Functional Health Coach Certification

Carmen Hunter

Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to talk to you about this and, and hopefully, you know, share some inspiration for health coaches and practitioners all over the world that are trying, especially at this time to make a big impact in the world of health and wellness. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT

Yeah. Well, why don’t you just tell us a little bit more about your background. I went over it a little bit and then I have some questions for you. 

Carmen Hunter

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, one of the things that people always say is how did you end up being a health coach? You know, what’s your experience? What’s your background? And you know, my, my background or my experience is a, is a health journey that I received, no, no support with and, and got led down the wrong road many times, which is the common story for many people today, and a lot of health coaches have the same story. They’ve went on a journey and they ended up having to find the answers for themselves. So, over 10 years ago, almost 11, I finally found the answers to why I was struggling with chronic pain. 

And in the time that I had studied over 10 years at the time, I figured out that there, lots of people could benefit from the knowledge that I gained with my own experience and in traveling that road. And I thought, how can I best do this? So, I started a health coaching business without one lick of business sense at the time, except some experience, you know, working for advertising and things like that. And realized very quickly that word of mouth was the best way to build my business. And, and, and I still believe that to this day. And I was off to the races, building a business through trial and error, making lots of mistakes but helping people at the same time and found my passion in the health and wellness space, because I believed that I was led to that place through a lot of bad mistakes in my own personal life and my own health. So, I’m very passionate about sharing this information. I think that everyone that goes through a journey with their health has a story to tell and a way to help others. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT

Yeah. Fantastic. I love how what you’re offering people really is a way to learn from your mistakes because if you’ve been around long enough, you’ve made a few. And, what I found I could help people with who are getting into the business is, look, just don’t make these mistakes in you’ll probably be okay. You know, that’s an amazing thing. So, that’s what a true teacher does. But, now what do you believe is the first place coaches should start when they’re working with a new client? 

Carmen Hunter

Yeah. I honestly believe that we have to lay the bricks of a firm foundation for our business. Many times when we, we get that certification, you know, we come out and we’re, we’re just ready, excited and you know, want to work with people and help them with their health. The sexy part of the health coaching industry. But the unsexy part is what’s not being taught or shared and that people don’t really realize is that we have to have that firm foundation. In other words, you know, protect yourself, establish your business as a real business. And that means becoming somewhat of an entrepreneur. Making sure that you have, you know, your licenses in place and that you, you are ready to invest in your business. Many times people are under the, you know, the mistake that they don’t understand we have to invest money into a business to grow it. So, I believe having that firm foundation is the best way to feel confident when you’re helping people, and to protect yourself, and to move forward and feel good about what you’re doing with others because you protected yourself first. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT

Yeah, there’s just so much commonality, you know, in what you’re doing and what we do here, is I try to separate the hobbyists from the professionals, you know, so people can take your course because they just want to learn. And you know, they dabble a bit, you know, and I call that more of a hobby than a profession. With me, I have some hobbies, they cost me money. They don’t make me money, so when you make something a profession, it makes you money. You have to know some business, have some business acumen or learn it real quick or you’re going to learn it the hard way. So, that’s fantastic. I do like the idea that we’re talking about professional health coaching here. So, what do you think is the most important thing to remember when you’re working with that client? 

Carmen Hunter

Yeah, and I love that you said that about that you know, it being a hobby. So, I coined this term a couple of years ago when I did a training and I said, are you a health coach hobbyist or are you, are you actually a health coach? Right. Are you making money, investing money and building that business in a way that’s making an impact, but the one that feels good to you too, where you’re actually making the money and exchanging that energy, for it to make a business. So, one of the things that I have to say is that when, what’s most important is remember that the two types of people I believe that are looking for us, are the standard American person or the overwhelmed symptom chaser. That’s been my experience, right. So, remembering that we have all been in a place where we need that person that can lead us through the overwhelm and so-called underwhelm us in this experience, is very important. Because then we can empathize with them. 

