How We Relate With Relationships with Traci Porterfield
When you put yourself out there and not getting any results, it can get very frustrating as you watch yourself going down the rabbit hole. Traci Porterfield is a dating coach, matchmaker, CEO and Founder of Love by Design, a personalized matchmaking and relationship coaching service, and creator of the online course, LoveShifting. After years working as Vice-President with success guru Tony Robbins and having served on the Senior Leadership Team on behalf of Dr. Deepak Chopra, Traci learned about the importance of getting clarity on what we want our life to look like and taking massive action to make it happen. Traci talks about relationships, her personalized matchmaking service, as well becoming self-aware to make life happen.
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How We Relate With Relationships with Traci Porterfield
I’m back for another episode of The Bald Avenger show. It’s one I’ve been looking forward to. I could get myself in trouble on this one. I don’t know where it’s going to go, which is the theme of all of these shows. We think we’re going to talk about one thing and it ends up being another. She’s one of my favorite people in the entire world, a woman who I deeply respect and have come to admire over time. She’s got four-and-a-half years with Tony Robbins. That’s where our paths first crossed were when we were working with Tony as a VP and then she’d been eight-and-a-half years with Deepak Chopra. In the last several years, she’s had her own personalized matchmaking, MyLoveByDesign.com. “What are you going to say? Are you going to say what you mean? Are you going to ask her questions?” I’ve gotten more feedback on our conversation than I have on all of the other shows so far. Hopefully, we don’t disappoint.
We talk about four subjects here on every show. We talk about business. We talk about philanthropy. We talk about vitality. We talk about politics. We were talking and I got to that fourth one and I got the eye roll from Traci going, “We didn’t talk about,” and I was reminding her back to the show if everybody wants to go back and revisit it. When we were talking to A New Dawn ladies and we talked about everything. We talked about their stints in prostitution, 27 felonies for one person, thinking about attempting suicide by chainsaw, all of these things. I got to the last section, I’m like, “It’s time to talk about politics,” and they were like, “I’m out.” I’m like, “Chainsaws and prostitution and felonies and we’re not going to talk about politics?” It is exactly why I talk about politics on my show. It’s important that grown adults can have a conversation back and forth with each other, still love each other, still hug it out and still make things work. We’re going to talk about politics, but everything is going to be couched in the realm of dating.
You are a world-renowned dating, personal matchmaker. All four of these subjects I want to have a conversation around how that impacts the relationship. I’m genuinely interested and I laid it out for her that she can dissect me and coach me and say whatever she wants to. I’m going to play the role of my actual life that I’ve walked through dating, through relationship, through marriage, divorce, kids and all of that stuff. I’m genuinely interested in your coaching and feedback for somebody like me. Hopefully, I represent the guys out there and there are going to be a lot of them that will go, “You don’t represent me at all,” and they’re going to be like, “He said what I was thinking.” They’ll be sitting next to their girlfriend or their wife and they’ll be like, “Honey, I don’t think like that at all.” This should be a fun ride. I’ll start out. I’ll be like somebody on your couch. How would you start out the interview with me if I was coming to you and I was like, “47 years I’ve been at this and I suck at matchmaking for myself, I need some help. How do we start?”
First of all, I want to back up one step. Working with Tony Robbins is truly a place where you ask yourself, “What am I passionate about? What do I want my life to look like?” You go make it happen. You don’t sit around in that space of, “This is my lot in life and I’m miserable.” Working for him, you’re constantly asking yourself that question, “What do you want to do? What are you good at?” When I was working for him, I also was going through a divorce. I was a single mom. I was looking at having a big fat mortgage on my own and life was changing. You sit in that space of like, “How am I going to do this?” and you don’t know what’s on the other side. For me, sitting in that space at Tony Robbins and going through all this massive change and not knowing what’s on the other side, you do it anyway. You commit to living the life that you want to lead to saying, “I am scared. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m going for it.” When you’re in that environment, you have people that support you. I feel fortunate that I went through that.
On top of that, when I was going through that divorce and I was back out in the dating world, I’m a massive extrovert. I was like, “I’m going to go get a boyfriend now.” That’s not the way it worked. I’ll try anything. I thought like, “I’m an extrovert. I’ll tell people. I’ll go online.” I did every online site there was. I had my Match.com profile. I gave it to anybody that looked in my direction. I gave our insurance broker, “I’m single. Do you want my Match.com profile?” I put myself out there and I was not getting my results and I was so certain that I would. It gets frustrating and you watch yourself go down this rabbit hole because you’re not having to happen what you think is going to happen.
What I was doing is when I would go on a date and I would meet a good guy, but it wasn’t the guy for me. My degree is in psychology and my recruiter’s brain starts thinking, “Who can I introduce this person?” Because it’s a good person. I started making introductions when I was still working for Tony and I started having successes and even engagements of people that got in relationships. I was doing it for fun because I liked it and that’s how my brain operates. That’s what got me there to say, “It’s time to leave here. It’s time to do something different. It’s time to put myself out there. What’s the worst that can happen? You go start a business and you flop. You’d fall on your face. You try and you’ll go back and get another job in Corporate America if you do.”
That’s what got me to this place of like, “I’m having these successes. I know how to recruit. I have Tony Robbins behind me. Let me go do it,” then things changed. I had in my head one idea of what the business would be and then even that changed. You have to like everything. You think, “It’s going to go like this and I’m going to do this,” and then this comes in and you’re like, “That didn’t work. That sucked. That didn’t happen,” and you have to keep changing. At the same time, I also was asked by The Chopra Center of Deepak Chopra to come to help them with HR. That to me is like Tony’s, “Go make your life happen. Make things happen. Figure it out. What are your belief systems?”
Deepak’s very much like, “Let’s center. Let’s see what’s going on inside. Let’s learn how to have that inner peace. Let’s learn how to meditate. Let’s hear our thoughts and all those things that came together. You need both.” In the dating space, in business space, you need to act and you need the stillness and you need the understanding of your own inner knowing. They have to come together to have a full piece of the puzzle and a lot of people don’t know. I wasn’t searching for Tony Robbins. Someone else referred me over there.
[bctt tweet=”A lot of times your self-esteem is down and your fear is up and all those things that are on the table, but you’ve got to deal with that.” via=”no”]
I wasn’t searching for Deepak. They called me. You look at your life as a whole and you’re like, “I needed all these pieces.” You need the pain. You need the divorce. You need the, “I’d love to talk to you too later about this. What your situation was like. I want to know what that time was like.” Even if someone wants a divorce, it’s still a massive change of something. If you have kids, it’s even on a whole other level. My son was three when I got divorced. I sat down on my stairs in my house and cried and cried. Your life as you knew it is gone. You are starting over with what you have and a lot of times your self-esteem is down and your fear is up and all those things that are on the table, you’ve got to deal with that. You’ve got to look at that. All those pieces and giving you the back story to tell you why I got to this place of helping people in this spot because it’s my passion, it’s my skill set and I have a lot of knowledge. I believe that that’s what will help you.
