and knowing.

I have been on your side of it. I was an engineer at Google. I know what an on-call rotation does to a person, what it is like to have your competence be the thing you are known for, and how a technical mind tries to debug its own exhaustion. You will not spend the first three sessions explaining your job.

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How it works

A free consultation, about 30 minutes. You describe what is going on. I tell you honestly whether coaching is the right fit, whether therapy would serve you better, or whether you need something I do not offer. There is no pressure in either direction.

Sessions by video, from anywhere. Most people start weekly and move to every other week.

No packages, no minimum commitment. You continue while it is useful and stop when it is not. Fees are on the fees page.

[Schedule a free consultation]

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Common questions

Are you my therapist if we do coaching? No. Coaching is not a clinical relationship and does not carry the legal confidentiality protections that therapy does. I hold your information in confidence as a matter of professional ethics, but the two are not the same thing and I will not pretend otherwise.

I am not in Colorado. What can we actually do? Coaching, in full. What I cannot do outside Colorado is provide counseling or therapy, diagnose anything, or treat a mental health condition. If it becomes clear that is what you need, I will say so and help you find someone licensed where you live.

Is this just executive coaching with a different name? There is overlap. The difference is that most executive coaching starts from a performance goal, and this starts from the fact that you are depleted. Performance usually recovers as a consequence, but it is not the entry point.

How long does it take? Most people notice something shifting within six to eight sessions. Whether that becomes durable depends on whether the structural things change, and some of those are decisions only you can make.

Do you work with couples? Not in coaching. Relationship work is counseling, and in Colorado that is relationship counseling.

What if I am not sure whether it is burnout? That is a reasonable thing to be unsure about, and it is a good use of the free consultation. What high-functioning burnout looks like is a useful starting point.

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Structured Data

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@graph": [
    {
      "@type": "Service",
      "@id": "https://bobmanthy.com/coaching/#service",
      "name": "Burnout Coaching for Founders, Engineers, and Leaders",
      "serviceType": "Burnout coaching",
      "description": "Burnout coaching for founders, engineers and C-suite leaders, delivered by video anywhere in the United States by a licensed professional counselor and former Google engineer.",
      "provider": { "@id": "https://bobmanthy.com/#person" },
      "areaServed": { "@type": "Country", "name": "United States" },
      "audience": {
        "@type": "Audience",
        "audienceType": "Founders, engineers, and C-suite leaders experiencing burnout"
      },
      "url": "https://bobmanthy.com/coaching/"
    },
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      "@type": "Person",
      "@id": "https://bobmanthy.com/#person",
      "name": "Bob Manthy",
      "honorificSuffix": "LPC",
      "jobTitle": "Licensed Professional Counselor and Coach",
      "url": "https://bobmanthy.com/",
      "hasCredential": {
        "@type": "EducationalOccupationalCredential",
        "credentialCategory": "license",
        "name": "Licensed Professional Counselor (Colorado)"
      },
      "knowsAbout": ["Burnout", "Executive burnout", "Imposter syndrome", "Leadership isolation"]
    },
    {
      "@type": "FAQPage",
      "@id": "https://bobmanthy.com/coaching/#faq",
      "mainEntity": [
        { "@type": "Question", "name": "Are you my therapist if we do coaching?",
          "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "No. Coaching is not a clinical relationship and does not carry the legal confidentiality protections that therapy does." } },
        { "@type": "Question", "name": "I am not in Colorado. What can we actually do?",
          "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Coaching, in full. What cannot be provided outside Colorado is counseling or therapy, diagnosis, or treatment of a mental health condition." } },
        { "@type": "Question", "name": "Is this just executive coaching with a different name?",
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        { "@type": "Question", "name": "How long does burnout coaching take?",
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⚠️ Do not add aggregateRating or Review to this. Testimonials for a licensed counselor carry real ethical constraints, and review schema on a therapy or coaching practice is a place to be careful, not clever.

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Internal linking plan

Link TO /coaching/ from:

/coaching/ links to: /fees/, /schedule/, /relationship-counseling/, /blog/signs-of-high-functioning-burnout/, /about/

Navigation placement: top-level, beside Executive Counseling. Burying the only nationally available service in a submenu repeats the problem this page exists to fix.

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Conversion strategy

• Primary CTA: free 30-minute consultation. Repeated three times: hero, mid-page, after FAQ.
• Objections addressed: is this real or just life coaching (licensure); can we work together if I am not in Colorado (yes, explicitly); I tried therapy and hated it (named directly); will you understand my job (former Google engineer); how long and how much (answered, no packages).
• Trust signals: LPC license, Google engineering background, the willingness to refer out. That last one converts better than a testimonial, because it is the only thing on the page that costs him money to say.

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Publishing checklist

• [ ] Bob reviews and approves the licensure wording (blocking)
• [ ] Title tag and meta description set
• [ ] /coaching/ added to the main nav
• [ ] JSON-LD added, validated in the Rich Results Test
• [ ] Internal links placed, both directions, starting with /blog/therapy-vs-executive-coaching/
• [ ] Added to sitemap-index.xml (and add the missing /videos/ while you are in there)
• [ ] Open Graph image
• [ ] Self-referencing canonical
• [ ] Mobile render checked
• [ ] Fees page updated to show coaching