Ep #23: Insights from a Seasoned Coach with Maggie Reyes

Hi, this is Lindsay Dotzlaf and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills, episode 23.

To really compete in the coaching industry, you have to be great at coaching. That’s why every week, I will be answering your questions, sharing my stories, and offering tips and advice so you can be the best at what you do. Let’s get to work.

Hello, love. I’m so glad you’re here today. You are in for a treat because I am talking to one of my colleagues, a coach that I have worked with, one of the best coaches in the industry, who has been doing it for longer than any coach that I know, that I am friends with.

She has so much energy. Her love and energy are contagious. She is brilliant. I could go on and on and on all day. She’s also so fun and a good friend of mine. Her name is Maggie Reyes. If you don’t know her, she is a marriage mentor and life coach.

She helps women change their marriages and loves to say she’s changing the world one marriage at a time, which is one of my favorite things. So, I’m going to let her introduce herself. And I hope that you have so much fun listening to this. We drop some major truth bombs while having a lot of fun. So, what’s better than that? Here we go.

—

Lindsay: Hello. How are you today?

Maggie: I’m so happy to be here.

Lindsay: Yay, I am so happy you are here. I have been looking forward to this. This is going to be so fun. First, I want you to introduce yourself.

Maggie: Hello, everyone. my name is Maggie Reyes.

Lindsay: And tell them what you do.

Maggie: I am a life coach, and the marriage life coach, to be precise.

Lindsay: I love it. And you’re my coach. I have been working with you for about six months.

Maggie: Yeah, just coming into seven months now. It’s amazing.

Lindsay: So, we are colleagues. I have also been working with you. You are one of the best coaches I know. And when I thought about who do I want to have on my podcast, because I love talking to coaches that I think are just great examples of really great coaching in the industry, because you know that’s what I love to focus on, I thought of you, so I’m so glad you’re here.

Maggie: I have to say, it’s a sacred honor to be your coach. It’s a sacred honor to be a coach and help people in a pivotal moment of their lives, always. And it’s an extra special honor, like with a cherry on top, when someone who studies the craft of coaching for a living and teaches the craft of coaching for a living says I’m one of the best coaches you know. In my heart, in a special sort of next to Oprah little trophy case in my heart, that sentence is there.

Lindsay: Well, I always say that I don’t think any coaching is bad. I think just having someone to listen to you and having someone to just give you perspective of your mind that you don’t already have, that can never be a bad thing. But when you come across a great coach, there is just something so magical about it. I am like, I just want to hire you forever. I’m just going to put you on retainer and just have you forever. Let’s just make that deal now so that everybody hears it and you can’t ever go back.

Maggie: I was too busy laughing to answer but we’ll talk about that offline.

Lindsay: Perfect, just let me know what the price is. I’ll make it, whatever it is. Okay, so, I just have so many questions. And I do also want to say, you have a podcast. Tell them what it’s called because I always mess up…

Maggie: Yes, it’s called The Marriage Life Coach Podcast.

Lindsay: Okay, I did an interview on your podcast where we talked all about marriages and relationships and all of that. So, if they want to hear us talk about marriages, they should go there and listen.

Maggie: And I’ll send you the link in the show notes. So, it might not be on when this show airs, but if you go to Lindsay’s website, we’ll update it as soon as that show airs. I’m all about show notes.

Lindsay: Oh yes, you plan things a lot further ahead than I do, so I forgot that it’s not actually out yet. So, they might actually come out around the same time. Anyway, I just want to say, today we’re going to talk mostly about coaching, also some about your program. So, there’ll be a little marriage mixed in. But if anybody wants to hear us talk about marriages, go to your podcast, and just go to her podcast in general…

Maggie: Yeah, if you’re curious and you want to hear what Lindsay is like as a client, like a behind the scenes. The best. First of all, she’s equally as awesome as a client as she is as a teacher and as a coach. No surprise. But if you want to hear that, you’ll have a lot of fun listening to that episode too.

Lindsay: That’s funny. Okay, so one thing I said before we hopped on here and we were chatting is I said I don’t actually know how you got into coaching. And I want you to tell me now so that we can all know.

Maggie: So, this is what happened. I got married. It all comes back to that for me. When I met my husband, I was working in HR. I had a job that was very sexy. A lot of my friends liked it, I travelled all over the world hiring people for a cruise line. Part of it was a little bit sexy and part of it was just like schlepping to places to hire people, right? But things were fine.

And I met my husband and I had this experience that was the most incredible sense of rightness. Some people have that with their partners. Some people have that with their kids, with a pet, with a hobby, when you’re in the flow and you’re like, this is what life is all about…

Lindsay: With a business…

Maggie: With a business. Some people have it in a coaching session, that can happen very often, where you just feel like, “This is what I was on earth to do,” or that feeling. And for me, I’d had it before with hobbies and things. But when I met my husband, I really understood that incredible sense of rightness in a deeper, deeper way. And what it revealed to me was everything that didn’t feel that way.

Once I had an anchor for it, I was like, “Oh, all these other things are not that.” And so, as we developed a relationship and then we got married, I went through this stage where it was really like, “What do I want to be when I grow up…” kind of stage. I was like, I think there’s more to life than this. I’m not quite sure what it is. What does that look like?

And I took all the aptitude tests. I took the strengths, all of those quizzes. I’m like, how will I figure this out, was really part of it. And during that time, I worked with my very first coach. Her name is Christine Kane. I love her very much to this day. But it’s so beautiful to think about, for all of you coaches listening, the clients you have today like five years from now, six years from now, 10 years from now, they’ll say, “Oh she was my coach in this really important chapter in my life.” And that will always be part of your legacy. It’s just a beautiful thing to think about.

Lindsay: I love that.

Maggie: Isn’t that cool? So, working with her, I went back to school as an adult. So, still working in HR. I went back to school. I got my little community college degree. At the time, Barack Obama was president and he was the commencement speaker at my graduation. And I just thought, “Wait, when I go back to school, the universe organizes itself so that I can have Obama as my commencement speaker.” I was like, Harvard probably has the secretary of the treasury. I got the president.

Lindsay: That is incredible. And I’m like, “What? How did that happen?” But that’s for another day.

Maggie: I’ll tell you in one sentence. So, Miami, although it’s a very party town, we have one of the best community colleges in the country. It’s one of the most well-developed. And we have so many international students, which is one of the reasons it’s so well-developed. So, in this one area, we are the leader in the nation. And they were doing a big support around community colleges all over the country, so that’s actually how it happened.

Lindsay: Amazing. And in that moment, it felt the same rightness as when you met your husband?

Maggie: Yes, I was like, this is what it’s all about. So, when that happened, I had to decide, am I going to go on and get a Bachelor’s in human resources, which is what I worked in, or what am I going to do? And it was either four-year traditional college, or the Life Coach School. And as you know, since we’re here, guess what I picked.

Lindsay: Yeah… human resources. No…

Maggie: This is actually another great story about when I enrolled in the Life Coach School. At the time, Brooke Castillo taught it personally live over the phone. True story.

Lindsay: I forget every time, when you say over the phone, every time I’m like, “Wait a minute, no, no, not even over Zoom, just over the phone.”

Maggie: Zoom was not a gleam in anybody’s eye at that time. I’m sure there was probably like AOL Messenger or something like that. I don’t think Skype even existed. I’m not sure about that.