We remember what it felt like to maybe be chasing symptoms like I did for 10 years, trying to find an answer and not having anyone lead us in the right direction. That helps us to have more empathy for where they are. But alongside that is to also remember that we are not accountable for the decisions of other people. So, when we are coaching someone and we provide great information and reliable, credible resources and we practice ethically and are good stewards of their time, money and emotions, then we want to make sure that they know, we expect them to care for themselves as much as we care for them ourselves. Right. So, those are two things that are really important. Remember what it felt like to be that person, the standard American person or the symptom chaser, and remember that we are not responsible for the outcome when they are working with these clients. We’re there to cheer them on, hold them, hold them up and lift them up. But we want them to take accountability for their decisions. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT

Absolutely. I agree with you. The, I say often enough that we’re not responsible for the outcomes because we don’t have any control over them. The outcomes are the natural consequences of behaving a certain way. Most people have lived themself into the problem. You know, we’re dealing with chronic stress related conditions. People aren’t coming to their health coach with broken bones or you know, Ebola virus, they’re dying, you know, bleeding out of their eyeballs or something. They’re coming with the chronic stress related conditions that have been the natural consequences of living the way they have. And so, we teach them how to live their way out of it. Right. And if you do that as a professional, then you can make a very good living as long as you treat it like a business. And, so I like the things that you said about that. Now, when you first start out, what are you, where do you get your first clients? I mean, did you have someone handing them to you or did you sort of, how’d you get your first clients? 

Carmen Hunter

Yeah, so it’s a good question because, you know, many times when I’m mentoring or educating coaches, they’ll say, but you, you know, you’ve got clients, you know, you don’t, you know, you’ve got them handed to you this, I’m like, let me tell you the real story. You know, I lived in a, in a town in Tennessee, it’s the fifth largest city in Tennessee. Clarksville, Tennessee. And that’s where I started my health coaching journey with just one personal training client. She was a designer and I wanted help with my home and she wanted help with her weight and her health and I started personal training her. The good thing about her was that she said, exercise isn’t enough for me, tell me how to eat, tell me how to do all these things. And I’m like, okay, great. And the good thing for me was that she knew a lot of people in the community. 

So, she started telling people what she was doing to lose weight and get in shape and feel better. And it just became this word of mouth thing where I ended up, believe it or not, having to put people on a waiting list very quickly while I established how do I work with all of these people, right. With a system so that I’m not spinning my wheels and reinventing things every single day that I get a new client. So, I didn’t get anyone handed to me. I had to make sure that I was coaching people effectively for one thing, staying safe in the business and, and helping them to find their own way. And once they were able to tap into that, it was like they had a sustainable way to live and they wanted to share that with everyone.

So, word of mouth was the main way, but you know, at the same time, while getting those clients, I was busy working, you know, 12 to 14 hours a day, typing content, creating templates to be able to handle all the people that were coming my way. So, it was quite the journey for the first two years of health coaching, trying to figure all of the business pieces out and help people at the same time, while maintaining my position of lifting them up and supporting them. So, it was a little bit of a mess for the first couple of years, but, I learned so much while doing it. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT

Yeah. You know, I’ve known you quite a while and I know how hard you work. It’s just kind of common among people who are dedicated to helping others. You kind of put yourself behind a little bit. Although we, we say one of the most critical things to be a health coach is to walk the talk, you know, which means we’re supposed to be the least stressed out of everybody, not the most stressed out. So, how do you balance things? How, how do you balance your own world so to speak? And, and I know you’ve got, everyone has personal stuff going on. How do you balance it Carmen Hunter? Yeah. And, and I, you know, that’s all, I say, that that’s all changed over the years. I feel like, and balance is a word that makes me go, oh gosh, cause I’m not, I’ve never been a great person at balance. I even talked about it yesterday how balanced to me is when both people hit the see-saw right at the middle. Right. 

So, looking at that from a business perspective, it means when your income comes in and your clients are happy, it meets itself in the middle. And for me, I, I’ve, I’ve always been going up and down with it. One thing’s great and one thing needs work. So, for me, what I do is I prioritize what are the things, first of all, I take, I take care of myself. I didn’t always do that. I got, I went down that rabbit hole of caring for others more than I cared for myself, which is why I no longer do that.

