EPISODE 057 | Pulling Back the Curtain on the Dark Side of Coaching

Welcome to our Clinician to Coach Series! 

In this six-part series, I'm sharing resources and strategies to help you start and grow your coaching business to consistent $5K and even $10K months without overwhelm or burnout.

And we're kicking things off by pulling back the curtain on the dark side of coaching! 

In today's episode, you're going to hear me talk about: 

• Why healthcare professionals are burning out with the current state of healthcare
• The growing trends and opportunities in the coaching industry
• The concerns with the wild, wild West of the coaching world and the lack of industry regulation
• Potential issues with coaching certification programs and the importance of consumer awareness
• What we need to consider as health professionals navigating the coaching space

If you enjoy today's episode -- and if you're excited about the rest of this series -- I would love to hear from you! You can reach out via DM on Instagram @otsgonerogue or by email (simply hit reply to one of our weekly email newsletters).

You can also connect with me through our Facebook page  @otsgonerogue or by going to our contact form, https://www.otsgonerogue.com/podcast-contact.

For the latest show notes and full episodes, make sure you head over to otsgonerogue.com/podcast. 

If you don't want to miss any future episodes including the upcoming episodes in the series, make sure you're subscribed to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever else you listen to podcasts. And thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of the OTs Gone Rogue podcast! 

Transcript

You're listening to the OTs Gone Rogue podcast, where we inspire therapists to think outside the box and do things differently. I'm your host, Melissa LaPointe. My passion is in helping ot entrepreneurs have a bigger impact on the world while building a life they love and doing transformative work that lights them up. On each episode of the show, I'm going to share tools and tricks to help you flex your entrepreneurial muscles and grow your business from the inside out. I want to see more OTS step up as visionary leaders, change makers and influential CEOs. So let's get started.

Hey, everyone, and welcome to the clinician to coach series. In this six part series, I am sharing my best strategies to help you start and grow your coaching business. So you can hit consistent 5k and even 10k months without overwhelm or burnout. Now, as many of you know, I have had my feet firmly planted in the coaching industry for several years now. I was offering both parent coaching and birth coaching when I had my private practice. 

So between the years of 2012 and 2018. And in 2019, I started coaching other occupational therapists. So at this point, I had a focus on business and high performance coaching. Last year, I graduated as a Women's Health Coach. And this has helped me to do a deeper dive in the services that I provide as a business coach to high performing female business owners. I am also no stranger to being coached. I've worked with business coaches, movement coaches, health coaches, I've worked with a money coach and a life coach, I had a session with a self love coach, a recovery coach and a relationship coach. 

More recently, I've also been coaching a lot of OT coaches. So yes, I have one foot firmly planted in the OT world. And my other foot is very firmly planted in the coaching world, which is what motivated this series. I really want to help more OTS understand how to navigate the ever growing coaching world. I want to empower you with the knowledge of how to position yourself as a coach, when you're a regulated, licensed healthcare professional. And for those of you who want to start grow or scale your coaching business, I want to help you too. 

So if this sounds like something you're interested in, stick around, because over the next six episodes, we're going to be doing a very deep dive together. All right, are you ready? Let's do this. First, let's talk about some of the reasons why the coaching industry is growing exponentially. There is a huge demand. And we can't talk about the growing coaching industry without also talking about the current state of our healthcare system. I know I'm preaching to the choir here, we are all well aware that there are some issues with our health care system, to put it mildly. 

When we were applying for ot school, when we were applying for acceptance into these fancy therapy programs, many of us were a bit naive in terms of what we were getting ourselves into. And I can't speak for everyone 
Speaking for myself, and for a lot of my ot friends, and a lot of my colleagues, this was our experience. And these programs weren't easy to get into their prerequisites. You know, once we actually got into the programs, the training the amount of time at the library, traveling around for our different fieldwork, placements, tuition. This was not cheap. And it required a lot of sacrifice. 

