Have you ever wondered why coaches still need their own coaches? A lot might think, “Why would a coach need another coach?” It may come as a surprise, but coaches still need guidance in order to discover their true selves and their higher purpose.

I got asked one day, while I was coaching, why coaches need coaching from other coaches? And it gave me this wonderful idea to share three questions that coaches have in their minds and my answers to these questions. I will also share a cool analogy on why you need to invest in your professional and personal growth.

Are you ready? Hold on to your hats, ladies and gents, and let’s dive into this amazing episode!

Soul Stirring Quotes

“Coaching is the answer to all of the issues that this modern world is throwing at us.”

“The coaching industry is needed badly today to stop the gap, to pull us back from this existential crisis we’re in.”

“The coaching industry is many things, but saturated is not one of them.”

“We live in a transparent world, and professional and personal life can no longer be separated.”

“The coaching industry is here to stay!”

“Clients who pay good money expect you to be trained and certified.”

“The world is really hurting and we really need help.”

“I encourage you to follow your passion and show up in this coaching space!”

Why are there so many coaches, coaching coaches, we are about to get MEA up in this podcast. Welcome to the everyday intuitive podcast. I’m your host, Heather Alice Shae intuitive life coach trainer status quo, shaker and founder of Atmana coaching academy. Listen in each week to break up with your comfort zone, claim yourself confidence and radically embrace your role as an intuitive healer mentor and sought after coach let’s get within.

And get after it

today. I wanna talk about the coaching industry. RI large, and there’s a couple of disconcerting myths or sort of ideas run a muck about the coaching industry that I want to touch on here today. And there are three main questions that I hear from the aspiring coaches, the emerging coaches, and also just, you know, coaches who’ve been in business for a hot minute.

Frequently ask me. And so here are the questions we’re gonna cover. And by the end of this episode, my hope is that. Your faith in this industry is completely renewed and that you will really sort of once. And for all understand that coaching is not a side hustle. This is a legitimate profession that this world desperately needs.

I would go so far as to say that coaching the coaching industry and the concept of coaching in general is quite literally. One of the greatest solutions to our 21st century problems that we have economically, spiritually, personally, coaching is the answer to all of the issues. That modernity is throwing at us and that’s a bold claim and I’m gonna back it up with some straight up facts.

So put on your nerd glasses serves and sisters, here we go. The first question that I get is why are so many coaches coaching other coaches pretty meta, right? Let’s say that three times real fast. Why are so many coaches, coaching coaches, coaches, coaching other coaches on how to coach the second one. I get a lot.

Is the coaching industry saturated. And the third is, is this whole coaching bubble gonna burst? Hey, can I say the word coaching one more? coaching. So let’s, let’s dive in. And in order to really answer this, this first one, why are there so many other coaches, coaching coaches, and why is the coaching industry needed so badly?

We are gonna have to travel back in time. So let’s just kind of. Step back in history and put this into context of why we’re seeing such a rise of helpers in our world. So the short answer to this really is coaching is the mechanism by and through which we now learn the necessary and required skills that we have to have not only earn a living, but actually cultivate a meaningful and.

Prosperous and healthy life. Okay. So let’s look at how human beings, you know, use how we used to, to live and work. What, what, what was our lives like 300 years ago? What’s really normal for humans. Like for our species in general is, you know, you grew up on a farm, right? Like there weren’t these big cities that we would go to.

So previous to the industrial revolution, which started around 1760 human beings lived in a gray model. Right. So you were born. Your, you knew what you were gonna do for a living. You didn’t like you were gonna go plow the field with your dad when you were gonna make butter with your mother. Right. That’s what you were gonna do.

Very few people had the luxury of going to university. You know, if you were super lucky, you got to apprentice, maybe with another guy in the neighborhood, uh, who, who maybe. A skill or a trade that you maybe were, uh, more inclined to do, uh, maybe what your dad did or your uncle did, or your mother did.

Wasn’t something that you, um, it’s actually, for women, we didn’t even have that option. We were just gonna like do what our mothers did. But if you were, if you were a, a guy you maybe had a little bit of, uh, flexibility in that you could be an apprentice. We would call that today, like a trade school. Um, that’s what you did to go get a.

