The difference between therapy and coaching and how to protect your license!

Foreign. We are live here today. It is Wednesday. Happy Wednesday. Halfway through the week. Woohoo. If you are here with me live today, let me know where you're coming in from. Type type in the comments where you're calling in from. I would love to say hello. I am calling in from sunny South Florida. Let me know where you're coming in from. We have viewers popping in. Say hello. Happy Wednesday, everyone. I am super, super stoked about today's topic. Hi Jesse in Colorado. Love Colorado. If I did not live in Florida, I could live in Colorado. But I'm super excited about today's topic because this was a big hit. I know that you guys are dying to know the nitty gritty between therapy and coaching. How you can add coaching to your practice and still protect your license. Awesome. We have Tennessee, New York. All right. Another Floridian. Land o' Lakes. Awesome. Tennessee, North Carolina. Hi Jennifer. I'm so glad you guys are here with me. If you are not, you can watch the recording. I like to be punctual. So we're gonna dive right into the topic. I am type A, so I have tons of notes here for you guys. We have tons to cover, so I want to make sure that it is all covered. And you're leaving here with value. You are leaving here with knowledge. I want this to be interactive. Obviously you can tell I'm looking at the comments. So if you have questions, please shoot them in there. I have some questions that were submitted to me prior, so I'll be answering those. Hi Bess. So give me some likes, Give me some comments. Please, please let me know your questions. I am here to support you. So you're probably wondering who I am, why you should trust me. Why do I have so much to say about this topic? So I am Carly Hill. I'm a licensed clinical social worker here in the state of Florida. I am also a woman empowerment coach. I'm a Reiki master. I'm a healer here in the local community. And I'm also a business strategist for therapist. So I say all this to say because I'm not just your typical business strategist, right? I know all these worlds. I know the therapy world, I know the coaching world. I know the healing world. So if you have challenges, if you have questions, I am here to support you. I can probably answer. And if I cannot, I'm the first person to let you know that I cannot help you and I will direct you to someone else. So with that being said, let's dive in. I'm going to be going live in this group every Wednesday at 2:00'. Clock. If you can't make it to the live, it will be in the Guides section of the group and you can watch the replay. I will be posting a poll probably around Sunday or Monday every week to let you know what topic I'm going to be discussing and you can take a vote. So let me know ahead of time if you have anything that you're wanting to know more about. Obviously today it's about therapy, coaching, how to protect your license. So first I want to hear from you why you want to add coaching. If you're here, you're probably thinking about adding coaching. Maybe you already have coaching going on, but you just want to double check that you're protecting your license. So let me know in the comments why you wanted to add coaching. Did you feel maybe limited by your license? So maybe location limitations? I just did a post on this in my Instagram today actually about, you know, the location limitations that we have by our licensing boards and how the regulations are really quite archaic. They were established in the 1950s, but that's a whole other topic in itself. But maybe you feel that your license is limiting you. You can't see clients out of state. Maybe you feel limited by your career options. Maybe you feel limited with who you can work with. Maybe you feel like you have a cap on your income. So maybe it's the money that you can make. Maybe you feel like you resonate more with helping people get from problem to solution. Maybe from A to B. Right? Maybe that's more your style. Maybe you would rather use like a proven system or a strategy versus just maybe talk about the problems again, helping them get to A to B a lot faster. Maybe you enjoy helping people with problems that are not necessarily diagnosable. So it's a non clinical problem. Like maybe it's like breakup, divorce, weight, fitness, confidence, self love, stress, sleep. Maybe that resonates more with you. So you want to move into the coaching. Maybe you don't like diagnosing people. I hated that. Do you want to move to self pay and have more options or are you just burnt out with therapy and you're looking for maybe a new and improved date different way. So let me know, let me know in the comments. Why is it that you want to add coaching to your practice? How is that going to benefit you? Definitely location limitations. Yeah, and a number of friends who offer coaching as a service wanting something different. Totally. So I'm a newbie here. Can you explain what exactly coaching Is that's, that's what I'm going to dive into now. So I'm going to talk about the difference between therapy and coaching. Let me know also in the comments if you have googled this before and went down a rabbit hole and feel like you didn't understand the difference and you just got a bunch of answers where there was nuances and it just seemed like so similar and really you didn't understand the difference. So let me know if that is you and you googled that. I made a chart of kind of some cookie cutter definitions that totally googled this. Yeah, I made a chart and I'm going to explain to you some cookie cutter definitions and then I'm going to move on to explaining to you my definition which I want you to adapt as your own. Because it's really the simplest way to think about it and it's going to help you conceptualize all of the cookie cutter googled definitions. So therapy treat mental illness focused on the past and the present. Discuss what got you where you are now. Analyze clients past to understand current behaviors, then work to modify