We made sacrifices in terms of our time, our energy, our resources in order to be healthcare professionals. And then we graduate from ot school, and the world is our oyster until it's not if you go into Google or PubMed, or if you go online and enter keywords. So if you enter keywords like burnout, healthcare, stress, there is an endless stream of information that's going to pop up. And it's not just burnout and stress. You're also going to find articles on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder on alcohol use on substance use on suicide rates. 

What's going on in healthcare For our professionals, it's a pretty dire situation. So the reality is that working in healthcare is very stressful. The healthcare system is broken. It's not supporting us. And we are seeing this mass exodus from our healthcare professionals, and it's a problem.  Another point that I would like to raise is that the health care system is doing a terrible job of promoting health, it often fails to address the root cause of disease and pain. When I was in my women's health coaching program, one of the topics of discussion was around the escalating cost of lifestyle related disease. 

And it is currently estimated that this comprises 70% of healthcare dollars in the US. But our healthcare system isn't set up to address lifestyle related disease. Healthcare professionals generally don't have the time to deliver this information and education, not in the way that our current health care delivery model is set up. So there's a huge gap in terms of what people need. So with behavioral change, in terms of the support required to empower them through education, and what's needed to help them modify their lifestyle. So we have a huge gap between what's currently happening and the need. 

And again, this isn't like there are no secrets here I'm, I realized I'm preaching to the choir. All the different education, the day to day activities, all the different pieces of the puzzle that need to be addressed, and how much time we have as healthcare professionals in the work that we're doing with our clients and our patients, especially when it's covered by insurance or benefits. There's a reason why we're burning out. Adding to that, we have the health care systems reliance on prescription medication and bandaid treatment. So how often we may go into the doctor's office. So we have an issue, we know we have 10 minutes, we have 10 minutes to plead our case to focus on one specific issue. 

And so often the result, the outcome may be prescription medication or a band aid treatment. Even when the symptoms were going in for or the issue or going in for is exasperated or sometimes the result of this prescribed medication. There are so many huge red flags in our healthcare system. It's a big, big problem. Now, as OTs, we have known since the beginning of time, that our health and well being goes beyond the physical. So this isn't rocket science. We know that there are many facets to health, that there are many factors that we have to take into account. We have to think beyond the physical problem. 

But again, there's what we know versus what we have capacity for versus the way the system is set up. Then we have our health insurance coverage and our benefits for those of us who are fortunate to have that because not everyone does. And for any of us that have worked in the system, where we have to deny treatment, because their healthcare insurance doesn't cover it. It's heartbreaking. When you know that, there's something that's going to benefit your client or your patient, and they have to turn it down or when you have to make a decision between two different types of treatment or two different pieces of equipment. And you know, one is hands down superior, it's a better fit. 

And you have to instead pull back and direct the client or the patient to the other one that is less superior simply because of their health insurance that you know is going to be less effective, that's not as good of a fit. That sucks. When someone so a client therapy, excuse me, a client or a patient when they can't work with a specific practitioner, so someone that they may have already developed rapport with someone that may have advanced training. They may have what this person seeking out, but their benefits or their insurance provider doesn't cover that specific practitioner and they have to go somewhere else. 

Again, that sucks. We spent so much time learning about client centered care and the importance of client centeredness in our schooling in our training Yeah, and what a wake up call it is when we get out in the real world, and we see what's happening in the healthcare system. Now, I'm not telling any of you things that you don't already know. But we have to talk about it, we have to get worked up about it, we have to get annoyed. We have to get angry because this is what's going to help motivate us to take action, because we can do better, and we should be doing better. Okay, so we have clinicians and practitioners who are disenchanted by the broken healthcare system, who are burning out who know that they either need to they have a choice, they can transform how they practice, or they can stay on the hamster wheel and burnout. 

So we have that scenario. Now I want to shift gears for a moment, and I want to talk about the coaching industry. The coaching industry is the second fastest growing industry on the planet only second to the IT industry. Is this coincidence when we look at how broken the healthcare system is, when we look at all the life stressors that we've been dealing with in the last five years in terms of humanity? No, it is definitely not a coincidence. numbers vary, but I found reports stating that the coaching industry was valued at $15 billion dollars in 2019, with a total market value of 7.5 billion in the United States. There are some estimates that last year in 2022, the coaching industry was valued at $20 billion. In 2020, if you did a search for coaches worldwide on LinkedIn, you will have come up with millions of results. The international coaching Federation reached over 50,000 members in 156 countries in 2021. 

