Contractor coaching ↔ marketing receptivity correlation — three plausible causal interpretations, data does not distinguish

Claim: Coaching organizations (Breakthrough Academy, EOS adopters, ProfitTools — see [[breakthrough-academy-coaching-self-reported-outcomes]]) correlate with marketing receptivity, but the causal direction is unclear. Three plausible interpretations:

1. Selection effect — GCs who self-select into coaching are already more business-systematic and would have adopted marketing anyway.
2. Treatment effect — coaching genuinely produces marketing receptivity by teaching the owner to think in firm-level rather than craft-level terms (relevant to [[down-reveley-2004-owner-operator-identity-trade-not-firm]]).
3. Joint adoption — coaching, EOS, marketing, and tech-stack modernization are bundled in practice; cause is the underlying readiness, not coaching specifically.

Confidence: Directional. The data does not currently distinguish among these.

For Candid — qualification rule: Treat "the contractor has a coach" as a strong qualifying signal but not as a sufficient one. It correlates with budget, owner-time availability, and basic systems-thinking, all of which raise close-rate. It does not by itself indicate fit; combine with the segment criteria in [[marketing-engaged-vs-averse-gc-profile-table]].