A Quick Word About Certifications - Laura Brandenburg's Certification is Opening

Welcome to the A Quick Word version of the Get a 6-Figure Job You Love podcast. So A Quick Word is just going to be a quick podcast that I record every week with some unfiltered thoughts that I either coached somebody recently on or came to me and I really just had to share. So enjoy. And if you want to listen to longer form content, check out the Monday episodes where I go deeper. And if you like the short ones, join me on Fridays, sometimes other days, but normally on Fridays for a quick word about something. Stay tuned. Hello. Hello. So I want to say a quick word about certifications and how the way that I talk about getting certified in certifications, it really depends on where you're at and a lot of factors pertaining specifically to you, your mindset, your career, where you're at. So I wouldn't say to everybody like, you don't need any certifications. I wouldn't say you do. It's going to be different for each person at each level of their career. So I just wanted to make that clear. And the reason why I'm talking about this right now is because I am helping Laura Brandenburg get the word out about her business analyst certification. Her certification is an applied certification, and I know many people who have gone through it and who have really made use of the information, really integrated it, and gotten amazing results. I love to talk about it, and I love to help people know about it because I know it's something that will help you further your career if it's right for you right now. So the way that I normally talk about certifications is I say you don't need another one, right? You most likely don't need another one. And I stand by that. Like, it's, you don't normally need it, right? But you can get it in order to, for the right reasons, right? So if you're getting it, so there's right reasons and wrong reasons to get a certification, to get another certification, to invest in one. And I'm actually going to be doing a LinkedIn Live with Laura where we are going to discuss that. It's on July 7th at 3:00 PM Eastern time, 12:00 PM Pacific time. So if you're listening to that at this time, you can click the link in this episode to get that. It'll be in the show notes, or you can find me on LinkedIn and the event will be on LinkedIn. We're going to be discussing the right and the wrong reasons to get a certification. But briefly, what I wanted to say was that certifications can be great if you are intentionally going to use them in order to make your money back on them. And I, for example, did a certification in coaching. So I am a life coach certified coach, and I got that certification after I'd already been coaching for a while. So after I had already kind of figured out that I wanted to be a coach, that I was doing this, and I was just going to continue with or without the certification because I had already learned a lot of stuff. in the field doing the actual work of coaching and, you know, being messy, not being perfect. So I didn't get it because I wanted everything to be perfect and I wanted to do it first before I was able to coach. So that's a big reason. It's like if you want to get it because you're avoiding going out and doing the uncomfortable things first, then that's not a good reason. But we'll cover more of that in the LinkedIn Live that we'll be doing. But the certifications can be great. So I just wanted to pop in and say there's good reasons and bad reasons for getting a certification and whether or not you're going to make your money back on that certification, whether it's going to be a worthy investment in your career and pay you back, that's up to you. And that's what you need to really make sure of before you get a certification. But what I'm against and what I see really hurting people is when they get certification after certification after certification, or they're just going to school and getting degree after degree after degree. But not actually making the money back, right? Not actually making the amount of money that they should be making now based on the amount of education that they have, right? And there's a lot of people like that because going to school is easy for them. They're familiar with it. They'd rather go and get another certification than they would actually get into the field and make mistakes and get messy and figure things out in the real world. They'd rather Take another test, study for another test, do the same process again. And so that is where the problem is. So I hope I'm being clear with that. Certifications can, especially if it's the right one and it's applied. So feeling very strongly about it giving you an opportunity to actually apply things so that you get an idea of what it's really like. And some certifications can actually send you out to go do things. In the real world for people, add value in a real way with what you're learning, right? So it can be great, but it has to be for the right reasons. And it can't be something that actually holds you back because it could. So it just depends on the context, right? So if you've taken 5 certifications already, for example, and you're getting interviews, but you haven't gotten an offer yet, another certification isn't the reason that you haven't gotten the offer. And people might think to themselves, oh, it's