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Ep. 70 – The Difference Between Coaching Men and Women

In this episode, Doreen interviews her husband Jeff Wilson. Jeff Wilson is a entrepreneur, business owner and family man who loves life coaching. Discover Jeff’s background and motivation that drives his coaching practice. Find out the difference between coaching a women and coaching a man.

Transcript

Doreen: Hey, my beautiful friends, and how are you? Well, today I’m gonna interview somebody. Somebody very special to me, and I hope you get to know ’em better. I’m gonna interview my husband, Jeff Wilson, about coaching, life coaching, and specifically as it applies to men, but also some general information. So if you are ready, let’s get started.

Are you ready to create a life that’s better than ever before? We are Doreen Yaffa and Jeff Wilson, and we are here to give you the strategies you need to create the life after divorce that you deserve and desire. As partners both in marriage and coaching, we use our expertise as well as our own personal experiences to help you make the next chapter of your life the best chapter.

Hey, my friends, hope everybody’s having a good day, a good morning, a good evening, a good week, depending on when you’re listening to us. Today I’m gonna interview my husband, Jeff Wilson. Hey Jeff.

Jeff: Good morning. How are you?

Doreen: I’m great. How are you?

Jeff: I’m excited.

Doreen: Well, you should be. You know, it’s kind of interesting because you became certified this year as a life coach, but you’ve been in coaching for a while, and we’re gonna talk about that just in a different area of coaching. And I think that, you know, we’re working on our website, but you know, right now we’re doing one-on-one coaching. My coaching sessions, I primarily work with women.

I’m not opposed to working with men. I just find that most of the time women wanna work with a woman. But not always, not. Right now, I don’t have any slots available for one-on-one coaching, but if anybody’s interested, please go to our website and go ahead and fill out a form and have a, you know, a complimentary consultation with me or with us. But what I was gonna say, and you coach mostly men.

Jeff: Correct. I coach mostly men that are either business owners, entrepreneurs or, you know, professional men.

Doren: Yeah. And we’ve been focused more and we’re, you know, still working on our website. So bear with us. But when you go to our website, you’ll see a picture of us at the beginning and it doesn’t really explain that. And so, we do one-on-one coaching, currently, but we’re also in the process of putting together an amazing program that’ll be more for the general public, meaning like anybody should be able to afford it. We’re trying to make it very affordable. And so that will be launched sometime next year. We’ll give you more information on that, but currently we do one-on-one coaching.

And we started to focus in more on entrepreneurs and professionals. Not that we wouldn’t take someone that doesn’t follow within that category, but primarily because we have gone through our own divorce and we were running businesses of our own at the time, consider ourselves professionals and the struggles that you have as a professional trying to balance your business, your career along with the divorce and now restructuring into single life has its own little quirks. Right?

Jeff: Right. It could definitely affect all of your areas of your life and, but I know as an entrepreneur and professional one thing that you can easily let go is your business, and we try to avoid that.

Doreen: Yeah. Because you know, you’ve got that extra struggle. And again, I’m not suggesting that if you’re not an entrepreneur professional, mean like an attorney or accountant or, you know, real estate or whatever you’re doing. And it falls along a lot of different categories and subjects and careers.

But we’re not suggesting that it isn’t challenging to go through divorce anyhow. It’s just you’re trying to hold your business together. You’re trying to maintain your family life. You’re trying to make sure your employees are getting a paycheck, you’re trying to keep your clients happy and you’re dealing with the divorce.

So that’s really our niche right now that we’re focused in on. At least I am with regard to the women that I do coach.

Jeff: And what you were just saying about as far as struggling with employees and your family. You know, I think one of the things that gets neglected more than anything is yourself.

Doreen: True, true. Well, and you gotta balance it. Right. You really have to balance it. So let’s talk about you. Okay. Because we, we started talking about, you and I, you know, coming up with our subject for the week. We started talking about how my coaching is filled right now. And yours isn’t. Right. And I think, what do you have three slots available?

Jeff: I have three slots available.

