Divorce Coaches Academy

Tracy Callahan and Debra Doak

Divorce Coaches Academy podcast hosts Tracy Callahan and Debra Doak are on a mission to revolutionize the way families navigate divorce. We discuss topics to help professional divorce coaches succeed with clients and meet their business goals and we advocate (loudly sometimes) for the critical role certified divorce coaches play in the alternative dispute resolution process. Our goal is to create a community of divorce coaching professionals committed to reducing the financial and emotional impact of divorce on families.

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Top 10 Divorce Coaches Academy Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Divorce Coaches Academy episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Divorce Coaches Academy for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Divorce Coaches Academy episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

What the Recent Election Can Teach Us About Conflict Resolution

Divorce Coaches Academy

12/18/24 • 28 min

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These days we seem to be living in a society defined by us versus them, black and white thinking, intolerance, fixed mindsets, and lack of curiosity. Not only is conflict remaining unresolved, but our interactions (especially online) seem to pour more gasoline on the fire rather than cooling it off. We see conflict spiraling and escalating at an alarming rate and there seems to be less interest in trying to find common ground or solutions. It’s almost like people are itching for a fight.
We’ve seen family members stop speaking to each other, long time friendships disintegrate and workplaces become minefields.
The question is...where can we go from here? Are we just destined to continue down a path of divisiveness or is there a way to move toward relationship and restoration? We believe that whether it’s politics or divorce and co-parenting, we can apply the same aspects of conflict resolution to both politics and divorce.

Listen in as we explore 6 lessons grounded in the electoral process's emphasis on structure, fairness, and engagement, and how we can adapt them to personal and professional conflict resolution scenarios as well.

Learn more about DCA® or any of the classes or events mentioned in this episode at the links below:
Website: www.divorcecoachesacademy.com
Instagram: @divorcecoachesacademy
LinkedIn: divorce-coaches-academy
Email: [email protected]

The 5 Most Common (and Expensive) Divorce Mistakes

Divorce Coaches Academy

07/17/24 • 28 min

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We're reaching to our back catalog to share one of the most popular episodes as Tracy and Debra take a quick summer break. We'll be back next week with brand new content!
When people find out what we do, it's not unusual to hear “UGH, I wish I’d known you when I went through my divorce. I made so many mistakes.” In this episode, we’re reviewing the five common mistakes people make and talk about how a divorce coach helps clients sidestep those mistakes and save time, money, relational damage and emotional energy.

Right now the average divorce with attorneys in the US will cost each party somewhere in the neighborhood of $15-20,000 and can easily exceed 6 figures when you add in custody battles, forensic accounting, discovery, depositions, motions, and all the other professionals and processes. Certainly legal fees can add up quickly when conflict escalates, but there are many other costs that clients pay when divorce mistakes are made.

When clients are stressed and overwhelmed and/or driven by emotions like anger, sadness, vengeance, jealousy, or indecision, their lives are impacted on every level. While those costs are much harder to quantify, they aren’t hard to observe. And when people are experiencing these costs of divorce, they may act and make decisions that don’t reflect their best selves or their best interests.
Listen in as Tracy and Debra dive into the 5 most expensive divorce mistakes and talk through the coaching tools you can use with each.

The Right Divorce Help at the Right Price: Start with Affordable Group Coaching

Divorce Coaches Academy

06/12/24 • 32 min

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Our featured guest today, Heather Cary, is a trusted member of the DCA team and is an experienced Divorce and Co-Parenting Coach and Mediator who is dually certified as a DCA® Certified ADR Divorce Coach and a CDC® Certified Divorce Coach. She holds a Masters of Education, is certified as a New Ways For Families Co-Parent Coach, is trained as a Mediator, serves as a Parent Educator in her local area, and is a member of the Oregon Association of Collaborative Professionals.
Today, Heather and Debra talk about the benefits of support groups for individuals going through divorce. Specifically we discuss the advantages of a professionally facilitated group like the affordable ones offered at DCA for just $75/month.
People often seek information, advice, and support from friends, family, Google or Facebook but because that information is generic, it doesn't always help clients make the best decisions for themselves.
The DCA groups are facilitated by certified, professional ADR divorce coaches who are committed to offering both information and personal support in a consistent and safe online environment for topics like:

