The art and science of a dating coach

Evan Marc Katz dating coachLove mentors in demand among rich, educated groups

By Karin Zeitvogel

Americans invented the personal trainer to get physically fit and the career coach to give them a leg-up on the professional ladder.

But once they had hauled their size zero bodies and rippling abs to the very top of the career tree, and paused to allow their fancy to turn to thoughts of love, they realised they were out on a limb.

Enter the dating coach.

Unlike a traditional matchmaker, a dating coach will not arrange a tryst for you, but is “a personal trainer for people who want to fall in love,” one of the pioneers of the genre, Evan Katz, said.

“You have to do the work, you have to lift the weights, but I will guide you to make sure you don’t hurt yourself,” said Katz, who has been coaching people to successful love lives for five years.

His client pool is unlikely to dry up any time soon because, according to Katz, there are tens of millions of single people out there.

The people who employ the services of a dating coach tend to be educated, hard-working and relatively high up on the socio-economic ladder, not least because fees for the service are relatively high and not reimbursed by health insurance, coach Jennifer Viemont said.

(more…)

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SMARTdate teams up with Dating Coach at Sexpo 2007

In a country just opening up to the culture of the dating scene it?s hard when you?re newly single to know what to do or where to go. SMARTdate owner Jenny Cereseto will present a number of workshops, with Ramon Thomas, a well known dating coach over the course of the controversial exhibition, Sexpo with intent to educate single people about the dating game.

“As an exhibitor I want to make the dating concept something people understand and remove any hesitation they may have had in the past,” says Jenny Cereseto, owner of SMARTdate. “Most of my clients find speed dating helps expand their social life and in that way meet new people for dating and relationships. Speed dating is a great way of improving confidence, developing social skills and finding a partner.”

Sexpo began in Australia, where the biggest public exhibition is held. Joburg’s version is expected to draw up to 30 000 visitors. The expo, being held from September 27 to 30th at Gallagher Estate, will host 100 exhibitors offering books, toys, gadgets, health, fashion, dating and lingerie.

“Most people today are overwhelmed by choice. Internet dating and cellphones make things easier and more difficult at the same time,” says Ramon Thomas, South Africa’s #1 Dating Coach. “My mission is to show people how to convey what they have to offer and meet better quality people.”

Some of what men will learn at the Sexpo:
- how to overcome social programming
- attraction vs romance vs love
- advanced body language
- eliciting women’s values
- setting up short, medium and long term relationships

An interesting dichotomy emerges in the dating industry with all online dating and SMS dating companies are run by men with majority of users being men. The opposite holds true for most speed dating and dinner dating companies. They are run by women and attract more women than men to their events. ?Men hide behind their computer or cellphone screens instead of going out and meeting woman,? says Thomas. ? I’m determined to show them how to do it.?

There are currently over 40 dating service providers operating in South Africa. This number excludes most SMS services who come and go and old fashioned social clubs, who advertise mostly in local classifieds. Most dating companies do not offer any advice to their clients. While the worldwide trends are that they partner with dating gurus or life coaches.

Thomas confirms the biggest problem in the dating industry is that there is no regulation. Users of online, speed or SMS dating services have no independent body to report any complaints to for investigation. And Thomas has become the unofficial industry ombudsman.

MEDIA CONTACTS

Ramon Thomas, Dating Coach
Cell. 074 124 1696

Jenny Cereseto, owner SMARTdate
Cell. 072 464-4253

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Anecdotes from my coaching clients and their dating experiences

Here is some anecdotes on problems my coaching clients, who are very successful otherwise, have had when it comes to women:

One guy about 35 was a very good dancer which already sets him apart from most other guys. His problem was he just could not overcome his approach anxiety so he always ended up dancing with women he already knew. I showed him how easy it is to approach women he did not know, initiate a conversation and later on dance with them. Another client of mine is a much older guy who was divorced when I met him. After 20 odd years of marriage he just had no clue how to go about socialising with single people. So we create a social life for him from scratch. First by getting better clothing, second by identifying the best places to meet the kind of women he wanted to meet. And thirdly how to structure conversations using what’s called patters on threads to create deep rapport. He is a very successful guy and has a lot of life experience but his main problem was not being able to convey his best attributes without coming across as bragging.