easy to trick yourself into thinking, oh, well, this other certification will help me get the offer because that's what they said I needed. So I actually had one client who she got her PMP certification and she was like, oh, this is great. Now I'm going to go out there, I'm going to interview, and I'm going to get a job as a PMP. She went to the interview, they told her, oh, sorry, but we actually need you to have an Agile certification. We went with someone with— well, they basically gave her the feedback where they said, we went with someone who had more agile experience and an agile certification. So sorry, but we didn't pick you because of that. That's what they told her. And she's like, okay, now I gotta go get agile. So she went and got certified in agile. Then she went to another interview. She's like, okay, now I've got my PMP and my agile certification. Then they said, oh, well, sorry, we went with someone else who has a Scrum Master certification. Right? And you can see where I'm going with this. You can just go down this rabbit hole and— The writing on the wall is not you actually need to chase all these certifications. It's actually your interviewing skills are not working. You're not able to convey the value with what you already have, or you're attracting the wrong fit roles consistently. Those are 2 different problems that are not gonna be solved with another certification. So that's what I help you with. But if you are in a situation to get a certification and it makes perfect sense for you to get it, you wanna make sure you get the right one and you wanna make sure you have a plan to make your investment back on that fairly quickly. Which is completely possible to do. So those are the situations. You either, you're in the right spot to get a certification or you're doing it out of avoiding doing the hard thing, right? And figuring out how to get an offer is a lot harder if you haven't done that yet versus going to get another certification. That's easy. And your brain's like, yeah, I know how to do that. That's what we need, right? And it's easily going to trick you into thinking that's what you need when it's not. What you really need to do is learn a new skill, which you haven't learned before, which is mastering the interview process. And getting yourself hired, selling your value, right? That's what you need to master. And since that's harder, your brain is going to say, oh, let's just get that other certification that will help us, right? And at least that'll put the having to interview on hold. It'll put mastering that on hold when really you can have 70 certifications and have not mastered your interviewing and still not have an offer, right? Still not be making the money back on all those certifications that you got. So, that's where I wanted to clarify. I hope you will join us for this LinkedIn Live that's happening on July the seventh at three p.m. Eastern, noon Pacific, and Laura and I will be discussing her certification specifically. I, like I said, I took my life coach certification, and I turned that into a two hundred thousand dollar a year plus business, and it was because I had already kind of done some of the work. I didn't have; I wasn't expecting the certification to deliver the results for me. I was using the certification as something to. Increase my skill, make me more skillful, but not making it dependent on me going out there and getting clients. I was like, I can do this without the certification. I do not require it, but I want it. And this is why, and this is how, this is my plan to make it give me a return. So that's very different thinking than just kind of defaulting to going on more certifications. And that's where we call somebody a professional student or somebody who's really good in school, but not so good at applying in the real world. Applying what they learned. Laura's certification is an applied certification in business analysis. I'm like, my program is basically a certification in interviewing and in selling yourself and in getting yourself into the roles you want, into getting results. It's like a certification in results. That's kind of how I feel about it. We make a really good team when people work with us together. They're able to do both. They get the best of both worlds. They get the confidence behind the certification that Laura is offering, And then they get the confidence behind how to sell their value and how to communicate that to the right people, how to find the right people, and then how to get hired and make the money that they wanna be making. And I help you to make the decisions that are aligned with you so that you can go after that. So if you wanna join us, that's July the 7th, 3:00 PM Eastern, noon Pacific on LinkedIn. Come to my profile, you'll be able to see it. If you're listening to this after this is already done, All this information still applies about certifications. Laura promotes her certification twice every year. So every 6 months you have the opportunity to get in and it's Laura Brandenburg Bridging the Gap. You can find her if you just Google her website, it's just bridgingthegap.com, I believe. And yeah, she's offering that every 6 months it opens. So you can go over there and get on the waitlist if you are listening to this at a, at a different date. Awesome. Okay. That's all for today. Awesome.