So, she was teaching the class. I was working full-time in HR. And she would teach the class at like 10AM or 11AM or something. And I was like, “Listen, universe, I need a class 5Pm, 6Pm, anything in the evening, that’s what I’m going to need.” And I knew I was going to sign up. And I knew as soon as there was a class that I could go to, I would. And I kid you not, for my birthday, Brooke announced an extra class and it was at night, late enough that I could go. And I signed up for that class and I said, “Thank you Brooke, who created this for me so I could come to class.”

Lindsay: That is the best story. So, what year was that, do you know?

Maggie: It was 2011 when we did the training, and I actually graduated in 2012.

Lindsay: Okay, that is just so fun to think about because I didn’t even know what coaching was then, except maybe the only knowing I had of coaching was that sometimes Oprah, full circle, back to Oprah always, Oprah had a coach on her show sometimes.

Maggie: Yeah, all reads lead to Oprah. This is how we roll here.

Lindsay: For those of you that do not know Maggie, she is the biggest Oprah fan that I have ever met. And she has met Oprah, which is just like, “Wait, what?”

Maggie: You have to have me back to tell that story another day. Because that’s a crazy story. We’ll do a crazy story episode and we’ll just do a lot of crazy stories.

Lindsay: Next question, right in line with this is, since the Life Coach School, you have – what I love about you, and I think one thing that we really connect over is that you have a passion for just being great at coaching. You have done several other trainings, I don’t know, certifications, whatever you would call them. Why does that feel important to you?

Maggie: So, there’s two reasons. When I graduated and I was a little baby coach starting out, I really had the intention to make a lot of money as a coach, to have this be my profession, to be professional about the execution of the service that I provided. And I thought, well I want to make a lot of money. But I want everyone who pays me to get the most amazing result. These two things to me always went together.

And I know that people who listen to this podcast feel the same way. That’s why they’re listening to this podcast. But out in the world outside of sort of this mindset, there’s a lot of make money easy or quick or the quality is not as important or things like that. And that never resonated with me. And being a marriage coach, I finished the Life Coach School – I stayed in HR for a while, which I want to mention, I’m sure there’s someone listening to us now who is risk-averse, like I was, who maybe is still in their career, doing coaching as a side hustle, that kind of thing.

And I just want to take a stand for you, keep going. Keep listening to Lindsay. You’re on the right path. This is the way forward. Quality will always rise. It doesn’t matter what’s happening in the economy. It doesn’t matter what’s happening in the world. Quality will always rise. And if you keep going on this track that you’re on, having mentors like Lindsay, you’re just on the right track. So, I want to say that to that person.

Lindsay: Quality will always rise. I have never heard that and I feel like it might be my life motto that I didn’t know. That’s so good, and so true. Oh my gosh, that just gave me chills.

Maggie: I love it. So good. So, I wanted to be not just a good coach, but I’ve always been an ambitious person. And I genuinely knew that I wasn’t the best when I first graduated. But I knew I wanted to be among the best. That was my goal.

And I thought, okay, if I was among the best, what would I do? What would I know about? What would I educate myself on? What is the best version of me? And turning to our future self, that we talk about in so many different ways. And that really let me to, at the time, the Life Coach School, there was no podcast. Everyone, pay close attention. A lot of you that are listening have listed to every episode of the podcast. There was no podcast.

Brooke had not taught anything really specific about relationships. Now there’s even relationship episodes and all the things. Back then it was the model and coaching tools. There was questions and a bunch of other things that we all use now. But I had to think about, okay, marriage is a specialized thing, are there things that would be useful for me to know about that specialized thing?

And here was my approach to it, which I think no matter what specialty you’re in, this can apply to you. Think about a weight coach. They know the nutritional aspects, or the basics of how people gain weight and lose weight. There’s an element that goes into a protocol where you know this protocol is likely to succeed or not. A business coach will know whether it’s their strategy or whatever it I they’re teaching about, their business principles. They’ll know what is profit, what is not a profit, right?

So, I was like, in marriage, I was like, what are the things that determine a marriage is healthy versus determine that a marriage is not healthy? Even applying the model to this specialty, I as an individual want to know what are some of the parameters here. So, that led me into a couple of things.

It led me into following the Gottman Institute that researches marriage. Coming into life coaching, which many people are not familiar with and there’s a lot of skepticism sometimes, it’s like no, this is evidence-based. This is science. This has been researched, this is what we know works. Now, do we need to manage your mindset around applying it and use tools like the models and all the different things that we use? Yes.

But the protocol is the different things that make a relationship thrive, we can actually look to the research and know that there’s a lot of things that we already know. We know how to reinvent the wheel for that. So, that’s one of the trainings that I did. They have one training that’s just about their research that anyone can take. You don’t have to be a therapist to do it. And then there are advanced trainings.

I’m always like, will they let me in the room? If they’ll let me in the room, I’ll go, right? So, I did that. And I was in several continued education trainings. But I’m a double-certified coach. So, in the Life Coach School and then in the Tantric Institute for integrated Sexuality by a fabulous woman named Layla Martin. And that really brought a lot of the body-based, listening to the wisdom of your body tools and processing emotions from a slightly different angle tools. So, we could talk a lot about different trainings. But what I want to mention…

Lindsay: Particularly that one we could have a whole other episode about…

Maggie: We could have a whole other episode about that, for sure.

Lindsay: I’ve heard some small bits of it and I’m intrigued.

Maggie: Yes, some of those are offline only. You have to meet me in person for those. But what I want to mention, and I’ve told Lindsay this. Ever since her program started, when she first launched the first Coaching Masters, my first sentence to her was, “This is what I wish existed when I graduated.” And I don’t know how many times I’ve said that, but basically every time Lindsay posts I’m like, “Yes, I wish I had this back then.”

Lindsay: Oh my gosh. So, I’m just going to say this so everybody listening really takes this to heart. Any time you’re creating something new, it’s always a little scary. You always have this thing of, “Are people going to buy this? Is this what people want?”

And you, Maggie, have been – even though you haven’t actually been in my program because you don’t need it at this point, you have been my number-one cheerleader and any time I have any doubt that people want to buy it you’re just there to say, like, “What are you doing? Everybody wants this.”

Maggie: And everybody needs this.

Lindsay: Everybody needs it. Just keep going. Your people are out there and it’s just so useful, everybody find a Maggie, some form of a Maggie who is like, “Listen, the thing you’ve created is the best in the world.”

Maggie: And really, from my point of view, I went through a lot of different trainings and experiences. Some were amazing. All the ones I’ve mentioned have been amazing. Some were not as amazing. And what Lindsay has done so masterfully is really distilled what are the principles, what are the concepts that will help you be masterful in your coaching in the simplest, most direct, most practical way.

I’m a person who really respects theory but loves application. And I think sometimes in our business, we can get a little bit caught up in the theory and it’s like, “Wait, what do we do on Tuesday, person who is in front of me?”

Lindsay: But I’m on the call now, what do I actually say?

Maggie: Exactly. So, I love, even though I haven’t been in the program as a student, from Lindsay and I’s conversation about the program and her mindset around how she teaches, I really can see and I can feel how powerful it is to really distill, these are the essential things that you will walk into any coaching situation and feel like you’re in command of that situation. You can lead your client. Whatever stage you’re in, whether you have a year of experience or 10 years of experience, and it’s the craft of coaching, which is an actual craft.

And I think it’s a relatively new industry that people don’t think about it in general as something that has a craft attached to it. So, I like to think about it like acting. And I always say this, that anyone who is in Lindsay’s programs, they’re like the Meryl Streeps. You learn to be at that level, like best-in-class level…

Lindsay: Are you listening, clients? Just soak it in. She’s calling you Meryl Streep. Amazing.