Doreen: Right. And I didn’t, we were trying to figure out why, you know, we were doing our research and we came to the conclusion that women generally, and let me just premise this entire show, this entire episode, by stating that these are generalities, right?

In other words, I’m not saying this is everyone. Right. I’m just saying that generally, and so when we talk, please understand nothing here that we are telling you is an absolute. We understand that there’s exceptions. Everybody in the world is different, but generally women seem to seek help during and after divorce from support groups, friends, therapists, coaches like us more frequently than men. Have you noticed that?

Jeff: Yes, I’ve noticed that. And I think, well it’s in studies they’ve said that women do retain their circle of, and network of friendships more than men do.

Doreen: During the divorce?

Jeff: During and after.

Doreen: Right.

Jeff: So during and after the divorce. So they have a more of a support group than men do. They tend to have more family members and kids and, you know, all of their friends.

Doreen: Okay. Yeah. And when you were doing your studies or research for today, I think you found that generally men, the percentages of men that go and look for someone to help them after divorce is much less.

Jeff: Yes. My research that I’ve done does indicate that.

Doreen: Yeah. So, you know, too bad. I’m sad. I’m sad for the men. I mean, I’m sad for them because I just feel like, you know, in the business that I’m in, being a lawyer, I deal with a lot of men, a lot of professional men. And I’ve been doing it a long time.

So let me just say that in the legal career, women have come a long way. You know, I was just talking to one of my partners about this and I was saying, listen, you know, I was telling ’em about an experience that I had with a judge. And it was basically degrading, you know, me as a woman. As a young woman who was a law clerk.

And I don’t wanna get into specifics of it, but I said, you know, hey, his name’s Richie. I said, Richie, listen, you know, you have no idea cuz he’s in his late thirties. And of course, you know, I’ve been practicing 28 years. So, I said, you have no idea how it used to be. But, anyhow, I just diverted, didn’t I?

Jeff: Yeah. You went off on another.

Doreen: I did. I went on one of my directions. I do that from time to time.

Jeff: Oh, back to me.

Doreen: But I’m gonna get back to it. But I was saying what’s really sad is that if men open themselves up to being coached, they could really get past the divorce and focus in on what they really want for the rest of their life and figure out their goals so much sooner than living in isolation.

Jeff: Yeah. Well, the good news is the last little bit of research that I’ve done. Men getting coached is the largest growing sector of the coaching business.

Doreen: Oh, that’s great. That’s really important because I feel like if men are open to being coached and specifically life coached, you know, that they will become more in touch with their thoughts and their feelings and their actions and their results, which will make for better relationships all around. Right?

Jeff: And the other section is that is growing is men coaches. So there’s a lot more men coaches than there were before, and that’s a growing industry as well. So I think men can relate a little bit more to men.

Doreen: Yeah, it might be a safer place for them to engage in coaching. But having a woman’s perspective would be nice too. If anybody, if a gentleman out there wants to be coached by me, I certainly would consider him and put you on the waiting list as well. Not that I’m trying to take business away from you, Jeff.

Jeff: I know. And I don’t. And it may be a woman wanting to be coached by a man.

Doreen: No question. No question. I think it would be great perspective. Okay. So let’s talk about you. So my understanding is that I’m gonna skip a little bit. But okay. So, tell me if I’m wrong, because we’ve been married for, is it 13 or 14 years?

Jeff: I believe it’s 13.

Doreen: Okay. Well, we just lost a year.

Jeff: I know I did. I had to get the calculator out and it, I believe it’s 13.

Doreen: Okay. Thought it was 14, but then I didn’t know either.

Jeff: It’s like the elevator in a building. We go right from 12 to 14.

Doreen: Yeah. Skips 13 altogether. Right. It’s just a number.

Jeff: It is.

Doreen: But anyhow, so I wanna talk about, so your parents, your biological father and your mother divorced?

Jeff: Correct.

Doreen: And how old were you?

Jeff: I was two years old.

Doreen: And so may I presume that you have no memory of it.

Jeff: I have no memory of the divorce. I only have memory of him coming around maybe I was five years old and he came to visit once.

