Candis Smith

I attribute my success to God. I would not be able to do this on my own. First and foremost to Him, and my spiritual life. Because of my spiritual life and my journey, he's always been able to keep me grounded, help me through some of my difficult times, but also allow me to grow. He's been able to help me see through the things and lead me and guide me in the ways that he wanted me to, and also gave me the support that I needed. He placed the people in my life who I feel so blessed to have - my husband, my children, my mom - I call it my circle of grace. They are the key people that he just allowed me to be in camp around me. When I need strength, they're there. They lift me up. Sometimes when I don't even need it, they'll call me when I don't even realize I need the call or the words of encouragement. They use my circle, and I'm just blessed to have that circle around me all the time that just keeps me motivated, keeps me encouraged. Throughout my life he's just allowed those key people to just always be in my life, and I'm just blessed.

The biggest advice I've gotten is, are you gonna be a thermostat or are you gonna be a thermometer? I always remember that. It's a choice. We can't control things, and what I can control is how I allow things to affect me. So I could choose to be a thermostat, or I could choose to be a thermometer.

I would say that we all have gifts. They have been blessed with, and those gifts have been given without measure. We spend a lot of time second-guessing ourselves, because we think that we have to look outside of ourselves to do the things that we want to do. But sometimes we just gotta bet on ourselves. Because everything that we have is within us. We just gotta dig deep. Take a chance on ourselves. And just go after our goals. Because we can do it. We just not gotta let the fear hold us back, and take those brave, bold steps, and take a chance on you, because if you don't take a chance on you, who else will?

The biggest challenge in the industry is that people don't really understand what true coaching is. A lot of coaches themselves are not sometimes certified, so a lot of people are going in and not investing in themselves as true coaches. There are absolutely fabulous coaches out there who have invested in their careers, but then there are other coaches out there who haven't. So there's misinformation in the industry as to what coaching is, and there's a lot of people that need coaching and are misinformed of what the value is and how significant coaching is, especially when it comes to your career or your life. A lot of people think about it as a mentorship or consulting, but it's much more valuable for you when it comes to your growth and your transformation. I think about it with this analogy - an athlete can be talented, but an athlete wouldn't go to the Olympics and become a gold medalist if they didn't have talented coaches around them to help them chart the course, help them hone in and build their natural talent and gifts. That's what coaches are. But that coach has to be trained, that coach has to know how to actually pull out and develop that natural talent in that athlete. If that coach isn't trained and doesn't have the proper skills to do that, he or she wouldn't be able to take that athlete to the Olympics to become a gold medalist over and over again. The biggest opportunity is to make sure that when clients are meeting, they're meeting with certified coaches and they're asking the right questions. Coaches themselves need to be explaining what coaching is and making sure that if they want to be a coach, they're investing in their own training, understanding the industry they're stepping into, and certifying themselves. They need to make sure they're doing the right thing for the clients they want to serve, that they're not just jumping into an industry without understanding what that entails and how they're developing themselves as professionals to serve the clientele that needs their services.

The value for me is faith. You have to have faith. You have to have deep faith in God, faith in and trust in God, in yourself, in others. You have to be able to be dependable, but also be able to depend on others around you, and be able to know when you can't do it, so that you can know your limits. You gotta know what your limits are and be able to take feedback and advice. A lot of us try to think we could do it all, and we try to control things. Sometimes we gotta give that up, and know what we need to give up so that we can allow others to step in and help us, so that we can grow through the process. It's not about the end result. Sometimes we gotta understand the process that we're going through, and see the growth in it, so that we can understand the journey that we're on, so that will allow us to understand the learnings. Those are the big takeaways, versus the endpoint. That's where, to me, the pressing and the stretch and the growth comes from the most, so that we can really transform who we are, and then be able to figure out how we can help and serve others.