Kristen Carder
Welcome to the I have ADHD podcast, where it’s all about education, encouragement and coaching for adults with ADHD. I’m your host, Kristen Carter and I have ADHD. Let’s chat about the frustrations, humor and challenges of adulting relationships working and achieving with this neurodevelopmental disorder. I’ll help you understand your unique brain. Unlock your potential and move from point A to point B.

Hey, what’s up this is Kristen Carter and you are listening to the I have ADHD podcast episode number 175. I am medicated I am caffeinated and I’m ready to roll. Come one come all today is part two of so you want to be an ADHD coach, where I am dishing all of my thoughts and some grievances on the coaching industry and telling you all about the coach training program that I created for adults with ADHD who want to learn how to coach adults with ADHD. If you’re interested in this topic, but you didn’t listen to last week’s episode, you kind of need to okay, it’s gonna give you a lot of context. I give so much info I spill a lot of beans.

So go check out that episode first and then come back here for part two. If you thought last week’s episode was spicy, hmm, today’s episode is going to be straight up fire. And if that’s the kind of thing that makes you excited, and you want to hear me say things like, not everyone is meant to be a coach. And not everyone who becomes a coach makes money. Well buckle up because this episode is gonna let you write up. But if you don’t give a flying F about coaching or the coaching industry, don’t panic, we’ll get back to our regularly scheduled programming in just a few weeks. As I said last episode, I have no intention whatsoever of turning the I have ADHD podcast into a podcast about coaching, or on how to coach or he coaching or anything like that. No, no, no, no. But I did want to take just three episodes and tell you all of my thoughts and invite you to join my coach training program if you feel that it aligns with you and your values and what you want for your future.

So I’ll give you a brief recap of last week’s episode. First, I love coaching in the coaching industry. But I also see a lot of red flags. I’ve distanced myself from many of my former mentors, and I would like to disrupt the way that I see things going so that we can build this industry on ethics and values, at least to the extent that that’s possible. Next, I create a coach training program specifically for adults with ADHD who want to learn how to coach adults with ADHD. Unlike many coach training programs out there, it’s set up for the neurodivergent brain to succeed. And I implemented that training program with 20 Focus members. And the program itself was a huge success. 95% of the people I trained pass their evaluations and I’ve spent an average of 60 hours coaching over the last six months, which is pretty, pretty awesome. Next, well, I know I could sell a lot more spots.

If I opened this up to the public and sent you to a sales page. I believe that the most ethical way for me to proceed with this training is to offer it exclusively to members of my focus coaching community and I will give a lot more information on that later. Lastly, even though I experienced massive amounts of imposter syndrome, as I talk to you and know that you are hearing me say like I am qualified to put this training program out into the world, I have spent a long time building up my evidence bank for Yeah, it makes sense that I would create a training program for adults with ADHD who want to coach adults with ADHD because I am uniquely qualified to do so. I have an extensive background working with neurodivergent learners. And I’ve dedicated many, many, many, many hours to setting ADHD. I have 1000s of coaching hours under my belt and have an evidence bank of over 1000 adults with ADHD who have been helped by my teaching and my coaching methodology, methodologies. So a hard word to say. So as we get into the meat of today’s podcast, I’m gonna segue here and say, speaking of coaching methodologies, it’s important that I make it clear here that I’m not training people in the modality that I learned from the school that I certified with. And if it sounds like I’m being a little bit cryptic, I am. It’s kind of on purpose.

Okay. But I wanted to make that clear. I’ve curated a toolkit from various psychologists and leaders in the industry that I believe are more helpful for the ADHD brain and emphasize self acceptance with a hefty dose of self responsibility. The tools that I use include methods of observing and shifting unhelpful thought patterns and identifying and processing emotions. It’s a causal coaching approach. To, which gets to the root of the client’s struggle and helps them to transform themselves from the inside out the gentle and ADHD accepting experience that combines self responsibility with empathy and care, and it leans very heavily on the work of Aaron Beck in his cognitive theory, and those that came after him, most specifically the work of developmental psychologists. And now life coach Dr. Sasha Hines, who I’m grateful to call a colleague and a friend. And there are a variety of methods out there that work, it’s important that I say that, like, we’re talking about building this on ethics, let me just make sure to say that I don’t have the special secret sauce, okay, I’m sick of that kind of marketing anyway, you don’t have to join my coach training, because all of the other trainings are trashed. That’s not true.