And those numbers continue to grow exponentially. There is a huge trend happening in the coaching industry. There's a huge demand, and there's a huge need. But like anything else, it is not all rainbows and sparkles. When it comes to the coaching industry, the fastest or rather the second fastest growing sector in the world. This industry is not regulated. So what does that mean? What are we dealing with, when we are moving forward in an industry that lacks regulation. Lack of industry regulation means that there's not currently a clearly defined area of practice. Nor is there a clearly defined scope of practice. No license is required to call yourself a coach. There is no governing body. There are no set qualifications, there is no fee structure in and you can price yourself whatever you would like. You can make the most outrageous claims on a website as to what you're able to provide on the transformation you're able to deliver. You can say whatever you want on social media, and there are no set guidelines in terms of how you practice terms of what you charge terms of how you work with your clients in terms of confidentiality. In terms of boundaries, there are no rules. 

Now, I should have started and I'm going to hit on this now. I want to highlight that there are a lot of excellent coaches in the world. There are a lot of practitioners who have invested many, many hours into their training into their area of expertise into the ins and outs of professionalism and understanding marketing and sales techniques, understanding therapeutic relationships and how this applies in terms of the coaching world. There are a lot of great coaches out there. But there are definitely a lot of bad apples too. There is no clear legal definition even with a health coach, meaning someone can be on Instagram. They can be calling themselves a health coach. So no background, no training. They could be promoting green smoothies and supplements and six pack ab workouts and detoxing. They could be promoting weight loss, they could have 50,000 followers and people are clinging to every bit of information they're sharing as the gold standard. This is the coaching industry. This is the dark side of the coaching industry. 

Now There's a lot of good that's coming out of this industry as well. So this episode isn't meant to discourage you. It's meant to motivate you to think outside the box and to take action. Anyone can be a coach, anyone can call themselves a coach, anyone can charge and make money from being a coach. That doesn't mean anyone can be a good coach, or that just anyone can be an effective coach. We're going to talk about that. But for right now, I want you to understand the lack of industry regulation in the coaching world and what that means. These are some things that we need to consider. And once again, you're going to hear me repeating this over and over, as healthcare professionals, as professionals, as practitioners, as therapists, the onus is on us to decide how we're showing up. And if we want to position ourselves as a coach, we have to rise above all of this, we have to step up and put ourselves out there with integrity, keeping in mind all the different rules and regulations that we have to abide by, as clinicians, as therapists, as regulated healthcare professionals. 

All right, speaking of stepping out there, speaking of coaching, I want to give you an idea of the different niches that you can currently find in the coaching industry. This is not an exhaustive list. This is me doing searches on Google on LinkedIn. This is me doing searches on the various members in so I'm a number of a member in a number of online business groups where a lot of people are coaches. So here's what I came up with. We have mindset coaches, I want to see how many of these you resonate with as an OT. So we have mindset. We have manifestation coach, that's a big one. We have finance coaches and debt coaches. We have money coaches. We have self love coaches. We have trauma informed coaches. We have ADHD coaches, executive coaches, burnout coaches, we have sensory coaches. We have anxiety coaches, and happiness coaches. 

There are cannabis coaches, we have creativity coaches, inner child coaches, we have recovery coaches, career coaches, leadership coaches, mental health coaches, spiritual coaches, divorce coaches, intimacy coaches, of course, we have business coaches, sales coaches and marketing coaches. We have high performance coaches. We have fitness coaches, relationship coaches, transformation coaches, we have birth coaches, we have climate change coaches, weight loss coaches, infant sleep coaches, pediatric sleep coaches. We have emotional intelligence coaches, there are health coaches, menopause coaches, vagina coaches, fertility coaches, resilient coaches, life coaches, we have accountability coaches, parenting coaches, intuitive eating coaches, we have sex coaches and intimacy coaches, we have success coaches, and we have psychedelic transformation coaches. Yes, you heard me right. When we go through this list, again, I want you to keep in mind that some of these coaches have very extensive backgrounds. They have extensive training, extensive experience, but not everyone. 