It’s a huge help and it helps set the table a lot to where it comes from. You’ve been through my twelve-week business course and a lot of those things when you’re first setting up a business. The only reason I could do that twelve-week business course was I needed the psychology piece from Tony. I needed this book. I needed that input. I needed this failure. I needed that bankruptcy. I needed this business partnership to blow up. I tell people all the time. They hire me and they hire my company, Anton Jae Global, all the time because of my failures, not so much my success. Turning them in and turning those failures into success. It sounds like for the same way for you and it’s sequencing those things together has brought you all the success. I love the fact that you were trying to solve a pain in your own life. It’s amazing to me how many times that a great business comes together, especially around a qualified individual such as you. Tony is that go guy and Deepak is that centered person. You’ve got all of your intellect and your organizational structure and all of the tools that you bring to the table. There’s nobody better to have all of those pieces come together.
The other thing that I want to point out to the audience that I point out quite often is that the only reason that you’re here and qualified is that you failed. A lot of people are like, “I went through a divorce or made a mistake.” In my case, I cheated. We don’t want that stuff out there about us because all of a sudden it’s going to define us. This leads a lot into the dating disasters that happen out there and that has happened for me too, as far as putting on this fake face and putting it out into the world. Especially in an intimate relationship, I can imagine you’re like, “I’m this person and this person’s saying that I’m this person,” but behind those masks, we’re neither. I love the authenticity of you coming on here and saying, “I failed at this. This was my situation. I went out. I tried to date. I did it incorrectly,” because you’re the person I want to follow. You’re the person I want to talk to.
I don’t want to talk to somebody who was like, “I met my sweetheart in junior high. We’re so in love and we’ve been together for 42 years.” I love those stories and I love those people and thank God that their stories are out there. They give other people hope that still has it. For most of us, the people that have chosen to follow me and call themselves misfits. Most of us are misfits, which mean we’ve made mistakes in this area. We’ve made mistakes in our business. We’ve made mistakes in our financial life, our relationship, our health and all these other things. That sets you up for the guide that I want to talk to and I know that the guide that my audience is going to want to hear from because you’ve been through that pain. You eloquently laid it out there like, “Here it is. This is the deal. I’m not perfect.” Let’s start there.
There is much learning. Divorce is a massive one, especially if you have kids. Both ways are massive learning. When I did get in, I’ve had one relationship since then which is a long-term relationship. I say this because I want people to know I understand their pain and the depth that it can go. Literally, the next relationship I sold my house, I sold everything in it. I took my kid out of his school and moved in with my boyfriend that was in a different area, not far, but all of that had to be different. That was the wrong relationship too. You get to this place that you’re like, “How do I get out of this?” I couldn’t even see when you finally admit to yourself and you look at how a lot of times your self-esteem gets chipped away and you go down. Sometimes it’s so subtle and you don’t even notice it and then all of a sudden you’re sitting down here and you’re like, “Who am I? This is not me, but I’m down here.”
In my case, I was like, “I don’t have a house. I don’t have a set of silverware. I took my kid out of school.” I felt like, “I got myself into this.” My life mantra has been, “I’m smart. I’ll figure this out,” and you do. You take baby steps and one step at a time and then I was like, “Here I am renting a place. I don’t have anything in it.” A big part of what I tell people is it is that fear that’s real. It’s real, the shame that people have on top of it a lot of times because they’ve made bad decisions. It doesn’t mean you have to stay there. It doesn’t have to stay there, but you have to be listening to what’s inside and say, “I am not happy.” I don’t care what is on the other side. I have to get out of where I am. It’s like, “What’s the first step? Who can I lean on? I don’t even have any family in the area. I have a lot of good friends.” I had to rent a place. That’s what you do. You rent a place and you start over. Even with the first place, the rent was some scam on Craigslist.
You do it. You have to say, “I’m committed to my happiness. I made a wrong turn.” That was harder to get out of my marriage even and you have to do it. You’re doing it with the kid that you’ve uprooted them and they are going to feel off of what you feel. My number one thing in life as being a good mom and the kids need to learn that life is going to throw you a lot of curve balls. You’re going to make decisions that are wrong. You’re going to thought you were right, but the wrong path. You change. I literally said to him, “We’re going to go back to your old school. Wouldn’t that be awesome to go back there again?” They pick up on whatever you’re putting down. If you’re like, “I’m sorry I did this to you and I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but together we can do this.” That is giving them a disempowering belief when it’s like, “We’re going to change. We’re going to go back there. Here’s what’s going to be great.” You’re going to make mistakes in life. That’s what it’s about.
It brings up a question for me because you were talking about the self-esteem perspective and it gets beat down and chipped away. The work we do at A New Dawn, a domestic violence charity that we work with and Kat Dawn that runs it. Intrinsically, because of that situation of me being raised in that scenario. When you fall in love with somebody, the rest of the world falls away when you’re with that person and you’re building a life with that person. If you pick a person when you were saying, “Get over it. Get it out of it. Decide that you want something different.” People probably want to hear this is that a lot of times you’ve invested so much into that person and they are the ones that continue to chip away because that’s a form of control.
Relationships: Kids need to learn that life is going to throw a lot of curveballs and they’re going to make wrong decisions that are wrong. But guess what, you can always change.
It’s a form of control to say, “You’re never going to find anybody as well as me.” On the guy side, it’s one thing, which is you basically chip away at everything about them as a provider, as a man, as a father and as a husband. You chip away at them and I know a lot of guys that I’ve hung out with, including myself, we like to win. We want to be the rescuers. We want to be heroes in some sense. On the female side, I watch it so much because I watched my mom go through it and how he controlled her. What’s a strategy? The women at A New Dawn, you start to believe who you’re around and the words and the things that you hear a lot. For guys and for women, what is your best suggestion? You can’t go into another relationship until you figure that stuff out or you’re going to repeat it over and over again. That happens a lot too. What is a good piece of advice that you have for people that have allowed those people that they’ve allowed closest to them to chip away at that self-confidence level?
One of the reasons I feel fortunate is because I have the tools from my personal mentors and that’s also why I feel it’s my personal responsibility to share them for people that don’t have those tools. The circle that you’re surrounding yourself with is very important. Do you have girlfriends or family or someone that you can talk to honestly about what’s going on that can give you good advice? Unhappy people want the people around you to be unhappy. They’re not going to say, “Let’s get you out of that. You deserve something better,” if they’re miserable.