Carmen Hunter

So, I put my personal care first 100% every single day. I start my day with myself reading, doing whatever it is, meditation that feels good to me to set the tone for the day. So that when things come my way, I’ve already got that, you know, so-called parasympathetic, you know, foundation going on for myself. And if something comes up that feels urgent, I always ask myself the same question, is this an emergency? And I know that sounds a little bit kind of out of the box a little bit, but if I ask myself, is this an emergency? And I say, no, it’s not, it’s urgent, but it’s not an emergency. My body automatically calms down and helps me focus on the important things that are in front of me. Which means if I have clients or I’m teaching a class, if I’m being interviewed or I have a podcast, those things have a time on them, which means I’m committed to that. Like, I’m committed to you today. So, making sure I got everything done this morning so I could be present for you today. So, when we do that, those fun things about our business, the sexy things, those fun things can come after and they’re much more enjoyable because we’ve gotten those priorities out of the way. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT

That’s a good answer. I feel the same way about that word balance. You know, it’s kind of, it sounds hokey, you know, but it’s, what it means is that you’re doing things that would kind of regulate the stress. So, you know, lately I’ve had to reiterate big portions of my course, because one of the labs that I dealt with went out of business and it kind of upset the Apple cart, you know, so I started working some 14 hour days. But I go outside at least four or five times and just chill. I’m in Southern California, there’s some sun and I can go out and I refuse to sit at my desk for eight hours straight or 10, I mean I got in a 14 hour day several times and we’re kind of caught up now we’re getting there. But, man, I had to go outside.

I’ll go in my garden and just go outside and breathe the fresh air, you know, meditate a little bit. I’ll lay down and kind of catch a few winks, listening to some tapes. I love meditation tapes and things like that and it really does balance you. I can get back up now I also fuel my body properly, eating, for me, eating is really big as a parasympathetic, you know, we have to keep eating. If, if I get tired I eat, I’m back, back to where, you know, put some fuel back in the tank kind of thing. That’s great. Now I want to talk about your, your course and the Institute that you started the Institute for Functional Health Coaching. Tell us how you started that and what’s the problem it solves for health coaches? Why would a health coach want to take that? 

Carmen Hunter

Yeah. So, in 20, I guess it was 2013 I finally found my peoples, what I like to say on Facebook, you know, I’d been coaching for over three years and I felt very alone in the health coaching space because I wasn’t in the online world. I didn’t realize so many people were out there. I didn’t know anything about other health coaching schools. I just know I was looking for my people and I enrolled in an, in a school. You know, I got a little bit of information there, but more than anything I found the people in our space that were looking to help others. And so, what I realized was having over three years of background, of coaching, there’s a lot of people out there that needed that, that experience they needed help with building their business. 

They needed answers to how to help clients in a safe way, especially if they’re in a red state. All of those things. So, I very slowly started creating little courses, you know, a week, two weeks, four weeks, here’s some information, gave so many hours away of my time because I felt how important it was to have coaches working. And then when I finally just sat down in 2015 and started putting all of my experience into a formatted course and decided I was going to open up and be able to offer everything to people instead of little pieces, you know, bits and pieces. So, how it solves, the problem is I’m, you know, I don’t go deep like you guys. That’s why I think we compliment each other so well. You know, we’ve got schools out there that go deep with clinicals and labs and all of that. And what I do, is I do the pieces that I had to figure out by myself, which were the business pieces, the coaching skills. 

