Is SHRM Certification Worth It? AI, Coaching and Career Growth for HR Professionals.

SHRM Global Faculty member Anastasia Mizitova explains what professional certification can and cannot do for an HR career, how to choose between certification, a degree and hands-on learning, and how AI can help professionals identify the skills they actually need. The conversation also covers coaching, commitment to development, career pivots and rebuilding a professional path in a new country.

Anastasia Mizitova, SHRM-SCP, PCC · CEO, Talent14 · SHRM Global Faculty
Hosted by Ksenia Izotova and Timur Novopashin

Anastasia Mizitova, SHRM-SCP, PCC, is the CEO of Talent14, a SHRM Global Faculty member, executive coach, writer and speaker. She has more than 25 years of experience in strategic HR, leadership development and organizational transformation across industries and countries. Her work focuses on helping managers lead successfully and on combining human judgment with practical AI-enabled development.

Connect with Anastasia on LinkedIn
Learn more about Talent14

SHRM certification can be worth it when employers in your target market value the credential, when you need a structured benchmark for broad HR knowledge, or when certification fills a specific gap in your career plan. It is not a substitute for practical experience, judgment or business understanding. Anastasia Mizitova recommends starting with the skills your next role requires, then choosing the learning format — certification, degree, practical course or coaching — that closes those gaps most efficiently.

SHRM certification is a structured way for HR professionals to assess broad professional knowledge, identify gaps and demonstrate commitment to the field. In the episode, Anastasia describes certification as a bar rather than a badge: its value is in the standard it sets and the disciplined learning required to meet it.

That matters because modern HR roles require more than knowledge of isolated processes. Professionals are expected to connect people’s decisions with business needs, leadership, ethics and organizational context. A certification program can bring those areas into one learning framework, especially for people who developed their expertise unevenly through work experience.

The credential is most useful when it matches the expectations of the market and role you are pursuing. It should support a career strategy, not replace one.

Preparation time depends on prior experience and the format of the program, but Anastasia recommends treating it as a meaningful commitment. The exam itself runs for four hours. Intensive programs can compress preparation into a few weeks, although that increases workload and stress.

For most professionals, a more realistic preparation window is two to three months with approximately five to eight hours of study each week. This gives learners time to review the full body of knowledge, practise situational questions and connect the material with real workplace decisions.

The best schedule is the one that can be sustained. A shorter course is not automatically more efficient if it leaves too little time for practice, reflection and recovery.

Start with the capability gap, not the format. A certification can provide a recognised professional benchmark, a degree can offer broader academic depth, and a practical course can solve a specific skill need quickly. None is the best choice in every situation.

Map the roles and projects you want next, list the skills they require, and compare that list with your current evidence and experience. Then choose the smallest credible learning path that closes the highest-priority gaps. Aligning the plan with an employer or business need can make the learning easier to apply immediately.

This approach also prevents collecting credentials without changing how you work. The right program should produce new capability, useful practice and a clearer path to the next role.

AI can help an HR professional turn an unstructured career history into a clearer development plan. Anastasia uses AI as a thinking partner: she provides context about past projects, completed learning, challenges and career goals, then asks the model to identify possible skill gaps and help prioritise them.

The quality of the conversation depends on the quality of the context. AI can only work with what it can see, and recent or easily available information may dominate its answer. Professionals should therefore challenge the output, add missing evidence, check assumptions and make the final choice themselves.

At an organizational level, the same human-centred principle applies. AI should support reflection, analysis and access to learning while people retain responsibility for sensitive decisions, motivation, ethics and action.

Becoming a coach requires more than enjoying conversations or giving advice. Anastasia describes professional training as a serious investment in method, ethics, practice and accountability. Her own path included formal certification and a requirement to complete 100 hours with paying clients.

Paid practice matters because it changes the relationship: the client is choosing to invest, and the coach must deliver a professional process rather than rely on goodwill from friends or colleagues. Certification alone does not build a coaching business, but it can provide a disciplined foundation for the work.

