One of the interesting things about this business is how people’s emotions sabotage them.
For instance, had a guy recently reach out for coaching. He just got out of a serious relationship — a girl who in many ways felt like “the one.” We agreed to do the “basic coaching” package together to do a post-mortum of what went wrong, and to set his life up so he’d be able to meet a new high-quality girl in the future.
It was clear in this intake call that one of the key reasons the relationship collapsed was — despite their compatibility — poor communication and a lack of healthy emotional processing. Exhibit A was the catalyst fight that ended the relationship — he had blown up at her over issues with one of her family members, to the point he gave her no other choice but to leave.
I was excited to work with this client, as addressing these emotional issues is a strength of mine. It’s a standard problem I’ve dealt with among more guys than I can count.
And yet it was clear from the end of our intake call there were going to be problems with this client.
We were in the final minutes of our time slot, and I had sent over the request to his paypal. I was simply waiting on the phone with him for confirmation and for him to send over payment.
According to him, however, the request wasn’t there — he didn’t see it.
This was strange to me. Sometimes if the internet is bad, there can be a delay of a couple seconds, maybe even a minute for a request. But paypal tells me on my end that a request has been sent, and the accuracy of the account is confirmed by its auto-population of the person’s name. So unless paypal is broken, the request should be there.
But what am I supposed to do, accuse him of lying? Moreover, he was getting yelled at by a colleague to go someplace, and I had another call I had to jump on. All you can do is give the benefit of the doubt.
“It’s no big deal, shoot it over to me later today,” I told him. “I trust you.”
Of course, this did not happen — and despite reaching out after that call, I did not hear from him until the day prior to our scheduled deep-dive.
The reason it had not been sent over apparently was a “credit cap issue.”
Now, maybe this was truly what was going on. But I seriously doubt it.
First off, guys who have credit issues are forthcoming about it — they don’t avoid me (ex: one new client was at the bank twice this week in person to clear things up, much respect).
Second off, the basic package is not an extravagant amount of money and I have never in my years of coaching encountered a cap like this domestically.
Regardless, we rescheduled another call to give him more time to “resolve it.” Yet again, after days, there was no word from him, and that one too was cancelled.
Another week went by, with nothing… I knew it was time to close the chapter on this. So I put pressure on him for an explanation, and he finally told me the “cap issue is resolved” but he’s “no longer going to proceed with coaching.”
A SHOCKING twist, isn’t it?
But my question is — why lie? Why craft some elaborate story of technical problems, rather than just say… “I need some time to think about it” or “I have some questions or concerns before committing”?
I would be very bad at my job if I didn’t see through all of this stuff almost instantly, so it’s not like the ruse fooled me. It just wasted my time.
But honestly, you get this in the business — fear is endemic in most guys who have problems with women. I’m not complaining, and that’s not the point of the email.
The point is to draw attention to the tragedy that the same problem that screwed up his relationship also stopped him from getting that problem resolved.
He avoided expressing his emotions with her… until these emotions reached a boiling point, and ruined the relationship. Likewise he avoided expressing his emotions with me.
He avoided out of fear… and so the problem now remains and will return in his next relationship.It brings up an important philosophical question:
How much more pain do people need to experience in order to decide to change?
Sometimes, sadly, it’s quite a bit.I’ve recently started working with a guy who has serious issues in his marriage. Similar issues in fact to the guy above who flaked.
But the interesting thing is, we didn’t connect recently… he reached out almost 2 years ago. On that call, the anxiety of dealing with the problem was so severe that when “decision-time” arrived… he abruptly hung up.It took him 2 years to come to the realization that this issue needed to be addressed in his marriage. It took him 2 more years of pain; it required things to get worse in order for him to be ready.
I’m not judging — in fact I admire him immensely not only for jumping in now, but for having the humility to reach out again. Most guys bail, regret it, but their shame stops them from acknowledging it, and thus healing.
Moreover, I also understand that these things take time. If you are not ready to change yet, that is OK. We all have our journey.
But there are still costs involved with waiting.
Costs of wasted years living with unaddressed baggage and dissatisfaction with your love life.
Costs of bad situations becoming worse, and valued relationships becoming impossible to fix.
And costs of coaches like yours-truly costing more, and being less available than in the past.
True, I have improved as a coach in the last few years… and I will continue to improve. Things that took me awhile to shift before now take half the time, or less.
But my fees have also increased accordingly.
Something that will be occurring yet again once the updated masterclass is released in mid-October (and its price too goes up).
So if you were thinking about working with me…
Maybe this will put a fire under you: www.patstedman.com/application
– Pat