Maggie: This is my thought process around it. And really, if I look back on all the different things that I’ve done, it would have been so nice to just sign up for one program and really be able to have the principles to support me. And then, if I wanted something specialized in a thing, that would be a different thing. But that really didn’t exist in that way back when I started. So, those are some thoughts that I wanted to share.

Lindsay: I love it. So, when you think about all of these trainings that you did – and I’ll hear this a lot from coaches where they’ll say, “Well, I did these trainings. And I feel like maybe over here I wasted my money. And over here I wasted my money. But over here, this one was amazing and this one was amazing.”

Now, let’s be clear, if they hire you or me, they’re never wasting their money. But for coaches who have that thought of, like, “I’ve done trainings before…” how do you think about that? Because I have a very specific way I think about it. And I’ve actually never talked about it on here, but I’m just curious what your thoughts are about that.

Maggie: Okay, I totally want to hear. So, here are my thoughts. I have done things where the thing that I signed up to that program to do maybe was not executed, but I still learned from it. And in that sense, it’s never been a waste.

Sometimes learning what you don’t want, what your values do not reflect is a very valuable lesson to learn. And sometimes, we have to make investments in order to learn that lesson. And in that way, I think everything I have ever done has always been valuable in some way. And I always look for the value in it. So that’s one way that I think about it.

And here’s another place that I go in my brain. It’s like, what is my goal now? No matter what I’ve done before. No matter whether I did something similar or related. In my current goals, is there something that will help me move forward in a powerful way? And if there is, then it’s my duty to do it.

So, even with all the trainings we talk about, I’m currently, as we record this, in another training, which is the advanced feminist coaching training by a coach named Kara Loewentheil. And it helps me with seeing the social structures that we are in, in the United States, which is where I live and where I work. And that is something that I have never done any training on before, even with all my wealth of knowledge and all my coaching skill.

And what I have found is that learning about those social structures has only increased my skill. So, we also need to be honest with ourselves around am I applying the things that I’m getting trained on? And if I’m not applying them, why? Is there something I can do?

And some things, maybe the program itself was not that great. But there was one element of it that was awesome, and that I can still use now. I really take those two things. So, what was good about it and what meets my current goals and my plans for the future? Those are the two sort of lenses I look at it through.

I’m curious if you want to share now or if you’re going to do a whole podcast episode on it, I don’t know. But what is the lens around that for you?

Lindsay: I think it’s probably worth doing a whole episode on, but definitely my thoughts, I share very similar thoughts. They couldn’t see it but I was nodding vigorously the whole time you were talking. And yeah, for me, I always live by and run my business in a way where I say I always get what I came for. But my interpretation of that is sometimes I don’t know what I came for.

Sometimes, I think I came for one thing but it turns out I needed this other thing. This isn’t necessarily an example of mine, but let’s say I hired someone to help me make $100,000 but turns out I needed to stop being so mean to myself first. Like that type of thing. I see that happen with a lot of coaches. We’re like, “No, I want to skip all those things and get straight to it.”

So, there’s that piece. And then there’s also sometimes the best learning is learning what I don’t want. And one thing I love, because of what I do, what I teach my clients, is sometimes I love being in programs where I’m like, “Yeah, this is not my style.” And that’s totally okay because I teach all walks of coaches. This is their style. But also just seeing, what don’t I like about it? How would I do this differently if it were me learning from the teacher’s standpoint?

Maggie: I love that so much.

Lindsay: So, I don’t even know how we got down this rabbit hole, but I just think it’s so interesting to think about because I really believe there is no bad investment. There’s always learning. We just have to find it.

Maggie: I 100% agree.

Lindsay: One time, the only time this has ever happened, I quit a program just midway through. I just had some very philosophical differences with the person who was leading it. Nothing had gone wrong. I was just like, this is not for me. It was the only time I’ve ever done that. And I knew in that moment, she was going to give me my money back, and I said, “Actually, I don’t want it because quitting, just saying the words, that’s what I needed to learn.” Just to do it, to honor my truth, and to say I very much disagree with this thing that you’re teaching. That’s okay. Thank you anyway, and still get the learning that I needed.

Maggie: And that’s such a valuable lesson to learn. It just helps us stand in our own congruence and in our own integrity with whatever it is that we’re teaching. And here’s another thought that came to me that actually I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this. So, let’s talk about it with everyone listening.

Lindsay: Oh, it’s just you and I. It’s fine. No one will know. This will be our secret.

Maggie: So, I bought a book online. And I’m that person who reads the credits and reads every little detail and reads all the things. And I was reading the disclaimer of the book. And it was the most disturbing thing. It said, “Please be aware that we don’t guarantee any results. And in fact, most people who buy something online get no results and you should not expect to get any results.”

And I was just reading this thing. You could see, if I was a cartoon character, my eyes were getting wider and wider and wider and wider. And I was reading this and I was like, why – first of all, the mindset of why they would say such a thing in this way is another episode in and of itself. But when I was looking at it, I had this hear to heart moment with myself that I thought, if you ask me, most of my clients don’t just get one result. They get multiple results, multiple growths, multiple moments of things that help them in their life and forever. It would be an exception – like I had to think really hard to remember somebody to say, oh that person, but did they show up and do the work? And all that stuff.

Like, no, my exceptions are the opposite. If you work with a coach who focuses on having the skill of coaching down, the likelihood that you’re going to create the result if you show up in all your good faith to get that result becomes exponentially high. We can’t guarantee it, but it’s very high. That blew my mind.

Lindsay: Yes, definitely. I think, when you’re a great coach, you also have the skill of asking, like, “Tell me, what’s happening? Why aren’t you having a good experience? Or why aren’t you getting what you came for?” Just talking through it from a very neutral spot. And it’s so interesting that someone would put that on a book. Because my thought, can you imagine if that’s how we sold coaching? It’s probably not going to work, but you should do it…

Maggie: It was the most crazy thing. But what I really appreciated about it, it made me sort of take stock and think, people accept this as a standard.

Lindsay: That is a whole other episode. I’m just taking notes over here, writing down all the episodes. Because that is part of why I do what I do, is I truly believe that every person in the world that wants it deserves great coaching.

Maggie: I agree with that.

Lindsay: I did say earlier, I don’t think you can go wrong hiring a coach at all. But if we could just raise the standards a little bit, everyone will benefit.

Maggie: I love that so much. I’m all about that.

Lindsay: You and I are the same. I always say I’m changing the world one coach at a time. And you say, you’re changing the world…

Maggie: One marriage at a time.

Lindsay: That’s right. I love it. Okay, so have you – we’ve kind of already answered this – have you been a marriage coach since like the day you started coaching? You were like, “I’m a marriage coach. That’s it.”

Maggie: Let’s discuss for everyone who has niche drama. There’s a few things I have on my mind about this.

Lindsay: Also, just so you know, I cancelled it. Niche drama is not a thing. It’s cancelled. Who cares? Be a general life coach. General life coaches are so amazing. People listening are going to be like, “Gosh, they’re really passionate right now.” I’m usually pretty calm. When I hired a coach, she helped me change everything about my life. People want that.

Maggie: So, when I started, from the day that my business was born, it was about marriage. From day one. And it was part of how it came about that my business was born was I was sitting in a conference room in one of those workshops, Up-Level Your Purpose. And my first coach Christine said, “What is something you could talk about and never get tired of?”