Coaching is also not the right intervention for every situation. It works when a person is willing to reflect and act. If the real need is instruction, therapy, performance management or an organizational decision, coaching should not be used as a universal answer.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability while preserving the speakers' meaning.

Anastasia Mizitova: Hi, everybody. So nice to be here with you today. I'm Anastasia. I have been in leadership development, executive coaching and HR development for a long time. I am a faculty member with SHRM and I teach a number of certification programs such as SHRM-CP/SCP. On top of this, I do a lot in AI. I've recently been one of the people who have co-facilitated the hackathon at the annual SHRM conference. In this hackathon, more than 400 people were registered. Overall, more than 30,000 people attended this conference. On top of this, I teach people analytics. I do HR investigations. Anything around people management, anything around using technologies in people management — all that's me. I wrote a book about career management, and together with my partner Shirley, we are building a product in career management and leadership development as well. So yeah, quite busy these days.

Ksenia Izotova: Anastasia, how long have you lived in the States?

Anastasia Mizitova: Back in 1998, I worked in Jersey Channel Islands, which is a tiny island between France and the UK. Then I worked in London. I worked in Israel for a little bit, in Russia, and then I've been in the US for almost five years now.

Timur Novopashin: Let's start with the basics. What does HR certification mean?

Anastasia Mizitova: Let me take a step back. Many years ago, I graduated university with a degree in finance, international finance. When I decided to move from finance and legal to HR, I remember my friend saying to me, "Are you nuts?" Literally, "Are you crazy? Why would you do this?" At the time, the HR profession did not really have enough weight, let me put it this way. It was not one of the professions many people would dream about.

I said, "I can actually see potential in HR." I've been doing this for almost 25 years. My career spans across 30 years, but I've been in HR for about 20 years now. I have seen this profession rise. I have seen this profession become one of the core business success factors. The requirements today for an HR professional are much higher than they were before. An HR professional is expected to have a very balanced strategic set of competencies — all the way from business acumen to people leadership. No one really had an opportunity to learn as much as we are required to know today.

So I guess an HR certification is a way for anyone who is seriously committed to this amazing profession. It's a chance for anyone to take a step back, take a deep breath, review what you know, learn what you do not know, and prove to the world that you are a strong HR professional. That's what it is to me.

Ksenia Izotova: How long does it take to be certified? As far as I know, there are several different certifications.

Anastasia Mizitova: I've been a faculty member for HR for SHRM for a very long time, I would say more than 20 years now. I represent SHRM. I am aware of other great certifications, but I would say wholeheartedly that SHRM is the golden standard in HR profession. Membership in SHRM — they have more than 360,000 members across the globe. That's a lot of people, and that is the largest professional HR organization in the world.

At SHRM, to get certified, you need to learn a certain volume of material. You need to practice your test skills, and then you will have an exam which lasts for four hours. Some people would self-study for this exam, but most people would choose to study with an instructor in an official SHRM program. That would take anywhere from 10 weeks. The shortest program that I personally lead would be a couple of weeks, but then it puts a lot of pressure on people. If you really want to thoroughly prepare without too much stress, I would say two to three months would be a great idea.

You need to be very intentional about your studies. You need to set aside time. When I teach people, I would say you need to set aside anywhere from five to eight hours a week. It's a lot of commitment. It's going to be a lot of studying, a lot of participating in online courses and practicing your exam skills.

Timur Novopashin: Why do HR professionals do it? Why do the ones who go and get certified?

Anastasia Mizitova: I'm very privileged to be teaching a lot of people. I've been trying to figure out just how many people I prepared for certification in the last four years in the US — that's more than 2,000 people. That's a lot of people. Beyond the US, there are SHRM advocates, there are SHRM students, but obviously in the US almost everybody would be pursuing HR certification at some point. This really is a golden standard. There's been a lot of research that would suggest that a professional certification is more valuable to employers than traditional education, and it makes more sense financially to people as well. In SHRM, just like I said, you can do it within three months, and it's going to be much more practical, much more recognized in the market than just a regular academic education.