Doreen: Okay. And what was your relationship like with your biological father?

Jeff: Didn’t really have one. Yeah. Didn’t really have one. I, you know, then the story, I met him on Sally Jesse Raphael, years later when I was in my thirties. But that was short, you know, short-lived.

Doreen: So if anybody wants to look that up in the Google Worlds, I guess they can.

Jeff: Yeah.

Doreen: You were a cameraman?

Jeff: I was a camera operator. Freelance. And did one of the Sally Jesse Raphael, remote shows in Miami Beach and approached the producer over finding my dad and they did.

Doreen: Okay, great, great. And for anybody that doesn’t know who Sally, Jesse Raphael is, cause we might be aging ourselves a little bit, she is a talk show host.

Jeff: Yeah. One of those Jerry Springer type of shows.

Doreen: Yeah. But not as controversial. Right.

Jeff: She tried to be.

Doreen: She tried to be. Okay. And then so you’re the product of divorce?

Jeff: Yes.

Doreen: Meaning that child of divorce?

Jeff: Correct.

Doreen: And then your mom remarried. And how old were you?

Jeff: I was 10.

Doreen: You were 10. And what was that relationship like with your stepfather?

Jeff: It was, and still is very distant. You know, it seemed like, uninvolved is the best word I can come up with.

Doreen: Okay. Do you think that experience, meaning having the divorce occur when you were so young, not knowing your dad and then your mom remarrying when you were 10, did that, does that help you with your coaching today?

Jeff: I think it does, along with the other things that have I’ve gone through in my life. You know, when I was in my early forties, I got into martial arts. And quickly became an instructor and a program director. And I loved the fact I was coaching kids and adults on goal setting and discipline and respect and fitness. It was just, I loved that I had a passion for it.

Doreen: And how long were, did you, do martial arts?

Jeff: Well, I’ve done martial arts for the last probably 30 years, but that was about 18 years I was working at a dojo but before Lauderdale,

Doreen: And then did you eventually open your own business?

Jeff: Yeah, I mean it became such a passion of mine that you and I, we opened up our own Dojo, two actually two dojos, two locations in East Boca, west Boca Raton. And being the owner of the Dojo, I just even felt more committed to help them and give them the tools to improve their future.

Doreen: So when you look at being a business owner of a dojo and a martial artist I think what were your fourth degree?

Jeff: I am now, yes.

Doreen: And what style of martial arts?

Jeff: Kempo, Muay Thai, Kickboxing.

Doreen: Okay. And so are there similarities between the martial arts based on your experience and knowledge and coaching? Life coaching?

Jeff: I think there is, there definitely is that you’re developing yourself through self-improvement of your mind, your body, your spirit, when you’re coaching, you know, but there are also differences as well in life coaching today, we more bring out what they’re going through in the present and kind of point out what their own thoughts are. And then their own thoughts can be controlled by themselves. In martial arts it’s more you do as I say. Yes, sir. And you know, I’m doing it to help them and pointing it out to them, but you know, they’re basically doing what I say because I am the sensei.

Doreen: Right, right.

Jeff: Big difference.

Doreen: Yeah. I understand that. We have this expression in life coaching that we don’t jump in the pool with our clients. What does that mean?

Jeff: Well, jumping in the pool means you kind of join in with their emotional problems. Oh, that’s so bad. I feel terrible.

Doreen: Look what he did to me during the divorce.

Jeff: Yeah. I feel so sorry for you. You know, you’re getting in there with them. Staying out of the pool is kind of staying neutral, which allows us to be a little bit more of a better coach.

Doreen: Yeah, I think what it allows us to do is it allows our clients through the questioning and the coaching that we do to basically determine for themselves what they’re thinking is and what they want for their future. Because the last thing, it’s really like a self-development, self-awareness on many levels.

Jeff: Yeah. And in the martial arts, it’s not like because I’m a fourth degree black belt in sensei, you have to do what I’m told. If there isn’t that bond and rapport, and they really, really, I wouldn’t say the word admire, but look up to you and respect you. You can get them to clean their room and do better in school. But if they don’t have that bond and rapport, it’s like talking to the wall.