How to stay sane while on the emotional rollercoaster
How to negotiate effectively with your STBX (soon to be ex)
How to make hard decisions with confidence
How to parent your kids through this transition
How to get organized and prepared
How to save money and understand your options
How to make the best use of time with your attorney

Listen in to learn how DCA is combining community support and professional divorce coaching for just $75/month and how it can provide amazing benefits for you, your clients, and families.
Group Coaching: www.divorcecoachesacademy.com/groups

Navigating Conflict: The Surprising Benefits of Marital Mediation vs. Couples Counseling

Divorce Coaches Academy

05/01/24 • 27 min

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Couples facing challenges or difficulties in their marriage have traditionally turned to couples counseling or marriage therapy for help. And we often hear from clients who are now deciding whether to stay or go that they found the experience of couples counseling to be quite frustrating with lots of blame and finger pointing and little to no resolution of the issues at hand. But what if married couples had another choice?

Enter Marital Mediation.
While both couples counseling and marital mediation share the overarching goal of promoting healthier, more harmonious relationships, they differ significantly in their approaches, methodologies, and intended outcomes.
Couples counseling focuses on exploring and understanding relational dynamics, emotions, and patterns of interaction. Therapists in couples counseling often adopt a more directive or interventionist stance, offering guidance, feedback, and psycho-education to promote positive change.
Marital mediation, by contrast, emphasizes practical problem-solving and negotiation skills. Mediators in marital mediation maintain a neutral stance, refraining from offering advice or solutions. Instead, they facilitate dialogue, negotiation, and problem-solving, empowering couples to generate their own solutions and agreements.
As ADR modalities and processes are becoming more commonly used by families in conflict, we are seeing an expansion of the practice of marital mediation or couples mediation. By offering couples a future focused, problem solving approach, we hope to be able to create agreements that allow the couple to navigate conflict and remain in relationship.

Get Free Access to 27 Divorce Coaching Pros at the Save Your Sanity Divorce Summit

Divorce Coaches Academy

04/03/24 • 18 min

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We can’t believe it’s finally time to share this news. We’ve been working behind the scenes for months to get ready to present this incredible event and now we get to announce it to the world. Registration is now open for the Free Save Your Sanity Divorce Summit - the first ever online event featuring 27 professional certified divorce coaches. It’s our dream, honestly, and it’s happening April 22nd through the 26th.
This thing is big - it’s 5 full days and includes 25 individual talks given by DCA trained coaches covering 6 topic areas including preparing for divorce, co-parenting and custody, conflict and safety, emotional wellness, legal and financial decision making and recovery after divorce.
The main message of the Summit is “Divorce doesn’t have to wreck your mental health, empty your bank account or derail your future”. We want attendees to take away practical tips to help them experience divorce and co-parenting in a way that puts less stress on their bank account and their personal wellness. And we hope they learn that working with a DCA trained divorce coach is the key to saving their sanity and their money.
And did we mention that it’s FREE? It’s absolutely zero cost to register and attend any speaker talk on the schedule. There is an option to upgrade to a VIP ticket for just $49 which will provide exclusive access to the VIP panel discussions, allow you to watch replays of all the talks for 30 days, and enter you to win some extra prizes.

Sign up now: Save Your Sanity Divorce Summit

Avoiding Emotional Contagion: Protecting Yourself From Prickly People

Divorce Coaches Academy

01/24/24 • 23 min

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This week we had a great networking event where we discussed the popular TED Talk, "How to avoid catching prickly emotions from other people". Did you know there's a cactus nicknamed the "jumping cholla" for it's tendency to seemingly shoot cactus spines into unsuspecting passersby?
The same thing can happen when we get too close to people having big emotions. When a spouse or co-parent is angry, hostile or negative, we can get hurt if we catch those feelings from them. Today we’re going to give you and your clients some information and tools to avoid this “jumping cholla effect” or what we call emotional contagion.
First we dig into how emotional contagion happens, where emotion comes from and how to work with clients to raise awareness about how their beliefs, expectations and even physical symptoms can contribute to this process.
Then we offer some strategies we call "bubble wrap" to provide protection from any pricks that might be flying your way. These include understanding mirror neurons; cognitive reappraisal; "OK, So what, Now What"; and of course, boundaries.