To be able to, to live, eat, you know, and exist in this world. But there wasn’t a whole lot of question about what you were gonna do. Right? You were gonna be a, you know, what is it? A, the quintessential butcher baker, candlestick maker kind of thing. And then the industrial revolution happened. Right? So, so in the agrarian model, you knew your skill set, you were gonna plow the field.

You were gonna shoe a horse. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, you learn that skill by the time you’re 15 and off, you’re off to the races. You die by the time you’re 40. Congratulations. Right? So then we have the industrial revolution and that started in like the, the 1760s and lasted till about the, you know, the mid 18 hundreds.

And what you had was a bunch of people learning a new set of skills. They went instead of to the fields to work, they would go to a factory, right. So we sort of needed to up level our skills, um, and. We sort of stepped out of the old way of doing things, but even with that, really, yes, there was some education involved, but you could basically get on the job training, you know, in order to, to make your way in the world.

And that was really how we existed for, you know, from the, uh, 18 fiftys up until about 19 50, 19 60, when the technological revolution happened. Okay. So you are seeing this steady, steady, steady, steady progression into constantly needing to learn new skills. Stay with me here. The reason why coaching is so important is it is the mechanism by which a human, uh, a human being learns new skills, whether that’s a personal skill, a professional skill, it doesn’t matter.

Okay. So we went from agrarian. To industrial. And now we’re in this CR we’re literally living in the midst of a massive technological revolution. What I don’t think we realize as individuals, because we’re sitting in the soup of this every day is that’s what we’re living in in times a million, right? We are in the middle of a digital revolution right now.

And so what we are, what we are seeing in our economy, in our world, with breakneck pace. Your average person is having to learn new professional skills. You know, EQ emotional intelligence is now a thing. It is almost never ending. The amount of skill a person has to have in order to be successful in our world today.

And it’s all encompassing. It’s not, you know, you don’t, you no longer get up and go to university. And learn how to be an accountant work for a big firm. Stay there for 35 years, get your pension and leave. That’s not the world we are living in today. Okay. So with the industrial revolution and, you know, starting in, uh, after the great depression, people started going to college, right.

We started saying, oh, you know, we need, we’re gonna go. We’re gonna, we’re gonna learn an official profession. And we are going to do that profession for the rest of our. Okay, that has now gone away. That was a 20th century thing, ladies and gentlemen, that doesn’t exist anymore. So to back that up, there was a recent article published in December of, uh, 2019 college enrollment is down, is steadily declining and has gone down 11% since 2011.

And they only expect that to continue to go. okay. So let’s, again, let’s, let’s kind of sum this up. Where did a person go to learn those skills? They either went to a trade school, which are virtually non-existent in America. And today. You apprentice was someone which again, doesn’t exist. No one. You don’t.

No one lets you do that. Hey, can I come to work and learn how to be an accountant with you? No, doesn’t happen. Okay. And then what was our other alternative with those, you know, apprentice go to a trade school. Okay. Those don’t exist anymore. Well, you would go to college and now that is even going away.

And even if you do get to go to college, those days of getting a four year degree, you study for four years to learn a profession that let’s be honest, you probably are gonna hate anyway, to get outta school to be $80,000 in debt. To go do something else to not even apply your degree. So the reason why the coaching industry is needed so badly, it’s the stop gap.

It’s what it’s. The coaching industry is coming in to say, okay, we are going to be the new infrastructure as this old infrastructure is dying away. so that is why there are so many other peop so many other coaches, coaching coaches. We are literally in the process, although we don’t know that’s what we’re doing.

Right. But if you stop and think about it, the reason why there’s such a mad rush to, uh, have so many more coaches or people want to get in the industry is that we, I think on an unconscious level, we understand. uh, that, that is what is going to really pull us back from this existential crisis we’re in, because of all of the technological disruption that we’re experiencing.

It’s like, you can’t you now. So your average person now, um, the data on this show that you will have three careers in your life. What are you gonna do? Go back to college and get another degree and another degree? No, again, those are the old ways, right? So coaching is where we are able to learn those new skills.

And so why there are so many coaching coaches is we understand that we need to build that info infrastructure. There simply aren’t enough coaches right now, which brings me to my second question. which is, is the coaching industry saturated. Oh my God. I hear this all the time. So if you’re thinking about becoming a new coach or you’re thinking about training, or you wanna enter into the industry, but this one is holding you back.

