Jaycee Woods

In the TikTok female confessional sphere, there is an odd phenomenon of women putting themselves forward as life or dating coaches. The odd part is that they have no demonstrated relevant expertise in their own lives. In fact, personal details they share illustrate their lack of experience achieving success from claimed expertise. A frequent joke is that they are unsuccessful older women attempting to teach younger women how to be unsuccessful through failed bromides.

My draft short story “Maya Life Coach” dramatizes this. The dialogue is between Maya, a credentialed life coach, and her potential client Grayson. In vetting her, he asks questions about how her claimed skills apply to the way she pursues major personal life goals. He quickly establishes that she is a vacuous echo without any practical experience achieving results. She resists his efforts to correct her until she can no longer deny the obvious. He gives her tips on changes she could make to achieve her goals with her recognizing his feedback as valid.

In the end, he reminds her that she never asked what service he sought. He explained that he was looking for a life coach to mentor several key subordinates at the company he owns. However, he explained why her methods, principles, and values were inappropriate for his purpose. As he left, she regretted the money she just lost as it would have been a major new client for her. Although unsettled by the experience, she is fundamentally unchanged as she fell back into the same process errors.

One open question that I have is whether to change Grayson to my Chad character from The Misadventures of Chad Seeking a Wife. While it is not a dating story, as a teaser short story, it would demonstrate a different aspect of Chad as a successful businessman.