And I’m here to say, talking about marriage since 2012, still not tired. It’s true. However, in that space, I stayed in HR for several years. I blogged. I did other things. I went through a bunch of things before I decided, I am a coach, this is what I do, this is how I am in the world.

During that time, I only ever spoke about marriage. And if someone wanted to hire me for leadership development, which I used to work in HR. So, all that kind of dealing with your team and hiring and all this stuff and being a leader. Someone wanted to hire me for leadership development. Someone wanted to hire me for something else.

If I felt that we were a good match and I could help them, I would help them. And that’s the message that I wanted to say about the niche drama. Specialize in your thing. Talk about your thing until the end of time. And if you’re really good at your thing, what will happen is someone will say, “I love your thing, but I don’t need help with your thing. Could you help me with this other thing?” And I’m officially telling you right now, say yes.

Lindsay: Yes, in the beginning, especially when you’re just trying to raise your self-awareness of who you are as a coach and your self-concept and your confidence in coaching, say yes. Coach all the people.

Maggie: Exactly. So, that’s what I wanted to share. And I think it’s so important to give ourself a latitude when we’re figuring out what we’re about. It’s okay to be in the process of figuring it out. That’s fine.

Lindsay: And I always say, when I’m talking to my clients, what I tell them is, listen, like you, you knew from day one this is the only thing, it’s marriage. If you have that, do it. I’m not advocating that people shouldn’t have niches ever, for sure. If you know what your niche is, you go for it and just get there as soon as you can, taking all of the clients along the way until you really are all in on your niche. But some people don’t have that, and so they’re very angry with you right now.

Maggie: Oh, are they?

Lindsay: They’re like, “But Maggie, tell me what my thing is.”

Maggie: That’s a fortune-teller. That’s a different thing.

Lindsay: Okay, what you’re saying is no matter how many trainings you go to, coaches don’t actually read minds.

Maggie: Correct.

Lindsay: Okay, well shoot. So, don’t contact Maggie. If you’re having niche drama, she can’t tell you what your niche is. But I always think people that come into it knowing, it’s because they’ve had – maybe for you it was just that experience of your husband coming into your life and you just knowing, “Whoa, something is different about this than anything else.”

Maggie: Yes, and I came into it also very frustrated because I got married in my 30s and I didn’t want to mess it up. It was very important to me that this work out. And there was a lot of focus on the marriage. Which is delightful. I love a good party. My marriage was, like tripped out. We had two conga lines. I’m all about the wedding. Do not get me wrong. However, I saw that as a society, if I wanted to know 57 ways to fold a napkin, there were plenty of resources for that.

And then there was marriage counseling if you were in a dire situation. But at the time, I could not find anything that was for in the middle. Like, I’m married. I kind of like it. I want it to be good. Maybe I want it to be a little bit better. Something’s bothering me. I couldn’t find anything that was that. And when I first started as a blogger, that was really my focus.

It was create a life you love with the love of your life. That was my thing back then. And it was like, what if you just are like me and don’t want to mess it up?

So, I also want to say to that person who maybe doesn’t have a niche, I’m still thinking about you, niche-less person, general life coach, that follows intuition, those intuitive hits. I was just really following something that really riled me up and led me here. But whatever that is for you, and if it’s more than one thing, keep following that thread. You’ll get where you’re going.

Lindsay: There are so many times when I am listening to you talk and I’m like, “Yep, this is why we’re the exact same person.” Because the way you just described that is why I do what I do. Because when I was growing my coaching business, it’s like, there are so many people that will help you get started. You can get all of the certifications. You can learn how to coach. You can work with your own coach, all of that. And then there are lots of business coaches who want to help you make lots of money.

And I’m like, but what about all the normal stuff, all the day-to-day, just like the marriage? What about every day when I’m a coach, when what do I do? It’s so fun. Except you like pickles.

Maggie: I do not.

Lindsay: Oh, you don’t like pickles.

Maggie: I mean, I will have an occasional pickle. But a pickle is not my thing.

Lindsay: Oh, I was going to say this is where our difference is. But you eat pickles, so that’s still a big jump from where I am. We talked about pickles on your podcast, so I had to bring that in. Okay, you were a marriage coach from day one. Did you ever have drama about should I not be, should I do something else?

Maggie: I did. I had two kinds of drama. I remember very specifically being bored and saying, “Maybe I should be a law of attraction coach. I’m really good at that. I’d be great at that.” And then I remember thinking, that’s not a good place to make a decision from.

And for a moment, I entertained changing my whole thing. And at the time, I had what I would call, like, brand equity. In the marriage space, the Gottman Institute that I revere, they had said, “Follow this blog if you want great marriage tips.” I was already in that place.

And I was like, really? Do I want to throw all that away because I’m bored on a Tuesday at three? I don’t think this is a good reason to do it. So, I had that drama. But I squashed that pretty quickly. This is the other drama that I had. And I think someone listening to us will have this one, and this is for you, person. This is for you.

Many coaches come to their specialty from having turned it around. So, they will have been overweight, they lost the weight, and then they teach weight loss. Or they will have been a bad manager or had a bad boss, turned that around and they will become a leadership or executive coach, whatever. They will have turned it around.

And that is not my story. I never had a bad marriage. And so, I don’t have – I have trauma in my life from other things of course from being human. But in my marriage, I don’t have the turn it around story. And there was a brief moment in time where I thought, is that a problem? That’s not where I come at it from.

And it really took quite a bit of coaching. I always had that on the backburner. So, everyone listening, if you have something on the backburner, let’s bring it to the front burner and take a look at it. Because Stacey, who I love and who you love and who is my coach as well, she said Brooke, who is one of our mentors, she never had money problems and she teaches money and it’s not a problem, so why is this a problem for you? And that’s all she had to ask me.

And let’s just notice, one well-placed question will change your life. This is why we work on the craft. Because one well-placed question, someone could work with you for six months, a year, whatever it is, and you ask them one well-placed question and it was worth the entire time you were together.

So, she asked me that question and I really sat with it and I thought, “Oh, it’s not an actual problem.”

And then I took on the mantle of I only know how to thrive. This is what I do. This is how I’ve lived all these years. And I will teach you what I know about thriving, plus all the psychology and all the things I’ve studied and all of that. So, I had a different flavor of drama.

Lindsay: That’s interesting. I’ve never had that drama that you’re talking about, but I have had clients who have. And I didn’t actually know that about you. But what I think makes you still so great at coaching on marriage is when you were looking for that. You were like, “No, I still feel so compelled to work on this in my life, for it to be a constant work, not from a place of everything has gone wrong, but from a place of it’s important.

Maggie: Oh yes, I see what you’re saying. Yeah, when we first got together, we went to every workshop, the Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz. We both read this book. We went to workshops. We did all kinds of wacky things. We did energetic exercises, all kinds of just really fun things.

And there wasn’t a clear path of this is how to have a healthy relationship. These are the steps. And now, in the Marriage MBA, I’m like, this is the path that I didn’t have, and I’ll guide you through it.

Lindsay: Yes, okay, so I want to come back to talking about your program. But real quick before we leave this topic, I want to talk about what does your husband think or what has he thought with this being your niche, as you have grown your business? Has he ever had an issue with it or has he always just been like, “Yeah, obviously, this is what you do?”

Maggie: Oh, it’s so fun. So, when I started writing very early on, I realized that I would write things and people would read it. And if I was writing about marriage, I’d be writing about him and things that we do.

And very early on, we had a conversation where this is what we did. I, of course, as a coach, and very specifically as a relationship coach, in my work there’s a big focus on creating safety. I teach my clients how to create safety for themselves, how to create it in their relationship, from a lot of different angles, a lot of different strategies.

