Sean Smith: Hey if you've been wondering what kind of life coach certification
you need to be a life coach or if you even need one at all?
Stick around in this video.
I'm going to give you my thoughts based on well over a decade in this industry and I'll
let you know why my answer is emphatically, No.
And yes, I'll explain.
Don't tell anybody that I have shorts on.
They won't be able to see it.
And on this channel.
I publish videos every week so make sure you click the subscribe button and click that
little bell icon.
So you get notified every time I go live and publish videos if you're interested in hearing
the truth about the coaching industry.
So, by the end of this video I'm gonna give you all the information you need to decide
if you need a coaching certification at all.
If you don't know me I'm Sean Smith.
I'm the founder of Elite Coaching University where we give me the skills to be a better
coach and the strategies to build a bigger business.
Now, I've been coaching in this industry for well over a decade.
I look really dark, this is kind of creepy.
Dang it!
That's not going to work.
I've been coaching this industry for well over a decade now.
I've been in this conversation around certifications what's needed what's not many many times.
And you are about to get what's in my head.
This conversation really comes down to the value of a certificate and the value of certainty.
This actually is not my coaching certificate it's it's it's my Master's Master of Arts
in Education.
I was.
So you really need a certification or some kind of credential
to open up a life coaching business the answer is no there's no legal body in this industry
it's not like medicine or law or psychiatry or therapy where you have to pass some kind
of a board certification program to open up a business.
And then you have to get one of those called now continuing education in order to stay
in business we don't have a legal body like that.
The upside is that you don't need a certification to open up a business.
The downside is that you don't need a certification to open up a business.
Now I don't want to be super judgmental, but there are some coaches that probably shouldn't
have a business.
No disrespect to them but they haven't been trained properly.
That's one of the downsides about not having some kind of board that set standards.
Now the closest thing we have to that in my experience is the ICF which is the International
Coach Federation but they still don't have any legal power.
So even though they have a lot of standards and their curriculum is phenomenal super high
level of training if you don't follow their standards you don't get a credential by then
they can't come in and shut you down.
And there another light just turned on two lights turned on.
Fantastic.
See I don't know how to turn my lights off.
They're all on sensors.
I've only been here three and a half years so you can expect me to know how to work my
lights.
Here's to a more enlightened conversation.
I don't have anything bad to say about the ICF at all.
I really respect them as an organization.
But my experience is that their value in providing certification is really just to coaches not
prospects.
So in all my experience with prospects if you've demonstrated that you can help them
they really don't care if you got your schooling from a certain institution or not.
They just want the help.
I mean if they have a splinter in their thumb and they want you to take it out do you think
they're really going to check in with where you went to schooling and see your credential
on the wall?
No.
They just want to splinter out.
So that's pretty much how it is with prospects.
If you show them that you can help them make a significant change in their life they will
hire you in all my experience in the coaching industry.
I've only been asked maybe eight to 10 times where I got certified, but they were always
by other coaches who I guess just wanted to compare credentials.
Never by a prospect.
Now the one caveat I would add to that is if you're in some sort of academic market
like medicine or law or any other industry that places a high level of value on academic
credentials well then everything I just said throw it out the window.
For the most part in most markets people just want help in their life or some kind of business
strategy so they won't really care about the academic credential.
The most important thing in this whole conversation is whether or not you're a good coach.
Not whether you have a piece of paper hanging on the wall.
I mean would you rather get in the car with somebody who just has
a drivers license or somebody that knows how to drive?
Now if you asked me my opinion I don't really see this happening in the coaching industry
where we have a legal board.
But I would love to see it become reality so that we can tighten up the standards of
the industry and get a lot more consistency in the curriculum so that most coaches really
truly have a grasp of transformational strategies and what it actually takes to change a human's
life.
If and when that happens I think we would all be better off, both, coaches and clients
but those are just my personal thoughts about the legal conversation.
But the reason I really think you need a certification is so that you have the certainty in your
body to actually attract clients.
You see a good certification program is going to give you four main things profession, process,
projection, and practice.
So, the first thing is that you'll just feel professional. I mean, it feels really good to
complete a certification program and get a certificate with your name on it.
And it also matches the way we think about a legitimate career.
First you get trained and then you start your business.
So when you complete a high quality training program it actually changes your psyche a
little bit.
It makes you kind of feel good about yourself right as you get ready to start this business.
Plus there's nothing like celebrating a job well done and a lot of hard work and effort
especially when you go through a program with your peers.
[00:05:58] The second thing that a good certification program will give you is a process.
So you need to have some kind of a path to illuminate in order for your prospects to
feel good about hiring you.
And let me tell you, if you don't know the basics of human behavior and you can't put
that in some sort of framework that people can understand and get excited about following.
It's going to be really difficult for you to create the distinction necessary to make
people think that you can actually change their life.
Now, having said that though you don't want to lay out every single one of your steps
and tell them exactly what you're going to do because if you give the intellect too much
information like that it will think that it can just go off and do this on its own and
you're actually going to talk yourself out of clients.