Doreen: Okay. So let’s talk about coaching men. Life coaching. Okay.  You went through your own divorce, right?

Jeff: I did.

Doreen: And you were a martial artist working as a martial artist at that time. So when you think back to when you went through your divorce, how, what were the major issues that you encountered as a man, as a professional martial artist going through divorce?

Jeff: Well, it can encompass your life. I mean,when I talk, think about my finances and my relationship with my son and just overall it does encompass your thoughts almost a hundred percent all day.

And it got to be where I wasn’t feeling well. I wasn’t myself. I was stressed, I was drinking more, I was not working out as much. And I noticed a dip in my business as well.

Doreen: So what did you learn from that?

Jeff: What did I learn from that? Well, it was all me. You know, there is a circumstance, but the way I was taking the circumstance into my brain and thinking about it was all up to me and I was doing the wrong thing.

Doreen: Did you seek assistance? Now, this is before you knew about life coaching. I mean, maybe you heard about it before, but you didn’t study it back then?

Jeff: No, actually I was studying it a lot. I, you know, I was in sales for many, many years. And I love self-improvement tapes and books, you know, Zig Ziegler and Tom Hopkins and Tony Robbins and a host of many, many more. And that really did help me get through.

Doreen: Well, when you speak about those types of coaches, let’s take Tony Robbins. I mean, he’s more of a he coaches men and women usually in big groups. Right. But I mean, men are attracted to him because he’s tall and he’s a man’s man. He is got a deep voice and he is very, very, you know, outgoing and charismatic and macho.

Jeff: Yeah, definitely macho, definitely.

Doreen: Definitely macho, you know, into health.

Jeff: And got the ego.

Doreen: Got the ego. So, do you think you were drawn to those coaches because of that?

Jeff: I don’t believe it was because of that, cuz I’m also tall and very ego to, no, I’m not. But I think it’s more of the message. I love the messages that were coming across. And coming from a man I can relate to him a more.

Doreen: Okay. So tell me about men in coaching. What do you think where are men generally from your experience, from your research, from your coaching, from whatever you’ve gone through? What are the pitfalls of their  generally account encountering, I’m having problems speaking today, when they’re going through divorce.

Jeff: Well, I think the main issue is that men are kind of against the feely and touchy-feely type of thing that women love, you know? You know, like, remember that book Men Are From Mars, Women are from Venus. And one thing that he says Mr. Gray, is that men like to fix things. We like to fix things.

And I guess if you admit that, Hey, I need a coach and something’s wrong with me, then I’m broken and I need to be fixed. So men don’t necessarily like that. I, you know, coaching and seeking help.

Doreen: The philosophy of it.

Jeff: The philosophy of it. They’re more apt to try to fix it themselves.

Doreen: So how do you, when you have a gentleman who’s interested or thinking about coaching, how do you get him to relate to coaching with you?

Jeff: Well, I think the first thing that I must do is get to know the guy a little better. Where not only is where is he at, but what type of personality is he? Is he analytical? Is he wants to move, go, go, go, go, go. Or is he slow mover? And that kind of sets me up for what type of coaching I’m going to do.

Doreen: How you’re gonna approach it?

Jeff: I’m gonna approach him and how I’m going to you know, react to him.

Doreen: So the next question I had was, and then we’ll get back we’ll with a little bit more about you personally is men. Do you find some common, I don’t know if I call it situations that they’re dealing with more often than not after divorce?

Jeff: Well, yeah, I know that one of the main things is the wife is usually their social connection to the friends and to activities. And when you lose that, you basically lose almost 50% of yourself, you know? And that’s where I come in. I try to become that partner in business and partner in health and partner in getting their life back together again.

Doreen: Yeah. I read some statistics that men feel much more isolated generally after divorce than women.

Jeff: Absolutely.

