Is Women’s Health Coaching The Right Career For You?

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:00:03 Hi and welcome to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m your host, Doctor Jessica Drummond, and I am so thrilled to have you here as we dive into today’s episode. As always, innovating and integrating in the world of women’s health. And just as a reminder, the content in this podcast episode is no substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment from your medical or licensed health care team. While myself and many of my guests are licensed healthcare professionals, we are not your licensed healthcare professionals, so you want to get advice on your unique circumstances. Diagnostic recommendations treatment recommendations from your home medical team. Enjoy the episode. Let’s innovate and integrate together. Welcome back to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m your host, doctor Jessica Drummond, founder and CEO of the Integrative Women’s Health Institute. A couple of weeks ago, I promised you a very special episode about whether or not becoming a women’s health coach could be the right career for you. And here’s the thing. This is our final cohort of the Women’s Health Coach Certification program.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:01:28 And if you have not listened to the episode about the story of the Women’s Health Coach certification, how I literally built it while flying it. Well, you know that airplane? Well, I built it in person while I built it digitally. How I had to learn all the crazy tech tools, all the amazing people who supported us along the way, and most importantly, the legacy of our 3000 graduates who each themselves have touched countless women and helped them heal and change their lives from the root cause over nearly two decades. I’m calling this the 15 year celebration because I don’t exactly remember day one of the Integrative Women’s Health Institute’s Women’s Health Coach certification. But I do remember the mushy beginning and the mushy middle about how this program evolved. So you can hear that entire story in that episode. What we’re going to talk about today is, you know, I’ve now seen all of these students and graduates who are our most successful. What do they have about them that makes them a successful health coach? I think it boils down to a couple of key things.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:02:44 One is you care deeply about innovating and changing and deepening how women’s health care is delivered. You care a lot about the stories of each and every woman who is navigating the system, sometimes feeling like she’s in the dark, that she’s not supported, that she’s putting everybody else’s needs first. You just care deeply about women. You just care deeply about people who are in underserved situations. And that depth of care drives forward a lot of the energy that you need to do this work. And then the other piece of it, the flip side of the coin, is that you have the capacity for your demeanor to be patient, to be mindful. And you may not be that yet, but you might strive, you might have a goal to be more mindful, more present, more in the conversation with people. So if you’re someone who your friend group, your family, you know, people you’ve known throughout your life, random acquaintances on the train start talking to you. Share things with you easily. You have a natural aptitude for this.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:04:05 But even if that’s not the case, and you care deeply about women and showing them the path to having lives that are more aligned with things that they care about and that they feel really well, really energetic, they’re living fully. No matter what phase of life they’re in, you can learn the skills of presence, of mindfulness, of curiosity, of non-judgment, of holding space. So I find the people that are most successful are those that have that deep curiosity, care about women, care about individual women’s stories, care about creating community among women who are navigating challenging things and are open to learning. Here’s one of the things that’s most challenging for our clients who come into this program I’m from a clinical background, so if you’re a physician, a PA, a PT, and OT, a nutritionist or dietitian, this is the thing you might struggle with. And luckily, at least half of our master coach faculty are also clinicians. And they also struggled with this. So you’re in great hands. And by the way, so did I.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:05:26 This was the hardest thing for me. There is a big shift from clinical healthcare, where we give a list of recommendations to learning to deepen our trust in our clients and patients, and getting curious and asking questions and knowing that they probably know some of the answers, maybe not all of them. We still are going to have to explain, you know, some of the complexities of, you know, mitochondrial energy or how the brain impacts hormones or why building muscle in our 40s is so important, right? Like, we’re going to know some of this technical stuff. You’re going to learn all the things about coaching and the Dutch test and nutrition and GI mapping, and the gut microbiome and nervous system regulation. Like you’re going to learn all those nuts and bolts. But what’s so amazing to me is that most of the time, the detail of those kinds of things are very secondary to how safe and comfortable and supported people feel in their lives. And that starts with them getting curious about their own vision. And so the people that are most successful in our programs stick with their clients when their clients are like, oh, I don’t know what to do, just tell me what to do.