So, in creating safety around me writing about our relationship, I sat down with my husband and I said, “This is what I think. You have veto power.” I will write up everything that I want to say. And if I ever say something that you’re not comfortable with, you have veto power. And there will be no questions asked. I won’t fight you on it. I won’t try to convince you about it. I will just say anything that I think is important and useful and you can use your veto power no questions asked.

And that really set us up to never have a problem about what we talk about or what I talk about and what I do from the point of view of how much I share or things about our experiences and stuff like that. What was really funny about that whole experience was I thought it was this really serious, you know, very important thing. And he became the editor of my blog.

And when we were starting out, he would check the commas and the punctuation and then it would go out into the world. That’s how we started. And he never, to this day that I can remember, has ever had an issue with the content of something. What he has an issue with is well, that semicolon doesn’t go there and what are you doing? Do you even know what punctuation is? Have you met a period? Kind of thing.

Lindsay: Like listen, this is not what you’re here for. I did not ask for this type of feedback.

Maggie: So that was really fun. Really, we have a lot of fun around that part of – he takes it very seriously, which I appreciate. It also helped to be part of what I was creating, so he was always a part of it. I will tell you, I did have a dark night of the soul at one point when I hadn’t figured out my business, I hadn’t figured out really what was I about, and it was one of those moments where it was like, I was either going to go back to HR or go all in on this business. And I remember crying in the kitchen, one of those kitchen floor moments. You all know what I’m talking about. Everyone has had at least one.

Lindsay: That’s where all the big meltdowns happen for me at least. It’s either the closet right here, where I’m recording my podcast, or the kitchen. Those are the only two options.

Maggie: Those are the places. So I had the kitchen floor moment and I remember telling him, “When you married me, I wasn’t an entrepreneur. I was an HR professional person, and I really understand if this is not what you want in life.” And I was sobbing, very melodramatic, I’m Cuban, this is like, telenovela level situation.

Just picture yourself there and then add some violence. It was that kind of thing. Like, no, this is not what you signed up for. And he really, to his credit, and he’s just an amazing person, he said, “No, I want to be with you and any adventure that you’re having and this is the adventure you’re having so we’re having it.”

And so to answer your question, that’s part of this thoughts about it is I want to be with you, with whatever adventure you’re having. And the other part is I started getting quoted in magazines or blogs or places, and when we got married, I changed my name to his name, so his name is Reyes and my name is Reyes.

And so whenever I get quoted, you know the peacock feathers that just come alive? He’ll say, “And Reyes said.” And he’s very proud and very happy and all those things.

Lindsay: That is amazing. I just love him. I can’t wait to meet him someday. I’ve actually met him for like two seconds. You guys were getting off an elevator, I was getting on at some workshop. And he seemed fantastic but in those two seconds, but all the stories I hear about him, I just think I would adore him.

Maggie: I think you would too.

Lindsay: Okay, tell me about – in the beginning – maybe it wasn’t you. In my head, you are like, let’s go do this thing and let’s go do this energy workshop, let’s go do this. Was he like, what is happening? Or was he just like, yeah, let’s do it, I’m here for it.

Maggie: So a couple of things. The way – now we have words for it, right? We’ve been married 13 years as we record this so now we kind of have our own groove. And the way I like to describe it is that I’m the visionary and he’s the executor of the vision. He executes the vision.

So he’s a person who loves solving interesting problems. He’s an engineer and he loves anything that’s puzzles, anything that just engages his brain. So I engage his brain constantly. So it’s a very good match because he’s just like, “Oh, that sounds interesting, that’ll be an entertaining, interesting thing to figure out.”

So he’s very game to try a lot of things but back then, he was on his own sort of spiritual journey and his own self-development journey and it was just – our values are very aligned in that we wanted to sort of figure out how to be in relationship with each other in a way that was healthy and good.

What I would say about that now is now we’ve been married for 13 years and that for him was one chapter of his life. In that chapter, he was going to workshops and retreats and things like that. I’ve never met a workshop I didn’t want to do.

So that kind of thing, I do much more of that now and then so well, I will do whatever, three classes in a workshop or whatever, he might do one weekend retreat or something like that. He’s still very much a very thoughtful person who likes to have a container to engage in his thoughtfulness, but I’m like, all the way on the other side of that and we navigate that together.

Lindsay: Yeah. Okay, so I have a question for the people that are listening, they’re all coaches, a lot of them have spouses. This is a little sidetrack but I have to ask you this because it’s been a huge piece of my journey and you know because we’ve talked about it. What about the people who more like me, I was not a coach when we got married.

We’ve been married for almost 16 years. We got married in 2005, which I’m like, wait what? Was I five? I was a baby. That seems so long ago. And then I got into coaching and then he’s like, no, no thanks. Fully supports me, my husband is amazing, supports everything I do, much like what your husband said, I’m here for it, I support you.

But I have no interest in coaching, no interest in personal development. He has an MBA. He does his own development. So in case he’s listening, hi Nate, love you, this isn’t about you. He’s amazing. But you know what I’m saying, right? It’s like I have a spouse that isn’t into any of that. And there was a moment when I was like, this is terrible. I have ruined everything.

Maggie: By having an interest in this thing.

Lindsay: By having interest in this thing and me really going all in on it. And of course I can see now at the time it was like, and I also just wanted him to come in with me and he didn’t have to. But what would you say for people who are listening because I hear this a lot, how do they navigate that? If they don’t have your husband, if they have a spouse or a partner, a significant other that isn’t all in?

Maggie: I would give a really extreme example. So I’m going to give you all an extreme example and we’ll see where that leads us. And it’s not extreme. It’s actually from my real life. So it’s an extreme example, it’s actually a real thing.

As you know, we mentioned it already in this episode, I love Oprah. If Oprah came to town tomorrow I would be there. All the things. My husband, not so much. He respects her but it’s not like he’s going to camp out to see her or something. My husband, this mild-mannered IT guy loves adventure.

He has dropped out of a plane, he has gone rappelling, he’s done zip lining in Costa Rica, all these adventure things. I would be by the pool with a book, listening to a podcast, maybe this one. He’d be swinging from the trees…

Lindsay: Shouting with Oprah if she’s available.

Maggie: That’s what I’d be doing. So imagine if he wanted to invite me, I don’t know, rappelling, and I said no, and I made that mean that I didn’t love him, that I loved him less because I don’t want to jump out of a plane. That’s my favorite example because I never in a hundred thousand million years would ever jump out of a plane. It’s just not something I want to do.

And if I said, “But I really love him,” would you believe me? Yeah, you’d believe. I love him and me wanting or not wanting to jump out of a plane has no bearing on how much I love him. So to you dear person, if your partner does not want to jump out of this plane with you, it’s genuinely possible that they could love you as much as they’re capable of loving another human, they just don’t want to jump out of a plane.

Lindsay: Yeah. What if their thought is – because I hear people say this, but what if I outgrow him or her? I’m going to do this work, what would you say to that?

Maggie: So here’s what I would say. I would say this today, I might say something else on a different day, and I also – every situation is different. And as a marriage advocate, I actually take this as a very serious thing, so I’m going to get serious for a minute.

Sometimes the highest and best outcome for a relationship is for it to end from a place of love, from a place of true care for the other person. And I don’t want to gloss over that that is also true sometimes. But let’s say that we’re in a scenario where you really love your partner and you don’t want to outgrow your partner.

