Seven companies. One bankruptcy. Two shutdowns. One way of coaching.
BEST Coaches is a CEO and executive coaching practice founded by Stefan Doering. Forty-five-plus years building businesses. Twenty-five-plus years coaching the founders building theirs. The lessons that land in our sessions came out of the work, not the slogans.
"I'm not telling you about my failures for sympathy. I'm telling you because every lesson I coach today came from those failures. Not from the wins."
Stefan Doering, Founder, BEST Coaches
Stefan Doering started his first company in 1981, at seventeen: Doering Housepainters. The slogan was "Help us paint our way through college." It worked. Six more came after. One went through bankruptcy. Two he shut down on his own terms before they pulled him under. The rest are still running, or ran their course. Along the way: drugged and robbed in Brazil. Hit by a car in Brooklyn, nearly killed. Forty-five years of operating later, none of it broke the discipline.
The practice has helped clients raise more than $13M for their businesses, and walked others away from raises they didn't actually need.
What it built was a particular kind of practice. The kind that can sit across from a founder and name the thing the founder can't say out loud. The thing that's actually broken. The thing the round won't fix.
Unreasonable is the word BEST Coaches uses for the standard of action that follows. Beyond what seems possible. Driven by heart, not logic. The standard the work holds you to.
How the practice got to this work.
Not a straight line. A long string of decisions that almost didn't survive. The reason the coaching works is because each story below is somewhere in the background while we listen to yours.
Oma. "Never give up."
Our founder's grandmother survived WWII. Husband killed. Homeless with three kids. Almost died from a fever in Germany. She kept going. Eventually started over in America. Her exact words sit behind every framework the practice teaches.
Doering Housepainters.
First business. The slogan was "Help us paint our way through college." It worked. The blueprint for every business that came after was already in place: a clear offer, a real customer, a margin you could see.
Bankruptcy. One of seven.
One of the seven went into bankruptcy. The lessons were paid in dollars. The frameworks the practice teaches today were forged in this period, most of them showing how to spot the wall ten miles before you hit it.
Drugged. Robbed. Pushed through.
Backpacking in Rio, right after the first two companies. Drugged and robbed of everything. Pushed through. Fell in love with Brazil. The mindset rewrite from that trip is in every coaching session the practice runs.
Shut down after 9/11.
One venture was on track until 9/11 disrupted its funding. Wound down on our own terms before the wreck. Lesson: never let any single dependency control the whole outcome. Diversify funding sources the same way you diversify customers.
Shut down before it pulled us under.
A different venture, a different decade. Same call: shut it down on purpose, write off what couldn't be saved, redeploy what could. Walking is not failing.
Hit-and-run. 90 days.
A hit-and-run took out walking, hearing, and sight, and nearly killed him. Doctors said maybe never again. The bar was set at five miles in Central Park, day 90. Done on day 87. The Unreasonable 90-day approach was born.
The $250K conversation.
A pitch to a billionaire that turned into a real conversation. No check at the table. The conviction came across. The check came after. Energy beats action. The lesson sits inside every sales conversation we coach today.
4,000+ founders. 45 years operating. 25 coaching.
BEST Coaches now coaches Presidents, CEOs, founders, and other professionals running $500K to $5M businesses through fundraising, strategy, and sustainability. Stefan Doering also teaches Intro to Entrepreneurship at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), where sustainable entrepreneurship is part of the syllabus.
Game plan. Accountability. Receipts.
BEST Coaches is sometimes shorthanded as "the CEO Whisperer." The label is accurate but understates the work. What we actually do is hold founders to a measurable plan, week after week, until the plan ships. Our clients call this the difference between an idea and a result.
- You leave session one with a game plan written on one page.
- You ship against it weekly. We track.
- When something stops working, we find it before you do.
- When fundraising is the real lever, we work it directly. When it isn't, we don't.
- You graduate from the engagement holding your own line.