Evolutionary Blog

Someone asked me if I had watched "The Deep End" - the documentary about Teal Swan. I had never heard of her. I watched the trailer and as soon as I heard her speak, I knew she was full of sh*t. Took me 5-10 seconds.

Then I had someone tell me the kinds of things she has people engage in and I was disgusted. after stating what I saw as the positive purpose of the exercise, I broke down for the person the dynamics and meta-structures of what she was up to in those instances and why one should not do that to participants, and how it is actually counter-productive.

But this is not about her - it is about cults and cult-like communities in general, many of which are far worse and include a lot more systemic pathology. And the exposure of some of them in recent years ... has me thinking about cults and coaches and politics and just how and why people fall for these people, be they gurus or politicians. Which got me thinking about the transformation industry in general.

I try to spend as little time as possible thinking about the coaching and practitioner industry. That might seem strange since I have been in it for so long (full-time since 2004), but honestly, the more I am exposed to it, the more I find myself recoiling. Maybe it is what I perceive as a lack of depth in the industry, or - as a meme one friend sent me the other day said, “God, please give me the confidence of a 25-year-old life coach”. But in contemplating it - and in noticing trends over the 30 years I have been engaged in transformational communities, I have distinguished a few “types”.

These are off the top of my head, so I am open - and welcome - any feedback, comments, or additions. Or for you to share your own experience in encountering these or other categories of “coach”.

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🔮The Regurgitator: they parrot the thing they just read, heard, or learned in a workshop and they get it all over everyone. Very little precision, and it often feels very gross (vs subtle) and like a blunt instrument. A lot of projection may be involved. You can contort yourself to see how it fits, but it really has little to do with what is happening for you or your desired outcomes (if they even asked you about that). They also have little apply-to-self or self-reflection. 

🔮The Mentor: they have vast experience in one area and teach others how they succeeded (sometimes often after a lot of trial and error or at least one major failure).

🔮The Technician: They are very skilled in a very narrow area - one modality - and it is the only lens they view things through, they are, however, very competent at that one thing.

🔮The Mindset Master: They really have one primary tool: linguistic or perspective reframes. “If you just think about it differently, you’ll feel better”. While this is true - and critical for day-to-day happiness and an integral part of developing facility with self, the problem with this one is if used as the only tool - or over-applied - it often steps over somatic feelings and emotional build-up that will need to eventually be cleared out - and in doing so they stack up in their body and may lead to a massive meltdown of sadness or depression later on. The deeper thing needs to be addressed and often goes unaddressed so they are engaging in bypass or what I heard recently may be termed as “toxic positivity”.

🔮The Synthesizer: they consume all forms of personal development and likely have for some time and then come up with their own version that is an amalgamation or an integration - or new material entirely that builds on what came before. They are also very good at pulling from that experience and applying it at a more individual level for people - choosing the approach or modality that will best serve them in the presenting context at that time. There is both depth and breadth.

🔮The Guru: This one seems to have deep spiritual knowledge and has adoring followers. Their followers' eyes glaze over when they talk about them as if they are under a spell. Sometimes it is unclear what specific value they bring or if the followers integrate the teachings into their lives. People often fall in love with them and at some point, their illusions are shattered and they become very disillusioned. As much as they were in love with them is the degree to which they will now have disdain for them.

The benefit, of course, is the feelings of community and acceptance the student experiences with other followers and the shared experience. Until, of course, the inevitable descent into pathology or cult-like dynamics. Over 80% of them seem to engage in sexual misconduct at some point.

I have a theory that the larger a transformational community becomes, the more it tends toward pathology even if the leader is pure in intention, teaching, and their own personal ethics.

🔮The Scam Artist: This speaks for itself. Some of them just see a way to make money and do not even see themselves as scamming people, but are usually very entitled, charge above market rates for their services out of the gate with little experience, and may even encourage a “wish list” purchase, etc. (like a dominatrix or escort would), including tools for their business they could and should ethically purchase themselves. Often they do month-to-month agreements instead of extended offerings because they either do not have the energetic capacity to hold someone over several months, or are not competent enough to continue with a client beyond the quick sale of the 1-month agreement. Maybe it’s a side gig. One of many. They also get a dopamine hit from being in a position of authority in someone’s life, no matter how fleeting or temporary that may be - and they often come from that place, not from a place of serving their client in achieving their outcomes.