Find somebody that does have what you want or even these days you can listen to the podcast, you can grab a book, you can start training your brain in a different way. The circle of people you have around you get rid of the ones that are going to tell you why you have to stay or why this is the way life is or anything that’s negative, which honestly that’s probably most of the world. Finding those people that are the ones that are going to be supportive or whatever you read or listened to or something because you need that support network.
That’s what I love at New Dawn. I love your organization. I love these different organizations that are a way. People could on social media reach out to a new circle. There are new strategies because I know for my mom and for a lot of these women that have been in these rough situations, that sounds great. I got my kids and I need a roof over my head and they’ve ostracized me from a society that I don’t have skill sets. I don’t know how to balance a checkbook because this is what control freaks do to people. On top of what you’re talking about, I would say reach out online because Traci’s got a huge network of people that support her and can help you if you’re looking for those answers. That’s not this show. We’re here to deal with my messed-up dating tendencies. I’m going to make it about me.
I like to start with fear because the people that come to me that want to be in a relationship, they do. They’re not calling me unless they do want to or they’re admitting that something’s going wrong. They keep picking the same people. They want to change that. The first step is recognition. My world is I have men clients and I have females that can be in the database for free. They’re called candidates. My passion is helping the man. We have a small group. I don’t take more than eight in a year that I will work with, but the females are the ones that they can be in the database for free. My passion is helping them. I’ve had live workshops. I have an online course and it all about raises your dating IQ. Women love to also be part of a group. Even jumping on Facebook, there are a lot of groups that you can jump on and get support.
When you start hearing like, “That happened to you too or you know what that feels like,” automatically, some piece of you is going to get a little bit of relief off of you. The people that come to me want their relationships. I start by helping them understand who they are. A lot of people will say they know like, “I know who I am. This is what I want.” I can’t wait to get into the psychology of the male-female because I had an event that was fascinating for me to notice the distinctions between how the women showed up and how the men show up. It’s been ongoing with my business. I would love to hear the male’s perspective.
For your audience and for those of you that are new to the show, my mom had something with my original father and I didn’t know that I was adopted. She ended up marrying a guy who wasn’t my father and never told my original dad that he had a kid. I was adopted at six years old by this guy and he was massively abusive. To this day, I’ve never raised my hand to a woman. I can’t stand men that beat their women or their children. It takes a special coward and there’s a special room in hell for people that hurt women and children. I hate that. That was a good outcome from where I was at. That led to my first relationship. My first relationship with her as she was a powerful personality. 4’0” but she had a lot of power. I, on the other hand, was exactly the opposite of my adoptive father. I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t get angry. I didn’t stand up for myself. I did whatever was necessary and over and above because I thought that I had in this mindset that I was going to be a great husband, a great father. I had produced that in my mindset of somebody that was in an abusive upbringing. What my wife got at the time, she got basically a pussy boy. I know that’s not PC.
I was almost the female energy in the relationship. I was a collector. I bought all the time. I had all of this stuff. When it came to women specifically, I became this completely other energy because I thought if I was in my masculine that meant I was going to hit them. I shied away from that. What happened was we had infidelity and she left and was with another guy, in which I don’t blame her. I basically was having another woman in the house at the time. That led to a lot of great realizations. Like you, I was crushed. That evolution, I couldn’t get out of bed. We had two daughters together and they were my world. I’d spend my entire life thinking that I was going to grow up to be a great father. Even though my marriage wasn’t working, I would’ve stayed there forever because of my daughters and because of this preconceived notion I thought of what a man was and was supposed to be.
[bctt tweet=”Even if you made bad decisions, that doesn’t mean you’ve got to stay there.” via=”no”]
This is my opinion and I know we’re allowed to share whatever we want here. Children will get over a divorce. That’s what most of the world does. When you give them no role model of what a good relationship is, you’re doing more damage than staying for the sake of the kids saying that. My parents divorced when I was thirteen and I was happy as hell when they got divorced because there was so much fighting in the house that it gave me anxiety. I’ve always been the peacemaker ever since. In hearing you say that, saying that you would stay for the kids. That is a mindset that a lot of people have and I want to throw it out there that I disagree with that. You do more damage to the kids when you’re like that and then when you are in the feminine. It’s not attractive to women anymore.
A lot of people are going to enjoy reading that and you’re probably going to get some hate mail but whatever. We expect that. That’s a great piece of coaching. I had set it up. This wasn’t her. This wasn’t about my kids. It was about me and it was my mindset and it was the way that I believed things should be. They were supposed to be this other way because I’d read about it. If it’s written in books, it must be able to be accomplished. That was my idea. I went from there. I put on this hard shell that I was never going to get hurt like that again ever. I don’t say this with any pride. I entered into a long stretch of my life where I was out of integrity in my life in a relationship. I did a lot of work, the same stuff that you’ve done, Tony Robbins and Deepak and all the great thinkers of our time and philosophy from the past and all that stuff.
What happened was when I was in that abusive relationship, I would lie and tell him what he wanted to hear. I would tell him what he wanted to hear because I knew how to avoid beatings. That meant I was lying. I was lying out of whatever sense of this is okay to lie because it’s going to save me from getting another broken nose or from getting beaten or keeping his attention off my mom or whatever it was to start lying. I did that in my relationships constantly. I lied and I’m talking about stupid stuff like, “I’m on my way.” I wasn’t on my way. I would lie about the dumbest stuff constantly because I thought it was what she wanted to hear and that would reduce conflict.
I’ve never said this in public, but it’s not something I’m proud of. If we’re going to talk about stuff that people are going through in relationships, this might be something that people are going through. I had this upbringing and I’m not blaming on it because it was my fault. It was my decision, but that was the one area and we’ll get to where that drove me once I consciously understood this and then the research that I did around relationship and coupling and all of the stuff. The big stack of books I read and all the reading that I did, which I can’t wait to have that conversation with you to see if I’ve come to some good conclusions or not.
For the most part, that was my dating life. I got married a couple of times. I went from my first marriage that was five years. I got married again. I woke up drunk one morning. We thought it was a good idea to go get married. We were together for three months. I married again to an amazing woman. That one lasted three weeks and then dragged on for lots of years after that basically because of my lying. I was telling people what they wanted to hear instead of the cold hard truth. It’s been many years since I’ve come to this conclusion. If you’re dealing with somebody like me or somebody that you’re in a relationship with and they’re constantly telling you what you want to hear, I’m going to ask the dating guru but that can’t be a good basis for the start of a relationship.