So for example, calling yourself a trauma informed coach, as a clinician, as a health care professional, we understand the weight of that terminology, but not everyone does. There are people out there, I've seen this messaging, they're claiming that they have successfully escaped a narcissistic abusive relationship. And because they can do it, they're now going to help you do it too. No mental health training, no concept of boundaries, no ability to screen for risks or mental health challenges. No concept of confidentiality, or no understanding of the significance of therapeutic relationships. Tell me that that is not a major red flag with our infant sleep coaches or our pediatric sleep coaches, not all of them are health care professionals. When Max was a baby, I ventured into the sleep industry as a consumer. 

As a pediatric therapist, I was appalled at what I was seeing the lack of regulations, the lack of rules, who was calling themselves a sleep coach, when I would go into their background, their training, what they were charging, with no credentials because they were successful in training have a baby to sleep through the night. Now, you can't tell by someone's title, if they have these credentials or not, if they have these additional trainings and experiences. For a lot of these coaches, there may actually be complaints out there. But we don't know because there's no regulatory body. This is the dark side to coaching. This is the wild wild west.

It's not all negative, though. And I cannot emphasize that enough, there is opportunity. And there are people doing amazing things. I have absolutely adored the work that I have done as a coach, the training, the personal growth, the professional development, the endless opportunities that I've had as a person, a therapist, a business owner, and yes, as a clinician, it is so eye opening, and completely life changing. There's a reason why I want more of us stepping up and leaning into these opportunities. Yet with so few rules and regulations where anyone can be a coach, I often see occupational therapists questioning the need for additional certifications. 

On one end of the pendulum, I see OTs, you know that impostor syndrome creeping up, I've heard them say, oh, my gosh, I could never call myself a coach. And I think that speaks volumes to our desire for more training, and how serious we take this, meaning it's not a bad thing. Because coaching as an OT coaching is 100%. Within our scope of practice, it is a tool in our toolbox. But then I also see OTS say, Oh, we don't need more training, because we are the original life coaches, we've already been trained as coaches. And I don't think that's the way to go either. I think this is our ego getting in the way. If you're going to be working as a coach, you should have some training as a coach, do you need an additional certification? No, you don't. We'll talk about that in a moment. If you choose to go that route totally fine. I've heard other OTS say, Well, I use coaching with all my clients. 

And that doesn't make sense to me either. Because not all of your clients are coachable, or in a place where they're receptive to coaching, or not all of your clients are understanding that this may be a coaching relationship. And if you are not an active participant in a coaching relationship, it's pretty darn hard to be coached. So to me, this speaks to a lack of knowledge on coaching, and a lack of knowledge on the understanding of the coaching agreement or the coaching relationship. So again, we're going to go into this in later episodes. But for now, I want you to understand that yes, OTs are primed to be amazing coaches. And yes, I think we should have more training. The different training that I've completed over the years has really opened my eyes to different way of engaging, a different way of interacting, a different timeline for service provision, different ways of interviewing of asking questions with my coaching clients, different ways of listening, and holding space. 

All of this compared to how I was practicing as a clinician. It's night and day. That's not to say that there weren't times that I brought my coaching skills to that client therapist relationship. So when I was practicing as an occupational therapist, but how I operate as a coach is different than how I operated as a clinician, where as a clinician, I was bringing in coaching tools to some of my interactions, not all of my interactions. So we're going to explore this a little bit more in next week's episode. Well, we're going to touch on it a little bit in the next five episodes. All right. Speaking of coaching certification programs, I want to take a closer look at this because I think this is an important piece to the puzzle when we're talking about the dark side of coaching. 

According to some estimates, there are now over 1000 international coaching Federation, accredited coach training programs offered around the globe. When we talk about no rules, no regulations, no regulatory body. Well, the international coaching Federation is the closest regulatory body that we have, but not everyone's going through them. We also have the National Board for health and wellness coaching. So again, we're getting there changes are happening. But with both of these, you don't have to go through them. Meaning you can call yourself a health coach. or a health and wellness coach without going through and writing your board exams and becoming certified through the National Board for health and wellness coaching. 