the pattern. So really focusing on the why focused on cognitions, thought patterns, introspection. So again, that why helps with healing from the past and reducing symptoms. So you're seeing a pattern here, right? The past, the past, the past. Obviously you're a licensed professional and you can diagnose, so you can bill insurance. You have ethical guidelines to follow. You help clients gain insight into their suffering through talking about it. And it's usually for a longer period of time. So there's no set in date typically. Right. So that's the cookie cutter therapy definition. Now the coaching is obviously you do not treat mental illness. You focus on the present and the future, not the past. Discuss where you are now and where you want to go. Identify problems, accept them, modify them. So this is the how versus the why. Focus on behaviors and achieving goals. Help you launch forward and get unstuck by problem solving and looking at barriers. You can be certified or hell, you can not be certified. It's an unregulated field. Right. Or you can have trainings and then your self pay. Obviously you can't take insurance. Right. You have more flexibility and creativity with how you treat and you help clients set goals, have action plans, provide accountability, create motivation. And it's usually for a set period. It's usually a shorter time period. So you can see there's many overlaps, there's many nuances. A lot of them I don't agree with. As a therapist As a coach myself, I know, and you probably know that you talk about the past, you talk about the present, and you talk about the future regardless. And coaching is not the only place where you talk about having action plans and goals. What's a treatment plan for? You help your therapy clients do that too. You don't only talk about the past in therapy, you're helping them get to their future, their goals. Right. So again, there's all these nuances. So the way I think about it, and the simplest way to remember it, is think of coaching as solving a non clinical problem, a non diagnosable problem, really helping them go from problem to solution. But it's more of maybe like a situational problem, it's a non diagnosable problem. So if you have a client who has agoraphobia, for example, right. They can't leave the house because they're so anxious they're having panic attacks, they're a better fit for therapy. If you have a client who is anxious taking their kids to the park or going to the grocery store or standing up in the workplace and they're just having sweats and like heart palpitations and stuff like that, they can be coached through that. That would be more of a coaching client. Maybe someone has PTSD from a domestic violence relationship and they're having nightmares and they're having panic attacks again. Right. They would be a better fit for therapy. But if someone went through a breakup and they're having, you know, some grief and some sadness, then they can get a coach to navigate the dating world again, the single world again, and feel confident doing so. So I hope this kind of clarifies what the difference is. Adapt the definition that coaching is solving a non clinical problem. A lot of people say too, okay, so you're helping them with a problem and then emotions are triggered. So emotions is therapy, right? Like you're dealing with people's emotions. No, emotions are human nature. We all have emotions, right? So it would be therapy if you really dove into the generational trauma where it stemmed from and of course, if it's a diagnosable problem. But emotions are emotions that's going to come up whether you're coaching or whether you're in therapy. So let me see some of these questions, you guys. I love that interaction. What are the most popular coaching niches that are successful and bring clients? If I have time at the end, I'm going to address that because there's really a couple buckets that are the most successful and popular coaching niches. The most viable Niches. So if you are only a coach without a license, there is no regulation. The coaching field is an unregulated field. I'm actually going to get into now kind of how to protect your license. So again, focusing on the past, the introspection, talking, talking, talking, coming to a conclusion, closure, Aha moment. And if it's a diagnosable problem, therapy. But as a coach, I want you to think about more of teaching kind of tools. Here's the problem. And you're going to help them get from problem to solution. But it's a non clinical, a non diagnosable problem. I also want to mention that not everyone needs therapy, right? So maybe not everyone is the right fit for therapy and they could really use more of coaching. So take a single mom who's newly divorced and she keeps snapping on her children because her stress levels are so high. So she could probably just go see a parenting coach. For single moms who are divorced, that's super hyper niche. And they're going to give her the tools to get her from that problem of seeing snapping on her children to being more calm and maybe present with her children. So could she go to therapy? Yes, but it's more of a situational thing that she's dealing with that she could see a coach for. So you're working more with people on an adjustment disorder in coaching? Yeah, kind of. Right. So that's a really good point, Rebecca, because you really have to use your disorder discretion because technically everyone could meet criteria for some type of diagnosis in the dsm, right? Like anxiety unspecified adjustment disorder. You know, you could diagnose yourself with something, I'm sure. So really use your discretion on. Is this a serious clinical problem that they need therapy for or is it really more of a situational problem that you can give them tools to help them go from problem to solution? A non diagnosable situation. Yeah, good point, Rebecca. All right, so let's move into kind of the unregulated field. Do you need a certification with coaching? So you don't need a certification to coach. You could leave this training