By Andreas Pettersson, Founder, Leaders ADAPT
You have a leadership team of six. Two of them are good, one is new, and the Monday meeting runs ninety minutes and decides nothing. You search for a Scaling Up coach because a friend's company runs on it, and you find 290 coaches, a discovery call, and no price. Then you wonder whether what you need is an operating system at all, or a room of people who have run a company like yours.
I run a virtual CEO mastermind at Leaders ADAPT, no revenue gate, at most 14 members, and I have run a company on a one page cadence, so I have an interest in both answers. This is the Scaling Up coach entry in the CEO Peer Group Index, included because CEOs search for it alongside peer groups, and marked clearly as a coaching model, not a peer group.
Quick answer: A Scaling Up coach is an independent practitioner certified by Scaling Up, formerly Gazelles, to install a four part operating framework, People, Strategy, Execution and Cash, with one company's leadership team. The company's coaches blog puts the average at $5,000 to $10,000 a month. It is a certified coach model built on the Rockefeller Habits, not a CEO peer group.
What a Scaling Up coach is, in 12 fields
A Scaling Up coach is an independent coach certified by Scaling Up to work with a company's leadership team on the People, Strategy, Execution and Cash framework, paid monthly, with no published fixed price and no peer group component. The table was read from scalingup.com, its coaches blog, the Master's Program site and one press interview in October 2026.
| Field | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | An operating framework, People, Strategy, Execution and Cash, delivered by independent certified coaches to a leadership team, plus a 12 month Master's Program | Scaling Up, Master's Program |
| Cost and year one | Main site: pricing walked through on a discovery call, no figures. Coaches blog: average $5,000 to $10,000 per month depending on coach time. Implied year one: $60,000 to $120,000, derived, not published. Master's Program price not published. Optional Harvard CEO session: additional $2,500. Joining fee and increases: not published | Scaling Up, Coaches blog, Master's Program |
| Gates | For CEOs, founders and leadership teams. No revenue, age or employee minimum published. Master's eligibility not published | Scaling Up, Master's Program |
| Group size | Coaching is team based, your own leadership team, not a peer group. Master's cohort size not published | Master's Program |
| Time commitment | Coaching cadence not published. Master's: 12 months, four 90 day online sessions, 7.5 off site days in total: a 2.5 day kick off, team sessions every 90 days, a 2 day close, an optional 2 day Harvard reflection | Master's Program |
| Facilitator model | 290+ certified coaches, independent practitioners certified by Scaling Up, which also recruits new coaches. Master's off sites led by outside experts and a City Leader | Scaling Up, Master's Program |
| Contract and cancellation | Not published | Scaling Up |
| Format and geography | Hybrid. Coaching in person or virtual by coach. Six continents, 300+ public workshops a year. Master's online plus off site | Scaling Up, Master's Program |
| Industry mix | Mixed. Growth stage companies with a leadership team | Scaling Up |
| What members say | No independent client quotes found. The vendor site cites 102,000+ organizations and 12M+ people scaled | Scaling Up |
| Founded and size | Gazelles founded 1997 by Verne Harnish, who co hosted the Birthing of Giants programme at MIT from 1991. 290+ certified coaches, 102,000+ organizations | SmartCompany, Scaling Up |
| Best for and not for | For a CEO who wants a whole leadership team operating framework with an outside coach. Not for a founder seeking confidential peer dialogue, or anyone who needs published fixed pricing | Read of all sources above |
If what you came for is the framework itself, the Scaling Up Rockefeller Habits page walks through it, and EOS vs Scaling Up compares the two systems most CEOs choose between. This page is about the coach and the room.
What Scaling Up does well
It is a real operating system with a long record. Verne Harnish has been at this since the Birthing of Giants programme in 1991, and the four decisions are a sound way to divide a company's problems.
It works on the whole team, not just the CEO. Most CEO problems at $5 million to $50 million are leadership team problems in disguise, and a coach who sits with all six of your executives can see what the CEO alone cannot.
The scale is real. More than 290 certified coaches on six continents means a search for a scaling up coach near me usually returns someone within driving distance who has installed this before.
And it publishes a cost range, which is more than most of its competitors do. The coaches blog puts the average at $5,000 to $10,000 a month. Not a price list, but a number you can plan around.
What Scaling Up does not publish
A fixed price. The main site says pricing is transparent and walked through on a discovery call, a contradiction the blog partly resolves. The year one figure of $60,000 to $120,000 on this page is derived from the monthly average, not published anywhere.
The contract. No term, no notice period, no cancellation policy for coaching clients. The coach is independent, so the terms are the coach's terms.
The cadence. How often a coach meets your team, and for how long, is not published. Each coach will answer differently.
The Scaling Up Masters Program price, beyond the optional $2,500 Harvard add on. And any independent client voice. The site cites 102,000 organizations and 12 million people scaled, but no named client said anything on the pages that could be read.
Who a Scaling Up coach is not for
A founder without a leadership team. The product is delivered to a team. If the team is you and a bookkeeper, there is nothing to install it into yet.
A CEO who needs peers, not plumbing. The coach is paid by you and reports to you. A room of other CEOs will tell you the thing a vendor will not. These are different purchases, and the EOS implementer vs business coach page draws the same line on the EOS side.
A company that has a cadence and is not keeping it. The framework is not the problem then. The discipline is, and $10,000 a month buys another person to be late for.
Anyone who wants to budget on a published number. The scaling up coach cost is an average on a blog and a conversation with each coach. If your board wants a fixed figure in the plan, get it in writing from the coach before you commit.
