Every so often, a figure enters the group chat and shows an incredible amount of staying power. Last year, my friend Ashley, who is married, sent a video to our chat of a Black man sharing a “cheat code” for dating. Discussion ensued, other videos were shared, and a group chat icon was born. Dating coach Anwar White starts almost every video by saying that he “specializes in getting successful Black and brown women into relationships.” It’s not just that he’s speaking to a group of women who have very specific experiences around dating; it’s that he does so with humor and warmth. He calls himself “your fairy god brother,” and his approachable yet knowledgeable tone immediately makes you feel at ease, even if he’s saying things you may not want to hear.
But where did he come from? A So-Cal native, White studied German, African-American history, and statistics (more on that later) as an undergrad. After a few years abroad, he got his MBA at Columbia and began a career in fashion. As he worked for places like Uniqlo, Versace, and Tom Ford, he was planting the seeds of his current career. White noticed that when he checked in with women friends from grad school, everything was going well for them—except for their love lives. “Me being the type A person I am, I was always telling them, ‘This is crazy! You’re amazing. I’m just gonna take over your love life, and we’re just gonna get this solved for you,” White laughs. “And that’s exactly what I would do, right? So I literally did that for a couple of my friends.” And that’s how Get Your Guy Coaching was born. White offers four tiers of coaching, two of which include group sessions with other women.
This isn’t new for White, though. He recalls bringing boys and girls together on the playground, bridging the masculine and the feminine. “I think being gay has really helped me in this area of being a dating coach because it’s given me a perspective for both the feminine and the masculine to be able to translate in ways that many people might not be able to do so. I’ve been able to navigate a variety of different circles, which has helped me not just as a dating coach but in life as well,” he says.
This distinct placement of identity is part of White’s appeal. He gets you, and he sees you, and he sees (and hears) what you and your girlfriends don’t. For White’s client Kelly Diggs, PhD, a STEM consultant, the fact that he’s a gay man is an absolute plus. She says White is “Someone who has that [male] perspective but doesn’t necessarily want or need anything from me, to give me behind the scenes. The fact that he is a Black man who is in a healthy same-sex relationship, it doesn’t feel like there is any sort of compulsion for him to be like a surrogate boyfriend.” White brings a lot of his own experiences into his coaching, relating to Black and brown women in specific ways while offering an outside insight. He has been Black in corporate America, has had heterosexual men talk over him in meetings, been discounted and judged, sharpening his antennae for the ways in which successful Black and brown women are moving through the world.
As with basically anyone with a large social media following, White has his detractors and doubters, but he seems unbothered. His advice comes from his experience as a coach and the actual data, but as Jilly from Philly once said, everything aint for everybody. “Some people like what I have to say, some people don’t,” he says. “The way that I think about it is based on my experience, and I’m not here to explain that not everything is 100%. And oftentimes, at the end of videos, I will say, ‘Hey, let me know if this applies to you.’ The assumption is not that I know everything.”
White is adamant that he isn’t a therapist. He isn’t a life coach. He isn’t a matchmaker. He is a dating coach who helps his clients reach their goals. Not every woman is looking to get married; some just want to be more comfortable with themselves, and others just want to know how to date and date well. That’s what Brandi Stevenson, who has been in the program for about a year, was looking for. She describes her previous dating life as “situationship heavy,” and after following White on TikTok, she decided to join his program to break the cycle. “I was never taught how to approach dating. So with Anwar providing tools and best practices, it was liberating once I had that ‘aha moment’ because I was no longer internalizing the actions of every guy I was dealing with.” She’s been dating a man since last spring and says she is in “the most honest and vulnerable relationship” she’s ever been in.
For *D, a divorcee navigating the tumultuous world of dating, White appeared in her feed right on time. She’d decided to be more intentional about finding a partner but didn’t really have the framework to do it. Since signing up for coaching in August of last year, she’s already seen results, and not just in dating. “I do a lot of great things, and I do things well, but that doesn’t mean that I have to do everything and possibly go into a state of burnout,” she shares. “So delegating, asking for support, leaning into vulnerability, and establishing boundaries have been anchors that I’ve learned from him. I’ve been able to apply it in a much more thoughtful way that is accelerating my growth in all aspects of my life.” That’s what White’s program is really about. It’s less about finding a man and getting a ring and more about unlearning the personal and cultural narratives that can hold women back from finding what they need in relationships. As he puts it, “My focus is on these women, making sure that they are becoming the highest version of themselves.”
While many women (myself included) have learned a lot from White just by following him on TikTok, his clients that I spoke to said that taking the step up into coaching was something they would do again. He’s the real deal. As D says, “If at the very least I’m able to cut out the foolishness and shenanigans, that is worth its weight in gold.”
*Names were changed to protect the subject’s identity.