There are other programs out there. Some of them are very traditional and they would last for months or even years. I'm not saying this is not a good idea. I'm just saying that the market right now is so dynamic. There's so much complexity happening. I do believe in concise, practical education that would build your applied skills and that would help you immediately do something in the workplace.

Why do HR professionals do this? Because there is so much complexity out there, because there is a need to prove your professional certification level. Especially in the US, this is a minimum qualification standard. You just need to be certified. It may not be the case everywhere across the world, but it's certainly the case here in the US.

At SHRM, there are two levels to the certification. There's CP, which is Certified Professional, and there's SCP, which is Senior Certified Professional. I'm seeing very different people pursuing this certification. Definitely graduates — many universities would actually have internal training programs for students. There are so many programs across the US and across the globe. I personally facilitated a number of programs for just graduating students. If students are majoring in HR, they might want to pursue SHRM, absolutely.

But also, I'm seeing a lot of very mature professionals — VP level, HR director level. Obviously, they would be pursuing Senior Certified Professional. I'm seeing a range of people, all the way from graduates all the way to senior professionals.

Especially at SHRM, there is this certification product. On top of this, there are a number of products which are called specialty credentials. That would be the type of program where you can supplement your existing foundational skills with any deeper domain that you might need in your workplace. I mentioned that I teach people analytics. This is a part of the competency model, but if you're interested in this particular skill or competency, you can actually take another program which will take you much deeper.

Timur Novopashin: Let's say I'm an HR professional, and I'm looking for a way to upskill. There is a HR certification, a university degree, and some professional hands-on type of course. How would you choose between those three?

Anastasia Mizitova: The big promise in AI is that it might give us the level of personalization that we have not seen before. What I personally have done recently was I sat down with AI, and I had a coaching session where I said, "You are my career coach. You're my development coach. Help me figure out what kind of skills I need."

The mindset that we had before was that there are certain programs available, and you have to take them all to succeed. That's not the case anymore. Now that we have AI, the approach is, number one, sit down and figure out your personal needs. The way to do this is to sit down, have a conversation with an AI. Maybe you have an amazing human coach, but still have a go and see what AI can offer you. Tell AI what kind of projects you have been engaged in. Tell AI what products or what programs have you already been experiencing. Tell AI what struggles you may have encountered, and then sit down and have a conversation, iterate, and figure out what is your portfolio of skills, capabilities, and what it is that you still need to learn.

From that, build a plan for yourself. The old way is just grab whatever comes your way. The new way is to figure out a plan which works for you, prioritize your needs and competencies. Another thing that you can do — and that's a wonderful thing — align your plan with your employer or with your business wherever you are right now. Build a meaningful, personalized plan for yourself. Incorporate any of the tools that you're aware of, but most importantly, build a plan that really would close your gaps and help you become a better professional. Use AI. I'm a huge champion for this.

Ksenia Izotova: That's amazing advice, and I think that it can be related to any sphere, right? Absolutely. Not only to HR development, but to language learning, to personal development, even to sports.

Anastasia Mizitova: One of the big promises of AI is that we might be able to build a very personalized, meaningful development plan.

So it's a wonderful question to start with: what is it that I need? What is it that would make sense for me? What kind of skills do I need in this particular situation, with this particular employer? And then from that, build a personalized journey for yourself. And keep assessing yourself with AI, by the way. One other thing you can do is ask AI to assess you. Give it the task prompt so that AI would guide you in this journey, and be assessed by AI. Don't wait for your employer to assess you. That's another thing that you can do.

Ksenia Izotova: Can you share how you use AI in your everyday life? Not professional, but let's move a little closer to your personal life. How do you apply AI daily?