All those missing pieces, coaches were coming to me for. And I created an 18 week course and I put all of the business information at the front so that once they finished their other certification or their journey or whatever it was, they could get to work right away. Getting that firm foundation in place that we talked about in the very beginning so they could start working with people as soon as they had those bricks laid down and feel comfortable and confident in doing so. So, it solves a lot of problems. The main one being showing them actually how to run this business and be an entrepreneur. The other one, giving them the confidence and telling, showing them actually how to do this and grow as they go, is what I like to call it. And then giving them a community to share this information with, of go- getter health coaches and not people who are just in this, as you mentioned earlier, as a hobby. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT

That’s really good point. You know, and it’s a huge need because you’re right, we teach deep dives into the physiology, anatomy, biochemistry, you know, really figuring out what’s, what’s wrong with the person. And then of course, the protocols, you know, what, how to customize a diet, and rest, and exercise program, and all the ways to reduce stress, including testing for hidden stressors, the bugs and the foods and things like that. And of course a lot on supplements, but some people are coming to us, Carmen Hunter, who are really, going from one career to another, you know, they have, an inclination I want to help people. 

And like you said, they often have their own health problem that they’ve overcome and they take our course and they feel like very confident that they could go out and help others. But if they haven’t been in business. Oh man. It’s like, now what do I do? So, your, your course would be the natural next step for someone like that. So, the problem you solve is, is getting them up and running and making money. I mean, do you work on packages? How to sell your stuff and what your demographic is or something like that? Like, give us a little bit of detail.

Carmen Hunter

Okay. So, we talk about all of it. It’s basically, you know, covering, you know, how to find clients online and out in your community, how, you know, everything from where to show up, how to present yourself to practitioners, if you’re wanting to collaborate. How to, you know, set up your coaching fees and services based on demographics and what you’re offering. How to not worry so much about not knowing enough, which is a big fear of… 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT

Oh Boy. 

Carmen Hunter

You know, I always say, yeah, learn and grow as you go. I mean, you know, the minute you learn all that stuff, it’s going to probably shift and change in some way anyway. So, we need to focus more on the things that we’ve got our experience in, like labs or focusing on, you know, something that they’re passionate about. So, we do, we talk about that. We talk about how to identify the obstacles that our clients might be facing. You know, based on maybe some old traumas or, you know, situations where they, they’ve got an upside down belief about food and movement. 

You know, there’s so many different pieces. So, we really structure the course around the pieces that pop-up that coaches, that might actually paralyze coaches. Like, oh my gosh, I have a client with this complicated problem and I don’t even know how to begin. So, we show them how to begin and really start that checklist of things, you know, so that we can get down to the nitty gritty and investigate what the root cause of someone’s problems are so that they can take it further with the knowledge they have. Just like the labs that you guys do, how important those are, because if someone’s doing everything right and they still can’t figure it out, this is a key to figuring those things out. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT

Yeah. Turns out they just think they’re doing everything right and that’s good when they get, when you get a client who, who’s willing to learn and, and behave like just sometimes they’re so, frustrated. They’ve been through the cycle of trial and error, one person to the next and when you, when you run some labs, you can point out some healing opportunities and then they just, wow that’s amazing that that works for me, tell me what to do? And so then you’re bringing in the accountability factor and a system for that and a way to charge and, and, make a, make a living doing it. I love when we get new students from, like who were engineers, you know, it’s just they, they don’t like being an engineer anymore. They want to do something more meaningful, something with more purpose in their life. And, and you know, women who, you know, I’d say it’s mostly women, 60% of our people are women. And they, they, they’ve been taking care of their whole family and themselves forever and they feel like they’ve, hey, I know a thing or two. But then they want a certification or a couple certifications so that they’ve got something to back up what they’re, what they’re saying. 

Carmen Hunter

Yeah. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT

That’s fantastic. Tell me, tell me, why you think coaches don’t do it? What, what keeps them from being successful? 

Carmen Hunter

You know, there’s a couple of things that, that, you know, we spent some, some time and invested, you know, a lot of, just it’s time I guess, just asking questions, and doing surveys, and polling our groups, and putting things out to our list and asking them. What is it that you feel is holding you back? What are the 

biggest fears you have? And things like that. And the two things that came back across the board, you know, higher than anything else was confidence and a system. And the system and the confidence, the two things, one, you know, the system will give you confidence. So, you know, that was the good thing that came out of that was that we realized, well, we have the system for you and it will give you the confidence because it is a rinse and repeat process. Right. 