Ah, okay. Just, I’m gonna, I am going to do my best to read a bunch of big numbers to you that will help you just, you know, nail this one in the coffin. The coaching industry is many things, but saturated is not one of them. Okay. So. The coaching industry is not even close to being saturated. There are approximately big number ready for this 7,655,957,369 people on this planet right now.

And guess how many live coaches there are according to the ICFs, most recent data. There are 2016 survey, which by the way, is the gold standard in coaching research. Guess how many coaches we have in the world right now? 53. Thousand 300 coaches. So if you are a life coach right now, you are at a very, very, very, very small club of people.

If you want the number on that it’s 7e-06% of the world’s population. And if you happen to reside in north America, only 33% of that number live in the, on the north American continent. So that’s a pitiful, you know, about 17. Thousand 589 coaches to be exact right. Landing you in even an even smaller group of people.

Just 0.0 0 0 0, 0 2% of the population. Okay. So yeah, no, the coaching industry is not saturated. Again. We do not have enough coaches. To fill the need to help people learn these inner and outdoor skills. I think another reflection of how incredibly important and, uh, powerful the coaching industry is, is like the rise that you see in mindfulness training.

Another thing that coach, uh, that this sort of hints to is that new training is needed and the new infrastructure structure. Will be built to provide this training is not a factory. It’s not physical. It’s cognitive it’s in the mind we need cognitive skills, not physical skills. We don’t, we’re not going to work in a car factory.

Right? Like we did at the beginning of the 19th century, we are, uh, learning cognitive skills. Right. It’s an inner game at this point. It’s in the mind. And who owns the mind space, the mental health community, and of course the coaching community, uh, and a recent survey in Forbes magazine also, uh, or published or, uh, commented on and published in Forbes magazine says that the coaching industry is the second fastest industry growing industry in the world.

Second. Two, you guessed it, the tech industry. So these two things kind of go hand in hand. I really see the tech, uh, the tech industry and the coaching industry going hand in hand because the tech industry is moving so quickly. We need a nimble agile system that allows people to stay up to date on their skills.

And kind of move with the flow at that, you know, at that pace, that quick pace, uh, that technology advances through, which also brings me to my third question is will the coaching industry bubble burst. And I think that the answer to that now is pretty self-evident, there’s, there’s really no way that it’s going to burst.

in fact, it’s in its infancy. We haven’t even really gotten started with it. Um, I, I think the evidence of this is the fact that the coaching industry is so deregulated coaching is so new. The government hasn’t even had a found a way to, uh, found a way to make money off of it yet girl don’t, you know, that they will find a way to tax it or tariff it or something.

It and coaching is so it’s the second fastest growing industry in the world. And. They haven’t even done that yet. Right. So, so that’s an indicator that it, that this industry really still is in its infancy. Another question that people ask all the time is, is there any money to actually be made as a coach?

And yes, the answer is yes. As of 2015, coaching is a 2.3 billion industry, and this is a 19% increase since 2011. So if that growth rate holds which it did. it grew by 447 million in just like three years. That’s three or four years. That’s insane. So there is absolutely money to be made as a coach and fun fact, the largest segment within the coaching industry, the biggest is the personal growth and development.

You would think that it would be like. Corporate professional development. It actually isn’t its personal development. That’s the big area where, you know, help is needed the most. So if you’re a coach and you want to get into the personal development realm. Oh my gosh. Like you’re loving it, man. That is the place.

To be. And that also makes sense, right? Because people need to get their mind, right. They need to get their lives. Right. There’s no longer a separation between a person’s professional and personal life. It’s just all the same thing. This whole idea of like work life balance. No, man, we live in a transparent world.

If you don’t have your shit together. And your personal life, chances are you do not have your shit together and your professional life again, because the pace is so quick. So personal coaching, professional coaching, tomato motto, it’s all kind of the same thing. But what this means to you as a coach is that whichever industry that you want to go into you really kind of can’t.

Get this wrong. And another question that people ask all the time and that I think is a really, really, really important question is do I really need to be certified? And I run a life coach training in business development company. So obviously I’m going to say yes to that, but I would like to give some reasons why I do think that certification is really important.

And the first is that this is a legitimate profession. and just because it’s deregulated, meaning anybody can just go out there and go, yeah, I’m, I’m a life coach just because it’s deregulated doesn’t mean that it, isn’t a very, very, very serious profession. And just like any other profession, you need to be properly trained.