Anastasia Mizitova: This is so funny because my life is my work. I really would not be able to separate my life from my work. I enjoy what I do. I take pride in what I do. I use AI every single day for multiple different reasons. Let me just walk you through my last few days just to give you a very realistic preview of what I've been up to with AI.

A couple of days ago, I was very fortunate to be a part of an amazing SHRM team who facilitated the first ever hackathon for HR people at the SHRM annual conference. We had more than 400 people registered. My job was to help people in a breakout room within two hours to come up with something meaningful. People would come to me. They would generally be at a very senior level. I had PhD level people in my group. I had HR director level people in my group, and within two hours, they all developed something really meaningful. This is such an amazing thing. I'm seeing a lot of people having enough skills to be able to prompt with AI. They want to come up with something meaningful, and that's what they do.

My example number two — and that was last week — I facilitated a meeting for one of my clients, and that was for more than 100 people. That was internal for a single client, and they were having a conversation about building an AI culture, which is also people-centric. What I do is on top of just using AI as a tool, I help organizations build a culture which will help keep humans in the loop. It's not just about the tools, it's about human intervention, human supervision, human intelligence. That's what I advocate for — not just for using it as a tool.

And then on a personal level, after the hackathon, I sat down and I thought, "I really need to use AI as a coach. I want to figure out what I'm building, but I want to go much deeper in my thinking about this." So I sat down and I spent a few hours just having a conversation with AI about what I do, the strategy of my business, the needs of my clients, and then some of the AI agents that we will be building.

Finally, this morning I have been organizing a focus group, and that one of those focus groups will be about using AI in a major organization. So I do research, I use AI, I help other organizations apply AI in a human-centric way.

Ksenia Izotova: What is the biggest mistake people make when using AI in prompting, for example, or in some other things? Because we are still learning, we are all learning.

Anastasia Mizitova: I had a meeting with a client this morning right before this conversation. They have a big HR team, many people. They've been telling me about everything they have been doing in prompting AI experimentation. The thing about AI is you cannot make a mistake. If you make a mistake, just build another prompt. Just iterate. That's what AI is great for. There is no space for mistakes. You're just playing with this and you're coming up with better and better output.

The problem with AI is what do you do with the output? How do you integrate it into your business and into your existing systems? Playing with AI is not a problem. Learning with AI is not a problem. Making it useful for the business — that's where the problem is. How do you integrate it with your existing systems? What do you do about the ethics of it? What do you do about fatigue? Because many people feel like they've had enough of this. They've had so much of it and they don't want to listen about AI anymore.

This is really not about the mistakes people may be making in prompting. This is really about making it useful and making it scalable across the organization. I guess that's where everybody's struggling right now.

Ksenia Izotova: What about you? Are you ever tired of AI? Do you feel this fatigue?

Anastasia Mizitova: I am tired of AI sometimes. I appreciate the capabilities that AI is offering, but I'm also feeling that it produces a lot of noise. Sometimes I feel like if I just sit down and think, I might be better off without AI. So sometimes we overdo AI and sometimes we rely on AI noise a little bit too much.

Ksenia Izotova: Anastasia, tell us about what technical stack do you use when working with AI. What AI platforms, what AI tools — the whole tech stack would 100% be interesting for our audience.

Anastasia Mizitova: AI is evolving so fast and everybody knows that. Whatever it is that I tell you today is probably going to be different tomorrow. Let me answer your question by saying what subscription I pay. Last year I paid a subscription for GPT, then I stopped doing it. I was actually embarrassed by my kids who came and said, "Mom, are you still doing this? It's so outdated." I was like, "Okay, what's new?" I paid for Gemini, and I stopped paying for Gemini. Right now I have a subscription for Claude. But whatever I do, I usually double-check with other platforms. Sometimes I feel like when it comes to writing, GPT sometimes does a better job. Sometimes when I do my analysis, Claude does a better job.