If you are interested in improving your social success and your dating and relationships with the opposite sex please checkout my coaching program here.

Dating Coach responds to critics in Sunday Times

This is a response I wrote to the Editor of the Metro section of the Sunday Times, in response to readers feedback published here.

Being a dating coach is a part-time interest and my primary occupation is online research. My online dating research project has been widely covered since 2004 in various media ranging from Business Day to True Love, television shows like Carte Blanche, 3Talk as well as the controversial show “SEX, etc” on M-NET last year, with sexologist, Dr Elna McIntosh, where I was interviewed on how the Internet is changing the sexual behaviour of people today. Therefore there is no doubt about my level of professionalism and credibility in this regard.

In general most guys wear lots of bland colours and this results in them all looking very similar. By creating contrast with bright colours a man stands out from the pack and thus uses what is called “peacocking” in evolutionary biology terms. Charles Darwin’s theories on sexual selection explains this phenomenon in great detail and more recently in Matt Ridley’s book, The Red Queen (see chapter 5: The Peacock’s Tale).

Women can buy their own drinks and are not going to bars or clubs for men to do so. Instead they seek stimulation conversations and when a man buys her a drink BEFORE getting to know her it can be considered supplication.

Again giving a woman a compliment before she has an opportunity to demonstrate what is compelling about her, puts the man in the same boat as all the other men who have given her a similar compliment. A woman will value a compliment about something unique or different from the generic, overused, “you’re beautiful” type of compliments that most men give women.

Lastly most men know they should be using condoms. And those who don’t are ignorant of the risks of contracting a sexually transmitted disease. Based on my research the general difference between how men and women view sex is best described by this analogy: when a man sees an attractive woman he first thinks “what would sex be like with her”, while a women seeing an attractive man may think, “what would a relationship be like with him.” You only have to ask yourself why men, over the centuries continue to pay for sex with prostitutes. And you will realise they are in most cases not looking for a relationship with the prostitute, rather they want sexual gratification. So a man who wants to establish a sexual relationship with a woman can avoid falling into the “just friends” category by having a rule that says, if by the third date he has not had sex with her, he should move on because his chances of forming a sexual relationship with her diminishes drastically and she may in fact not be attracted to him for all good reason e.g. lack of confidence.

The aim is not to have sex with every woman you meet but to understand how to form a sexual relationship with a woman that you desire to have one with.

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Sunday Times readers respond to my feature in the Metro

As you may or may not know I was featured in the Sunday Times Metro section (Gauteng only) on 10 September 2008. This interview was done on the previous Thursday and there was a quick photo shoot in Rosebank, Johannesburg.

Well I just came back from a week in Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown where I attended a the first ever blogging conference at Rhodes University. During one of the speed speaking session there was a woman who had read the same article on her flight from Johannesburg, and she asked me how I could give this kind of advice.

This was the advice: If you are a guy and you have not had sex with a woman by the 3rd date, move on! The simple reasoning here is that most guys are not trying to find love, they just want to get laid. And if you have not had sex by 3rd date you are very likely to end up in the friends zone.

This is just one of many tenets from Leykis 101. Yes, I understand South Africa has a high HIV infection rate and I, likeTom Leykis, recommend you always, always wear a condom. Even you married guys, or guys in long term relationships. If you are having risky sexual encounters or anonymous sex with lots of women without any condom you are taking a huge health risk. So be prepared because next to a possible sexually transmitted disease you can also get the woman pregnant and you will have to deal with that consequence as well.

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Contact Info

Head Office Cell. 074 124 1696

Email: faye@ramonthomas.com

Hours: Monday-Thursday 08h00 - 18h00

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