And not only that, the clients who want to pay you good money to be able to do. Actually expect you to be trained and certified. And to back this up in the ICF study, they said that 77% of the people pulled, said that they strongly expect the coach that they hire to be trained and certified coaching is more than advice giving your neighbor can give you advice.

Your mom has been doing it. Your whole life coaches are properly trained experts at helping move a person through the change process. Toward goal attainment and transforming their lives in a way that’s meaningful and purposeful and rewarding. And that is actually a very complicated thing to do. So just like a surgeon goes to school to learn how to do surgery, just like an accountant goes to school to learn how to be an accountant.

you too. If you’re thinking about being a coach, it really behooves you to consider taking the profession seriously and being properly trained. So coaching is a skill set. When I was in graduate school, we studied, you know, at length, the difference between coaching and, and mental health. And I was shocked, absolutely shocked to see that in terms of skill set, the skills that coaches use and the skills.

Master’s level and above clinicians use there’s a 90% overlap in my own coach training program. I trained my coaches using the literal same textbooks and theories and processes that I learned in grad school. You know, one of my intentions with was to . I always kid around and say, like, I went to grad school, so you don’t have to, one of my intentions.

To make the education that you receive in your coach training to be on par with the education that you do, that you can get at that university level. Like you just don’t have time to go back to school and get a master’s. I was so fortunate and lucky to be able to do it. I love school. My brain works well on academia, but it’s just simply not practical for other people to do it.

And yet you do need a stellar education with. To entering this profession and learning these. So, you know, one of the myths about the coaching industry that I just wanna bust here. And I know that this is me, like kind of serving up some tea, but I really don’t care. You know, a big thing that I hear from people when they say, oh, well, you know, I don’t need to get trained.

I don’t need training. I, you know, I’ve just lived my life. I’ve experienced this too. And I wanna help people. And what I say to that is amazing. I think you should, like, if you don’t have the time or money to get train. then still coach, right? Like I would never say to a person, you shouldn’t start until you get a certification.

Oh, hell no girl, go out there and get it done. So my answer to that is yes, do it. We need people out there doing the work period, but I also think that in order to take it seriously to really as a professional, just like any other professional, you yourself are I believe morally and ethically responsible.

For investing in your education, investing in your professional skill set and continuing to grow throughout your profession as a coach. And so an analogy I give to this is kind of goes like this. So imagine that your car breaks down and your looking to hire a mechanic and you have two mechanics in front of you.

And one mechanic says, well, yeah, I mean, I can fix your transmission. I’ve been riding in cars my whole life. And I’ve had my transmission go out many times and I rode home from the hospital. The day I was born in a car and my friends drive cars and I’ve just know everything about cars. I’ve been around cars.

My whole life I’ve sat in them. I’ve sat, you know, I’ve, I’ve done all kinds of things in, in him. I’ve had one since I was 16. I know how to drive one. I wash mine frequently. I know everything there is to know about. I have a lot of experience with them. That’s like, okay, that’s cool. Sounds good. And then you, you go to the second mechanic and you say, Hey, my transmission broke down.

Can you help me fix my car? And the guy says, yeah, I too have a lot of experience with him. I drove home from the hospital in one, I’ve had my transmission breakdown one time and I, I. took that to somebody to get it fixed. And I’ve been sitting in them all my whole life and all my friends drive cars. And I’ve got a ton of experience with ’em.

I had one when I was 16, two, and I was also trained for, you know, four years as a master mechanic at X, Y, Z auto shop and received stellar training on how to do this. Which one are you gonna choose to fix your. It’s very clear that you’re gonna go to the guy who’s studied, right? Because just because of you have personal experience with something doesn’t mean that you’re a master of the change process.

It means that you’ve experienced it, but that doesn’t mean that your process is going to be your client’s process. So coaching is not. I did it. I’m gonna show you how to do it too. That is not what it is. Coaching is. I am a professional at shepherding an individual through the process of change. That process of change encompasses a specific skill set that you learn as you become certified as a coach.

Right. And I can work with anyone in any situation, even if I haven’t experienced their particular problem to move them through that process of change, because I’ve mastered the skills, I’ve mastered the skills of being able to help that person get from point a. to Z, right? I know what B through Y is. I’m a master at B through Y.

