117. Getting Another Certification Could Actually Be Damaging Your VA or OBM Business - Here's Why

I had a client ask me recently: "Do I need to get an OBM certification?"

I didn't say yes or no. Instead, I asked why she was asking. And through that conversation, she realized she already had the knowledge, what she was actually looking for was confidence.

Here's the thing: The VAs and OBMs who are growing their businesses versus the ones stuck at the same income level for years? It has absolutely nothing to do with how much they know. It has to do with what they do with the knowledge they already have.

9 times out of 10, the answer is no, you don't need another certification. Because clients don't hire certifications. They hire people who can solve their problems.

In this episode, I'm breaking down when certifications actually help versus when they're just a bandaid on a deeper issue, and what you should focus on instead.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Andrea Elibero: Hello and welcome to Soulepreneur Scaling Stories. I'm Andrea a certified OBM turned business coach, helping VAs OPMs and done-for-you. Service Pros turn their unstructured expertise into a signature method and a business that pays them for outcomes, not hours. So if you want a business that gives you freedom instead of taking it, you are in the right place.

[00:00:23] Andrea Elibero: Okay, welcome back. Okay, 

[00:00:25] Andrea Elibero: Today we are diving into the difference between the A'S and OMS who are growing their business, and the ones who seem to move just like stuck at the same income level for years. And the thing that I want to share with you is that it has absolutely nothing to do with how much they know.

[00:00:43] Andrea Elibero: What it has to do with is what they do with. Their knowledge that they already have. So it is a thing that I see all the time is that potential clients, my clients that I work with, they have so much experience, they have happy clients, they see real [00:01:00] results and the question that they ask me all the time.

[00:01:04] Andrea Elibero: Or that they contemplate? Is that, oh, like should I get this certification? Should I do this training? And the reason that they're asking this is because the belief is that if they get that, that's the thing that's going to make their clients want to hire them, or that's the thing that's going to make them believe in themselves more.

[00:01:26] Andrea Elibero: And I will share with you that nine times out of 10, the answer is no, it is not. In some cases the answer is yes, and I will share that as well. the actual act of believing that, of thinking that, oh, I need more training, I need more knowledge. I don't know enough. That's the thing that's blocking you, that's plateauing you in your business.

[00:01:46] Andrea Elibero: And so we're gonna dive into that a little bit more now. Okay, so the thing that. Inspired this episode was a client that I had recently in expansion. That's my one-on-one coaching, where we go from unstructured [00:02:00] expertise and create a scalable offer so that way you can have more purpose and more

[00:02:07] Andrea Elibero: money and more calm and peace in your business. So what happened with this client is that she asked me, said, listen, do I need to get an OBM certification? And so what I did in this conversation, I didn't say yes or no, right? So I explored why she was asking me that, and. You know, it's kind of like things like, what have you already done?

[00:02:29] Andrea Elibero: Like what's your experience? Which I knew most of. What's the reason that you're interested in this? You know, what type of, are your clients happy? What difference are you making for them? And just like really kind of digging into that. And through my asking these questions, she realized that no, she actually does have the knowledge, you know?

[00:02:48] Andrea Elibero: So she's like, no, I know what to do. And so the reason that she was interested in getting this. Certification was about her confidence, and I see that so much, like I said before, is that. [00:03:00] She knew how to do the work, but she didn't feel like she did. She didn't feel like she was confident enough to do it.

[00:03:09] Andrea Elibero: And a lot of people believe that if they get this certification, it'll give them the confidence. Now they can say, okay, now I am this title, and now I am allowed to do this type of work. And so the thing is about that is that. Clients don't hire certifications, right? People don't care. They don't care for the most part if you have a certain certification or not.

[00:03:32] Andrea Elibero: And I'll tell you that if you can hear, my dog is chewing on a thing that's loud on the floor, so she agrees with me. If you hear noises, that's her agreeing. So they clients hire people who can solve their problems. A certification is not going to help her because she already had the skills. And so the reason I say that it's 9 times out of 10 that you don't need this type of training.

[00:03:54] Andrea Elibero: It's that for me. Right. And my own story. My story is that my background is in clinical [00:04:00] psychology and nursing. I majored in biology like. I didn't have an operations background. I didn't have a business background. I jumped in as a va. I learned along the way, I learned about what an OBM was, and I didn't actually have a clear idea of what the skillset was.

[00:04:16] Andrea Elibero: I didn't understand what an OBM did, so for me, it was absolutely the right call, right? Because I didn't have experience, I genuinely didn't know the role. So there was a knowledge gap there for me, but she didn't have one. And in fact, I have another expansion client who is getting, some additional certifications in, in notion she knows the platform, but this is something she's like really specializing in and digging into more.