and you can legit call yourself a coach if you want to. Of course you need to protect your license, which we're going to go into. But some clients may want you to have a certification. In my experience, this hasn't really been the case. Clients don't typically care about your credentials or your certifications. They just need to like know and trust that you can solve their problem and that you can get them from problem to solution. However, I do have A certification. I'm a certification junkie. I love learning. I love taking trainings and certifications. So I'm not trying to, you know, discourage you from taking a certification, but if it's holding you back from starting coaching in your practice, know that you don't need it. If you are going to take a certification, I would recommend maybe taking a training or a certification that relates more to your niche. Because if you just go take like an ICF certification, you're going to be bored, to be honest. You're going to be learning rapport, active listening, how to ask questions, things that you already know as a clinician. So therapists really, really, really make the best coaches. Because we have the background, we have the clinical knowledge we report building is piece of cake to us. Right. So there's plenty of certifications out there that you can find within your niche. And if it's going to make you feel confident to have that certification, by all means, go take it. But know that you don't need to have it. You're more than enough qualified. Right. So let's see, what else am I missing? Yeah, you don't have to take a certification. Okay. Yep. Where did you receive your certification, Melanie? I will, if anyone is interested, I'll actually post it in the group, but I'll send it to you. Melanie. I took an NLP certification, Neuro linguistic programming. It was absolutely life changing. It was like a five in one certification. So life coaching, hypnosis, neuro linguistic programming, timeline techniques and EFT tapping. So it's a 5 and 1. She does it online. I will send it to you. She also does an ICF certification course, but that is in person. Yeah. Okay. So let's move into protecting yourself and your license. So I want you to know that you will always be a mandated reporter. We know that. Right. So just because you're moving into coaching doesn't mean that you can forget about the ethical guidelines that you hold yourself to as a clinician. So even as a coach, you need to include in your paperwork mandated reporting and informed consent. So you need to have a coaching agreement. So yeah, I'll give you guys the, the information. Absolutely. I will pass it along. She would love that. Okay, so you need to have a coaching agreement. The ICF actually has an agreement that you can download and then you would just need to make it your own, of course, and then add in the mandated reporting and informed consent. Boom, there's your coaching agreement. You need to consult the board. So I say this because every state and every license has A slightly different, you know, regulations, which drives me insane. That's a whole nother topic on itself. But just reach out, do your due diligence, Reach out to the board, let them know the switch that you've made. If you're just adding it to your practice or you've completely switched over, just reach out to them and let them know what you're doing now. Because who knows, in your state, maybe there's like one extra step that you need to take or one extra thing that you need to add in your paperwork. So you really just want to check all the boxes and consult your board. Then you're going to want to talk to your liability insurance provider. So add error and omissions to your liability insurance and then add your new business. So you're going to have to file a new business license. If you can remember anything about protecting your license, it's about keeping everything separate. So you're going to have a separate business license, you're going to have a separate bank account. You're going to market yourself separately. You're going to keep everything separate. So file a separate business license, get the separate bank account. That stuff is easy. The main thing to do is to remember to keep your therapy clients, therapy clients, and your coaching clients, coaching clients. You cannot blend, so you can't have a dual relationship. So you can't move from therapy to coaching or coaching to therapy. You have to refer out. So you want to keep it separate from the beginning, and you want to use your discretion. So it's not up to the client to decide whether they want to do therapy or whether they want to do coaching. You're the expert. You know how serious their problem is and what they're a better fit for. This is where the marketing comes in that needs to be separate because it's confusing for us to know the difference. That's why you guys are all here. Imagine how confusing it is for our clients to know the difference. Right? And although the stigma has gotten so much better these days, it is much more appealing, in my opinion, to go see a coach versus going to see a therapist. So a lot of clients can only get help under that framework of coaching when really they're a much better fit for therapy. So make sure that your messaging is distinct and different, your marketing is different from the services that you're offering, the therapy services, the coaching services, so that it's really clear to your client and that you're keeping them therapy clients, and you're keeping them coaching clients, and you're keeping them completely Separate, can we have one website with both coaching and therapy listed on it? Yes, you can. So there's some mixed messages about that. If, again, if you Google that. But there's no rule. The unspoken rule is to make sure your messaging and your marketing is different. So some say, for example, on like business cards for coaching, you should not indicate that you're an LMFT or an lcsw, because that's kind of marketing yourself as a therapist. Instead, you should say you