Could A Certification Program Be The Game-Changer For Your Online Business?

Hey everybody, it's Tara Bryan and you are listening to the Course Building Secrets Podcast. Whether you're a coach or a CEO, the success of your team and clients is based on your ability to deliver a consistent experience and guide them on the fastest path to results. This podcast will give you practical real life tips that you can use today to build your online experiences that get results and create raving fans. Why? So you can monetize your expertise and serve more people without adding more time or team to your business. If you're looking to uncover your million dollar framework, package it and use it to scale, you're in the right place. Let's dive in. Transcribed by www. taralbryan. com. www. taralbryan. com. Hey, everybody. Welcome to today's episode. I want to talk today about certification programs and how powerful they are as a way to extend your ability to serve your customers at the highest level. You may have heard of a certification program before but basically a certification program is your ability or somebody's ability to take their proprietary framework that they have created and turn it into an opportunity that someone else can use it to help their customers or to help their own business or to bring in for their team and so basically what you're saying is like I am teaching you my framework, and I'm teaching you how to help other people with this framework so you can help them get the result that my Framework offers. A couple of different examples. Mike Michalowicz has a framework called Profit First, and he has also built an entire certification process around it. So he has certified professionals. These certified professionals pay him to be certified, then they pay him a license fee to be able to use their use the Profit First methodology in their business. And and, and then they're also a part of his certified professional network, which means that they're paying him for additional tools and resources and training and community and the different things, right? And so there's so many opportunities that are open to you. Once you have your framework, once you're able to get success and, and sort of a brand reputation of the framework that allows other people to say, Hey, I want to be a part of that. I want to use that framework in my business. So that I can help my customers at a different level. Another example is Donald Miller has StoryBrand probably something that you've heard about. He also has a StoryBrand framework, and that is the framework that he uses to train marketing professionals to be able to use a StoryBrand framework in their businesses. Same exact model. And so when you imagine what it could be like to train other people to be certified professionals in your methodology, you can see how that starts to elevate your status, right? Starts to elevate your brand and your expertise. And so when you're the go to expert in the industry, people will say, well wait, like they have that framework that allows people to go from point A to point B. I want to be a part of that. I want to be able to offer that to my customers. It becomes a powerful revenue source for you to be able to not only elevate your status, to become more of an expert in the space, but also for you to train other people so that they can benefit and your customers can benefit, and their customers can benefit. So it becomes this exponential growth model that really allows you to expand way beyond just you and your ability to help the customers that are closest to you. It becomes a high level offer on your value ladder to be able to offer a certification program. It is an amazing way to again, fast track that ability for you to grow exponentially. So before you do that though, like you have to have that framework that allows you to build a certification program. And so, so what we do is we like, how do you define your authority strategy? Well, you need to have your model, which is sort of your core tenets of what you believe about whatever it is that you're helping people with, right, that matches your expertise. And then the specific methodology, the path going from point A to point B. Again, you've heard me talk about this a ton. But the framework, your signature methodology, your IP, your whatever you want to call it, is the piece that becomes packageable. It becomes the asset that allows you to sell it to, to be able to help people as a coach, to help people as a trainer, to help people as a certified professional, to certify other people as a professional, right? Like it's the thing that allows you to grow the business beyond yourself. If you want to sell your business, this is a great foundation to be able to create an asset that allows you to sell the business in the future because it's your intellectual capital, but it's not you it's outside of your ability to serve, which is if you're trying to sell your business, you have to get out of being the middle of the business or nobody's going to buy it because it can't exist without you. Being able to create your proprietary framework allows you to get yourself out of the the mix of the the middle of the business and is a great first step. which then is infinitely scalable, which then allows you to go and, and ultimately do with it, whatever you want, because it scales beyond your time. It scales beyond your ability to, to be in that one on one capacity. Because the reality is like you have 10 customers. Great. You have 50 customers. Things start to get a little shaky, right? You get a thousand customers. You cannot serve them the same way you do when you only have 10 customers. And so when you're looking at the vision for your business, if you're like, I want a thousand customers, like I just talked to the someone the other day was like, I want 5 million people in my she was creating a program. I want 5 million people in my program. Well, that has to have the foundation of a framework and a methodology that gets somebody from point A to point B. There's no way you can scale to 5 million people if it's just you delivering the message. If it's just you being in the middle of the business. If they're relying on you to do all the things, you'll never, you'll never get there, right? You're going to max out whenever you max out, right? 