Whether it’s a man or a woman, or however you self-identify. And you’re like, I love this person, I’m scared of outgrowing them. That’s a different scenario and that’s the one I’m going to address. You following me?

Lindsay: Thank you, yes. And that is what I was asking. And I’m glad you addressed the other because I don’t want people to hear this and think, “Oh, Maggie’s saying I should stay.”

Maggie: Right. And really, so this is really important, my best friends, my local friends that are not coaches are not into self-development the way that I am. Don’t do all the same things that I do. And I very clearly remember one day, something happened that as a coach, I would handle in a completely different way. Not because I’m a coach but because I think about things in a different way.

And there’s a person in my life that I love, one of my closest friends, and I just thought, I will never outgrow her. I made the decision and this is what I did, so if you’re worried about this, I invite you to try this, play with it, see what happens.

I made a decision that I would never outgrow her and then I proceeded to look for all the things that we still had in common because we’ve been friends for so many years. And I said to myself, well, these values we hold always. These interests we’ve had always. These things are super fun and on these things, we can always find common ground. And this is now what our relationship will be about. It doesn’t have to be about this one thing where maybe we have a different philosophy on how to approach it.

Lindsay: Yes. So when I was a newer coach is when I had thoughts like this. This was way before I was working with you, Stacey got to hear all these things. And it was more of a – yeah, just like a fear. I don’t want this thing to happen and I’m afraid it will.

I think as you – I’m just interested if you agree with this or disagree, but as I become, as I’ve been a coach longer and I’m a more seasoned coach, I’ve worked with all the people and I’ve worked with so many of my own coaches, the only thing I’ve gained is awareness. I haven’t actually changed as a human.

Which is what I think when you’re a newer coach or really new into self-development, you’re like, oh my gosh, this is – and it’s like, everything. And you really feel like you change as a human being. But really, you still have a human brain. Five or six years into it, I’m like, guess what? Still have drama. I think I thought of it as I’m going to become this person who is incapable of relating to the normal humans.

Maggie: Of course.

Lindsay: Hopefully that doesn’t turn people off of listening to this but that was a long time ago and I think a lot of coaches go through that phase where you’re like, oh coaching just turns me into this new person. Really it just gives you a whole ‘nother level of awareness of yourself.

Maggie: So I’m going to take that in a different direction and then you tell me what you think. I think everything you said is true and here’s something else that can also happen. And this is for everyone listening.

Imagine yourself in high school, maybe you’re 17, 18. I don’t know, when I was 18, what really mattered to me was whatever new music CD was going to come out, the concerts that were coming to town, those things seemed really important back then. Whatever we were wearing to the party, really important. Those priorities were really clear and that’s a few things like that, my grades, stuff like that really mattered.

Lindsay: But what was your favorite CD?

Maggie: Oh my gosh, I’m going to tell you offline because there’s a story attached to that. Okay, so now, imagine then you’re 20, maybe you’re 25, or maybe you’re 30. Now you’re working, you’re in a job, or you just started your life coaching business. Now you have other priorities. Now your priorities have changed.

It is possible, you could be in a relationship with a person where the only thing that really matters to them is still those things that used to matter to you quite a lot. And then you have to look for are there other places that we still have in common where this is fine that you like these parties and the CD and the whatever. Are there other things that we can build on or have I really moved to a different set of priorities that is so far away? If I met my 18-year-old self, I mean, I’d hang out with her but I wouldn’t marry her.

Lindsay: Like gosh, she’s annoying.

Maggie: Right? You know what I’m saying?

Lindsay: Yes.

Maggie: So that’s the place where I would take it, which is why we want to really talk about this from that point of view of what do we have in common? Is there common ground to build on? And sometimes the highest and best outcome really is to make a new decision.

Now, what is a waste of time is to be worried about it incessantly. If you’re together today, make the best of today, go listen to my podcast, all the episodes will help you do that, and then be together now and if that changes at some point because it hasn’t change now because right now, you’re just worried about it.

Lindsay: So good.

Maggie: And here’s the last thing on that; whatever specialty you are, doesn’t matter, whatever modality you were trained in or if you didn’t do any training and you’re just a school of hard knocks, apply your training, whatever thing you teach your clients to that thought.

Lindsay: Yes.

Maggie: Whatever I’ve said now is fine, but think about what you teach your clients, whatever modality, if you use tapping, if you use thought work, if you use body-based work, whatever it is, okay, this is my fear right now, how would I process a fear with a client? I’m going to process that fear with myself.

One of the things I love about what The Life Coach School teaches is you are your first and best client. And I think there’s some schools of thought that don’t teach that to their detriment because we lose on a whole set of people that could have such heightened awareness if they adopted that one thought.

Lindsay: Yes. Oh my gosh, that is so good. This is why I have you because I’m like, here’s the one truth and you’re like, well, actually Lindsay, there are 20 truths, let me tell you all of them. It’s so beautiful. Okay, but it is so fun to think about this is why marriage is your specialty, right? Because I only have the frame of myself and the one marriage I’ve been in and the way I have interacted within it.

But you have helped all of the people and it’s just so amazing. Like oh yeah, there are so many different ways this could go. But okay, thank you for sharing that because I love when I have guests on. I love to think about what is your specialty and what’s a couple things that you can just help the listeners with as entrepreneurs and coaches that they may or may not be going through. And I think that that advice you just gave is true also for friends or any relationship in your life.

Maggie: Agree 100%.

Lindsay: Yes. Okay, so that being said, let’s move on to your program. I want you to tell me about it. I work with you one-on-one. I’m not in your program, but I know a lot about it and it sounds amazing. And for any of those people that are worried about what we were just talking about, definitely join it.

And you recently have transitioned from one-on-one coaching to group coaching. What has that been like? And tell us about your program and anything you want to talk about.

Maggie: Okay, so where to begin? So first of all, my approach is I work with individual wives, usually very Type A women to have better marriages because as a Type A woman myself, I’m very driven, I’m that person that my checklist has checklists. I am the person who will write something that I just did on the checklist just to cross it out. That is me.

So with that mindset comes a set of issues and things that happen. We like to be in control, we like to have things a certain way, there’s a bunch of things that happen that then work really well at work or in business, it’s part of what makes us so successful at what we do, but then at home, those things don’t always quite work the same way and sometimes there’s a reconditioning of okay at home, it’s slightly different.

And sometimes it’s the opposite, which I’ve found really fascinating. Sometimes we’re really great at having difficult conversations with clients like all day long, and then we have a difficult conversation with our partner and it feels so hard and difficult and I’m thinking of one of my clients who was in sales, and she was like, superstar salesperson and her whole company, all the things, but you calm down nervous people all day.

How about we take that skill and we apply it to your husband? It was so fascinating. She was like, oh, I do know how to do that. So the essence of what I do in one-on-one is the same of what I do in the group, with the group having a slightly different structure is really the difference.

So I just want to mention that. The group is called The Marriage MBA. It’s the marriage mindset breakthrough activator. The whole intention behind it is when you’re done, you’ll be able to activate breakthroughs whenever you need one, whenever you want one. I’m going to teach you a bunch of things and you’re going to learn a bunch of things, and then you’ll be coached on those things, so that then those tools are things you have for the rest of your life.

So that’s the intention behind it and I was just talking to someone recently who signed up for the program and she said, “Well, what’s your overall goal for the program?” She’s like, “I know what my goal is as the student, but what’s your goal as the teacher?”

And my answer was think about an MBA. When you get an MBA, they don’t drop the perfect business in your lap and say here, here you go, it’s perfect now. What they do is they give you the skills to run a business, whatever kind of business you want to run, they give you the mindset and the perspectives to be able to handle anything that comes up as you’re running your business.