They don’t last long, thankfully.

🔮Professional Scam Artists: Megachurch preachers, Trump, et al. Grifters and con artists all of them. Praying on the old and the feeble-minded.

🔮The Hobbyist: “I give my friends advice all the time, I may as well get paid for it!”. Enough said.

✨There is also the therapist turned coach, which is always interesting - and of great value for some.

✨And on the other end of the spectrum, the young sex worker turned coach (but in a different context). The challenge there is they bring a lot of the dynamics from their previous offerings into the business of coaching and that does not translate well professionally or inter-personally. They essentially have to re-learn business.

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If you are interested in becoming a clean and skillful practitioner (or a synthesizer) attend my next practitioner certification training. Full details about that training are »here«. If you are curious about working with me one-on-one, schedule an initial conversation »here« to have a conversation and we will discover if we might be a fit or not.

I’ve been in this business a long time. Over 18 years now. But recently someone I knew and followed me on social media reached out to me and was not even sure if I even still engaged in one-on-one work.

Of course, I do. Of course, I am.

But that indicated to me I needed to reach out to you and just review the past and mention an upcoming training as well.

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At some point, I was called to purpose in a way that had me know in my bones that there was nothing for me to do but be in service of others evolving.

Engaging in it professionally began in 2004, and while it took me a couple of years of making all the mistakes one can make in this particular business I finally figured it out or “cracked the code” if you will in 2006 which was my first 6-figure year in this business.

After 18 years and after guiding well over 500 clients through 6-month programs, I thought it might be time to re-introduce myself as a lot of people following me here have only seen a slice of my work as my focus shifted to relationships and relating and I have received a lot of feedback lately around how people perceive my work. Many - an odd number - think I only work with men. And recently someone called me a “relationship expert”. I openly laughed at that and responded: I am not sure there even is such a thing as a “relationship expert”.

Also, hilariously, a client I recently signed from here on Facebook reached out and asked if I was even still in this business. That cracked me up.

So to correct and clarify the record I’ll list off the phases my business and offerings have gone through over the years, and then ground the whole thing in how I was called to purpose at a certain point of my path - while briefly illuminating some milestones along the way.

✨2004-2006 figuring out how in the heck to make it an actual business. Even though I had been a sales trainer for Tony Robbins, I quickly figured out that the relationship between client and Guide is too intimate to simply bolt on a sales system from some other business - which is where most coaches and those teaching coaches how to build their business get it wrong.

✨2006-2008 and to the Present: offering comprehensive Personal Evolution - with three phases to that structured - yet formless - 6-month program. What do I mean by that? The Phases 1. Healing and Clearing, 2. Education, self-esteem, sense of self, navigating your interiors, etc., and 3. Integration and ad hoc application were always the same regardless of the context, just sometimes called other things. But the form - what was handled in each phase - is entirely dependent on the outcomes drawn out of the client. It is purely in service of those.

🔥At one point I signed 49 clients in a row to 6-month programs [no one said no in that stretch] so I figured it was time I systematized my sales system - or reverse-engineered it is more accurate.🔥

✨2008-2014-ish I added teaching coaches and holistic practitioners how to build their businesses. The best part of my sales system is ~98% of the people I work with report it never feels like sales because it is entirely outcome-based. More on that another time.

🔮But if you think that personal evolution is not part of building your business you are … mistaken. Clearing out negative imprints and beliefs about money and spirituality, working on your worthiness of receiving, clearing fear and anxiety, and perhaps shame are all critical for your business success. So we always start there because then when we implement business strategies in Phase 2, it moves with so much more velocity and ease in your nervous system.

✨2014-2018 I did a few corporate gigs for small personal development companies - both designing coaching packages for them and teaching their team how to sell them ethically using my system.

✨2019 my attention turned to relationships, so-called “polarity”, and … well, what a clean, healthy, and evolved relationship would look and feel like.

It clearly began as more of a critique of the complete stuff I saw out there in the space. So many unclean and unhealthy principles that were clearly coming from a place of regression and for most relationship coaches - clearly from their wounding rather than from a place of vision and emergence. And as a die-hard romantic, I felt there was simply a better way.

Some of you may have seen my 4-part series on my website critiquing polarity coaches (especially the male coaches).