Here’s to staying safe out there.
Watch the TED Talk: Catching Prickly Emotions
Find a DCA® Divorce Coach: www.divorcecoachesacademy.com/coach-locator
Learn more about DCA® or any of the classes or events mentioned in this episode at the links below:
Website: www.divorcecoachesacademy.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/divorcecoachesacademy
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/divorce-coaches-academy
Email: [email protected]

The 5 Most Expensive Divorce Mistakes

Divorce Coaches Academy

12/13/23 • 28 min

Send Us a Message (include your contact info if you'd like a reply)

When people find out what we do, it's not unusual to hear “UGH, I wish I’d known you when I went through my divorce. I made so many mistakes.” In this week's episode, we’re reviewing the five common mistakes people make and talk about how a divorce coach helps clients sidestep those mistakes and save time, money, relational damage and emotional energy.

When clients are stressed and overwhelmed and/or driven by emotions like anger, sadness, vengeance, jealousy, or indecision, their lives are impacted on every level. While those costs are much harder to quantify, they aren’t hard to observe.
Studies show that an employee can lose 40% of their productivity when going through a divorce, costing many companies millions of dollars in lost revenue. Clients who are struggling to manage their own emotions aren’t able to attend to the emotions or needs of their children in a healthy way. And when people are experiencing these costs of divorce, they may act and make decisions that don’t reflect their best selves or their best interests.
Listen in as Tracy and Debra dive into the 5 most expensive divorce mistakes and talk through the coaching tools you can use with each.
Learn more about DCA® or any of the classes or events mentioned in this episode at the links below:
Website: www.divorcecoachesacademy.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/divorcecoachesacademy
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/divorce-coaches-academy
Email: [email protected]

Why Uncertainty Fuels Conflict (And 4 Divorce Coaching Strategies)

Divorce Coaches Academy

11/15/23 • 22 min

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In last week's episode, we talked about why people resist change and did a quick review of the 5 SCARF domains - status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. Today, we want to dive deep into the domain of certainty and discuss how uncertainty impacts both resistance to change and conflict.

We consistently see a perfect storm of someone’s tolerance for risk, their resilience and their emotional intelligence come together to either weather the uncertainty and changes that divorce brings or create more waves by feeling afraid and resisting them.
To the human mind, uncertainty equals danger. If your brain doesn't know what’s coming next, it can’t protect you. So it has a tendency to assume the worst, over-personalize threats, and jump to conclusions. Did you know that our brains find psychological uncertainty just as (if not more) painful than actual physical pain?
We crave certainty and safety. No wonder the uncertainty of divorce has the potential to create so much chaos.
We discuss the results of scientific studies as well as research with elite athletes and then share 4 coaching strategies and some powerful questions to use with clients struggling with uncertainty.
Our role is to support clients in their resilience, their decision making, and their emotional management so they are in the best possible position possible to deal with the almost guaranteed uncertainty that comes along with divorce and co-parenting.

Learn more about DCATM or any of the classes or events mentioned in this episode at the links below:
Nov TED Talk Discussion Group: Sign Up Here
Website: www.divorcecoachesacademy.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/divorcecoachesacademy
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/divorce-coaches-academy
Email: [email protected]