Right now I'm paying for a Claude subscription to answer your question, where my allegiances are. But I'm not saying that I will keep my subscription in three months' time. I'll be very honest with you, and anybody from Claude listening to me, I'm sorry, I cannot stay faithful until forever. I will be reconsidering my choices. AI is developing really fast. I'm really interested in looking at some of the platforms beyond the US, some of the Chinese platforms. Again, I'm not saying that there is a very clear answer to what AI platform works better.

Timur Novopashin: We've got our own Europe-developed AI. It's called Mistral AI. Its headquarters are in Paris. It's also one of the fast-growing AI ventures and companies.
I don't know. I just wanted to mention that it's not just the US and China. Europe is also catching up to the race.

Anastasia Mizitova: And again, tomorrow we could wake up to the fact that there's a completely new platform everybody's crazy about. So you never know.

One of the sessions that I facilitated recently, we were talking about the opportunities for AI and all this stuff, and then I asked some questions, and people asked me, "Are you concerned about the environment?" Yes, I am. "Are you concerned about the ethical side of this?" Yes, I am. Energy use, water use. There was a lady — I don't know how valid this analysis is — but she superimposed the map of the newly built data centers over the drought map. Right now where I am in North Carolina, we're having a huge drought. One of the lakes which supplies water to our community is at 66% now, which means that 44% has dried out. What this lady did was she superimposed the map of drought over the map of newly constructed data centers and there's correlation. I don't know whether or not this is true. I don't want to say because I have no proof, but data centers use a lot of water and they use a lot of energy. And also people who live close to those data centers are saying that noise pollution is just horrible. We don't know what we're dealing with right now. I don't want to say that I'm all very positive about this. I do have my concerns as well.

Timur Novopashin: I had a kind of insight, I would say, an interesting thought when you were saying that of course we can learn with AI, we can play with AI. We do it a lot in our everyday lives and professional sphere. But the question is for organizations — how we actually apply those capabilities that AI offers. It's interesting that in personal lives, a lot of people are already doing that because people are very rational — "I would like to build a program for me. I would like to start my gym journey," and we figure out those connections quickly. But it's a bit harder to do it on a more institutionalized level. Because when we are talking about processes, and HR processes in particular, there are much more factors to consider.

You several times touched the topic of coaching, AI in coaching, coaching in organizations. For a lot of people, coaching is still terra incognita. They're like, "Okay, what is coaching? Why should I get coaching? What is the coach as a figure?" Can you please tell us in simple words, basic terms, what is coaching for you?

Anastasia Mizitova: Let me start by saying that I was so fortunate to have met people who are big coaches. One of them is Alex Werlik, and I'm hoping that he's listening to this podcast, because to me, he is embodying what coaching is. If I have this need to think things through, if I am stuck in my decision-making, if I am about to make a new step in my development, a coach is a person who is able to create space for me, expand my thinking, really help me leverage whatever experience, whatever emotions I'm currently going through to take me to this new level of my development. Help me become a bigger person. That would be my thinking behind choosing a coach.

I worked personally with coaches in multiple different situations. I worked with Alex when I was getting certified, but then I just recognized the power of his skills, and I said, "You know what? I want you to be my personal coach," and he became a friend.

Sometimes when I'm developing a new product, I'm the kind of person who needs to think things through aloud. I need to say this. I cannot just be sitting in front of the screen. I have a couple of people I work with, I would reach out to them. They are not per se professional coaches 100% of the time, but they have this capability to create thinking space for me, and I know that.

Sometimes when I just feel too emotional to be making rational decisions, again, I would be reaching out to a coach. Sometimes when I need to be systemic about my growth, I would reach out as well. Now, that's me.

From the other side of this equation, as a coach, I get invited in a number of different situations. Number one, I get invited when somebody is systemic about their growth. I work right now with an amazing individual — just to give you one example — who is a respected leader, one of the senior leaders in their organization. This person has been nominated to work with a coach because she's so recognized by her company, and that's the best possible scenario.

