The Certification Epidemic

The health and fitness industry has more certifications than any other industry that we know of. Yet, here’s the irony. Based on my experience, health and fitness professionals are probably the least paid out of other professionals when compared to accountants, doctors, real estate, all that kind of stuff, although doctors are still part of the health and fitness world.

Average Salary Of Health and Fitness Professionals

Okay, what’s going on then? What is going on? The average salary of a health coach is less than $42,000 a year. The average salary of a naturopathic doctor is less than $73,000 per year. That’s not a lot of money to live on if you live in the Western worlds. Yet, we think as a health and fitness professional that we need to continue getting new certifications and putting more letters behind our name. For what? Why are we doing this?

Yes, You ARE Good Enough

Well, here’s what I think. I think this happens for a few reasons. Number one, I don’t believe, or I believe that most health and fitness experts don’t believe they’re good enough to help their clients. At some level, there is this thinking of, “You know what? I don’t know enough. There’s something I’m missing. I’m not good enough. I can’t charge enough. Therefore, I need to get another certification,” or, “I need to be certified in order to help people.”

Now, when I was in school … I went to school for Kinesiology. In my second year of university, I went to a local gym, and I decided to get a job as a personal trainer. And I told my manager straight up, I said, “Listen. I have no intention, like zero percent intention, of becoming a certified personal trainer. I’m not going to do a certification course. I’m not going to do a two-day weekend workshop, whatever, because I’m doing this every single day in school.” And what I knew was that, based on my experience and my knowledge, I could help people.

And I want you to really let this sink in. You are good enough just the way you are, and if you’re not good enough in terms of being able to help someone, then that’s okay. Just be honest with that. And if you’re at that point where you’re not good enough to get an outcome for other people, then hey, yeah, do the training. Sharpen your skills. That’s important. But at some point, it’s just another excuse, getting ready to get ready, getting all your ducks in a row, filling up your tool box with more tools and more tools and more tools, just so that at some point in the future, you’ll feel confident and better about yourself to be able to finally get out and get clients.

Getting Past Your Fear

The reality is that I think most people, again, number one is that they don’t believe enough in themselves and they’re trying to get … they’re borrowing belief from certifications. Yet, the more certifications they get, it doesn’t seem to help their business. Second is I think a lot of health pros are simply afraid of doing what matters, which is selling. And when I say selling, I’m talking about having a conversation with a prospective client and being like, “Hey, does this make sense? Let’s do the deal. Let’s make this happen. Let’s start working together.” Because what could happen if the person says no? God forbid, we get rejected. It’s one of the biggest human fears, rejection and the fear of being disliked.

So what do we do? We hide behind busy work. We hide behind, “Oh, I’m doing this six-month certification. Once I’m done that, then I’ll feel ready to go out and put myself on the ledge.” But you know what? That’s not the way this works. The only way you get more comfortable putting yourself out there is by putting yourself out there. You can’t study bungee jumping and then go 1,000 feet up and be like, “Okay. Cool. I’m ready to bungee jump.” It doesn’t work like that. You got to go to the edge, jump off the fricking edge, and then the next time you’re going to do bungee jumping, it’s going to be a lot easier.

It’s the same thing in business. The only thing that matters is attracting new leads, converting them into clients, and delivering an amazing result for them. Anything else you’re doing is a waste of time, not just for you but most importantly for the clients you want to serve. Think about this. The longer you wait, the more you deliberate, the more the people you want to serve are suffering. It’s as simple as that.

That’s the first problem, but the second problem is that they’re not going to suffer forever because they’re pretty smart. They’re going to find a solution somewhere else. So the longer you’re waiting, those clients are like, “You know what? I still got to figure this solution out today.” So they’re going to go to somebody else. And listen. There’s no lack of problems you can solve in this world. There’s no lack of new potential clients coming into the pipeline of your potential business. But you have to be at a point and you got to be realistic about … I mean, you got to be real with yourself. You got to be, “Listen. Am I okay making $40,000 a year? Am I okay making less than $5,000 a month before tax,” if that’s the case in your situation.

Raise Your Ambitions

There are people that we speak with who just want to make an extra thousand dollars a month. I’m like, “Add a zero to that at least. At least add a zero.” So raise your standards. Raise your ambitions, and when you want more, not for the sake of wanting more money. It’s not about that. It’s about growing. It’s about who you become in the process. It’s about helping more people. And by helping people, we’re not doing that by getting more and more certifications.

So please, there’s a balance between getting enough knowledge and know-how to help someone and deliberating and procrastinating forever because you want to get more and more and more certifications because you’re going to feel better about yourself to eventually help people. Don’t make that mistake. Please, don’t make that mistake. Take action. Fail forward fast. Make the mistakes. Learn from them. Help people. That’s the way you build your business, and anything else is going to be a massive waste of time, at least in my experience, at least with the people that we’ve served, and yeah, hopefully this serves you as well, okay?

So that’s the deal. That’s the deal. If you think I’m crazy, let me know in the comments. If you agree, let me know in the comments as well. And if you think someone else needs to hear this message, then please give this a thumbs up and share it with them. We need more health and fitness pros doing the work, getting out there, and serving more people.