Communicating what’s unique and special about RCI relationship coach training and certification has always been challenging.
If you’re reading this you probably know that RCI trains you how to help singles and couples have successful relationships, but as a membership organization, that’s just the beginning, and not even the most important thing we do.
Sure, training is important, but does NOT ensure your success as a relationship coach.
What’s special about Relationship Coaching Institute’s relationship coach training and certification?
Since founded in 1997, RCI has been built from the ground up to be a membership organization focused on ONE important question:
“What do you need to become a successful relationship coach?”
Here’s our answer to that question:
Top Ten Things to Know About RCI
1. Support
What You Need to Know: Most private practice helping professionals work alone and can tell you that after awhile it becomes isolating and lonely. You support your clients, but who supports YOU? Who do you contact when you have a problem with a client or your business?
RCI: Supports you every step of the way, before, during, and after your training. More info here
Other CTOs (“coach training organizations”): Send you on your way just when you need support the most.
2. Mentoring
What You Need to Know: Training is just the beginning of learning your craft, you need mentoring from experienced coaches during and after your training to become a successful, masterful coach.
RCI: Our team of experienced mentors is dedicated to your success and we have your back 24/7. More info here
Other CTOs: Most don’t provide any mentoring and those that do tend to focus on the mentoring needed for ICF certification for an additional charge.
3. Practice Building
What You Need to Know: Starting any small business is a daunting task, especially if you’re starting from scratch and learning a whole new profession.
RCI: We’ve devoted more than two decades to developing and refining our proven, step-by-step Coaching Business Success System™ and provide the mentoring and support you need to build a successful coaching business. More info here
Other CTOs: Most provide nothing more than tips and referrals to expensive practice building programs.
4. Marketing
What You Need to Know: Having a business doesn’t help anyone or generate income without marketing it. But how?
RCI: Provides “Done for You” marketing campaigns and materials and extensive marketing resources along with the mentoring and support you need to market effectively. More info here
Other CTOs: Most provide nothing more than tips and referrals to expensive marketing consultants and services.
5. Getting Clients
What You Need to Know: Believe it or not, you can market til the cows come home and not get ANY clients! Successful marketing will generate prospects, and you need systems and skills for converting those prospects into clients.
RCI: Provides thorough, comprehensive client enrollment training, systems, skills and strategies, along with the mentoring and support to implement them successfully to fill your calendar with motivated clients.
Other CTOs: Most provide nothing more than tips and referrals to expensive client enrollment consultants and services.
6. Professional Development
What You Need to Know: Your real learning starts when your training ends and you are working with real clients in the real world. We humans do not like to stand still; we thrive by leveraging our experiences to continually learn and evolve, which is really hard to do in a vacuum all by yourself.
RCI: Provides continuing education resources and events, learning labs, mentoring, support and our innovative Leadership Program to support your on-going professional development. More info here
Other CTOs: Most provide nothing more than recruiting graduates for free help to support their trainings.
7. Licensing
What You Need to Know: Like consultants, coaches don’t need a “license” to practice, but that’s not the kind of license we’re referring to.
RCI: As the pioneer and leader in relationship coaching, since 1997 we have continually developed proprietary relationship coaching materials, programs, workbooks, trademarks, forms, exercises, curriculums for classes, workshops, retreats, seminars/webinars, etc. to make it easy for our members to market, get clients, build a successful practice, and make a larger difference in their community as a relationship coach. More info here
Other CTOs: Most provide nothing, and the few that do are not really coach training organizations in our view, but “guru” oriented quasi-franchises who usurp the label “coach” for their prescribed system that they think everyone should follow.
8. Membership
What You Need to Know: Perhaps this should have been listed first, but a membership organization is much more effective for systematically delivering a wide variety of services, resources and programs than a commodity business who simply sells a product or service.
RCI: Built from the ground up as a member organization to provide all the above affordably and effectively. More info here
Other CTOs: N/A, nada, nothing, nobody, zip.
9. Cost
What You Need to Know: A membership organization, like a health club, can charge a nominal fee to join (the “enrollment fee”) and is able to provide a wide variety of exceptional member services because the cost is spread out over many members paying a monthly fee.
RCI: The cost to join and complete your relationship coach training is very affordable and our goal is that you remain a member and allow us to help you become a masterful relationship coach and build a successful relationship coaching business, but you can cancel at any time.
Other CTOs: Sadly, they need to charge enough up front to cover their costs and generate enough profit to make their business financially viable. Some cope by providing DIY online self study training (you can’t train yourself!) so their only cost is marketing and hosting the online course. Others market a free/low cost bare bones course and push their higher quality upsell trainings. The bottom line is that the good ones charge much more than RCI but provide much less.
10. Member Success and Satisfaction
What You Need to Know: The measurement of a successful training program is the success of its graduates. Also, a member organization depends upon member retention and will not last long without happy members. Unsuccessful, dissatisfied members results in higher turnover and marketing costs. Successful members are satisfied and will stay members for a long time.
RCI: Our members love us, it’s that simple. Check out RCI Members Speak Out here. You’ll find lots of examples of how our members become highly successful relationship coaches here and here and here and here
Other CTOs: Typically have no idea what happens with their graduates when they complete their training.
So there you have it, my best attempt to be clear and specific about what’s special about RCI’s relationship coach training and certification. These guys did a pretty good job of reviewing and making sense of RCI here, for which we’re eternally grateful (we need all the help we can get!). Our members get it, but most had just a vague idea before joining RCI, only to be blown away after joining RCI. Some things are hard to fathom or relate to until you’ve experienced them.
If you have any questions or want to learn more about how RCI can help YOU, please contact us here
