6 Reasons It’s Critically Important to Earn Your Coaching Certification

As you consider becoming a coach, or as you start your journey to becoming one, you may be wondering whether it's really important to earn a certification.

After all, the coaching industry is still mostly unregulated, which means you're not required to be certified to launch your business and start coaching.

And certification obviously requires investments of time, energy, and money, and as a current or future business owner, those resources may be in short supply.

So if you don't have to become certified, then why would you?

Here are six reasons why it's critically important to earn your coaching certification:

1. Coaching certification provides you with an invaluable education.

If you're considering becoming a professional coach, then you're probably a natural when it comes to supporting and helping people. You've likely been coaching, unofficially, for years. Even so, there are specific skills and techniques coaches can employ to increase their effectiveness and efficiency—and help their clients get even better results, faster. You will learn these skills and techniques during the certification process.

2. Coaching certification requires ongoing education, which means you'll constantly hone your skills and stay at the forefront of the industry.

Because certification requires ongoing education, you can rest assured that as new developments arise in the industry (new tools, techniques, technology, and more), you'll be able to learn about and utilize them to help your clients succeed.

3. Having a certification provides you with credibility—which helps with marketing and business building.

Because coaching is becoming more popular both as a career and as a service individuals seek, potential clients have lots of options. Those potential clients are more likely to explore working with coaches who are certified, because they appear more professional and better educated. Plus, if you decide to pursue other methods for building your business—like speaking, writing a book, or offering courses—being certified will boost your credibility and make people more likely to hire you, buy your book, or take your courses.

4. Certified coaches earn more.

Several different studies have shown that coaches with certification and training earn more money, fill their practices more quickly, and remain professional coaches for longer than their uncertified counterparts.

5. Earning your certification means you're “walking the talk.”

You're asking people (your clients) to invest in their own personal or professional growth by hiring you. So it only makes sense that you'd walk the talk—that you'd invest in your own personal and professional development by becoming certified.

6. As the coaching industry grows, chances are it will eventually become regulated, and you'll be required to get certified, anyway.

The coaching industry is now a multi-billion-dollar industry. That means lots of people are coaching, and lots of people are hiring coaches. It means coaching works! And it also means that it's only a matter of time before the government regulates the industry.

In fact, Switzerland is the first country to begin regulating the industry last year! Could your country be next?

If it is, it's very likely coaches who own their businesses will be required to earn and maintain certification. Getting certified now is a great way to be prepared so that when laws go into effect, you're able to just keep coaching, instead of worrying about being forced out of business while you earn your certification!

In conclusion …

Although doing business as a coach doesn't currently require a certification, we can't overstate the importance of earning certification anyway. Doing so has myriad benefits to you and, more importantly, to your clients.

If you'd like to learn more about how to earn your certification, visit the Radiant Coaches Academy website here…