At some point, you have to ask yourself, “Do you want to keep in failed relationships? Do you want that?” I see a lot of people that say they want something but then they don’t want to do the work. I’ll start working with them, but if they don’t want to do the work I can’t help them. I can’t make them do the work. They’re not going to be in a sustainable relationship. My ultimate goal is to help people become self-aware. You have to want to be in that space. You have to want to look at yourself. You have to want something different out of your life and be willing to do the work. There’s something that typically triggers you to say, “Enough, I’m done. I don’t want to be this anymore.”
Sometimes it’s just someone to say that. I can have a conversation with them. A lot of times when females call me, they’ll typically within a short amount of time start crying. They’ll apologize and I’m like, “Do not apologize. That is the best thing that can happen is that you feel like you can unload it. You’re ready to start making a change.” The men don’t cry. They get defensive and a lot of times they get annoyed at me. At the other side of the spectrum is when they can say, “Okay.” I’m like, “I’ve been doing this for several years. I’ve had amazing mentors. I have a lot of knowledge and a lot of tools. You can listen to me or you cannot. It’s fine if you don’t want to. I’m not going to work with you.” They have to want to be in that space to make the changes.
In my side where I got defensive was constantly being attacked. You’re doing your best. I’ll act like I’m one of your offended male counterparts. You’re one of those typical women that are going to tear me apart because you think all men are bad. We happen to live in a society where it’s almost a sin to have a penis. I know that I’m seeing a lot of this. For the guys I know and for me, we have a couple of words. It’s, “Screw it.” That’s the exit point. This pressure, all this guy stuff, I’m willing to work on me but I know a lot of guys feel like it’s all expected to come from us. The changes, the softness, the understanding, the emotions and all of the stuff that we’re being asked to do.” It’s like, “Where is the female responsibility in this equation?” When you say that, now you’re a male chauvinist pig or you’re a narcissist.” Anytime anybody feels they’re losing an argument, the N-word comes out, which is narcissism and toxic masculinity. That’s a favorite one nowadays. If I had a dime for every guy ever told me, “My wife called me a narcissist or my girlfriend called me a narcissist. What does that even mean?”
Relationships: A lot of people say they want something but then they don’t want to do the work.
In this day and age where we have to walk on eggshells and we do. I’m not a disrespectful person. I’m a sexual person. I’m a driven person. I’m a passionate person. I extraordinarily appreciate the feminine energy, both in how you smell, how you dress and how you look. I’m a genuine appreciator of the other side of the DNA mix here, but I’m not one of those guys that go out and you’re grabbing butts and disrespecting women. I’m not like that. I know a lot of guys are not like that. They’re not the Harvey Weinsteins. They’re not that level of depravity where they think they can do anything to anybody at any time. I would say the majority of men are not like that. It’s being put out there for us that just because you have a penis you must be containing your inner rapist.
That’s the world that we walk around in. If we have dinner or we go out with somebody, especially if you’ve built up any foundation or wealth or whatever that you’ve got. The guys I know and I were deathly afraid to engage in any level because of that process. I don’t want to keep blathering on here, but I’m feeling this is like a stand for the brothers that I know would die for their women. Did they cheat? Did they lie? Are there things that they do but they would die for their women, they would die for their kids, they would die for their country, and they would die for something and yet we’re getting beat down? What is your coaching in that area?
Here are my thoughts on that. The men that I take as clients are successful. They are very much in their masculine. They are used to achieving so they get frustrated when they are not achieving in a relationship. To the men out there, I say, “You can’t achieve into a relationship. You have to tweak. You have to understand the other person and that you are not going to control them and you need to understand them.”
It hit me probably in the same space that it hits your other successful clients. What do you mean I can’t achieve in a relationship? If I have everything else the best, I want my relationship to be the best too. What do you mean I can’t achieve?
You can’t achieve your way into one. It’s not a business. It’s not numbers. It’s not a formula. This is a person with feelings and experiences and ways that they like to be treated. They have past experiences and things that are underneath that you don’t even know that maybe they don’t even know. The way that you go about a successful relationship is different from how you go about having a successful business.
Let me challenge that idea. I know there are other businesses and why they’re run. The way that I run my companies and the way that our consulting company coaches people is that their people need to be number one. Number one, you’ve got to fall in love with the outcome of your client. Number two, you’ve got to fall in love with the outcome of your employees, vendors, partners and all those things. When you fall in love with their outcome, then you set about on a path to achieving their satisfaction. The employee works for me for a reason. I’ve got to know that reason. They want to go to Paris or bring in a sick mom up from Mexico, whatever their outcome is I’ve got to be highly interested in that. Are you saying that’s a principle that couldn’t or shouldn’t be applied into a romantic relationship?
There are steps that you can take, but it’s different. The mindset of a super successful man, they get frustrated. It needs to happen, “This is what I want and this is what I do and I’m an achiever and it’s not that way.” That’s not the way it goes. It’s not the one you’re dealing with emotions. Back to your point though, what I have to coach on a lot is to the females to let the guy be the guy. This is my personal opinion, but what I see is this. With the males that are these achievers, it’s what a lot of people want. They want a successful man. They want the person to take to be their cohort, their power partner. They’re equal but different. You can’t be blazing over them if you want them to be the man. You bring different things to the table. The guys that are my clients, they almost always want their nurturer. They want that feminine energy. Feminine energy is powerful.
Women these days being successful in business and not needing men and putting everything out there and they are in their masculine a lot of times. A lot of people will go from work straight to date and they’re taking all that energy with them, that masculine energy and it’s not working. That’s not what the men want. A lot of coaching goes to the women to say, “Let him be the man. Let him open the door. Let him pay. Say thank you. Have gratitude. Accept compliments.” That allows for the two pieces to come together and have a whole, but I see a lot where the women have this defense up because of all the things that are going on. I have a sixteen-year-old son. I have to talk to him about how he can be perceived in this world. How something he could right now come back and bite him later. I’m fully aware of what men have in front of them. Not like men, but I’m aware of it.
[bctt tweet=”You can’t achieve your way into a relationship. It’s not numbers or a formula. It’s a person with feelings and experiences.” via=”no”]
Men have completely retreated. Not all of them. It seems I’m watching two camps. There’s one camp that says, “I’m going to bowl you over and beat you into submission.” There’s the other camp which is, “I’m going to go play video games. I’m going to tap out because I don’t know how to deal with this. I don’t want to deal with it. There’s plenty of porn out there and plenty of people on the website that you swipe, Tinder or whatever. There are plenty of those people that I can have temporary relationships with. Screw it.” This is the big thing for guys. There’s like, “Screw it. Put the work in. All I do every single day is work, and then I got to go home and I got to work too?” I understand that I’m taking the masculine side.