So, I believe that that’s number, yeah, that’s, that’s part of it is that they don’t understand how to start the business. They don’t even realize, you know, being an entrepreneur is not a simple snap your fingers type of thing. But having a system in place, as I mentioned earlier, can, can actually be one of those things that gives you the confidence that you need, can overcome your fears. Another reason why is they don’t understand technology. And you know, when we’re talking about technology, I don’t know about you, I’m 49 years old and anytime something new comes on I’m like, hey Brayden, I’ll call my kid down. You know, if I don’t understand it. And I’m like, can you look at this and tell your mom exactly if I’m doing this right? And he’ll roll his eyes. Yes, mom, you’ve got it right. So, I think that trips people up a lot. To your point, people have raised their children. So, you know, we’re in our forties, fifties sometimes sixties starting over with a new job. It can be very intimidating to try to figure all of this out today. But the good news is, is that we don’t have to have all of these technological pieces in place to successfully help people. It can be as simple as a $14 zoom account and you know, some HIPAA compliant stuff that we tuck our labs in and we’re off to the races and ready to go. So, those are a couple of things I’ve found. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT

Yeah, those are good things. I remember starting my practice 20 years ago or so, and we were still using pagers. There was no, and there were payphones everywhere. And you… 

Carmen Hunter

I know, I remember. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT

Yeah. And, and I would, instead of doing things electronically when I wanted to send out test reports and, you know, all the, all the things that go along with, results and recommendations, etcetera, I’d mail it to them. I’d mail them a big envelope about half an inch thick. And then I would have it in order and I had a copy in my office in, you know, you just knew that, okay, page one, let’s go to page one. And they’d literally like have it in their hands in front. So, technology’s come a long way, but some of our principles are the same, you know, it’s educate and educate. So, can you give me an example of a really tough case that you’ve helped solve Carmen Hunter? You know, like what was, whether it’s complicated, I don’t know if that means that they had bad disease or if it meant they were just a pain in the neck to work with. You know, there’s lots of complications you can come up with. 

Carmen Hunter

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so one of my, one of my favorite cases, is a, a girl who came to me who was eating paleo. I mean, and this woman did not, she did not veer from her, from her food plan and she was CrossFitting, five days a week. So, she was moving her body appropriately. She was in a loving relationship. She had all of these amazing things in place. And so, I helped her to tweak some of the things, you know, cut back a little bit on CrossFit. I thought she was stressing her body too much. You know, provided a list of labs to ask her physician for. We worked together for about three months, just checking off the list of the seven essential things that I believe on, right or believe in. Made sure she was having fun in her life and we were just like, what is going on? Because what’s happening was she was putting on weight by the day. 

I mean, she gained 75 pounds, I think in less than four months before she came to me. And while I was working with her, it just kept on like a pound here and a pound there. And I said, okay, I need to really get into this and let me do some studying because I really rarely had anyone at the end of three months that has needed to continue with me, you know. And so, I said, I had an aha and I sent her a text and I said, oh my gosh, I think that you, you know, you need to see a doctor and I want you to ask for a scan and I want you to see if you’ve got a pituitary adenoma. And she was like, what in the world is that? What’s going on here? I said, I don’t know, but I’ve been doing some reading and this popped up in my, in my, feed several times when I’m studying. And sure enough, she went into an endocrinologist three weeks later and they diagnosed her with a pituitary adenoma.