have an msw. You should talk about your degree versus your license. So again, there's kind of some nuances. Right. But the main thing to remember and your intention on when you're writing your copy is, will this be confusing to my client? Will they understand that this is coaching? And will they understand that this is therapy? And will they understand what coaching entails and what therapy entails? Good question, Jess. Okay, awesome. Let's keep moving on. Okay. All right, so I want to address the two questions because Dana, I don't know if Dana is here with me live, but Dana asked, can you please talk about trauma therapy versus trauma sensitive coaching? That would be amazing. So, yeah, let me kind of backtrack on that again. I probably addressed this when I talked about thinking about coaching as, you know, solving a non clinical problem. But someone could absolutely have a serious trauma history when they're coming into you. But they're not necessarily struggling with those trauma symptoms. They're not really heightened like they used to be. They've done a bunch of therapy and they've handled it, but they're struggling with self esteem. And the self esteem is, you know, preventing them from getting back out into the dating world. Right. So they're kind of, you know, sensitive and it's more of a situational problem versus a diagnosable problem. And then you could treat them as coaching to boost that self esteem, a coaching client to boost that self esteem to get them out into the dating world again. So I hope that answers your question there. And then Crystal had a question about the paperwork. So she said that what's the difference in the notes between the two? Lately I've just been feeling resentful towards notes. Like it's a big waste of my energy. Give me a like or write in the comments if you hate writing notes. Bess, I already know that you hate writing notes. So, like, it's a big waste of energy. If I didn't have to do notes, I could actually help more people. I understand the necessity, but especially while grieving, it's hard to find the motivation and focus. Totally. Okay, so I was one of those people that I hated writing notes. So notes in the coaching field, it's completely up to you. So really, notes are all about a continuation of care, right? Like picking up where you left off. It had to, it had to transfer to someone else. Again, picking up where you left off, continuation of care. So in the coaching world, you're not billing insurance, you know, so you're not providing any notes and you're not providing a super bill. So notes in the coaching world, it's up to you. So if you feel like you can remember and you can be the best coach and provide, you know that care and pickup where you left off without writing notes, then you don't have to write notes. So it's completely up to you. I hope that answers your question, Crystal. Yes. You hate it. I hate it too. Okay, cool. So let's see. We've been going about for 25 minutes. I will, I want it to keep this around like 30 minutes. So let's dive into talking about the niche a little bit different, viable niches and then we'll wrap it up. And if you have any last minute questions that maybe I missed, feel free to type them in the comment box. So I always say riches are in the niches. It is so true. This goes for therapy as well. I kind of had to learn this the hard way. You know, I went into it and I was like, I am here to save the world. Who wants my help? And then you get crickets, right? So you really, really, really have to niche down and you have to be specific in your messaging in order to attract your ica, your ideal client avatar. Right? So it's the same thing with the coaching industry. Coaches are not successful because they're called coaches or because they have a certification. Coaches are successful because they have niched down. They solve a specific problem for a specific person and they get them a specific outcome. It's like super specific. They're hyper niched down. Coaches embody this niche too. So therapists do as well. But a lot of times I see therapists moving into to coaching and they're just like, well, what do people want? You know, like what, what will people buy? What's a viable niche? Let me just go with that. You have to be passionate about it also. You can't just pick something that somebody will buy. So it has to be a combination so that you can really, really embody it and you can be passionate about it. And that passion can relate to your clients. They can feel that. So what are you good at? What problems can you solve? And is it a problem that people need to be solved? Right. It's not a nice to have. It's like they're buying their way out of it. People don't buy their way into something, they buy their way out of it. So you help population go from problem to solution. Why do they need you? What are they buying their way out of in their life and their relationships with their finances. Right. Think about all those different things. And clients are attracted to the, to the coaches because of this niche. So again, when you can describe somebody's problems better than they can describe themselves, they're like, holy shit, she's speaking to my soul. She knows me like I like this. I trust her. I know that she's going to get me from problem to solution. Because you're speaking to it so well. You know your ideal client, you know your niche, you know who you help and you know the problem that they have and the solution that you're going to get them to. So the most viable niches are health and wellness. So this is probably going to be most of you guys, right? So this can be mental or physical. So it can be weight loss, autoimmune, mental illness, healers, wealth, and business is the next one. So this is like B2B business to business, real estate, finances, accounting, entrepreneurship, anything kind of in that wealth and business area. And then you have relationships. So this, you guys will probably really fall into this category as well, especially if you're already doing some type of