I feel sorry for women in this age when it comes to the level of masculinity that my side of the DNA pool is putting out. I’m trying to add to the conversation here in what I see. I have conversations. My friends are all dudes. Most of them are successful business guys and they’re going through these different challenges themselves. How is the rest of the world, because I can hear in my head somebody going, “Traci, you’re feeding old patterns and stay at home and wear high heels in the kitchen? You’re trying to put women back 50 years. Are you saying that they should cater to their man?” You got to get some of that in your feedback when you’re coaching these women.
My mom was a single mom and she raised my sister and me. I had a strong role model and what’s acceptable in the dating world and all of that. I see much masculinity in the women and it can’t both be masculine. It’s not sustainable. When you can appreciate the man for what he brings to the table and you bring something else. Sometimes you’re going to step up and he’s going to be down here and other times he’s going to step up and you’re going to be down here. The key is awareness of how are you showing up and why are you showing up. For women to understand that feminine power is so powerful. Men love it.
Honestly, I would jump off of a building for feminine energy. That’s what I’ve tried to explain in my masculine voice. It doesn’t get heard a lot, but if they’re in their femininity and allow me to be in my masculinity, I’ll chew through a brick wall for you. I don’t care, I’ll do it. I’m here. Tell me what you want to be done. Who do you want to be buried in the desert? What do you want? Do you want the car painted purple with pink stripes? I don’t care. I’ll do it, just let me be a dude. I want to get two takes. There’s a word that I feel the most as I’ve gone through my own path here that I believe being able to be a dude means.
I would like to hear from your perspective because if you’re in your masculine enough, maybe you forget what feminine tendencies are. If you were talking and you’re coaching a class of women that are powerful. I have such high respect for powerful businesswomen. I think that they’re smarter in a lot of ways than guys and they’re able to get a lot more things done than men. Most of my companies, they’re run by women. I choose to surround myself with high-powered women. I have a group of them that I can filter things through and try to discern people’s intentions for me that I can’t do. There’s so much power about a woman and about feminine energy. What is it that you think that women need to be reminded of these days?
I want to give examples of how something can work when you allow it. I’m going to give examples of specific dates and these are specific dates that I’ve had where you’re allowing the man to be the man. I am using myself as an example. I’m a very busy single mom. I have two businesses. I’m in my masculine a lot, but I love being a girl. There are two different examples. One guy says, “I’ve made our reservations at 11:30 at LeBear’s for lunch,” and when I got there he was already out on the patio sitting there like I didn’t have to think about a thing. That person had it down. I was like, “This is making my life so much better.” You’re allowing. Someone else who said, “I’m going to pick you up at 6:00. Don’t worry about anything. I got it handled.” I didn’t have to think about anything, nothing. Picked it up, went for a picnic and went to the beach. When you let the guy handle things and you don’t micromanage like, “Where is it? What am I supposed to wear? What about this?” which is a lot of times where women go.
Women are multitasking. They have a lot of things going on. We need to control things. When you say, “I’m not going to control.” It’s a conscious decision to say, “I’m going to let him and trust him and appreciate him for what he’s bringing to the table so I can be something else.” You have to have that appreciation back when you start questioning whether you’re in a relationship or not or just dating. When you start questioning or nitpicking or it’s not the way you want, then those are the times you’re chipping away. You’re not allowing this to be the full capacity of what this relationship could be if you each take a role and let him do that. The guy has to want to do that because the guy that calls up and goes, “Where do you like? Would you like this? Where do you want to go? Is this okay?” That’s super annoying.
A guy would go because I know some guys that do that. In my instances before I’ve asked because if you were allergic to sushi, I got to know. You hate fish. I hate Mexican food and then I take you to one of those places because I’m like, “I get stuff done.” You and I have that in common. When you ask the question, “Do you prefer this food or that food?” Especially in the Tony Robbins world, Tony said that you needed to be decisive. Why aren’t you being decisive? That’s probably the wrong way to handle that approach.
Relationships: Allowing a man to be the man makes life so much better.
In our perspective yes, especially if you’re getting to know someone and you don’t know what they like. If someone picked me up for sushi, I hate sushi. It’s more the overarching thing of the men step up a little bit to take the initiative and the women appreciate it and then everybody can be their best self. Women that are not secure in who they are that have their defenses up and men too when you have your defenses up you can’t let somebody else be like, “Thank you,” or whatever. You’re giving what you have inside. All of it comes down to what do you have inside that you can give? The two sexes understand each other, but first and foremost understand yourself because only when you come to that place of like, “I know who I am.”
I had one girl who wanted to go on a date with this guy and she told him that she liked camping because he loved camping. She hated camping. They went camping and it was terrible. She cried and was everything she didn’t want. You have to be okay in saying, “I don’t like that. That’s not my thing.” If you go meet somebody for lunch or a drink or whatever and you know who you are and it doesn’t matter what that other person thinks. That’s what’s attractive is when you are your true self when you go into that space because you know it. You’re not trying to make it fit into what the other person thinks it should be.
If I was going to be nervous about part of our relationship, this is it. This is that part. I want to talk about it because as far as evolution, I believe myself to be an intellectual guy that works through stuff. When I come up against a problem like when I had three failed marriages, I dove into that. When I wanted to know about religion, I dove into religion. I’m a seeker of knowledge so that I can understand. When I came out of that third relationship and then in and out of it, the basic thing was that I had cheated and I had broken trust with this woman who’s phenomenal. She’s the mother to my two children.
This is the last one. We went on to have another child together even after we got divorced but I had broken that bond of trust. After that, we went back together and then failed and back together. Sometimes she was setting up for failure and then other times I was setting up. Ultimately, it was because I had lied and broken trust that caused all of this in the first place. You advance past that and I go, “Why do I keep doing this?” That’s when I discovered, “I lied about stupid stuff my entire life because of my upbringing. I didn’t want to get beat up or whatever the case may be.” That stuck with me as an uninspected weakness.
I advanced past that and I go, “I want to know about the relationship because evidently, I suck at them.” I suck at relationships and I don’t blame the women that I was with. I understand where my participation was in each one of those failures. I get it. Past that then I go, “I’m going to try something different. How about 100% honesty,” which has a whole bag of problems of its own, but then how do you craft that into relationships?” For me, it was new. There are a lot of people that had been raised properly and they’re taught that lying is bad and whatever. There are a lot of those people, but I wasn’t one of them. For me, this whole honesty in a relationship thing was brand new. I said, “I’m going to go completely the other direction and I’m going to be honest. If I’m honest, then when I see a girl walk by that I’m attracted to, I’m going to say, “She’s hot.”