40 hours or whatever a week. That's not possible to serve 5 million people. And so, when you give yourself kind of that, that level of parameter, you can see how if you're not creating the foundation early enough, you're going to end up with a thousand customers and they're all going to leave because they're all like, I don't know what's happening. This is just a chaotic mess of, of something. Or you're spending all of your time spinning plates in the air, trying to, to serve everyone and try and create something that's going to work, but it doesn't have the foundation of a framework. or a proven path that's going to fast track their success and so it becomes sort of that again that hot mess express and and so a certification program if that is your vision is such a great way to start thinking about like a tangible asset, that tangible methodology that will serve you and allow you to be able to do that. That's one example of, the infinite number of ways you can deliver on what your signature methodology is, but a certification is a great way to do that. Usually when you're putting together a certification program, you're starting with like, what are the core you know, outcomes that they need to be able to do, what are the core skills they need to have and and then allowing them to be able to practice executing on that signature methodology so that they're able to get people a result. And so that's how you put together a certification program. But it's, the essence of it is starting with a consistent and predictable success path, that takes somebody from point A to point B. And for us, that's called your signature framework. And so that's where we would start people if they're looking to create, well, any packaged asset, but for sure a certification program. So if a certification program is on your list of things that you're like, I want to know more about that, this is a great place to start that conversation to make sure that you are fast tracking your success to creating a certification program is really looking at starting with that right foundation. Starting with, with finding your framework. What is that that's going to drive your entire business model top to bottom? Cause again, if you go back to Mike Michalowicz, like one of the things to think about, like, and if you don't know who he is go check it out and go to ProfitFirst.com, but he has his framework that he created. Then he created the book. And then from there, the book. Went to a coaching and went to packaged maybe courses or whatnot, and then certification and then network partners. And then, you know, now he's licensing to people to create different variations of the book. And he's doing, again, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Like all of the things. But it started with a foundation. It didn't start with like, well, I'm just going to show up and help people randomly. No, he started with his framework and then built multiple ways for people to interact with that framework. Whether it be a book, whether it be a course, whether it be an online experience, whether it be coaching, whether it be a live event, whether it be a certification, whether it be licensing, it doesn't really matter, right? Like there's a million different ways to deliver it. but he didn't start with like, I'm going to create a certification program and so therefore I'm going to, I'm going to write a book and do all these different things, right? Like the certification came from the fact that he had, was able to help so many people and they wanted more. They wanted to be able to help their people or become one of his coaches. And, and so that's how a certification happens. And, as you're building this. Really think about, like, what is the order? What makes the most sense for you? And for everyone, it's just a little bit different. We always recommend that you find your framework and then create a beta experience to test your framework with live people, right? Like, do that MVP version that allows you to sort of flush out the framework. Is it in the right order? Are the steps corrected? Did I miss anything? You're testing your framework. And then from there, you can turn it into a packageable delivery experience, whatever that looks like. So hopefully this serves you as you're thinking about creating various delivery models and specifically a certification program. It gives you the structure to be able to create that and create it easily so that you are helping people be able to replicate what you're doing. The more structure you give them, the easier it is for them to take your methodology and apply it to other people. Hopefully this serves you. If you want to talk more about certifications or you just want to, you know, like, have me find out whether or not you have your own proprietary framework, jump on my calendar, would love to talk to you. And until next time, enjoy the day.