And that’s not how I roll. I want you to join my training, if you feel that you are called to coach and if you resonate with the way that I teach, and coach, and if you find that the tools and focus truly are transformative and worth being trained in, which is why it’s only being offered to members of focused. Now, some leaders in the industry make it sound like anyone can be a successful coach, and I’m sorry to tell you, it’s just not really true. Please hear me. People that say this are benefiting from it, because the more people believe them, that means the more people will pay them. And that means that they will get richer and richer and richer and richer. And I’m just No, I’m over that. So yes, coaching is a skill that you can develop for sure. But it’s also an art, and you have to have at least some innate gifting if you’re going to be a causal coach, certifying someone simply because they have the money to pay just seems? Well, it’s out of alignment with my values.

All right. So my particular training is for those of you who do feel like you may have an innate gifting. Do you spend a lot of your time talking to people and helping them already? Do people in your life come to you with questions and ask you for direction? Are you considered someone in your community? Who is a helper? Do people ask you for advice? Often? Do you feel drained after a conversation of helping someone? Or do you feel energized, empowered? Are you perceptive? Do you have wisdom to share with people? Are you insightful? Do you see things about people or about the world that others just don’t see, too, people tell you things like I just love talking to you, or I just had to call you and get your opinion before I made this decision. Those are some good indicators that you might have some innate gifting. And that’s worth considering.

In addition to believing or sensing that you might have an innate gifting, you also need to know that a good coach is able to coach themselves and get themselves results. So this is a massive, massive reason why the training is only offered to focus members. Because I want you to of course happen to focus and take the tools for a test drive. But I also want you to see if they work, see if you’re good at coaching yourself, see if you can get yourself results. This does not mean that you are a perfect person. This is not mean that you’ve quote unquote, overcome your ADHD or that you don’t struggle with procrastination or time management or anything like that. That’s not it at all what I mean? What I mean is when you do struggle, do you have the tools to help yourself? Can you coach yourself through the struggle? Do you accept yourself? Are you nice to yourself? Can you get yourself through, if you’re good at coaching yourself, there’s a very, very, very good chance that you can be trained to coach other people and get them transformation, but it has to start with you. Can you coach yourself? Can you become proficient and getting yourself results? Those are good indicators that you might be someone with the gift of coaching.

And if none of those apply to you, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you shouldn’t become a coach, please don’t hear me saying that. But if none of these apply to you at least consider what type of coaching might be most appropriate for you to practice. Now, I do want to say I know I could sell a lot more spots if I open this up to everyone in the whole wide world and I didn’t make it exclusive to focus members but hear me I have no interest in creating a coach training factory.

No interest in that that’s our this is going to be this training will be deep, not wide. The people trained will already have the strategies and tools inside focus and we’ll be using them regularly to change their own damn lives. I’m not about to reteach all of those skills and strategy in the training program because the strength program is solely dedicated to learning how to coach. It’s a boutique style training, the cohorts will be small, I will be involved in the entire training process, I will not delegate it to guest teachers or guest coaches unless of course, I’m sick or something like that. I’m not expecting you to watch pre recorded videos, there’s literally no automation involved. It’s a high touch, high accountability training, and it’s only going to be offered to focus members. It’s not Walmart, my friend, you’re not at Chipotle, this is not an assembly line. You’re investing in a bespoke ADHD coach training program tailored to your specific brain so that you can learn in an environment where you flourish, and then take that transformation out to help ADHD years in the world. Here’s an important point that I want to make.

There are a lot of Coach Training programs being sold on the basis or on the implication that if you want to be rich, all you have to do is become a coach, I No joke, I saw someone on Instagram recently, whose name will go unmentioned. But oh my goodness, a former mentor of mine. And they said this, and I’m not going to tell you the exact location. So like, you just insert your own location. They said, I’m here at my house in insert luxury location. If you want a house in insert luxury location, you should join my training and become a coach. Know my friend, my friend, my friend, please do not fall prey to this type of unethical marketing tactic in my opinion, lifestyle marketing like this, you know, luxury lifestyle marketing, the kind of coaches that show their fabulous lives and try to sell you on that lifestyle. It really seems that they’re preying on you. They may want your money more than they want to offer you a valuable service.

