People often coach precisely in the fields where they are most unsuccessful. Single marriage coaches, business coaches whose only business is their coaching business, academic writing specialists who don’t publish academically. These people go into coaching precisely because they feel a lack in their chosen field. They use clients as a bandaid to put over the suppurating sore of their deficiency.
It’s not true that people who are successful in their field don’t coach. It’s normal to want to share your skill and help others. There are absolutely business coaches who have sold multimillion businesses, for example.
Choose a coach who does it out of abundance and not out of lack is my advice.
Clarissa's Blog 
The most popular how-to book about screenwriting is by Syd Field, a guy who never sold a screenplay. For decades it’s been the standard textbook at hundreds of colleges.
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One exception to my point is coaching in fiction writing. Even extremely famous, bestselling authors can’t offer a single crumb of value in their workshops. It’s a complete waste of time.
Screenwriting I know nothing about, so I won’t venture an opinion.
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Out of curiosity, I attended 3 workshops by different mega famous writers. I’m not planning to write fiction. It was simply for informational purposes. All 3 were terrible. The authors dripped in the most insane smugness. They tried to sell their individual story as a recipe that can be mass produced. The word “cringe” doesn’t begin to describe.
All three authors are very talented but that talent lives in the bodies of very mediocre human beings. Which is most often the case.
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I wonder why that is so often the case with writers. Joyce and TS Eliot were not great models of humanity: is egotism a strict requirement in order to be a great author? My favourite Italian writer does not display human qualities that make him likeable, either.
There are exceptions, of course – Proust and Céline (!) come to mind, for example – but generally after I read the biography of some much-loved author I tend to come away deeply disappointed.
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“coach precisely in the fields where they are most unsuccessful”
I’d say it depends. Doing X and being able to tell others how to do X or improve from being okay to great at X are often, not always, but fairly often separate skills.
A number of very successful coaches did not have stellar athletic careers and some great players couldn’t cut it as coaches.
I can see how the same principle applies less to academia but….
https://www.thesportster.com/entertainment/top-15-horrible-athletes-who-made-great-coaches/
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/520877-magic-johnson-wayne-gretzky-and-13-great-players-who-couldnt-coach
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A sports coach is more like an academic administrator. He needs to bring the team together and make it function. His individual success isn’t that important. Making a coherent team that functions together is a talent I don’t possess and no amount of publications will bring me closer to having it.
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“A sports coach … needs to bring the team together”
But I think the principle extends to individual sports as well.
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It’s very possible. My knowledge of sports is worse than anybody can even suppose. 😆😆
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Yeah, tennis is an example of ultrasuccessful athletes being total shit at coaching.
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“ultrasuccessful athletes being total shit at coaching”
Since the olympics are ending…. IIRC in figure skating some of the most successful coaches had very mediocre competitive careers and vice versa some successful athletes were just not very good at coaching others.
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These examples are probably why people think it will work the same with marriage coaches or life coaches but it doesn’t. Tons of single childless wind go into marriage or relationship coaching and produce no Alyssa Lius as a result.
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“people think it will work the same with marriage coaches or life coaches but it doesn’t”
Yeah, it suggests that academic success is more like marriage or general life rather than like sports.
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Does anybody actually think that counselors or coaches can save a marriage? We tried to help separations in family and friends but with little long term success, my wife did a little better by pointing out the likely consequences on the kids. Many involved economic problems, but I have to say that most guys truly did not seem to see it coming.
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What really helps in my opinion is to decide from the start that this is a forever marriage. It’s seeing the end of a marriage as an option that blows up the whole thing.
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Yeah, no-fault definitely questioned the forever belief. Prior to that, divorce were limited to serious breaches, and even then, it required a lengthy period of separation.
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I simply don’t see how it can work if people don’t start from the idea that it’s a forever proposition. The way out of this moral catastrophe lies through the realization that this is destroying the very people it’s supposed to liberate. Divorce impoverishes the people who can least afford it. It robs them of everything that makes life enjoyable. It plunges them into medicalization. There’s no freedom in it, only slavish dependency.
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By the way Kid, how went the turkey? Was going to give you the secrets learned from a serious chef, but figured you probably had enough problems ;-D
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The turkey actually ended up pretty great. I completely redeemed myself from the embarrassment of the Christmas eve Canadian turkey that came out of the oven half-alive.
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Interestingly enough Alyssa Liu and her 4 siblings were all purchased off surrogates. Chinese dad, white egg donors.
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Yes, I heard that the dad was a total creep.
So are the women who donate their eggs. It’s an extremely invasive, harsh procedure, yet these monsters still do it. It’s nothing like donating sperm which I also don’t support but this is on another planet.
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Did you read about how chinese elites are using surrogates to have dozens of babies with american citizenship? This birthright citizenship nonsense has to end.
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It is an outrage. It’s completely unconstitutional and deeply anti-American. Lots of time and energy is being wasted on crap when there are measure that could dramatically improve life in this country.
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one of the three in the Athens philosopher triad said “Those who can’t do, teach.”
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