The structural gap: plumbing is not the people
Scaling Up installs plumbing. People, Strategy, Execution, Cash, with meeting rhythms, priorities and a one page plan. Good plumbing. The house still needs people in it who have lived in a house like yours, and a certified coach is one person, paid by you, who has fitted the pipes elsewhere.
I say the same thing about the other side. On a webinar about country club peer groups I put it this way: "Climbing a mountain in Patagonia is not going to scale your company." A peer group that is a travel club is as useless as an operating system nobody runs. The question is never which brand. It is whether the thing you buy produces a committed action every month that somebody owns.
The cadence I run the mastermind on fits on one page, and it is the same shape I ran a company on. A monthly session rhythm, a 1 to 10 score from every member tracked session to session so I see who is trending down before they say so, and one committed action per member with an owner and a date. At Arcules that discipline is part of how I cut my own week from 60 hours to 45 while we grew past 150 people.
A coach does not signal a peer group. It signals a contractor, often a good one. But when the question in the room is whether to fire the head of sales you hired eighteen months ago, you want four other CEOs who have fired one, not one practitioner whose invoice you sign.
The operating cadence page covers how to build the rhythm yourself. The Index covers where to find the people.
The Leaders ADAPT room, measured by the same 12 fields
The Index grades my room by the same rules. It is not a Scaling Up alternative. It is the other purchase, the people rather than the plumbing, and it is not better at being plumbing.
| Field | Leaders ADAPT CEO Mastermind | Source |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A virtual mastermind of founders and CEOs, run by the operator who built it | CEO Mastermind |
| Cost and year one | Kept off blog pages. Covered on a fit call | This page |
| Gates | No revenue gate. Prior building experience and an appetite for direct feedback | This page |
| Group size | At most 14 members | This page |
| Time commitment | A monthly virtual session plus weekly office hours | This page |
| Facilitator model | An operator, not a certified coach: I scaled an AI company to more than 150 people and exited it to Canon, and I run every session | This page |
| Contract and cancellation | No multi year contract | This page |
| Format and geography | Virtual. Members chosen by fit, not by city | This page |
| Industry mix | Home care, flooring, title services, aviation services, wellness, logistics, lending | This page |
| What members say | No quotes, because no member is named anywhere on this site | This page |
| Founded and size | Leaders ADAPT, founded by Andreas Pettersson. One group, 14 seats at most | This page |
| Best for and not for | For owners of $1M to $20M+ companies who have, or are building, an operating cadence and need peers outside the company. Not for a leadership team that needs a system installed, and not for anyone who wants a polite room | This page |
Members who run EOS or Scaling Up inside their companies bring the quarterly plan to the hot seat. The two purchases stack. They do not substitute.
The people side of the plan
The Leaders ADAPT CEO Mastermind is where the one page plan meets other CEOs who have run one. Virtual, at most 14 members, no revenue gate, run by me, an operator who scaled a company to 150+ people and exited to Canon.
Every monthly session runs the cadence described above: a check in score tracked across sessions, a company hot seat against a ten slide template, feedback on five fixed prompts including what the presenter is not seeing, and one committed action with an owner and a date. Weekly office hours fill the gaps between sessions.
It is not for a team that needs a system installed. Hire the coach for that. Bring the plan here when the question is whether the plan is right.
Scaling Up coach FAQ
What is a Scaling Up coach?
A Scaling Up coach is an independent practitioner certified by Scaling Up, formerly Gazelles, to install the Scaling Up operating framework with a company's leadership team. The framework covers four decisions, People, Strategy, Execution and Cash, and grew out of Verne Harnish's Rockefeller Habits. The coach works with the whole team, in person or virtually, rather than running a group of peers from different companies.
How much does a Scaling Up coach cost?
Scaling Up does not publish coaching prices on its main site and says pricing is walked through on a discovery call. Its own coaches blog gives an average of $5,000 to $10,000 per month, depending on how much coach time the company wants. At that range a year of coaching runs about $60,000 to $120,000, a derived figure rather than a published annual price.
Is Scaling Up coaching a peer group?
No. Scaling Up coaching is delivered to one company's leadership team by one certified coach, so the room is your own executives plus the coach. A peer group is a set of CEOs from different companies who meet to work on each other's businesses. Scaling Up also runs public workshops and a Master's Program cohort, but neither is a confidential peer forum.
What is the Scaling Up Master''s Program?
The Scaling Up Master's Program is a 12 month programme combining off site executive education with online lessons. It runs four 90 day online sessions, and the off site time totals 7.5 days: a 2.5 day kick off, team sessions every 90 days, a two day close and an optional two day Harvard reflection session with an additional $2,500 fee. The programme price is not published.
How do you become a Scaling Up certified coach?
Scaling Up certifies independent coaches through its own programme and lists more than 290 of them worldwide. Coaches are independent practitioners rather than employees, and the site invites applicants through a become a coach page. The certification cost, training length and any ongoing licence or royalty terms for coaches are not published on the pages that could be read for this profile.
Scaling Up vs EOS: what is the difference for a CEO?
Both are operating systems installed with a leadership team by an outside practitioner, not peer groups. Scaling Up uses certified independent coaches at a published average of $5,000 to $10,000 a month. EOS uses franchised implementers who bill per session, typically about ten full days over two years, with a third party range of $20,000 to $45,000 a year. Neither publishes a fixed price.
Operating system or room? Decide which you are buying
If your leadership team has no shared rhythm, no priorities and no scorecard, hire the plumbing. A Scaling Up coach at $5,000 to $10,000 a month, or an EOS implementer, will install one. Get the price and the cadence in writing first, because neither is published.
If the rhythm exists and the problem is the decisions you make inside it, the coach is the wrong purchase. Find the room where four other CEOs have already made that decision and lived with it.
Is the thing that is broken the system, or the person running it?
