So if you've already been in the industry for a little bit,
this will be a very quick recap. If you're new or getting ready to start, uh,
your own business in the fitness industry,
this will be a quick overview for you. So,
licensing certifications are not the same.
Certification just means that you have completed a certain number of tasks
or have displayed a certain level of competency, uh,
in a certain subject area determined by an indi,
a person or an organization.
It's not necessarily a legally recognized thing. So that's important.
A license is legally recognized that you have displayed a minimum level
of competency and performed certain activities, uh,
which means you are now technically qualified in a legal sense to perform
certain duties or services. So, legally, legally, uh,
the license stuff is gonna be, you know, state, uh, or, you know,
federally recognized certification is basically what's used in the fitness
industry right now. There aren't really PT licenses per se. Um,
so the certifications are gonna be the things you're already familiar with,
like NAM and ACE and C S C S, um, N one, uh,
all of those kind of things. But they don't give you any kind of legal standing,
although certain ones are required or recognized for things like insurance.
So that is why you would want to consider having certain ones of those and maybe
required to have certain ones of those to perhaps work as a contractor,
uh, or provide certain services. Like I said,
don't technically need a license for personal training, but if you're working,
uh, in another facility,
they will often require you have certain certifications or levels of knowledge
to be able to work there, and that is more for a protection for them.
If they are obviously giving, uh,
or giving you or their customers to you, uh, to work together.
Why would you get one?
So just to obviously display that you have a certain level of competency or to
acquire a certain level of knowledge in a particular area,
works great for marketing. Obviously, if you have a more educated client base,
they're going to be familiar with a lot of the common certifications, uh,
and want to know or will feel more confident if they're working with someone who
has already passed those things and may also open up new opportunities.
Like I said, you can get, uh, insurance after completing certain certifications,
and many insurance companies may require you have certain certifications before
they will provide insurance for things like personal training.
So some services in the fitness industry do actually require a license.
Most particularly is going to be nutrition. Um,
so that's kind of the most commonly regulated one.
And the laws are gonna vary by state and country as to what type of nutritional
advice you can or cannot provide. Uh,
a personal training client or a client of any kind without an actual license,
like a registered dietician, for example. Typically, and, and this is,
uh, you can probably find this pretty easily,
is you can give 'em basic nutritional guidance. You know, probably, uh,
give them some suggestions on less processed food, portion sizes,
things like that. But once you start getting into, uh,
macro plans or especially food plans where you're actually giving them amounts
of specific foods, that really gets into the prescriptive realm really quickly.
Um, and is where most of the, uh,
the hard lines are drawn that you're typically not allowed to technically do
without a license.
The physical side of things is gonna be the therapy rehab corrective stuff
you're not technically allowed to diagnose or attempt or,
or say that you are attempting to treat a specific ailment,
um, or injury without a actual license in that area.
So what we want to look at is sometimes when we're working with people online,
we're trying to help them. We gotta be careful how we word things.
Even if we have a knowledge of cer to a certain degree that can help them,
we kind of need to try and, uh, stick to the, uh,
the legal boundaries that we have just to be safe rather than get ourselves in a
legal pickle. So, for example, the wording side of things, prescriptive,
I just have some examples here. You know, have, you know,
however much of X supplement at this time or whatever that would be considered
prescriptive versus, you know, rewording that, and again,
this is playing word games, but you could say, you know, if it were me,
I would try this. And then I would always recommend adding in kind of your, uh,
your terms and conditions or disclaimer there. But, you know,
check with your doctor or check with your health advisor before doing this.
That's always the safest thing to do. Same thing for exercise, you know,
saying, you know,
do this exercise and it's going to help fix this or correct that.
Probably not the way we want to do that. From a legal side of things,
always better to go the suggestive route of, Hey,
let's try this and see what happens,
but check with your doctor first, or if you're concerned,
check with your physical therapist first.
Those are the simple and easy ways to get to, to take care of that stuff.
But rather than playing word games,
it's always better to kind of know what our scope is and just focus on
sticking to that rather than starting to get into realms that maybe we're less
familiar with. Um, so this is where we talk about what is our scope.
So basically the old phrase, Jack of all trades, master of none.
So knowing what we're really good at and focusing on that we're gonna get a much
deeper level of knowledge than trying to be okay at a lot of things. Uh,
you know, for example, if, you know, if my car breaks down, or
Let's say, you know, my transmission dies,
am I gonna go to a mechanic that's just like I work on cars or am
I going to go to a mechanic who's like, I work on transmissions.
That's what I do, that's all I do. Well, if I'm have a transmission problem,
I'm probably gonna go to the transmission expert rather than the guy who,
you know, spends half his days changing tires and changing oil and, you know,
things like that, right? So we're kind of in the same boat. I am, you know,
if I am really good at X, that's what I'm promoting.
And this comes down to our avatar thing that we talked about, uh,
at the beginning of the course,
we need to speak to the problem we are trying to solve for our avatar.
We'll get much better response, kind of, uh,
leveraging ourself in that one area rather than, you know,
just putting ourself out on the internet and being like, I train people, right?
You'll have a lot more success attracting people and you know,
clearly communicating your value to that kind of specific market rather
than trying to do it all. Even though as we acquire knowledge, you know,
we want to be able to fix everything and help everyone.
And maybe we can't help a broad range of people,
but we have to know where that boundary is. So like, uh,
I kind of talked about before, when in doubt, refer out,
that's a really great, uh, mantra to work in this, uh, area. So,
you know, referrals, they don't make you look dumb, right? It's, it's actually,
you know, honestly probably refreshing when you have someone say, Hey,
I don't know, but, you know, talk to this person. They know,
they know more than I do, right? It's kind of refreshing to see someone,
you know,
display that level of humility and hopefully we can all strive for that too.
It also allows you to focus more of your time on what you're really good at,
rather than trying to, you know,
figure out a whole bunch of things that are maybe a little fuzzy, uh, as far as,
you know, your personal skill level is.
So helps us be more efficient with our time too. And then, you know,
if we talk back about, you know, developing allies in the industry,
this is a really great opportunity for that, you know,
networking and meeting new people who are really strong in areas that maybe
aren't your strengths. Uh, so, you know, for example, you know,
if you're really good at program design, maybe partnering with, uh,
a functional nutritionist for someone who can help, uh,
somebody who's got digestive issues or something like that,
you can always refer out to them if something comes up with one of your clients.
And maybe that works both ways.
They have someone who has a specific goal that you know,
you're really good at strength and conditioning and they send your way.
Also helps the course avoid, uh, legal issues and liabilities, right?
We don't wanna, you know, we're not, we're not doctors most of us,
and we don't want to try and play one on the internet. Also helps us, uh,
maintain our credibility, right? So, okay, to, uh, we'll just say, Hey,
I don't know, but, you know, either give 'em a solution.
I will find out and get back to you if it's something simple, uh, or you know,
I don't know that, but here's the contact info of, you know,
this person that I met who is really knowledgeable and they can help you out,
or, you know, better,
I'll email them for you and they'll get in contact and they can help you from
there.
So all of this kind of works in our favor to just be more efficient with our
time, but also gains trust, uh,
from our clients to know that we have their best interests at heart and aren't
afraid to send them somewhere else if we think we can get them a better result
through that route.