And for me, when I think about this program, that’s really my intention is things will come up in your marriage. You will still be human at the end. Surprise. But when things come up, you will know how to handle those things. So that’s really a little bit of it.

Lindsay: How have you found the transition from one-on-one coaching to coaching in your group? What has that been like for you and why did you decide to go all in on your group?

Maggie: So it’s been very interesting because I had a lot of reluctance to changing what I was doing that was working so well. We mentioned earlier in the episode, my clients always get results. That’s standard, that’s the norm.

And my coach challenged me to grow the way I challenge my clients to grow and really helped me think differently about what would be possible if I’m helping one person at a time versus if I’m helping 10 people at a time, what could that be like?

And so it required me to just think at a different level to distill what I teach in a more clear, more succinct level. So many things that come with that. So the experience for me, I’m really in it right now. I’m still – invite me here a year from now, I’ll have a whole different conversation about it.

Lindsay: What I love about where you are right now though is that a lot of my clients – I work with clients who are kind of in this transition sometimes where they come to me from maybe not the same background, haven’t worked with the same types of coaches you and I have where they’re trying to start with a group or the structure is different. So I just like to have this conversation because they have lots of questions about it.

Maggie: Okay, good. So a few things. It’s very interesting. If you’re used to group work and you want to start with a group, by all means do it. But my personal philosophy is that nothing prepares you to lead a group with greater integrity or greater skill or that they will get the most amazing results than having done hundreds of hours of one-on-one work.

Because what happens is you see the themes that always come up. You see how they emerge with different names and faces. You can recognize it very easily. Then you coach on it from all these different angles and then when you’re in a group situation, it’s almost like your coaching becomes so laser focused that it’s just massively helpful to have the experience of the one-on-one. And if it makes you feel uncomfortable, join Lindsay’s program and figure out why it makes you uncomfortable.

Lindsay: So good. That is 100% true.

Maggie: Because if your standard is, I want to be excellent and you have people here who are in the business making multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars, with integrity, with love, with care for everyone that comes into our world and we’re telling you this is the way to be excellent, it’s highly likely that you’ll be really excellent if you do these things, it’s not for everyone.

You might have someone who’s like, nope, group is my thing. If that’s you, no problem. But if it’s because of a reluctance, then we want to check on it. If you’re totally fine with it and there’s no reluctance, you’re like, yeah, I could do anything and I just prefer this, it’s a very different thing. Is that making sense?

Lindsay: Yeah. No I love it.

Maggie: Yeah. So in the transition from one-on-one to group, so what is the question that they ask you the most?

Lindsay: I think one of the biggest fears, which you and I both had to work through, but now that I’m on the other side of it I can see very clearly is why – but my clients won’t get the same results. Or my clients aren’t going to want this.

Maggie: Yeah, okay. So let’s talk about those two things very specifically. My clients won’t get the same results is just a lie. They often get even better results. And I say this as a person who still loves one-on-one and I see the value of both and I don’t want to diminish one to build up another. They both have their place and I really want to say that.

I love one-on-one, I’ve been a one-on-one client, I’ve been a one-on-one coach, it has served me well. I will be in one-on-one situations again, especially as a client for different things. I’m a big believer that when you want to build a skill in something or you want to get help with something, look for a coach. That’s what they do. Get the shortcut.

So as honoring both, they both can help your clients get amazing results. What happens in the group is in the group, you are in this vortex where it’s not just your leadership, it’s everyone in the group gets to provide their presence and their thoughts and their leadership and their support.

And here’s an interesting thing, I used to do it without having any words for it and now I have words for it. In my feminist coaching training, one of the principles is to be non-hierarchal. So in some coaching situations, there’s the coach, and the person. And it’s very pronounced.

And my approach is always like let’s take your highest inner wisdom and my highest inner wisdom and partner together for your greatest good. That’s one of my principles that I believe in. And what happens in a group setting, and especially if you set the intention to make it non-hierarchal, it’s just like yeah, I might have read a few more books than you did, or yeah, I might have a little bit of an approach than you did, but this thing you just said is brilliant and I’ll be quoting you from now on whenever I say it.

Everyone gets to learn from everyone else. So that’s one way that it helps everyone get great results. The other way is many times when you see us as your coach, you’re like, yeah, but Lindsay has it easy, Lindsay knows, or Maggie has it easy. But when you see your colleague going through the same thing and then creating a win, or rebounding from a fall and coming out of it, the way that you connect with that is very powerful.

And I can say that having been in a group setting with Lindsay and remembering very clearly many times in that group setting where my coach was already so far advanced in many business things and so in another place, which is awesome, but with Lindsay I was like, oh, I’m really walking down the same road that Lindsay’s walking and that felt as a member of the group, so comforting to me in that moment.

Lindsay: I love the way you describe that. I think one experience I’ve also had in groups is I have heard – I’ve had some of my most powerful coaching hearing someone else be coached because maybe they articulated something that I didn’t know how to.

I was having, let’s say in my business, I’m having some drama in my business and hearing someone else say something, then I’m like yes, those are the words. And then hearing them get coached on it that I would not have been able to, for whatever reason in that moment, pull that out of my brain, and it could have taken me another couple months to find the thing. And instead, I just get to hear them and get that coaching.

Maggie: In a group setting, think about your stress cycle, your fight and flight and freeze. When you’re listening to someone else coach, you’re totally relaxed, you’re just paying attention. There’s no emotional hurdles to overcome for that message to get to you. And when you’re in a one-on-one situation, it’s not a problem but sometimes if it’s something that really touches you deeply, there’s a moment where we need to first process the emotional hurdle and then get to the thing.

There’s value in both. You see how there’s value in both but this is why one-on-one is beautiful. If you’re in that stage and you’re listening to us, keep going. And if you’re in that transition to group, hear all the ways that group can be beautiful.

And to answer your second question, you said they won’t want that, that you hear that a lot. They won’t want that. So here’s my answer. They will want what you tell them that works. Imagine you go to the hospital and you have a sore throat and they tell you to do five jumping jacks, your sore throat will go away. You would do the jumping jacks if that was a real thing.

They tell you drink this red liquid, your sore throat will go away. You will drink the red liquid. Have these two pills, your sore throat will go away. Let me inject you in your butt, take off your clothes, and your sore throat will go away. So let’s think of ourselves…

Lindsay: Okay, that’s the only one I’ve actually done. Not kidding. I would have loved the other options more I think.

Maggie: So think about ourselves as humans on Earth. When we have a problem and they tell us do this and it will go away, we do that thing. It’s exactly the same. There’s no difference. That would be my short answer.

Lindsay: I love that. So funny. I just had visions of people being injected in the butt at the hospitals. Okay, one question that I didn’t ask and we’ll wrap up with this because I know we’re going over a little bit. But I just wanted to know, is there ever a time, because this probably comes up for all the people listening in some way, depending on what they niche is, is there ever a time that you in your marriage, that you have felt pressure just obviously just from yourself to have the perfect marriage or to – as a marriage coach, do you pressure yourself of like, what if my marriage doesn’t look perfect today? How can I do this?

Maggie: Okay, so congruence is one of my core values. So I know exactly what you mean and I’m sure a lot of people listening to us, the reason this comes up for them is because congruence is a core value for them too.

Lindsay: Question. Is that the same thing as integrity or is that different?

Maggie: To me, I think it’s very similar. So congruence is like, match. I match what I say. I say something and I do something and these two things match. I think it is integrity and congruence would be very similar.