Being honest, I don’t want to hurt somebody’s feelings. I understand that. Being honest was, “Do I genuinely think that I’m never going to be sexually interested in another female for the rest of my life?” I really wanted to know. I messed up a good relationship by being dishonest and not digging into this stuff. I wanted to know. I went completely into this and I started reading books about open relationships and about the coupling of the human race. Where religion, marriage is around control of masses of people and different opinions than what I had originally had. I went far into that. I started going on dates and I would have this conversation. I would say, “I’m attracted to you. I want it to be more than a sexual encounter but here’s the truth. You’re not going to ever be the only one. Here’s the thing, I’ll introduce you to my other girlfriends and all this other stuff, but I’m never going to lie to you.”
Is this all a true story?
100% true. This is the part that makes me nervous talking about because I’m a private person.
[bctt tweet=”What’s attractive is when you are your true self because you’re not trying to make fit into what the other person thinks you should be.” via=”no”]
My first question, “Is that how you felt or was that a defense mechanism to not be in that space again?” What if you fall massively in love with someone that you said, “You’re never going to be the only one, you’re going to meet the other ones?”
I want you to chastise me, but I want you to wait. Let me finish because I want to get through this because it’s been a journey. This is a particular spot in my curiousness. What I found was in these conversations and in these relationships from smart, powerful, brilliant, beautiful women. The first reaction was, “Screw that. I’m out.” A couple of weeks later, I would get a text because I asked this question at the end. I genuinely want to know. I’m curious. You know me long enough to understand that this isn’t a douchebag move. This was a genuine wanting to experiment with why I was failing in a relationship. I would have the conversation and I would ask the question, “Have you ever cheated?”
Most of the time, the answer is yes on both sides of the equation. “Have you been cheated on?” Most of the time, the answer is yes. “Have you ever been the reason somebody else has cheated?” My brain goes, “Everybody’s in an open relationship and most people are lying to each other.” You’re the only person on the planet that I wanted to have this conversation with out on an open because I want to know how you feel about this. What I found was that I was not out of integrity at all in any of these relationships. That was different for me is that I was in integrity. I was being honest about my feelings. I was being honest about my desires.
Letting a dude be a dude, the one word that comes to mind for me is freedom. It’s not all been smooth sailing. There are always emotions in a relationship and all this other stuff. I’ve had genuine good conversations with super brilliant women that were honest with me and I was honest with them. When we start bumping up against that freedom, it’s not freedom for me to be a man whore. That’s not what I’m saying. I want to clarify. It’s not about being a man whore. I was afraid of this coming out in the wrong way, but it’s about freedom.
What happened was in that freedom, I rarely stray. Every once in a while it would happen or whatever, but I found in that freedom it’s a lot of work. For me to go out and to chase down another relationship and to have sex and to do all the stuff that goes along with that. Not to sound like a jerk, but you got to talk to them. You have to text. You have to communicate. There’s all this stuff that goes along with that. I played that through in my head and instead of it being I can’t do it, I could do it and I chose not to. 97% of the time I chose not to act on that desire because I had given myself the freedom and was communicating honestly with the people that were in my life in that particular role. Could I have that freedom in one relationship? I don’t know.
Everybody has a different journey. Some journeys are extreme and some journeys are safe and you are an extreme guy. I wouldn’t expect you to say, “I’m going to do this in the dating world.” To understand all extremes to figure out what sits right for you makes a lot of sense. From my initial, “Why would any woman say okay to that?” Women would say okay to that. There are some that will and there are some that want that. Our society tends to think it’s that men sleep with people and men are this. Women do it too.
That was part of the other side of the equation was it wasn’t one-sided. The issue was you can do whatever you want too. The first time that happened and somebody goes, “I’ve got a date with somebody else.” I go, “The hell you do.”
Exactly my line of questioning is when you think about what you want, which is where we start, what we want. You say it, “I want this freedom.” Are you okay if they have it too?
Relationships: There’s so much freedom in just being able to say how you feel, what you’ve done, and why you’ve done that.
The first time I wasn’t and I got okay with it in a great way. For me to think that I’m the end all, be all that you’re never going to be attracted to somebody else or whatever it is. It’s as dumb for me to think it is. It is for somebody else to think it. When I got through that, I transitioned it into a different meaning for myself that made it good and made it fun and made it a sexual thing. It was different and fun, but my initial reaction was like, “I get to do what I want. This is about me. You don’t get to go out and go on many dates. Are you kidding me?”
I hear a lot because I end up like I am their counselor. You have to share where you’ve been to understand where you’re going. You have to if you want something sustainable. You’ve explained it where you were, I personally don’t subscribe to that philosophy, but I don’t judge anybody who does it if it’s part of your journey. I am a huge fan of being honest. I tell people that all the time in the dating world, “Be honest.” Not like, “That chick’s hot,” when you’re walking down the street. That’s going to get you nowhere. Be honest with how you’re feeling at the time.
If you’re not ready to be in a relationship or if somebody is not ready to have sex yet or if someone is ready but the other person’s not. You have to say why. It’s either going to work or it’s not going to work. When you’re honest, then at least you can never go back and feel guilty later or that person can’t say, “You did this to me.” You told them and then they made a conscious choice to either be in a relationship or not even be in a relationship or have sex or not have sex or whatever it is they’re doing. Be honest about it.
It was fascinating to me because of the relationships with people that never would have imagined I can hear people’s wheels. When I’m having this conversation they’re like, “There are some kinds of women that would do that.” If you met them and knew them before, you would go, “The last person on the face of the planet you think would go down this path.” A lot of times, the conversation that I would have would end in, “I’m not interested in that relationship.” It saves months and months of BS of saying, “Why am I way through this?” so that I can get laid or whatever people think when they’re at these deals. I would much rather have a genuine conversation about that path and that’s what I did and what I’ve done. In advancing past that story, to your point was this a defense mechanism? To a certain degree, I have to be honest with you, I don’t think I do. I do want a relationship someday. Is now that day?
I say this jokingly and I’ve said it a million times. The only person that I would ever marry again would be my ex-wife, the third one that we had the two kids and I lied and cheated and all this. If I was ever to get married again, it would be to her because she’s such a spectacular human being and my first wife is one of my best friends as you’ve seen. Do I want a relationship? I’ve always kept the door open. If I’m being honest, I’ve always kept people at arm’s length because just in case. In case that other relationship was going to come back or another one came along that made me feel that passionate about wanting to be with that person. Do I want a relationship? Everybody at some point and some level want a relationship. I’m okay not being in a relationship now and enjoying my life and making a lot of contribution. I’m growing a lot. I’m doing the comedy thing and the acting thing. There are lots of stuff to keep me busy. I don’t find myself particularly lonely and I know that that’s a poison thing for a lot of people that they’re lonely.
Do your kids ask you? Do they ask you why you don’t?
My kids, since I divorced their mom, they’ve never seen me with another female.
Do they ask?