Okay. So yeah, if you’re a coach and you’re not certified, you can absolutely help a person. Through what maybe you have been through and do a pretty good job, but you’re not gonna be able to do anything else. You’ll be totally out of your wheelhouse. So it’s kind of like, well, yeah, you can work on the transmission of a Toyota.

I don’t know a Toyota Camry, but if somebody comes in with a Hyundai, you’re screwed, right? Like you don’t really know how to work on a Hyundai because you’ve. Worked on it before, because you’ve always just worked on your type of car. So I know that this sounds a little harsh and I’m sure it’s gonna piss a lot of people off, like just right.

Piss ’em off, but truth hurts SIS. Like that’s not coaching coaching is I understand. The specific skillset. I understand. Non-verbals I understand the difference between open and closed questions. I know how to use minimal encouragers. I understand how to reflect feelings. I know how to provide proper feedback.

I understand how to resolve discrepancies. I know how to write a coaching plan. I understand how to walk a client through our client agreement. Like those are specific skills. And with Mo I think we, gosh, I don’t even know. I think we have like 23 skills at this point that we train our coaches on. So. That is really why one, the coaching industry is here to stay two.

It’s a legitimate profession that isn’t going anywhere. It’s one of the fastest growing and most profitable industries to be in. And. There are not even enough qualified coaches out there to meet market demand. So if you feel yourself being called to explore being a coach, you know, that’s certainly a very interesting, fun, exciting, and dynamic process.

And I’m sure you’re gonna have a lot of questions about that, but let these three that we presented here today, why are there so many coaches coaching other coaches? Because we’re building new infrastructure for the 21st century is the coaching industry saturated, not even close it’s like 0.0 0, 0, 0 7% of people on the planet are doing it.

and will it burst hell to the no, it’s here to stay. Put these three questions to bed. Allow yourself to seriously consider coaching as a profession. And then, you know, look to finding someone in the industry that can really answer your questions and help you get started exploring whether or not this would be a good fit for you.

So my team here at Oman, this is literally what we do all day long. I’m gonna include a link in the show notes for you to check out our application page, to becoming a coach. If that is something that you are interested in and the very least just reading through it will help you understand the types of questions you need to be asking yourself if that makes any sense.

So, yeah, that was a good one. I’d love to know your thoughts on this. I’d love to know your thoughts. Certification. Yay or nay. I’d love to know your thoughts on the little history review. I’d love to know your thoughts on how you see yourself. If you are a coach showing up into this space, what need in the market and in our world today, do you see yourself best filling?

Right. And if you’re not doing, and if you have a coaching practice and you’re not pursuing the type of work that you wanna do, I’m gonna encourage you to follow your passion and show up in this coaching space, doing what lights you up and turns you on because there is so much opportunity and it’s all, so, so, so very needed.

Right now. Okay. The world is really hurting and we really need help. And you as a coach are the one in the position to raise your hand and actually say, yes, I’m here. You can lean on me. Okay. Let’s wrap up with three quick things. So my intention for this podcast is to be of impactful service to you. And one of the ways that I can tell how well I’m doing that is by reading honest reviews of the pod.

So the reviews really allow me to see the topics and the ideas that are resonating with you. The most. So I would be forever honored and grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes for the show. And I get super excited every time a review comes in, because it helps me stay in my purpose. And in my intention of supporting the coaches and entrepreneurs out there doing the heavy lifting of helping other people heal and expand and grow.

So if it feels aligned, go to Heatheraliceshea.com/podcast, and show me some love by leaving me a heartfelt. And to express my gratitude each week, I read the names of everyone who leaves a review as a thank you to you for helping this podcast thrive. And speaking of showing the love, did you know that I make 100% free tip sheets for almost every episode on this podcast?

Why? Yes I do. So you can go to Heatheraliceshea.com/podcast, tip sheets, and enter in your name and best email address. And I will send you over a page link where you can download them all into your little heart is content. And the third and final thing is that I get. Emails each week asking how to begin the process of becoming an intuitive coach or from existing coaches and therapists who would like to begin applying intuition in their sessions.

So if you are interested or you feel called and would just like to explore, uh, the services that we offer over at Monica coaching academy, then just head over to my website@heatheraliceshea.com and check out our different offerings for coaches and creatives, who would like to explore intuitive development, business development.

Or both. So that is it for this episode. My lovely, remember, you are more powerful than you can possibly imagine. So step into your greatness and stay after it.

Settle.