✨Along the way I designed and facilitated 5 NLP Evolutionary NLP Practitioner certifications - all 7 months long - in 2006, 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2022. Why “evolutionary”? Because to me, all work we do is better served by understanding Integral Theory - Quadrants, Levels, Lines, States, and Types. So both stages of ego development and emotional and moral development a la Graves, Gebser, Kohlberg and Gilligan, Wilber, et al - or simply verticality (or stages of depth if you prefer that metaphor) is critical to know what your client needs when, in what order, for what outcome.

But in terms of rapid transformation healing your past reducing triggers and clearing trauma - including generational trauma - there is nothing more efficient, elegant, effective, and holistic than processes like Time Line Clearing, Parental, Core Transformation, sub-modality shifts, and the like.

And therein lies another misconception about my work. While yes, I have been a certified NLP Master Practitioner and trainer since 1995 [29 years now], I do not identify as such.

I am an Evolutionary Guide™ (which transcends but includes “coach”). I accelerate evolution. Your evolution. But it also means I work within an Integral framework.

My work is best suited for people who have already done a lot of personal development - perhaps in weekend workshops, etc, and even therapy, but want more intentionality around their outcomes with more effective approaches.

ANYWHO ...

I am also offering another Evolutionary NLP Practitioner Certification training. This will be the 6th.

It is designed for coaches, healers, practitioners, professional communicators, and humans who just want to massively accelerate their personal development within a container - and with logistics designed - for integration.

It kicks off in just a few months.

You can see full details for the NLP training (including curriculum, logistics, and an extensive FAQ section here: https://evolutionarycompanies.com/nlp-training

If you want to have a complimentary 30-minute initial conversation with me to see whether it makes sense for us to work together in service of your outcomes, you can just go ahead and schedule that here: https://calendly.com/evolve-co/30min

Wishing you only good things. Always.

In Your Service,

McClain

One of the things I have noticed about the current conversation around masculine/feminine dynamics and masculinity, in general, is just how threatened some men teaching polarity seem to be by certain things.

Notice I did not call them leaders - just people teaching these dynamics. There is a flavor to the way they teach it that reminds me of a born-again Christian who was recently baptized, or someone in a 12-Step program in their first few months of sobriety. Or a recent convert from one religion to another, or like somebody engaged in partisan politics who feels that the other side is evil even when they agree with their proposal. Or somebody who has recently found a transformational path - be it meditation or a community or a weekend workshop - and find it to quench a thirst that they've had for decades - and can’t stop talking about it and are hounding you to go.

This is understandable. As humans when we find a solution to a problem that we suffered from that may not have even been articulated previously we engage in it with a certain zeal.

The problem is there is an even greater need for clear, powerful, centered, principled men and the masculine these days. Feminine women are craving it - and the world is crying out for principled leadership, a commitment to truth, and is longing for depth.

And that last part is the real challenge here.

Make no mistake: men who are two-dimensional in their approach to masculine-feminine dynamics [meaning they lack depth, understanding of context, and when to powerfully lead and when to be more in flow, and the ability to calibrate to what is needed when and with whom] are the loudest voices in this domain. But you can engage in polarity without being polarizing.

You can be clear without being a dogmatic fundamentalist. We are all evolving all the time. What is the nature of personal evolution? The increasing capacity to take on an ever-increasing number of perspectives. To understand. To be able to argue from the other side and only then to show why you disagree with it. To honor it and then offer a better approach. It’s clear that these dogmatic, fundamentalists are in reaction. They are in fear. You can tell by their reactivity and their deflection. You can tell by their lack of tolerance for dissent.

You can tell by the things they are triggered by: Prince, conversations around gender identification, and their assertion that the trappings - the costume - of masculinity [beard and boots] are the answer. If they were really certain of their own internal masculine core - what I am calling a Column of Iron and Light - they would not be threatened by any of these things.

They would know it does not matter what someone wears. Don’t mistake reactivity and contraction for clarity and warriorship.

They are not offering a new, emergent path. Rather they are offering a 50s style approach because it makes them feel safer in chaotic times. That is also intrinsic to the nature of evolution: when we are under pressure, we contract and regress. We go back to stable structures that give us comfort. But that is not what we need right now. What we need is a new path that provides a better option that addresses the current chaos, and provides clarity in the face of it without denying or deflecting the realities of our current, complex times.

What we need are more Evolutionary Gentlemen.

Continue with Part 1 of The Problem With Most Male Polarity Coaches »here«