[00:04:41] Andrea Elibero: And this is something that can be done in a few hours. And so that's completely fine, right? She's upping her skills in that way, but the. Thing behind it, right? Like the question behind the question is, why do I want this certification? And the deeper question, like the main thing to look at [00:05:00] is, does it have to do with my confidence level?

[00:05:05] Andrea Elibero: And that's it, period. There's no other question beyond that, do I already understand the role and have the skills or do I not know anything right Or I don't have confidence. And that's what you explore in terms of getting certification. Now, what is more important than that? Right? So the thing that is more important is actually the structure of your offer.

[00:05:28] Andrea Elibero: And why do I say this? Because instead of thinking like, oh, I need to stack on certification after certification, and then I can do all sorts of things for all sorts of people. What is more important is is the fact that all of that means that you have, you have so much expertise already, right?

[00:05:47] Andrea Elibero: Like, you know so many things, but your expertise is unstructured. You're solving problems. You're doing so much for your clients, you're doing things that you love, things that you don't, all of this, right? But your business looks like a list [00:06:00] of 400 services. It looks like hourly pricing. It looks like in your bio it says, oh, I do the task.

[00:06:07] Andrea Elibero: That my clients don't want to do. I save them time. In your day-to-day life, it looks like you're jumping from thing to thing to thing. You have this call here jumping from this client task here to that thing here. There's a last minute request coming in from client A. Oh, another one coming in for client B.

[00:06:21] Andrea Elibero: Oh, client C is having an issue 'cause their other team member is not doing that. And now you have to handle that. And now everything is all scrambled, right? That has nothing to do with your skills. Getting another certification is not going to. Solve that problem. It's not going to give you calmer days.

[00:06:38] Andrea Elibero: It's not going to let you earn more money. It uh, actually there's a caveat. We'll let you earn more money hourly, but you're still going to. Suffer all of this that I just said and burnout anyways, and you're still capped. And anyways, that's another podcast episode. Remind me and I'll record that one. So all of this, it's not a skill problem, it's a structure problem, [00:07:00] and no certification is going to fix a structure problem.

[00:07:03] Andrea Elibero: You can add credential after credential to an unstructured business and still be capped in your time, still have a reactive business and still be completely exhausted. And just have more letters after your name. So if that's not the answer, then what is right? Because the people, the done for you service providers who are actually growing, they are not more skilled than you.

[00:07:27] Andrea Elibero: They just have clarity on three important things. And again, in expansion with my clients, we work on this as well, so they have clarity on what they do. Who they help and how they get them results, their process. So the clarity comes from their offer, their positioning, and their pricing. So instead of asking yourself, okay, what else do I need to learn?

[00:07:53] Andrea Elibero: Maybe instead start asking yourself. What am I already doing for my clients that I can make a [00:08:00] process out of that I can wrap up framework around that can become my method because it's already there. You are already doing it. You just need to pull it out and structure it, because then when you do that, you get to have your day be more spacious because now you are in control, right?

[00:08:21] Andrea Elibero: You are leading. You are saying, okay, this is how I work. This is what I do, this is my process. And you take your clients through that. You get to focus in on doing the things that you're amazing at and that you love doing, and you get to grow. You get to like have a structure that's strategic and so that you can literally grow without it costing you more time.

[00:08:44] Andrea Elibero: And it's amazing. It's like a breath of fresh air. All right, and so what I invite you to do is take one step towards that maybe right now, this week, right now, write down three [00:09:00] problems that you solve the most often, not the tasks that you do, but the problems that you solve in your clients at businesses that excite you.

[00:09:08] Andrea Elibero: And this is the start to your method, to your framework, to your structured expertise. And so if you are listening to this right now and you're like, okay, I have the knowledge, but I definitely don't have the structure. That's what we do in a free business audit. It's 45 minutes and I dive into with you looking at, you know, what's going on in your business, what's keeping you plateaued and capped.

[00:09:35] Andrea Elibero: Like really specific things that you can work on right now in order to shift things so you can grow and change. It's completely free, but I only have a few spots available each month, and so it's linked below, and I invite you. I'm so excited to see you in there, and I will see you on the next episode. 

[00:09:51] Andrea Elibero: That's a wrap on today's episode, and thank you so much for listening. If anything we talked about today made you think, okay, well, what [00:10:00] does this actually look like in my business? That's exactly what a free business audit is for. In just 45 minutes, I'll help you identify your unstructured expertise, pinpoint what's keeping you capped, and map out what your signature method could look like.

[00:10:14] Andrea Elibero: There's a link in the show notes to grab your spot, and I will see you in the next episode.