So I don’t know is it wrong for me to say this, I just I I just want to make sure that we’re not falling prey to luxury, lifestyle, marketing Zacky. Not everyone who trains as a coach gets rich, long pause intended, it’s important for that to be out there in the world. Not everyone who trains as a coach gets rich and riches relative term anyway. But whatever. Not anyone who trains as a coach makes money. If you choose to become trained and certified as a coach, no one’s going to roll out the damn red carpet for you, you’ll have to build a business right? You’ll have to figure out how to sell and market.

And my question for you is do you want to build a business? Are you entrepreneurial? Does the idea of selling and putting yourself out there excite you? I mean, of course it’s gonna scare you to write. But does it excite you because it’s a big part of selling your services. Now, if you already have sales, marketing entrepreneurial experience, you’re going to be way ahead of the game. And if you have a large audience, in addition to that, you’re going to be way, way, way ahead of the game. Because once you learn the skill of coaching, and you’ve got a lot of practice under your belt, you might find that making money does come quite easily to you.

I personally made a lot of money my first year of coaching. But it was because I already had a large audience that I had been serving for free. I’d grown this audience for free, right. And I also had 14 years of prior entrepreneurial experience that included working through a ton of drama, around selling myself and my services. So like, no one is overnight success. It’s not a thing. All right, I want you to consider that if you’ve never sold a thing in your life, you will have to allow yourself time to grow into that skill. You have to learn how to sell, you have to learn how to market you have to learn how to become an online entrepreneur, you have to learn how to grow an audience. And this is not a problem at all. Please do not hear me say that this is a problem. This is not a problem. This is just reality. And I’m not sure why no one out there say Why isn’t anybody saying it?

So please don’t hear me trying to deter you. I’m not I just want you to embrace the reality that this is a very normal pathway of any new business and any new entrepreneur. But nobody’s including this in their marketing, right. Nobody’s including this in their marketing. Most people selling coach training programs are not painting a realistic picture of this very, very normal trajectory of a business They’re painting a get rich quick picture, which is so unrealistic. And here it is, again, I’m sorry to do this, but unethical. I sang it this time so that maybe it would be easier to hear, because I know I’ve been saying it a lot. And these last couple of podcasts. This is the part where I confess to you that I personally have fallen prey to unethical marketing. And I know that I have used unethical marketing tactics. In my business, I know I have obviously not on purpose, I would never do it on purpose.

But as I reflect back over the last couple years, and I learn more and more about just marketing in general, and how we can do it ethically, I see some things that have been red flags in my marketing, and I’m not proud of it, I, I want to change it, this is not how I want to operate, moving forward. And I’m I’ve been making changes over the last several months to, to make sure that I’m moving forward in my marketing in a as ethical as possible manner. And my guess is in another year or two, I’ll learn more, and see some red flags and make more changes. I think that that is just part of our own growth and our own growing process. And as we expand, we have to make sure that everything is still in alignment as far as like our business and our methods and our marketing and all of that. So I hope to go through this process over and over and over, I am here for it. So if you are someone who’s interacted with what you feel like has been shady marketing tactics from me, I apologize. It’s not okay. No matter how great your services, the way you sell, it matters. And I’m fully committed to selling in a way that’s aligned with my own values and my own ethics. And if you’re interested in reading them, they’re on my website for the world to see.

If you’re an entrepreneur, and you’re wondering if you participate in predatory marketing or unethical marketing tactics, start investigating, start doing some research, start observing yourself and finding people leaders that you can follow that will point you in the direction of you know, figuring that out. And also give yourself grace, you can’t be expected to create a completely values based and ethical business right off the bat. But it is your responsibility as a business owner to work hard to clean up any messes that you’ve made and make ethical changes moving forward. And that’s exactly how I feel. As a company owner, I am wanting to comb through everything, clean up any messes and make ethical choices moving forward. So, okay, back to the show. I will be sending out applications for the second round of focus ADHD coach training on September 15. With this coach training program, I’m going against pretty much everything that I see in the industry, and I will be very selective on who I choose to train. So it’s not just like, if you can afford to join your end, there’s actually an extensive application process, you’re gonna have to submit a video like anybody trained by me is really going to truly have the skill and be a freaking amazing coach.

The coaches that I’ve already trained are expertly skills, and they’re highly experienced, they’ve read books, they’ve put in 18 hours of class time, they’ve spent on average 60, plus hours of coaching and honing their craft. They’ve passed an objective evaluation and their knowledge and abilities. They’re quite impressive. They know how to hold space without judgment. They know how to be an empathetic listener and still help their clients embrace self responsibility. They understand ADHD and how it holds us back and what to coach on regarding ADHD. But perhaps the most important thing is that they know when not to coach someone they know when to instead refer their client to a trauma informed therapist.