Doreen: And we talked a little bit about that. So I guess it’s nice for them to have someone like you that they can relate to who’s been through divorce both as a child and as a professional. Has remarried, has dealt with stepfather, has dealt with stepchildren from our three girls, has dealt with ex-husbands, my ex-husband, ex-wives.

So you definitely have some common commonalities. So I, I assume, and that isolation after divorce. I also read somewhere, and I don’t know if you found this or not, that men more often than women, tend to jump into a new relationship sooner without first figuring things out. Does, do you encounter that?

Jeff: I don’t know if I encounter that or not, but I know that it’s probably pretty common when you, when you mention it, I say, yeah, it’s probably true.

Doreen: Because I would think that are a lot of the men that you coach, are they interested in getting out in the dating world right away? What do they generally do?

Jeff: Well, generally they do, they want to get out in the dating world pretty quickly only because that partnership mentality is important to them.

Doreen: Right.

Jeff: So they tend to maybe get into the dating scene a little bit earlier than they should, where they should be probably looking at themselves. Which is an issue with men altogether.

Doreen: And maybe figuring out if they made some characteristic flaws by choosing a certain type of person to be involved with before. In other words, you know, maybe they have a history.

Jeff: Well, no, I get into that as well. Definitely get into that as well.

Doreen: Like what?

Jeff: The pattern that they get into as far as what type of woman, is it that blonde hair, beautiful girl that you know, I’m not gonna talk bad about any, any type of stereotype, but they usually will have that same girl coming around again, that is causing them issues.

Doreen: So what do you do about that?

Jeff: Well, I have to make sure that they realize it for themselves through questions and understanding what their mentality is. They’re gonna probably realize it themselves before I ever can make them realize it. If that makes sense.

Doreen: It does. It does. You know, I was thinking about again, my experience. As a divorced lawyer, so many times women will say to me that I’m representing, I’ll never get married again. Men on the other hand, they generally don’t say that as often, you know? That they’re gonna, they don’t say, no, I’m never gonna get married again. It seems like they’re more interested in finding that next person if they haven’t already found them.

Jeff: Well, I also think it may be a little bit of mentality that it wasn’t their fault. You know, men are egotistical and to my studies and on in general, not everybody of course, but they tend to find themselves to not be the blame of the divorce. And that’s why they’re quick to move on and find another woman.

Doreen: I see. I see. So how do you and your clients, your male clients, decide what areas you’re gonna coach on? How does that work?

Jeff: What areas? What do you mean by areas?

Doreen: Well, like what goals are gonna set, because after divorce there’s a lot of things going on, right? There’s a lot of things that we can coach on and we generally try to take them into stages. The first thing is determining where they are emotionally.  If they’re okay, if they’re ready to be coached, do they need to see a therapist or not? And then, you know, moving on to what’s right in their face that they might have to deal with, like maybe how they’re gonna deal with their ex-wife, in communication skill, how they’re gonna deal now, maintaining a home by themselves with their children, how they’re gonna deal with now taking on probably much more responsibility when it comes to children. I mean, like, how do you decide what you’re gonna coach on?

Jeff: Well, it’s basically simple question, what do you want? You know, it’s up to them what do they want? And studies have shown that men tend to lose the house, lose the children, lose a lot of things more than the women do. So they have all of this to overcome and they usually will want it back.

So a lot of these things we already know from studies that this is what they’re gonna say they want and we can best prepare for that.

Doreen: Right. And you know what, that’s changing. I’m just gonna say that again. From my own experience as a divorce lawyer, that is changing. Men are getting equal timesharing, men are sometimes getting majority timesharing.

Men are becoming more involved in caretaking of children on a much higher level than years back. You know, so I can understand that. Now having to leave the house. And having to deal with seeing their children, let’s say half of the time, that’s gotta be very a struggle for them.

Jeff: It’s very, very stressful for them.

Dorine: So, going back to you, if you were going to speak to anyone out there right now that’s listening who is a man that’s interested in coaching or maybe someone that knows someone right now, this is focused on men who wants to get coached. What would you recommend that they do?

