Life Coach Certification – Do I Need One?

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