Faiz, would you let us know who you are and what you do?

Sure, my name is Faiz and I work in IT.

What was the biggest reason you wanted coaching? What did you hope to learn?

I think the biggest reason is that I found that in a lot of areas of my life I was doing well. My fitness, my work, but what was missing was my social life. I felt that I had friends, but I wanted to deepen those relationships and I wanted to expand my social circle more. I wasn't sure how to do that. I felt that I was missing some knowledge or missing some key elements to be able to form lasting relationships. Yeah, absolutely.

What would you say is the most important thing you learned with coaching?

The most important thing I learned is the right mindset. A big one for me was don't try to be a mind reader. I had previously thought that a part of empathy was being able to try to get yourself inside the head of the other person. But that's not really the case. It's more about just being present and learning to appreciate that it's actually impossible to read someone's mind.

If I'm focusing on the present, then it will become very clear what I'm doing wrong or how I can improve conversation and form those better relationships. Yeah, if there's one thing I've learned, it's you can't read other people's minds and no one can read your mind. But yeah, I think that's an awesome win.

Talk a little bit about how life is different after coaching, what sort of wins can you share?

I care a lot less about what people think, which has been great, very liberating. I am more confident in storytelling. I have tools to implement humor into conversation. And I think I just understand people better. I know that everybody has an inner critic, some people stronger than others.

It's possible to tame that inner critic. A big benefit of this course is that the learnings are tailored to me. So all the recordings I can go back and listen to and I'll find advice that's relevant for my life and will help me. And also the videos you have in the coaching hub will be useful. I find that that would be a more relevant resource for me to start with rather than reading some generic book on social skills, which is designed for the masses and not necessarily specific to me and my life.

I love it. If you were talking with someone who is considering private coaching from me, what would you say to them?

I would say that sometimes the more money you spend on a coach, the better quality coach you get. In this life coaching space, there seems to be a perception that there's a lot of snake-all salesman. And that may be true, but I find that Jeff is definitely not. He has over 10 years experience specializing in social skills.

He really knows his stuff. He's very empathetic, very good listener. And he's able to really tailor the lessons to you. So it's not generic at all. And for people who haven't tried coaching before, I highly recommend it. If you have done coaching before in other forms, when you start talking with Jeff, you'll know that he's someone that really knows what he's talking about.

I highly recommend it. I think coaching in general, whether you have a personal trainer at the gym or, you know, it's really good to just learn from experts and then implement it in your own life. You don't have to do it the hard way.

Man, you don't have to do it the hard way. I need to put that on a billboard. That's awesome. All right. Well, I thoroughly enjoyed coaching you and I appreciate you taking the time to do this case study. Appreciate it.

Not a problem. I had a really amazing time with coaching. I think it's really changed my life.