Other scenarios would include team coaching. For example, an HR Business Partner would come to me and they would say, "You know what? We have this person. This is a new leader, or this is a struggling leader, or this is a person who's driving too much change and they need help, and we want you to work together for six months."

I've seen amazing results happening when teams are being systemic, open, candid in their conversations, when people come together with the intention to set aside operational tasks and really have a conversation about what culture means for them, what growth means for them, what kind of challenges they're going through together. It's just amazing what people can do.

Sometimes I would be coaching a top team when they're making certain decisions. I've been coaching a team of top leaders in a pharmaceutical company when they were going agile at scale. Even though they were amazing, strong individuals capable of doing it themselves, it really helps when you have somebody external who acts as an accountability agent, or engagement agent, who's there for you to just support you in this journey. I have seen a number of amazing cases where coaching can be truly valuable.

Ksenia Izotova: Quite the opposite question. Are there situations when a leader doesn't need a coach or a team doesn't need an external coach?

Anastasia Mizitova: Yeah, absolutely. In my experience, I've seen a number of situations where I felt like I was out of place. One of them happened recently. A person was about to be fired from an organization, and they decided to pair this individual with a coach, and that was me. This person was going through a very difficult time in their life, and they felt like I may not have been acting in their best possible interests because I wasn't there to give them good news. I was there to console. I was there to give them the true message, which was very hard. I'm hoping that it still will bring some value, but it's not one of those situations where coaching is easy, focused on growth, brings you joy. I've been in situations where coaching is not stemming from the place of growth and potential.

Would it mean that it was not worth it? I don't know. Time will tell. Maybe after a certain time, this person would really appreciate the chance of still having this opportunity to work with a coach. But yeah, it's not always very easy.

Another example with a team — the team did not want a coach. The team did not commit to a coach. They did not choose this coach. The coach was imposed, and they did not feel like it's really bringing them any value. I cannot feed a dead horse. If the team is not committed to doing this, we can do a lot together. But if they do not want a coach in their equation, there's nothing I can do.

I'll give you an example. I worked for a long time with an international company and I would be their leadership development trainer. They had a lot of money for those types of programs. Everybody would have a chance to participate in one of those programs on an annual basis, and they had a lot of people. As a part of one of the leadership development programs, everybody would have a chance to work with me as a coach. What I would do is I would put up my schedule on a flip chart — back in the days, it was not all about technology. I would offer people a number of time slots, and they would have to just sign up. It would not cost them anything. It would be free to them and that costs a lot of money.

The interesting observation is that I would not have 100% of people sign up, and it was just so amazing. I would tell people, "You know what? This is free for you. So if you want to work with a coach, if you've never done this, just go ahead and try this out." Of the people who would sign up for coaching, I would say that about 50% of people would make it to their actual coaching session. Not everybody would come, even if they signed up for this.

Another example — one of the things I do is I help organizations set up and manage mentoring programs. They would identify top talent within their organizations, and they would also nominate top leaders. They would put those individuals in pairs. They would set up the whole infrastructure, and they would give them a chance to be mentored. Most people would have sessions. They would not use it to the full potential. The vast majority of people would not use those programs to their full potential, and a small percentage of people would never make it to a mentoring session. They would not even have one mentoring session.

I never stop being amazed just thinking about this. People in organizations want to grow. They want to be paid higher salaries. They want to have better opportunities, and yet when there's a chance, not everybody steps in. Not everybody is being intentional about using the opportunities that are out there for you. If you're one of those people, just be more intentional about your growth and development.

Timur Novopashin: I think if we flip the coin, maybe we can unravel this mystery. We are focusing on the receiving end of coaching — you would like to get a coach, or there is a team that you know is working with a coach. Let's flip the coin. I would like to become one. I want to be a coach. So what should I do? There are a variety of certifications, schools, even degrees focused on coaching.