[bctt tweet=”Everybody has a different journey. Some journeys are extreme and some journeys are safe.” via=”no”]
Strangely enough, no.
Some kids do.
They don’t ask which is weird. I’m wondering why they haven’t asked.
It’s because you’re busy. They’ve seen you with people all the time.
They’ve literally never seen me in a romantic scenario or holding hands or being intimate at any level with any female. I hate when you see women that bring guys in and out and the kids are falling in love and then they break their heart. I’m not being judgmental because people do whatever they got to do. For me, if it wasn’t going to elevate itself to that one singular relationship, I never push it. Anytime anybody would push me to say, “I’d like to meet your kids,” and all that stuff, that’s when I would be like, “I need to break it off because it’s reaching that point.” No, they haven’t asked and I have never introduced them to another female ever.
That’s good parenting.
I love my kids. They are the light of my life, all of them, even the troubled one that’s like me. She knows who she is. I bared my soul. I’m going to have a whole new level of hatred for me out there. You’re going to have the feminist pounding on your door. We did a number on our careers. What do you think?
There’s so much freedom in being able to say how you feel and what you’ve done and why you’ve done that. Haters are going to hate. As a society, we can go more into being like, “This is who we are.” There are many things I learned from Deepak and one of the biggest ones was detachment and practicing non-judgment. When you’re dating, especially for anybody that’s out there dating, many times you’re going to like somebody and they don’t like you and vice versa. That needs to be part of the journey. When you start criticizing them or getting upset about it or all of those things, you need to detach and practice non-judgment and let it go. My so what bucket is one of my favorite things. That goes in the so what bucket. You’re not always going to have a match. More times than not, you’re not going to have a match.
Relationships: We all have to embrace our stories and get to our truth and decide what we want and who we want to go through life with, and then go make it happen.
Trusting and keep coming back to trusting that you have to put yourself out there if you do want it. I know you’re not in that space, but a lot of people are. If you do want it to keep putting yourself back out there and keep your mindset strong. The person that doesn’t look like their picture, the person that puts up asinine pictures online, their profiles are dumb. They lie. They can do whatever they want to do. That’s not your person. It is important for anybody that is doing online dating to have some pre-screening questions where you ask prior to going to meet them. No one wants to go have a dinner or a drink or lunch or coffee even with somebody that isn’t telling me the truth or that you know is not going to be a match. You have to be a smart dater.
Let’s talk a little bit about your service. If you sat down with me and we had a conversation and you go, “Jason, what is it that you’re looking for?” Do you do that screening for your clients?
For the candidates, those are the ones that are in the database. They fill the questionnaire and anybody can. The questionnaire feeds into my database. When I do matching for my client, I’ll see all the choices of the candidates. For the clients, we do a few phone calls. I do a session where I’m trying to understand, “Can I help them?” because I have to feel we’re a good match and they have to feel I’m a good match for them. Getting clear on what they want, why they want it, are they realistic and all those pieces and then the process will go. I’ll help them if they sign on as a client. Everybody that they need will be pre-screened and then the feedback that comes back is truly where a lot of the golden nuggets come from because you’ll hear things that you wouldn’t have known.
You can go on a date and never hear from somebody again and you don’t know why. I’ll know why and I’ll know the things that people are doing right and wrong and help them tweak and get into the next space better. You need to know what you’re doing wrong. I tend to get a lot of people that are divorced and then they don’t know what they’re doing. They’re back out there and they don’t know how they’re doing. They need some help along the way. It’s a learning process and I want people to keep embracing the journey because it is the journey. It’s not like when you look at it as, “Where’s my person? That’s not it. Another bad date.”
None of that supports you and all the vibrations come down and you’re attracting at a lower level. That is a recipe for disaster. To get clear on what you are looking for and putting that out there. I want to tell you about the event that I had to get your opinion on this. I’ve seen this for many years. It was a singles event and it was hand-selected. It was 40 men and 40 women. I put it up, 40 women sign up almost instantaneously. They got tickets. The men dragged their feet. I’m like, “There are 40 quality, pre-screened women here. Why are you dragging your feet? I’m curious about what that is.”
The first thing I would hear as a guy. If I’m hearing, “There’s this great event. There are 40 women and 40 dudes and you guys are going to go,” is, “Don’t you know who I am?” Do you want me to be genuine? I’m saying that guys think more of themselves than they should. I am no exception.
You wouldn’t want to go to that?
I would rather see the numbers skewed a little bit because what I’m thinking to myself, I’m being honest. I shouldn’t be being dishonest because it’s going to get me in trouble. There are three different levels. I need to get there early. I need to pick off the hottest one and we need to get out of this joint. That’s level number one. Level number two is you go in and maybe I’m a little bit late and somebody that I was attracted to is going to be gone. I’m stuck this entire night in this social. I’m shaking hands with my competition and we’re trying to create this awkward conversation. I’m giving you feedback. This is what I would think. Thirdly, what if it’s like baseball and I didn’t get picked to play? I’m leaving rejected. If it was put on by you, I would show up because you’re amazing. I know it would be a high-quality event. I’m saying when I hear, “40 dudes and 40 girls,” no.
Why would women want to go if there were fewer men than women? Why do men think that that’s a good idea?
You asked me what the guys were thinking. I’m 47. I’ve been divorced three times. Do you want me to give you advice on what women think? I’m miserable at this.
A lot of them had to be handheld to get there. Those are a certain amount of ones that are like, “I’m in. That sounds great. Let’s do this.” I love those people. Those are my favorite people in life. You say yes and no expectations and I’m going to meet cool new people.
[bctt tweet=”You have to share where you’ve been to understand where you’re going. ” via=”no”]
I would go because it was you. You have my trust. I would go with all of those thought processes going through my head guaranteed.
I did have one guy give me that suggestion. If I go and there are 40 women and nobody likes me, then I feel like an idiot.
I don’t ever think that about myself, but it could be a damaging thing to somebody. I tell people all the time I only have one feeling and it’s buried underneath of a mountain of unresolved issues so you’re not going to hurt it.
When I first started my business I said, “I’m taking men as clients and having females as the candidates.” That changed over time because there are women out there that have money and they want help and they’re successful. If I have a male client, I go approach women. I talk to them, ‘Who do you know?” I say, “I have this great male client. This is what he’s like. Are you interested?” Women’s like, “I’d love to meet him.” Flip it. I have the female client talking to men about the female client. “No, I don’t need any help. Why does she have to pay?” It goes into this whole skepticism, whereas the women are all embracing of it and the men are like, “No.” It made my life too difficult. It had nothing to do with the women. The women were fabulous. That’s an interesting scenario.
