Laith Saud is the founder of ManAfter, a life coaching company focused on helping men overcome challenges like divorce or embrace responsibilities like parenting.
Q: What exactly is divorce coaching and why do you think it is necessary?
Laith Saud: Divorce coaching is coaching someone through divorce; that means, like a coach in your corner during a boxing match, I coach men on what personal moves to make to avoid a long, costly divorce.
It is necessary because men and women alike often allow their emotions to get involved in the divorce process, creating more pain and greater costs for everyone involved. I realized only at the end of my own process that I walked into a lot of the traps of the divorce industry.
Q: What do you mean the “traps of the divorce industry?”
Laith Saud: Divorce is an industry; there is a certain professional class that makes money off your divorce. The most obvious are divorce lawyers but there are also child lawyers, psychologists and other so-called experts that need your divorce, want your divorce and drag out your divorce.
Enabling someone in a divorce to navigate these relationships is part of what I do.
Q: Is divorce coaching lucrative?
Laith Saud: Actually, not really. I do it because it helps someone in pain, there is still a fee, but there is not the same scale as with other businesses. The pain people go through in divorce and the pain they are subject to by a system looking to rip them off gets passed on to their children and then the world.
Helping people in those difficult circumstances is the right thing to do.
Q: Why do you just focus on men?
Laith Saud: It’s simply a matter of comfort and trust. I have worked with women too, but it has been my experience that, generally speaking, men feel free to communicate with a man they feel will not judge them. And women may feel the same way.
The other factor is referrals; men are more likely to refer other men to our service.
Q: ManAfter not only helps men going through divorce, you also help parents raising sons. How do you do that when you are a girl-dad?
Laith Saud: (laughs) Well, I am a son. And as someone who has experienced my own particularly male challenges, I bring perspective on young men and the challenges they may face without even realizing them.
I have faced most challenges that affect men most; I have been the target of stereotyping as a man of Middle Eastern descent, of false accusations (very common in divorce as well), and just general misunderstanding. But I always came out squeaky clean on the other side of it, because I kept my cool, told the truth and never bended to the emotional pressure.
The whole point of ManAfter is to help men live better lives and become better people after the challenge, hence the name, ManAfter.