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:06:45 And they’re like, no, you know what to do. Let’s take a little more space, take a little more time. Let me challenge you with a few questions. Let me give you some ideas to think about. Let me give you an array of options to play with. So we stick with them when they get stuck in navigating what they even want. Because think about it. Any woman who’s an adult has lived on this planet for at least 20 years ish. And she was taught that her needs come last. That I’ll tell you what to do. Just follow my directions. Right. And that’s not what make women happiest and healthiest. So our most successful graduates learn the skill and are committed to learning the skill of helping women deepen their own trust in themselves. Get curious about what they need, and reach out to get it. Whether it’s from her surgeon or her physical therapist, or her own discipline in meal planning, or getting to her workout classes, or doing her morning routine before she looks at her phone.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:07:56 There’s a level of discipline, but also self-love and self-worth and boundary setting that our students are really committed to helping their clients learn. They’re not just learning the nuts and bolts of which supplements to recommend. If someone has trouble metabolizing estrogen, that’s cool. But your client who’s having trouble metabolizing her estrogen, there’s probably a deeper reason for why. And while we’re going to support her with nutrition and supplements and all the things that we can do for that, which are many of us just telling her what to do doesn’t get to the root cause of it. So you are going to be an amazing health coach if you care about women’s health and wellness. If you’re excited about learning new skills that might challenge the way you think. If you love learning in a community of other women who have multidisciplinary and multi perspective thinking, and you are excited to be a part of that community, and this community has nearly a 20 year legacy, which is so exciting. Ever growing, ever expanding global. If you’re excited about being a part of a community who loves that you are going to fit in, great.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:09:13 You are going to be one of our most successful health coaches, and you’re going to be inspired by the wide variety of options and opportunities you have to create the perfect work for you. You can go and listen to all of our Student Spotlight episodes, all of our Graduate Spotlight episodes, and alumni episodes to get inspired about the kinds of things you can do, but also if you can dream it, you can literally do it. If you want a small niche deep dive practice into specifically supporting women with a new host who are struggling with fertility that is available to you. If you want to buy a horse farm and invite women in perimenopause who are struggling with their identity shift and the physical symptoms that go with that, and you want them to be able to put their hands on the grass and take a walk in the field. That’s open to you too. If you have a physical therapy practice that you want to take to the next level, or an acupuncture practice that you want to take to the next level, or chiropractic or PA or nurse practitioner practice that you want to take to the next level and be more specialized in a particular aspect of women’s health that’s available to you.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:10:31 If you want to build a massive 2000 person postpartum recovery programs globally, that’s available to you, because we have so many more tools and options now in this emerging and rapidly growing field of women’s health and wellness. And I want people stepping into those roles who have deep care for women. And that’s not always the case. So if you have deep care for women, you’re willing to learn some new communication skills, and you’re willing to get curious about your own vision and their visions, too. You are going to make an amazing women’s health coach. So reach out. Schedule a call with our career coaches, Brandi and Kelsey. They are experts. They will help you determine specifically if this is the right path for you. And I can’t wait to meet you inside the program. This is our final cohort of the Women’s Health Coach Certification. Get NWC certified and then continue to grow and expand with us as we go even bigger, wider and deeper into the coming years. You’re joining an amazing community with a great legacy.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:11:52 And I can’t wait to see you and meet you inside and see what you do to bring our community to the next level. Find out if this is a right next career for you. Talk to Kelsey and Brandi and you can reach out to them. Just go right to our website at Integrative Women’s Health Institute and search for Women’s Health Coach certification. It’s our final cohort, 2025. I’ll see you there. And if you want to reach out and chat with us at any time, you can always DM me on Instagram at Integrative Women’s Health. Can’t wait to meet you and I’ll see you next week on the Integrative Women’s Health podcast. Have a great week. Thank you so much for joining me today for this episode of the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. Please share this episode with a colleague and if you loved it, hit that subscribe or follow button on your favorite podcast streaming service so that we can do even more to make this podcast better for you and your clients. Let’s innovate and integrate in the world of women’s health.