Lindsay: I knew if I was questioning it, people listening probably are.

Maggie: Exactly. So integrity is doing what I said I was doing to do, and congruence is I am saying you should do this, and I’m doing this. So here’s what happens. I think about it differently and it’s not a huge issue. Do my husband and I have disagreements every now and then? Sure. Have I cried? Have things happened? Absolutely. Have we hurt each other’s feelings? 100%.

All of those things are true. But my overall marriage has always been very strong and I’ve never been worried in that way where I can see maybe a weight loss coach, maybe lost 30 pounds and then gained 30 pounds, and then they’re worried in a different way than I would be. So for that person, I also have an answer because I think about these things.

Lindsay: I love it. And this is a lot of times actually weight loss coaches, that’s the number one place that I see this come up, at least in clients that I’ve worked with. I’ve seen it many other places as well.

Maggie: Yeah. So wherever you are with this, this will help you for the rest of your career. It has helped me at different times around different things. So I’ll say what it is and then we’ll talk about it. In many coach trainings, because I’ve done more than one, in many coach trainings, the underlying principle is you only have to be one inch ahead of your client.

As long as you’re one inch ahead, you can help them solve a problem. That really helped me in the beginning and it got me very far in life. And then there was this moment when that really didn’t help me the same way that I thought it would. So if that’s you listening, just pay close attention, get the notebook out, you’re going to want to write this one down.

I read this in something, I wish I could tell you what it was so you could link to it. I don’t know. It was something around acceptance and commitment therapy. That’s all I remember. But this is the example they gave and it’s ingrained in my brain like a tattoo.

So everyone now visualize two mountains. Two mountains side by side to each other. You are climbing one mountain; your coaching client is climbing the other mountain. It doesn’t matter where you are in your own mountain. By virtue of being on a different mountain, you have a perspective. You can see things on your client’s mountain that they cannot see. Regardless of your position in your own mountain.

If you draw this on a sheet of paper and you put two mountains, two triangles, you put a little dot for you and a little dot for them, you will see that you can see their whole mountain, regardless of whether you went to the bottom of your mountain, you’re at the top of your mountain, it does not matter.

Lindsay: Maggie Reyes, you are a genius. That is a good analogy right there.

Maggie: For the record, I read it somewhere but my genius is in that of all the things I’ve ever read, I kept that one.

Lindsay: You are literally the best student. I do know this about you. You remember so much. You quote so many coaches that we have both worked with, Brooke, Stacey, all the people. You quote them so well and I’m like, gosh, I thought I was their best client. Guess not.

Maggie: We’re both best.

Lindsay: I have competition there.

Maggie: We’re both best.

Lindsay: What’s so interesting is I actually did not even think that’s what you were going to say. What I thought you were going to say, which also works, is you’re climbing your own mountain, your client is climbing the other mountain. All that matters is that you have the tools, which kind of the same thing.

You have perspective is what you were – your analogy. And my analogy is because of course I’m always thinking about the coaching tools, right? If you have the tools, you’re still going to be a lot better at climbing the mountain than the person that doesn’t have the tools and a lot better at teaching them or guiding them how to climb their mountain.

Maggie: I love that. That is so good. Just an addition and an enrichment of that same idea, which is so beautiful.

Lindsay: Yeah, I don’t think it’s better, right? It’s just a different way to think about it.

Maggie: So good. You have the tools. That’s all you need, right?

Lindsay: I think you and I could just do episodes every day where we just create concepts.

Maggie: I’m just going to invite myself back. I want to be one of those people that is like, a regular. Like you know on TV sometimes they have those people that it’s like, oh, there they are again.

Lindsay: Monthly Maggie.

Maggie: I’ll be back everyone.

Lindsay: Perfect. Okay, what else? Is there anything we haven’t covered? I feel like we kind of jumped all over the place, but is there anything we haven’t covered? Anything else you want to say?

Maggie: Honestly, I just want to say it’s an honor to be your guest. It’s an honor to be in your world. It’s an honor to be part of your life. And I think it’s important actually – this is a question that if it hasn’t come up, you tell me if it’s come up, we have different roles in each other’s lives.

We’re friends, we’re colleagues, we have supported each other as colleagues in a variety of ways, we are coach and client, and we have obvious different buckets that we fill in each other’s lives, and I think that it’s important to model that that is possible. You do it so beautifully with Stacey as well. I listened to that episode; it was amazing.

But I want to reflect that to everyone who’s listening who’s like, “Oh, my friend wants to hire me and I don’t know if I should.” Say yes. Let your friend give you money.

Lindsay: So I don’t know if you listened to the episode, but I had my best friend from college Sheri Strzelecki. So she’s been my best friend since we were 20. I actually met her before I met my husband. But right around the same time. And she is now a coach, she’s a very different type of coach than I am, very woo, very spiritual.

But she’s been my best friend for a long time and we talked a lot about that because she’s actually in Coaching Masters. And she has worked with me and she is also an incredible coach. So I covered it a lot on that episode.

Maggie: We’re going to link to that in the show notes. So when this episode comes out, anyone who missed it like I did, you can go and listen to that one. Because I think that’s a very important distinction to make, that there are people that I love to coach that have no problem – we can have a lot of buckets and there are people where nope, the answer is go and get help somewhere else, I’d rather be in this situation and that’s okay. And I just want to normalize any combination of that is okay.

Lindsay: Maybe I should just do an episode called how to coach your friends when they ask you.

Maggie: By popular demand.

Lindsay: Only when they ask you.

Maggie: Rule number one, only when they ask you.

Lindsay: Yes. Goes for husbands too, right?

Maggie: 100%.

Lindsay: Partners, spouses.

Maggie: I coach on never coach your husband again. Let’s discuss.

Lindsay: So good. I learned that the hard way. That was pre-Maggie time. Alright, I love you. Tell them where they can find you. I’m so grateful for you being here.

Maggie: I love you. They can find me at maggiereyes.com. And if you love podcasts, you can find me on The Marriage Life Coach Podcast and look for Lindsay’s episode. If it’s not already out, it’ll be out very soon after this one.

Lindsay: And every single person that’s listening, whether they’re in a relationship or not needs to buy your book.

Maggie: Oh my gosh.

Lindsay: You almost forgot to talk about your book.

Maggie: Incredible. It’s called The Questions for Couples Journal. If you go to maggiereyes.com you can click on book and all the details are there. It’s not a book you read. It’s a book you do.

Lindsay: Yes. Interactive and so fun.

Maggie: It’s super fun, you should totally get it. If you’re single, get it and answer the questions and visualize yourself in a relationship.

Lindsay: Yeah. I have it and I think the questions are – you and I talked about this but I’ve asked my kids some of the questions.

Maggie: Yeah. One of my best friends deletes in her mind all of the sex questions because there are sex questions in the book. And then she asks them at dinner to her kids and they love using it. The Questions for Couples Journal. Thank you, Lindsay.

Lindsay: You’re welcome. It’s one of my favorites. Had to plug it. Every person needs it. Alright, thank you so much, this has been so fun and you’ll be back. I’m certain of that. Goodbye.

—

Thank you so much. I’m so glad that you were here today to listen to my conversation with Maggie. I hope you loved it as much as we did. We obviously had a lot of fun. I will see you next week. Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Mastering Coaching Skills. If you want to learn more about my work, come visit me at lindsaydotzlafcoaching.com. That’s Lindsay with an A, D-O-T-Z-L-A-F.com. See you next week.