So, after, yeah, I know, I was like, oh my gosh. How did anybody miss this? She’d seen three endocrinologists. She’d been to two general practitioners. I can’t even tell you the functional medicine doctors she’d seen. She was at the end of her rope and just getting bigger by the minute. And of course depression and all that goes with it. So, she followed the protocol, you know, that the endocrinologist put into place. It literally within four weeks started dropping weight, started feeling better, more energetic, no more sleeping in the middle of the day and her life turned upside down. And to this day, we’re still in touch to this day. You know, she sent me a lamp when you’re in and she was like, you literally shed a light on my life again, like a lamp, a beautiful lamp. And I still have it, but that was one of the most complicated cases because it had me going, what have I missed here? What am I missing here? You know, and that was it. Yeah. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT

Well you, you’ve got, you know, I would, I don’t know how duplicatable that is. You know, you either are very intuitive or, or got lucky and probably a bit of both, you know. We, we don’t want to be, health coaches, you know, you’re not the one that provided the diagnosis. I think we may need to point that out that you had a suspicion and you referred her to the right person and they were able to go, oh my look at this. So, so good on you for that one. You mentioned doctors there, what, whats, do you think coaches should work with doctors or what do you, how do you feel about that? 

Carmen Hunter

Yeah, I really do. And you know, there’s probably some old trainings and videos of me when I was trying to help coaches, you know, be comfortable with entrepreneurship. And I was saying, and you know, I tried to work with doctors three or four times. I actually had one that said, you know, I don’t know anything about the endocrine system. If I let you in here, they’re gonna think I don’t know what I’m talking about. So I’m sorry, but I don’t want to work with you. So, I had many times where I was like, I just want to help. I want to connect, you know, people. So I would say, you know, I believe in building a business on your own as an entrepreneur. But over the last two and a half years, I’ve really changed my tune about that because I see the giant gap between what’s happening, as we’ve mentioned earlier, connection and communication. 

There’s no better person in my opinion than a health coach to establish a personal connection with someone and that communication so that they can adequately share information with a practitioner about what’s going on with food and lifestyle and all of those things. And, and spare the doctor from having to learn all of that stuff and, and do all those pieces that they don’t have time to do. So, I believe that we are in a, in a, in a time right now where we have a unique opportunity to bridge that gap between the client and patient and the practitioner. It’s a win for the client patient, they feel supported, connected with, communicated with, that they want to comply. 

It’s a win for the coach because they’ll get a job and it’s a win for the doctor or practitioner because they are no longer trying to be everything to everyone and they’re fully prepared and ready to help with those pieces like labs and important investigations into diagnoses and things like that. So, I believe, I honestly, and I, and I teach practitioners and coaches, I have two courses for that as well, that I believe we need to be partnering if, if we’re going to be able to support people in the best way possible. So, yes, I absolutely agree. It’s important that we work together. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT

Yeah, why wouldn’t we? You know, why wouldn’t we? You know, cause people have some true medical conditions that require medical oversight, you know, and if that’s the case, then I look at health coaches and teach my people that in that sense you’re the junior partner because if they’ve got a true medical condition, that means there’s something that is possibly spiraling downward that is contracted. Like this person could go south quick. Well, that’s where you need medical oversight because you know, they could die or they could end up with something worse already and they might need some intervention that only doctors can do, that we can’t. I certainly don’t have a prescription pad on my desk anywhere, you know. 

Carmen Hunter

No. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT

Now, I have a lot of things though, that you can do as a health coach to work around the edges of that, that supports the person holistically and full body. And with the diet, the nutrients. I mean, physicians often don’t have the time or education to, to talk about those things. Like they take on all commerce and that means that they’re going to look at what’s your complaint, oh boy, let’s do a test. And yeah, this is going down. This is dangerous. Like uncontrolled blood pressure for instance. It’s very dangerous. You can die from that real quick, real easy. So, you want to, you want to do something in the interim, you know, like again, it’s an intervention to, it’s like a life preserver. So, you’re not going to drown now. Well, now you can learn to swim, get out of the water, you know, and, and nurture the body. All the things that health coaches do. 

I have absolute respect for the fact, and I think what we need to establish as leaders in this field, Carmen Hunter, are that there are two backyards and that we don’t go scratching around in the other guy’s backyard much. Doctors don’t have time or aren’t inclined to be in our backyard. They’re not health coaches, although they could be. And we’re health coaches, but we don’t want to diagnose or treat specific conditions. That’s for, you know that’s between you and your doctor. You know, I’m here to make you healthier, you know, and we can work on every cell tissue, organ system and just make it all function better. 