Anastasia Mizitova: One of the things I do in addition to being a SHRM faculty member, I'm also a Blanchard faculty member. There's an international company called Blanchard. The founder is Ken Blanchard. He's a very famous thought leader. He's still around, thankfully, and he is one of the authors of a methodology called Situational Leadership. I was extremely blessed and fortunate to be coached by a member of Blanchard family, and her name is Madeleine Blanchard, and she coached me some 20 years ago, and I was inspired, and I decided to become a coach.

I asked her, "What is it that I should do?" And she said, "Get certified." At the time, I lived in Russia, and she said, "Here's the program that you should take." I said, "It's too much for me. It's in the U.S. It's going to take me a long time to get there, to get certified. It's going to cost me a lot of money." At the time, overall, with travels and program fees, it was about $30,000. I said, "It's just insane." She said, "Do not get certified, and do not become a coach." I felt offended. I was like, "What are you saying?" She said, "You either get serious about this or you don't. If you want to be a coach, you have to be the best possible coach. If you don't have this intention, don't do this." She was so blunt and she said exactly what I had to hear at that point.

You asked me before about getting certified in HR, you're asking me about getting certified in coaching, and I guess I hold this vision. That's my mindset. This is the message that I'm trying to project. If you want to be in this profession, be good at it. If you have no intention of being good at this, don't do this. If you want to become a coach, it means that you will have this responsibility of holding space for other people, being there for them, helping them grow, helping them become the most amazing individuals they can become. You need to be good at this. You need to learn. Learn hard.

I got certified in an organization which is called Co-Active Coaching, and I could not be more happy about this. They are amazing, and I paid my own money for this. I invested my own — a lot of money — into this. The most amazing thing happened, which I did not think would happen. I set up my own business after this. By the time I decided to do this, I still worked in an organization, and by the way, they offered me to pay for this. I said, "You know what? I'm doing it myself." Thank you to my amazing husband who made it happen. I remember coming to him and saying, "You know what? I think I want to do this." He just said, "Go for it." I was like, "Just like this?" He said, "Yeah, just go for this. If you think this is your dream." I'm so grateful. I did it. I paid for it myself.

One of the outcomes of this training is that it's not a training, it's a certification program. You need to have 100 hours of paid clients. You cannot get certified unless you demonstrate proof that you have coached for 100 hours and all of them were paid for. You cannot just coach your friend, you cannot just coach your neighbor. You need to coach somebody who would be paying you real money.

When I started this certification, I had been a professional with PricewaterhouseCoopers for about 15 years, and my charge out rate was hundreds of dollars per hour. I had no problem signing bills on behalf of PwC for a lot of money to my clients. But when I started charging money for coaching, my hands literally trembled. My fingers were wet with sweat. I was so nervous. I was like, how come? I was literally charging my clients a lot of money for many years. I never actually felt the weight of this money. When you have to find your client, charge your client for something that you've done, get the money in your bank account, you understand how to build a business.

So I quit my previous employer, I built my business, and I never looked back. Coaching can do amazing things to you.

Ksenia Izotova: So inspiring and really high standards that you have, Anastasia. That's an amazingly inspiring story.

Timur Novopashin: In the beginning of our conversation, you mentioned that now you're also building a new business to add to your variety of businesses that you founded and you're leading. Tell us a bit more about this new venture.

Anastasia Mizitova: One of the things that we're doing right now with a partner — her name is Shirley — we were invited to build a program for a historically Black university here in the US. The intention was to help graduating students navigate their careers.

The interesting thing about this was that we were told they were students, they were graduating, and we built the program with the assumption that they needed some basics. They needed to figure out a LinkedIn profile, they needed to figure out a resume, and then we showed up. We saw the students, and I was like, "Wow." One of those individuals was a senior engineer in one of the major telecom companies. Another person was a real estate agent, and I think he's my age. Another person was a nurse, and while she's navigating her certification, she's also a mother to three kids, maybe even four.