Same thing with the international coaching Federation, you can call yourself a business coach, or you can call yourself a life coach without going through one of their training programs or becoming accredited through them. It's possible. There are benefits yes to going through these different organizations to associate yourself with them. But not everyone does. There are so many different certification programs, different certificate programs and training programs out there. The question that you have to ask yourself is, are they legit? Are they necessary? And are they worth the investment? Some of these programs you can do for 20 bucks on Udemy over a weekend. Some of these programs are six to 12 months long, some of them are 18 to 24 months long, and they may come with a price tag of 5000 10,000 $15,000. One well known life coaching certification program now comes with a $25,000 investment. So again, the question is, are they worth it? 

What do you get for your money? Now, we have to take this with a grain of salt, because not all certifications are equal. And not all certifications are issued by national organizations. I know lots of entrepreneurs who've decided to create certification programs, and there's no standardization, it was just an idea that they had in terms of growing their business. Some coaching certifications also come with prerequisites or a requirement to fulfill a certain amount of CEUs each year in order to stay certified. So you might be thinking, Oh, well, isn't that a good thing. This is where I want to highlight this idea of buyer beware and consumer awareness. 

Because there are some certification programs where the prerequisites. And I've seen many actually where the prerequisites are their own specific content, meaning in order to qualify for this certification program, you first have to go through their education series. It's basically this arrangement. So you have to buy one or several of their online courses as a prerequisite, before you can then qualify for their certification program. For an investment, of course, meaning it's part of their ascension model. It's part of how they generate revenue, it's part of how they are profitable. I am not against businesses generating revenue. To be clear, there's nothing wrong with making money. I'm simply speaking to the consumer side of things, you need to take all of this into consideration before investing a lot of money into some of these certification programs. 

There may also be an ongoing annual fee to maintain your certification or there may be ongoing CPUs. I was part of a certification several years ago, it took me two and a half years and several $1,000. I went through their fundamental program, and then traveled to the US for a six day intensive and a practical exam. I was officially certified, I had graduated, I got a little sticker. It's pretty excited, put it on my laptop, got a little badge that I was able to advertise on my website. And in order to stay certified, I had three years to complete a number of additional programs with a signed see us. What bothered me with this was that the programs and the CPUs that I had to complete to maintain my certification. First of all, it was very extensive. It was like three times more than what I needed as an OT. And there is a lot of overlap in terms of training. So what I could use towards my CEUs for this particular certification program, we're talking biomechanics, women's health, pelvic health, restorative exercise, these are all really broad areas where there are a ton of options for continuing education. 

But the only thing that I could use for CPUs in order to stay certified with this particular program was anything from their course library, again, for a fee. I wasn't able to take another training with another professional to put that towards my CPUs, I had to continue to reinvest in this specific company, and their trainings. And that's what I had a problem with. I ended up letting go of my certification. So I let it lapse because I didn't agree with their business model. Do I still use my training and my knowledge and my experience that I got through that certification program? Absolutely. But do I need their fancy badge on my website to get clients? Absolutely not. So again, there's no wrong or right here. It's a very, very good Bay Area.

I've invested in amazing programs that have truly made the world of difference in what I'm doing. They're out there. But there's a lot of garbage to just tread carefully, and get really clear on the potential return of investment. So the lack of rules, lack of regulations, all of this stuff, it really is Buyer beware. So it's up to you to do your research. I want you to ask, what is the gap that you're trying to fill? And is this particular program? Or is this particular training? What is needed to fill that gap? With that being said, if you think a certification program, or additional letters after your name is going to be what brings in clients think, again, that's not what our clients or our prospects, that's not what they think about, or that's not what they look for. Don't worry, we're not going to get into this today. 