relationship counseling. So this could be marriage, it could be divorce, it could be getting into the dating world again, it could be friendship, you know, it could be community, or it could be spiritual, it could be with God, it could be with yourself as well. And then the last bucket is hobbies. So you don't really hear about this one as much, but it's really viable. Because if you want to learn how to play the piano or something, like you're going to hire a coach or a teacher. So sports, music, arts, creativity, these are all things that people would hire a coach for. And if somebody is already doing it and somebody is already making money, it means it's a viable niche. People are buying it, people are googling it and they need it. It's a viable niche. So then you just have to get really, really specific on what makes you different. So your points of difference. One thing that makes you different is because you have a clinical background, right? So you're already outshining some of those other coaches that are already doing this so you can hone in on your points of difference to really stand out. And in the coaching world, they call it, you know, the Red Sea, right? This is where all the gurus are. This is. It's because of all the sharks. It's kind of gross. But you have to stand out and you have to make your own blue ocean to make your program or your coaching different. Right. And again, being really, really clear because confused or unclear buyers, they do not buy, they will not buy into your coaching. They're not going to buy their way out of whatever their problems are because you're unclear with what it is. So I can't stress it enough to really, really niche down. I have a niche guide within the Facebook group under the guide section. So if you haven't checked that out, I would definitely do so to get your wheels spinning on what your coaching niche can be. Okay, cool. So let me just list off some of the titles of different coaching that exist and then we will wrap it up. So you have Career Coaching, Health, Life Mindset, Financial Relationship, Weight Loss, Nutrition, Productivity, Confidence, Stress, Intimacy, Communication, Resilience, Social Skills, Conflict Management, Parenting, Couples, Family, Birth, Sleep, Infertility, Grief, Divorce, Retirement, Life Direction, Business, Leadership, Sports, Wellness, Singing, Dancing, Writing, Job Skills, Spirituality, Personal Development, Life Purpose, Focus, Habits, Creativity, Goal Setting, Time Management. There's tons of things that you can do. And if somebody is already doing it and they're making money, that means that you can do it. And I know what you may be thinking, that the coaching field is saturated and maybe there's no space for you. But there is always space for you. There's always space for you. No one can do what you do, how you do it. You have a secret sauce and you're gonna make it known that it's your secret sauce. And there is always room for you. There's people right now who are looking for you. So just know that I'm serious. Okay, I think that's good. I could keep going on and on, but I feel I gave you enough value to understand the difference between therapy and coaching and the steps you need to take to protect your license. We went over some viable niches. I'm wondering what would make people prefer a life coach versus a therapist, especially with insurance covering some or most of the cost. Cost versus being out of pocket. I can see people being afraid of the stigma going for coaching, but curious what else you are seeing. Yeah, absolutely, Rebecca. So really what attracts people to coaching is the short term. You know, going from problem to solution versus spending a really Long time doing it. I would say that would be the main difference. So I think what you're saying is like, say you have the same exact niche in your therapy business and your coaching business. What would be the difference? Right, but the difference would be in coaching, you're really helping them go from problem to solution. You're giving them tools, you're kind of doing a lot of maybe like teaching or training. And then they're implementing, they're coming back with questions with what they've implemented. And you're really helping them get there a lot faster versus just maybe kind of talking about it, going to weekly therapy, spending much more time coaching. You can package it in a way where they're going to get those results a lot faster. So I would say that would be one of the main differences. But yeah, you know, a lot of people do want to go through their insurance, but I found that, you know, people will get really resourceful when they understand that you can, you know, solve their problem and get them from problem to solution. You'd be surprised, you know, how resourceful they can. They can really, you know, make themselves because again, they're buying their way out of something. It is worth it to them to save their relationship. It is worth it to them to take that leap. You know, it's making a huge difference in their life. So with all of that being said, thank you guys so much for showing up today. This is my first live within the group. We had a great show out. The replay will be available in the guide section of this group. If you missed anything, if you came in late, you can go back and rewind and check it out. And then of course, I will be going live at this time every single Wednesday. I'll be posting a poll. You guys can let me know what you want to know more about. I am genuinely here to provide you value. I want to see all of you guys succeed. If you are wanting to know more about what working with me would look like to build your successful coaching business, to create your signature group coaching program, please shoot me a message. I'll send you my calendar link. We could talk more details about what that process would actually look like for you. I think that is all. Happy Wednesday. Have a good rest of your week. My love is with you all. I am always rooting for you and supporting you. Bye now.