They are mature individuals with a lot of life experience, and they had a LinkedIn profile figured out. They had their resume figured out. They had very nuanced needs — such as find their voice, build their confidence, navigate AI. I was like, "Wow." They challenged me to the limit. I'm very proud to say that we used my book. I wrote a book. I published it on Amazon in English. We used my book as the foundation of this program.

We made a lot of mistakes in the process because we had all the wrong assumptions in the beginning. We worked so hard to listen, gather data, analyze data, talk to people, hold multiple focus groups. We really did a lot of research to figure out what it is that people want. We built a program. There's going to be an article coming out next month in a very reputable US magazine for HR Professionals, and we're going to be featured in this. We're going to be featured in a magazine called Chronicles of Higher Education.

Last month, we went to the US Senate in North Carolina. We were discussing one of the legislation initiatives around education and employment. There is a lot of conversation about making education real, and our program was mentioned a few times when we had a conversation with senators. It was one of the programs which really embodies the mindset of making education real, bringing it to life, helping individuals navigate careers.
It's just incredible how you do something from the bottom of your heart, really do your best, and then you end up being on top of the wave. We're scaling this right now across the US. We have other states interested in this. We will be presenting this at the conference next month in September. We will be talking to individuals about this program. We will be sending the message to interested educators across the US that if they're interested in higher education to do this, we are building this product. We're available for scaling it.

My overall message is — and by the way, I moved to the US four years ago with nothing. No connections, no infrastructure, and no friends. I think I'm a walking engagement, walking inspiration for everybody who's thinking about their career. Just keep doing it and be the best one in whatever it is that you do. Don't be second class, just be the first one.

People ask me all the time, "Do I or do I not need to be certified?" The choice is yours. The choice is really not about certification. The choice is — how high is your bar? How high is your standard?

The way Madeleine Blanchard taught me and guided me 20 years ago — if you are not planning to be number one in your profession, don't be in your profession. Full stop. You make your choice. You figure out whether you need certification for this or whatever it is that you need to be at the top. Not just look like you're at the top. You have to really claim your place at the top with your knowledge, your expertise, your insights, your results. You just need to be at the top. If that's your intention, there is so much you can do.

Timur Novopashin: I would say that one of the key takeaways for me personally from this session is the reiteration — if you want to be someone or become someone, just do it. Not just do it halfway, or semi do it. Just do it. Be serious about your goals, professional and personal ones.

Anastasia Mizitova: I will share one more thing with you. One of the things I'm doing right now is conducting research. I'm reaching out to top executives and I'm discussing with them what leadership really means these days. I feel there's so much emphasis, so much conversation about leadership, but I'm really interested in questioning what it means to different people. I'm hearing a lot of different ideas, and some of those ideas keep repeating, and one of the things that keeps repeating is the word pivot.

I'll be honest with you, when I was learning English, pivot was probably one of the last words I learned. It's not the basic word. It's a very advanced word. I only learned it fully, I would say, five to ten years ago. Pivot, to me, is one of the buzzwords of today, and pivot means that you turn.

When I talk to people about career development, leadership development, business development, I keep hearing this word pivot. It means that we would have started our lives in a certain way — in a certain environment, focused on a certain way of learning, building certain professional skills — and that can take you up to a certain point, and then you will become uncomfortable. Something will happen. Something will challenge your way of thinking, and then you have a choice to make. Would you become upset? Would you get stuck, or would you pivot?

Pivot means that you need to learn something completely different. You need to rethink the way you approach work or business development or whatever it is that you're doing. It's very uncomfortable. Just circling all the way back to our certification conversation — certification is a way for you to get skills fast in a new environment. Pivoting means that you are stepping out of your comfort zone into something completely unknown, and what you do first is you learn, and you show the world that you're being serious and intentional about this.

Pivot means to keep looking around, keep asking yourself a question, "What's available outside of what I already know? And if I step outside of this, what is it that I have to learn?" That's the message.

Ksenia Izotova: Thanks, Anastasia. It's been a great episode.