But one of our later episodes, we are going to be talking specifically about marketing, and how to get more coaching clients. All right. My final thoughts on the dark side of the coaching industry. I think it's obvious. Coaching has a bit of a branding problem. There are people out there that are giving coaches a bad name. There are people out there that obviously have no idea what they're doing. There are people out there who don't understand the concept of boundaries, who don't understand that they're actually causing people harm. There are people out there that I'm sure this isn't intentional. They're simply naive or ignorant as to the work that they're doing. But there are also people out there that are doing this for the money. There are scams, there are unethical marketing and sales tactics, you have to sign up now to get your fast acting bonus, you have to hand over your credit card details immediately, you're going to lose your spot forever. You have to take out a line of credit to pay for this massive investment. 

But don't worry, they grew a seven figure coaching business in 30 days, and now you can too. You'll get your money back. And then so I hope you can pick up on some of my sarcasm here. Listen to our earlier episode on sales tactics, pricing strategies to get to hear more of my thoughts on this. But there are no rules you guys, there are no regulations, there is no board you can complain to. So coaching has a branding problem. Anyone can be a coach. But like anything else, there's a flip side to this. There are a lot of good coaches out there. There are a lot of people having very positive experiences with coaching. The industry continues to grow for a good reason. There is no shortage of people having problems. There is no shortage of people looking outside of traditional health care to help them solve their problems. Because as we learned at the beginning of this episode, the traditional health care model is not cutting it. People are seeking other ways to go above and beyond what's provided through the health care system. 

So on next week's episode, we're going to dive a little bit deeper into this branding problem, where we're going to talk more about therapists calling themselves coaches. You have worked very hard for your credentials. You've worked hard for your training, your certifications, your professional designation. So I know that many of you are wondering, well, if I just start calling myself a coach, when coaching has a branding problem am I going to be damaging my reputation as a health care professional. And like anything else? It depends. But with that being said, there are ways that you can 100% Maintain your reputation as a health care professional while still calling yourself a coach. I am surrounded by healthcare professionals who are coaching and doing a great job of it, and maintaining that professional status and staying in integrity with what they want to be doing as a health care professional. Last but not least, we do have to think about the risks to coaching. It is the wild wild west. 

So what does that mean? If you are a licensed, regulated health professional? Yes, you have to look into insurance. You have to consider your marketing materials and how you're using your title as a therapist. You have to look into the promises that you're making and the ways that you're delivering your services. As healthcare professionals, we have to hold ourselves to a different standard. There are ways that you can move forward where you're not doing anything wrong. And you can do this in a way that is maintaining that standard of care that you pride yourself on as a health care professional. In the upcoming episodes, we're going to continue navigating these next steps together 

All right, let's wrap this up. In summary, in this episode, we touched on why health care professionals are burning out. We also talked about the trends and the opportunities in the coaching industry. We talked about the concerns about industry regulation, or lack thereof. And you learned some of the potential issues with coaching certification programs. Last but not least, you learned that there's more to the conversation, in terms of what we need to consider as health professionals navigating the coaching world. So there you have it, my friends, pulling back the curtain on the dark side of coaching. I hope you enjoyed this first conversation here on the clinician to coach series, we've covered a lot and we are setting the stage on what's yet to come.

In the next episode, we're going to talk more about how to avoid confusing yourself and your clients in terms of the services you're providing. Because coaching isn't therapy, and consulting isn't coaching. For episode three, we're going to dive into how to actually start a coaching business. Episode Four, we'll explore the benefits of working one on one with your clients. And in Episode Five, we will focus on how to actually get those clients. So we're going to be talking about your marketing plan. Last but not least, we're going to wrap this series up with our sixth episode all about creating your signature coaching program. 

I hope you're as excited about this series as I am and I can't wait to hear from you. As always, if you loved this episode, please take a screenshot and share with me on Instagram. You can tag me at otsgonerogue and let me know your thoughts. For the latest show notes and full episodes. Make sure you head over to otsgonerogue.com/podcast. If you don't want to miss any future episodes, including the upcoming episodes in this particular series. Make sure you're subscribe to the show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever else you listen to podcasts. All right. Thank you so much everyone for listening to this week's episode of the  OTs Gone Rogue podcast and we'll talk soon.