I’m super old school. If I was to go on a date and somebody wanted to pay, I already know she’s not my person. That is one huge indicator that I am not going to get along. I would probably love to be in business with that person or doing business with that person. I know. I get it. Pigheaded, old school, caveman. This is the cave. My studio is my cave. I have a cohost, this is my cohost. It’s bananas. Being the caveman that I am, I’m not interested. Cheer it on. There are a lot of guys out there that would enjoy that. They have different personalities and God bless them. It takes all kinds for this world to go around. I don’t judge anybody but I do know myself and I want to be the one providing.
When the female is the client and she’s paying, it upsets the dynamics of the two roles.
If you’re asking my opinion, I believe it does.
That’s precisely why I stopped taking female clients because it doesn’t work. I want people to keep putting themselves back out there. You have to. Online dating has a place when you can do it smart. Someone helping you is another way. Telling your friends and your business and your associates are many ways that you can meet people. You have to keep doing it and keep being your best self so that the right person can come along. When you do find that person, you kick into a different gear. It’s not like, “I’ve found him,” now you have to work on that. That’s a lifetime of making that happen and committing to that.
My son’s been hearing about this since he’s been three because he’s heard Tony Robbins, he’s heard all about my dating stories. One day in particular, I had two couples stop dating. They both stopped dating because of the dog. That wasn’t the reason, but it was the straw for both of them on the same day and it was about the dog sleeping in the bed. One, the girl is like, “No way is the dog sleeping in the bed,” and the guy’s like, “My dog slept in my bed my entire life. It’s not going to stop sleeping in the bed now.” There are all those other things that come into play when you go into the next space. You find them but then there are a lot to take into consideration.
Genuinely, do you have hope for long-term relationships still at this point in your life?
I do believe I’m happy when people find each other and I do think it’s possible, it’s probable. I do truly believe that or I wouldn’t do what I do. I also know that it’s work.
I had a lot of stuff to deal with. Everybody does at their own level. I’m proud of the fact that I have committed to working on myself and to become self-aware about these ideas and things that I love about myself that I don’t want to change. Some things that I know that still need to evolve and do need to shift and change as I move on. The relationship is one of those areas that are super touchy and I’ve seen it take good people down when they make the wrong decision of who they’re with. I’ve seen it accelerate otherwise moronic men into success when they have the right woman. I don’t know what else to say or else to put it that way. This was a great conversation. I enjoyed it and I’m glad that you created the space for me to feel comfortable to be able to do this. It’s an important question. This has been powerful.
It’s all about embracing your story. We all have to embrace our stories, get to our truths, decide what we want, who we want to go through life with, and then go make it happen or not. My personal belief is to make it happen. The majority of people do, especially the people in my world. It’s deciding where you are now. Are you happy with it? Are you happy alone? Are you happy with a good relationship? Are you happy with a bad relationship? Could it be better? How is it going to be better? How are we going to grow together? There are a million topics, subtopics that go around it, but it’s deciding are you happy where you are now and what are you going to do to get there?
One of the things that I’m happiest about in my life, my career, my development is that I have reached past the point of BS at all. I don’t have the energy. We need to get more people there and the only way I know how to do it is by leading by example. This conversation will see the light of day and it’s going to be stuff that’s going to haunt me for years and years. I guarantee it.
When anybody opens their self up, you give someone else permission to open up too. That’s the whole point. I believe that we’re all here to help each other with what we have and what we’ve done to allow someone else to step into their truth and say their truth. Now, we can help each other and move forward.
You’re the greatest coach of all time for people to get in touch with and to talk about this and your success. Who you are as a human being, it’s ridiculous. You’re kind, you’re brilliant. You’re beautiful, you’re accomplished. You do want to add service back in the world. Ultimately, that’s why the show exists is to ease suffering in the world. A lot of people suffer in a relationship. I know I certainly have and I’m proud of you. I enjoy watching your path and the difference you make in people’s lives and how many people love you and I’m one of them.
Not many people get to the place where they can contribute at the level that you contribute all over the world and the fact that comes from pain. When I do talk about you, which I do and I tell people to connect with you, I tell the foundation of your story because it helps them understand this isn’t someone that’s like, “You look at this big successful person in the business.” When I was in Vegas, I was listening to Tony speak, but also Kevin O’Leary from Shark Tank was there speaking. He was talking about his story too. Everybody’s got a journey. You look at him now, this great big person, but his story and boundaries and where he was are we all have something. We got to get there and support each other. Thank you for having me on here.
It’s my pleasure. Thanks for being here. This is going to be a valuable show if nothing else but to my haters and maybe to some feminists out there who want to bash you for your old opinions and your old school thought processes. They can bring it on because the problem is that neither one of us cares anymore because we have enough people that love us. That’s where we focus our energy and our attention. I believe that life is about meaning and about controlling the meaning in our life. I believe that haters exist out there to give us all their power and to give us all their ingenuity and all of their creativity because they’re giving it to us. I’ve got to go find a movie because I always envision they’re sucking the life force out of somebody. Maybe like Harry Potter, he’s trying to suck his life force out.
When I have a hater and somebody that trusts me, there are people that I’ve earned their hate because I always tell people, “If you hear something about me, it’s probably true and probably a little bit worse.” I feel when they can’t get over it or they’re lying, I have a couple of those that make stuff up because it is what it is. I feel their life force and I’m getting their creativity and their energy and their power because they’re giving it to me. The fact that they’re talking about me, the fact that they’re taking the time to type words in that my beard sucks or, “He’s bald or did you know he beat people up for a living?” I’ve pretty much told all that myself and I love being able to transform that into a powerful message. Definitely, we’re going to have another conversation.
Anytime, I have lots to talk about.
I know you do and you’re brilliant. I want people to visit you at your website and it’s TraciPorterfield.com. Thank you.
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About Traci Porterfield
Traci Porterfield is a Dating Coach, Matchmaker, CEO and Founder of Love by Design, a personalized matchmaking and relationship coaching service, and Creator of the online course, LoveShifting. With a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, and over 20 years experience with recruiting and coaching, she founded her matchmaking company after years as a Vice-President with self-help author, “peak performance coach” and success guru, Tony Robbins, where she learned about the importance of getting clarity on what we want our life to look like and taking massive action to make it happen.
In addition, Traci also served 8 years on the Senior Leadership Team on behalf of Dr. Deepak Chopra, a pioneer in integrative medicine, consciousness, and the mind/body/spirit connection.
She uses her serendipitous combination of personal development, professional recruiting, coaching and highly developed intuitive skills to help others embrace the dating journey, feel empowered by the process and ultimately Raise their Dating IQ.
Traci lives in Carlsbad, CA with her 16-year-old son, Cade, and her rescue dog, Fergie.
Learn more at www.traciporterfield.com