But that's getting into the sales process and it's a little bit beyond the scope of
this particular video.
I'm going to open that whole thing up though in another video so you can really, truly understand
what it takes to sell coaching packages.
But if you want to get a little bit of a head start on that I created a sales training and
it will help you close as much as 80 percent of your prospects on your consultation calls.
It's got a script that I created and we teach it to our sales people in order to know exactly
what to say when you're on the phone with somebody who might be interested in hiring
you as a coach.
And if you have any resistance or fear of sales get your hands
on that consultation guide so you can increase your certainty when you're on the phone.
Now the third thing that a good certification is going to give you and this is really big
in the sales conversation is the ability to provide what we call projection mode and what
that means is you project the future and really give people a sense of what your coaching
process is going to be able to do to help them decide if this is a good fit or not.
Now as I hear myself say that I want you to understand your job is not to get people to
say yes I can't stand when people teach things like how to get every client to say yes or
how to overcome every objection.
As a coach you don't want everybody to say yes I think your job should be to provide
enough clarity so that they know whether this is a good fit and they're yes or whether it's
not a good fit.
There are no I think all these sales tactics that try to like strong arm people to say
yes to coaching is one of the main reasons that the industry has a little bit of a black
guy and people think it's kind of dirty.
We're not selling widgets here. We're inviting people into an intimate exchange of us helping
them change something in their life.
And if that relationship is not solid from the beginning then it's not going to go well.
So what that kind of projection might sound like is when you go through my program here's
my intention for you I want you to have more happiness in your relationships.
I want you to have more confidence at your job and I really want
to help you drop these 10 pounds that you've been struggling to get off.
Now you wouldn't generally put all of those into one coaching program.
I'm giving you several different examples depending on whatever it is that you coach
on.
But the idea is that you let them know what the future can hold if and when they follow
this process.
But it's very difficult to do that if there isn't a process.
Now you never want to guarantee results.
I think that's disingenuous.
I think it's actually almost fraudulent because we don't know how the person is going to respond
what kind of commitment they're going to have etc.
But at the very least you can give them an idea of what they could experience in your
coaching.
However you can only do that if there's a process that specifically engineered to generate
that outcome.
But if you don't have a process and you're just like hey I'm a life coach and you're
a client so let's just get together and talk a little bit on the phone and good things
are going to happen.
You probably won't get very many clients.
And the fourth thing you're gonna get a good certification program is practice.
The only way to increase your confidence in coaching and certainty in yourself is through
intentional strategic practice.
I mean look nowadays coaching is extremely competitive it's not like a decade ago or
20 years ago where it was just starting.
There are a lot of coaches out there and if you're not showing up with the right authentic
energy that's going to create trust.
You're going to really struggle.
Now I don't say that to scare you.
I say that hopefully help prepare you for what you're going to
need to show up powerfully and be successful as a coach.
And if you're not in a well designed certification program chances are you're not getting the
kind of strategic practice that is necessary to build these coaching muscles.
I mean coaching is a specialized skill set if you really want to understand human psychology
and learn the tools and techniques to change somebody's life.
You gotta be intentional about it.
So a good certification is going to set you up with how to practice. Going to set you up
with people to practice on and hopefully you actually have some experienced coaches as
well to give you feedback on the tools and techniques as you learn them.
So those are the four things that you should get from a good certification program.
Now of course I wouldn't do a video on certification if I didn't give a shameless plug about my
certification program right.
I teach something called neuro-transformational coaching, which is being able to change people's
neurology so that the habit shifts, actually, are long lasting and sustainable.
I have a philosophy that if you don't change your neurology you can't have a true breakthrough.
Now if you want more information to see if that course is a good fit for you.
Check out the link in the description below.
So in summary if you really want to be successful a coach just get a certification.
Don't try to cut corners and shortcut your success in this industry
and you don't need the certification to try to impress people with some shiny framed piece
of paper but you need it to really impact people with the skills the certainty and the
knowledge you're going to get from a really good certification program.
So I hope this discussion has been valuable for you.
Please comment below with any thoughts or questions you may have even if you disagree
with anything that I said inside this certification conversation.
If you're interested in the sales training or my online certification go ahead and click
those links in the description and if you like this video let me know by liking and
subscribing and sharing if you'd like to.
You can actually take the transcript of this video.
Write it down in handwriting and mail it to anybody out there across the globe who really
needs this information.
They would love that.
Think of your grandparents in-laws maybe long lost friends from high school.
Anyway, thanks for watching.
Stay tuned for the bloopers and see in the next video.
What's up.
How come nobody is sticking around?
Am I that boring already?
OK.
Yeah.
You said I'm smooth.
Is that what it means to be liquid.
So just before I started recording I took a drink and spilled on my shirt.
Shhhhhh.
My camera's going to run out of battery.
Dang it.
So you can stay in touch.
What the hell.
What does that mean?
Summa cum laude.
Master of arts in education.
I was.
Do or do not, there is no try.
You're not just going to get that willy nilly.
Willy nilly!?
Where the hell did that come from?
Now I published channels on this video every single hahahahaha.
Its late.