Arguing With Questions: A Negotiator’s Secret Weapon

Divorce Coaches Academy

08/30/23 • 23 min

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In previous episodes, we’ve covered conflict styles, some magic words to use in mediation and the idea of tiered proposals, but today we're talking about one the most effective negotiation strategies there is - and that’s arguing with questions.
We’ve talked before about the ineffectiveness of positional bargaining, but it’s often the only way our clients have been taught to negotiate. They make the mistake of starting off negotiations by stating their position and then proceeding to JADE (justify, argue, defend or explain) why their position is valid and their partner should agree to it. JADE-ing continues back and forth and conflict escalates until someone backs down enough to come to a compromise or they walk away and lawyer up.
But there’s another way...and it's arguing with questions.
This is just one reason why divorce coaching can be the key to more successful negotiations. Because we have the chance to work with our clients at the individual level, we can create self-awareness. We have the chance to change those old limiting beliefs about positional bargaining. And we know that when one party shows up differently, the dance doesn’t look the same.
Listen in as Tracy and Debra walk through these 3 tools you can use to help clients learn to argue with questions.

Modeling
Scripts and Vocabulary Lessons
Role Play

Teaching your client to approach conflict with curiosity instead of justification or accusation will serve them well not only in their divorce negotiations, but in all their future relationships.
You can learn more about DCATM or find out about any of the classes or events mentioned in this episode at the links below:
FREE Sept Book Club "Ask for More": Sign Up Now
Website: www.divorcecoachesacademy.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/divorcecoachesacademy
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/divorce-coaches-academy
Email: [email protected]

Email Marketing for Divorce Coaches: Your Secret Weapon

Divorce Coaches Academy

04/23/25 • 28 min

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Have you been pouring endless energy into social media with minimal return for your divorce coaching practice? It might be time to unlock the most powerful marketing tool you're probably neglecting—your email list.
Trust serves as the cornerstone of the coach-client relationship, particularly when guiding someone through the emotional complexities of divorce. While social platforms broadcast your message widely, they lack the intimacy and privacy that email marketing delivers directly to your ideal client's inbox. As we often remind our coaching community, "If social media is the cocktail party, email marketing is meeting up for coffee."
The statistics don't lie—email marketing consistently outperforms social media in conversion rates, especially for service-based businesses like divorce coaching. Why? Because your subscribers have already demonstrated interest by sharing their email address, creating a warm lead that's significantly more likely to become a paying client. Plus, you completely own this asset. No algorithm changes, no shadow bans, no disappearing followers—just a direct line to people who've expressed interest in your expertise.
We walk you through creating compelling lead magnets that address specific pain points for divorcing individuals—from co-parenting communication guides to money-saving divorce checklists. The real magic happens in what follows: a thoughtfully crafted nurture sequence that builds trust, demonstrates your expertise, and gently guides potential clients toward working with you. Most importantly, we share how to confidently extend invitations to your services without coming across as pushy or sales-focused.
Whether you're just starting your coaching practice or looking to grow your established business, this episode provides a clear roadmap for building an email strategy that converts interested prospects into paying clients. Take one action step this week—choose an email provider, brainstorm lead magnet ideas, or draft your first nurture sequence. Your future clients are waiting in your inbox!

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FAQ

How many episodes does Divorce Coaches Academy have?

Divorce Coaches Academy currently has 157 episodes available.

What topics does Divorce Coaches Academy cover?

The podcast is about Entrepreneurship, Divorce, Courses, Podcasts, Education, Mediation and Business.

What is the most popular episode on Divorce Coaches Academy?

The episode title 'Wishful Thinking Won't Build Your Divorce Coaching Practice, But This Will' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on Divorce Coaches Academy?

The average episode length on Divorce Coaches Academy is 26 minutes.

How often are episodes of Divorce Coaches Academy released?

Episodes of Divorce Coaches Academy are typically released every 7 days.

When was the first episode of Divorce Coaches Academy?

The first episode of Divorce Coaches Academy was released on Apr 27, 2022.

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Divorce Coaches Academy

Tracy Callahan and Debra Doak

Top 10 Divorce Coaches Academy Episodes

FAQ

How many episodes does Divorce Coaches Academy have?

What topics does Divorce Coaches Academy cover?

What is the most popular episode on Divorce Coaches Academy?

What is the average episode length on Divorce Coaches Academy?

How often are episodes of Divorce Coaches Academy released?

When was the first episode of Divorce Coaches Academy?

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