And a lot of that stuff will just go away, you know, or need minimal, you know, a lot less intervention and medical. And we’ve seen diagnosed conditions just disappear, by getting that much healthier. You know, again, if you’ve lived yourself into the problem, you’re gonna live yourself out of it with the assistance of a health coach. So, as we wrap it up here, I want to ask you a little bit more about your course. It’s called Functional Health Coach. That’s the certification that people will get and then, you know, they can, like give me a favorite thing for you that you like teaching the most. What, what’s the top of the list? What’s worth the price of admission to sign up with Carmen Hunter Hunter? 

Carmen Hunter

Yeah, so I absolutely love to help coaches to teach them how to start with the basics with people, how to get people back to the basics of self care and what it means to be a human being. Because I think that we’ve all kind of forgotten that we all need those basic things like sleep, and fun, and safe movement and so on. We’ve leaped ahead to these difficult protocols and things that we’re asking people to do who are still driving through drive-thru’s. So I like to remind people and teach about, again, the standard American person and the overwhelmed symptom chaser we talked about earlier. I like to teach people how to remember how, what that feels like, but how to guide people and support them with the basics, so that when we do need to do those, those labs or those complicated protocols, we’ve at least got a foundation of health started so that people understand and they take, they take accountability again for their health. So, one of my favorite things is to teach people how to take a deep breath in your coaching space. Remember that you are, you are helping them with the food and lifestyle, and that starts with the basics. They are accountable for those decisions that they make and that we are there to support them. That’s the way to teach them how to sustainably live. So, they start, you know, talking about us and referring out to us. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT

Fantastic. How long does it take to get a Functional Health Coach certification from you? 

Carmen Hunter

Okay, so I’ve had the go getter’s, four weeks and I’ve had the, I’m going to take my timer’s, I’m still a nurse. I’ve got quite a few nurses, chiropractors and people like that. And, and that’s anywhere from, you know, the 18 week time frame up to a year. So, I’ve had anywhere from four weeks to a year. But you can absolutely, if you are a person, like I had a nurse recently, she said, I’m done. I’m not a nurse anymore. This is my full time job. I’m going to tackle this program. I think she was almost at 90% done after three weeks, so I don’t know where she is right now. But we’ll take a look and see. Yeah, you can cruise through it. And many times, you know, as a reminder, some of these people already have specific things in place, but they just don’t know how to get the other pieces going. So, they’re confident and ready to work with people. So, it really depends on how much knowledge you have and experience you have in the business world as well. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT

Fantastic. Well, we’re going to finish with that and if there’s anything else you want to add to it, I’ll be putting how to get in touch with Carmen Hunter Hunter into the show notes. And of course this event is available for purchase. We’re, you know, glad you’re here watching today, but if you want to own the recording and all the other recordings, we’ll put that link in the show notes as well. Carmen Hunter, what would you like to close with and tell the health coaches out there that, you know, you really want them to feel? 

Carmen Hunter

To feel. So, I want them to feel uplifted. I want them to feel supported and confident and I want them to know that there is a need for them and it’s growing every single day. It is growing. And I believe, I truly believe that if we are able to appeal to the, to the, the layman, Joe Public or whatever, meet them where they are and help them to get to where they want to be in a way that, that feels good to them and to the coach. We can only expect to see health coaches booming in their business, feeling more confident, feeling ready to work with people. And we can expect to see our general public getting healthier. So, I just want to say as, you know, just as a word, you know, stay with this. Do not, you guys have been brought to this for a reason. If you are passionate and you are resilient, you have the grit that it takes to make this business work for you. Stay with it and, and don’t give up. You know, don’t give up no matter what. Even if you’ve never built a business before, it is absolutely possible. And it’s not as hard as you think it is. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT

Beautifully stated. You know, you’ve really kind of, coined the whole purpose of this event. And I’m not going to try to add to it. So, great job. Carmen Hunter Hunter, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it. 

Carmen Hunter 

Thanks so much. Thank you Reed, appreciate it. Good to see you again. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT

You too.