They know how to identify a trauma response and not to coach on it. And I’m proud of them. My goodness. I’m so proud I can’t I can’t wait to get started with the next cohort. So you may not feel that my particular coach training is a good fit for you. Totally fine, but I do have some thoughts like if you are thinking about certifying somewhere as a coach, here are a few things that I would really love for you to keep in mind. So first, ask yourself if you prefer to be an accountability coach or a causal coach. That’s something that we talked about in last week’s episode and accountability coach is going to talk about goals, break them down into small pieces, help their clients make a plan, make a schedule and then hold their client accountable to that plan.

A causal coach is going to be more focused on the thoughts and feelings that the client is experiencing. And helping that client to develop awareness on what’s happening in their body, and develop the ability to hold themselves accountable, accountable, wow, let’s try that, again, hold themselves accountable and make changes for themselves in a timeframe that, like suits their capacity, to then choose your training based on what resonates most deeply with you. In my opinion, it’s really, really important for you, or for anyone considering a coach training program to, like, do some investigating and ask around to see if the coach is certified by that program or helping a wide range of people. Are they helping the kinds of people that you want to help in the way that you want to help them?

Are they making money are the tools that they use helpful, what’s the reputation of the coaching school and the coaches being trained in their methods. And if you can, I would say hire one of their coaches, hire one of their coaches and see if the coach is trained in that specific program can help you see if you like their approach, see, if they help you get results, see if the methods that the coach training teaches are actually helpful. This is why I’m requiring everybody to be in focus that I offer the training to because I want you to test the methods that I use, I want you to see if they’re useful, I want to see if you can use them on yourself and whether or not you think they’re even worth being trained in. And something that’s so important to me is I would really encourage you to find out how ADHD friendly the actual training process is? Is it lecture style? Is it over the phone? Is it over video? Do you have homework? Is there an extensive manual to read? Will you be practice coaching? Do you have to arrange that practice coaching on your own? Or will the company do it for you? Is there a practice our requirement for the training? Will anyone evaluate on your skills and technique? If so, how often? Is there accountability? How much FaceTime? Do you get with the person that you’re buying from? Are you watching pre recorded videos? Or are you attending live classes.

So those are really really great questions to comb through when you’re evaluating any coach training program and considering enrolling. And lastly, and I know this part, this part might be a little hard, but I would just say, check in with yourself to make sure that you have realistic expectations regarding how long it might take you to become profitable and make money as a coach. Learning the skill of coaching is amazing. It’s important, it’s obviously you want to do that, right. But if you want to make money, learning the skill of business, and entrepreneurship is also important. Okay, so just remember that it’s normal for that to take time, it’s normal for you to have to take some effort and time to learn the skill of coaching. And it’s also normal to take time for you to learn the skill of selling and marketing.

It’s not a problem. I’m not trying to deter you. I’m just trying to invite you into a realistic picture so that we don’t have a fantasy about how it’s gonna go. Not all coaches are created equally. And not all coach training programs are created equally. So just encourage you, as you are researching and learning and trying to evaluate where you want to train. Just take the time to ask some questions and get a really good feel for what you’re buying into. My training is not going to be for everybody. And obviously I’m intentionally keeping it small. So it literally can’t be for everyone. But as you make your decision on where to train, I just really encourage you to take your time and make it wisely. And if you’re feeling a big hell yes in your body right now. And you’re totally resonating with what I’m saying. Join focused for 199 a month, you get to start using the tools and taking the modalities that I teach for a test drive, you get to determine whether or not you really resonate with my style, whether it’s truly helpful to you, and you can figure out if this training is the right fit for you.

Then if it is apply, I would love to train you to become a focused ADHD coach applications drop on September 15. So get ready. I’ll see you next week. If you’re being treated for your ADHD, but you still don’t feel like you’re reaching your potential you’ve got to join focused. It’s my monthly coaching membership where I teach you how to tame your wild thoughts and create the life that you’ve always wanted. No matter what season of life you’re in or where you are in the world focused is for you. All materials and call recordings are stored in the site for you to access at your convenience. Go to Ihaveadhd.com/focused for all the info All