Depending on your coaching methods, your qualification and your coaching brand assets, you are likely to be building up a suite of licenses and memberships. These are not only going to be added to your marketing and product offer but also be added to your biographies and case studies as part of your coaching business communication.
The licenses that you own, collect and maintain play another role for your clients in that they should add value to your coaching quality, tools and presence. The licenses involved in a coaching business come in many forms, but the typical categories are certificates of qualifications, accreditation and affiliation with accreditation bodies. Then there are the licenses for products that aid your delivery of your processes i.e., software or coaching platforms. Then finally there are the tools that you purchase from third parties that aid your coaching i.e. psychometrics or assessments. All of these I would class as licenses. To operate with them successfully you will need to learn how to be the owner of the licenses, understand their implications and how to maintain them.
Using a driving license analogy, it is best to use your business plan to choose which licenses are going to make a difference and return on expectations before you invest in obtaining them. Some licenses feel important to get you started on the road and some will enhance your work as you move from one product vehicle to another of a difference size.
Before you take the tests to obtain the license, it is also good to be clear what the return on investment will be for your clients and the bill payer and be ready to understand what costs need to be built into your proposals that acknowledge their worth. All licenses take investment in time and money and many of the coaching tools will have a cost to provide to your client and a cost to maintain that license and sometimes renew it after a period of time.
Finding out which licenses will help you open doors, secure business and are on trend in the coaching profession is also key to making the decisions in your annual plan and it is always good to discuss which ones are working best for your peers.
As with most professions, we will also need to face into disruption and the opportunities that AI will bring and so we also need to think about what tools we may need a license to work with in the future. Let’s all keep talking on that point!
Kate