Jeff: Well, I recommend they give me a call, go to my website, send me an email, and let’s have a bro to bro conversation, you know?

And I think that at least they’ll know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. That the divorce is not gonna be something that they’re gonna be living with forever. They will get past it, right? And there is gonna be hope, right? I mean, a 30 minute phone call can change their whole perspective of things.

Doreen: Well, and I like what we do in the sense that when we have our consultations, there’s absolutely no pressure. It’s really just to become aware. I always say education is key. Even for, again, using divorce as an example, people that come and visit me for a consultation who haven’t yet decided to get divorced, but just wanna know, hey, if I did get divorced things are a little rocky right now. What would I be entitled to? What does it look like as far as timeline? What does it look like as far as what process? Right? So for a man to come and visit with you, at least they’ll know what options are available if they figure that they need some help or that they want to gain some help in the future.

Jeff: Well, and you think about it, 30 minutes. Who doesn’t have 30 minutes to give to for that chance that there might be something there that could change. And I know that after 30 minutes, at least they’ll feel hopeful and they’ll feel so much better for their future.

Doreen: You know, that’s interesting cuz I noticed that when I do my consultations. You can almost see a sigh of relief because usually we do them by Zoom and you can see they come in very tense and upset and they’re just going through the divorce and all those emotions. And by the time we finish, it’s almost like their body, their whole body language changes, their conversation, the way their talking changes. It’s a beautiful thing to see, right?

Jeff: Yeah, it is. It definitely, and it makes me, and I mean being a little selfish here, it makes me feel great. And that’s why I have a passion for doing this.

Doreen: Yeah. Why do you wanna help or focus in on professionals and entrepreneurs?

Jeff: Well, when I went through my divorce, I know that divorce can take you down and I don’t want that to happen to other professionals.

I also feel because I am a business owner and a professional and entrepreneur, that I can, we can relate a little better.

Doreen: Great, great.

Jeff: Simple.

Doreen: All right. So thank you so much for, is there anything else you wanna say to everybody out there, about you, about coaching, about I don’t know anything.

Jeff: I just look forward to speaking to everybody. I mean, I love speaking to people and I love helping people.

Doreen: You know, one thing that I find so interesting, I’m just thinking about this and if I go off into my another direction again, is that, you know, the amount of time and money that we spend on things that do not help us grow.

You know what I’m saying? Like, I love my Starbucks, you know, I love, but if you spend, what is it like $10 every time you go to Starbucks, let’s say with, by the time you order and if you get a little snack or something, and if you give the girl or whoever it is, a tip, you know, $10 a day. And then it’s like you put that, you put money into doing things like that and you put time into going into the Starbucks or wherever it is that you like to get your coffees.

I’m just using that as an example. How much can you gain by, by putting your resources into and your time, especially as a man into coaching. Like, you know what I’m saying? Does that make sense?

Jeff: Sort of. You did go off on a tangent there. Okay. I guess I’m not getting Starbucks today.

Doreen: And we love our Starbucks though. Nothing against that.

Jeff: Maybe if you’re listening to some self-help tapes on the way to Starbucks.

Doreen: Yeah, yeah. There you go. Alright. So anyhow, listen, if anybody wants to reach you, they know where to get you, right?

Jeff: Yes. It’s my email is [email protected] .

Doreen: All right, great. Well, I hope the men out there take you up on it. And, anyhow, and I hope everybody out there also has an amazing week. Remember to be kind to yourself, love yourself, take care of yourself, and love, and be kind to those around you. And as we say, until next time, yes, you can have an amazing life after divorce. It’s true.

Jeff: It is.

Doreen: We’re an example. All right, everybody, we’ll speak to you next week. Bye-bye

Jeff: Bye. You have the vision of what you want your life to look like after divorce, but maybe you just don’t know how to get there. So if you’re ready to take control of your life and want to find out more about our coaching, visit us at lad-coaching.com. That’s L A D as in life after divorce dash coaching.com.

Doreen: Until next time, have an amazing rest of your day. And remember, yes, you can have an amazing life after divorce.

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