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3 Reasons Why Traditional Business Coaching Is Flawed

By Brennan Dunn

This week I’m in South Florida spending the Thanksgiving holiday with my family, but I’ve been getting a LOT of feedback and questions about the Expert Roundtable.

In case you missed that email, Expert Roundtable is a daily coaching platform that we’ve now made accessible outside of the DYF Academy.

Unlike traditional coaching or mentoring, where you pay upwards of $1,000 for a bi-weekly phone call with a single expert, the Expert Roundtable allows you to jump on a video call with a member of the DYF teaching staff every day (except weekends and major holidays.)

Need some help with choosing a new niche? Jump on a call with Philip Morgan, author of The Positioning Handbook.

Clueless about using Facebook ads to get clients? Meet with Mojca Mars of Super Spicy Media, and have her help you refine your targeting and your creatives.

About to send out a new proposal and want another set of eyes to give it a look? Or wrestling with a weird client issue, and need to talk through your next steps? Meet with one of us.

Why I don’t like traditional coaching

The old model: Pay a business coach $1,000+ a month. They meet with you, either in person or over the phone, weekly or bi-weekly to talk about what you’ve been doing and (hopefully) leave you with a few action items that you can add to your todo list.

I’ve worked with business coaches since 2008, and have done a bit of it myself in the past.

I always had the same 3 problems with coaches:

  1. They might know a thing or two about business in general, but they usually had limited knowledge about the kind of work I actually did for my clients.
  2. I could eventually start to predict what advice they’d end up giving me. Their breadth of knowledge was always limited.
  3. If I needed them for something time sensitive and urgent, they weren’t always available outside of our prescribed meeting schedule.

Why we created the Expert Roundtable

When we were developing the Academy 3 years ago, we wanted to give students a way to get advice that was “out of scope” from what we were teaching within the Academy.

Unlike at university, 100% of our students are actively running a consulting business while they’re enrolled in the Academy.

This means client problems will pop up. And project pitches will be met with anxiety. Or self-doubt and imposter syndrome will set in.

We needed a way to handle this, so I made myself available for 1-2 times a week to meet with students.

Since August, we’ve been hosting these sessions daily.

And we’ve gone beyond just myself. I’m now joined by the 7 other teachers who help me with the DYF Academy, who are all consultants AND have deep subject-matter expertise:

  • Brennan Dunn, A bit of everything 🙂
  • Philip Morgan, Positioning
  • Kai Davis, Market Research, Outreach, and Information Products
  • Jonathan Stark, Pricing and Proposals
  • Gina Horkey, Messaging and Freelance Writing
  • Kurt Elster, Marketing Automation and Scaling an Agency
  • Mojca Mars, Social Media and Paid Advertising
  • Matt Inglot, Content Marketing and Scaling an Agency

How Expert Roundtable fixes the 3 problems that plague traditional coaching

  1. Every one of our teachers runs a profitable, six or seven-figure consulting business or agency. They’re designers, marketers, programmers, or writers who are all experts at the business of consulting.
  2. I’ve hand-picked every teacher. These aren’t people who read “The Dummies Guide To Starting A Coaching Business” over the weekend. They’ve written industry-recognized books, created courses, and speak at conferences about the things they do best.
  3. One (or more) of us are available Monday through Friday for at least an hour to personally work with you, webcam-to-webcam. No matter when you need us, we’re available today. (Except today since it’s, er, Sunday 😀)

So if you’re feeling overwhelmed…

If you know you COULD be doing this. And SHOULD be doing that. If you’re overwhelmed by all the information and how-to guides out there…

Help is on the way.

Sometimes you just need to talk through what you’re planning — and get sound advice on 1) if it makes sense to do that now and 2) whether your plan is bullet proof.

Or you’re starting down the path of something you aren’t too sure about… Maybe you’ve never had to choose a niche. Or you’ve never setup an email marketing automation campaign. Or you’re looking to scale beyond yourself and start an agency, but are worried about what that means financially.

The DYF teaching staff and I are committed to giving you “fluff-free” and actionable advice, and we’ve been doing it for the last few years within the Academy.

What’s included in Expert Roundtable, and why now is the best time to join:

Through tomorrow (Monday) at midnight, we’re offering a launch special for the Expert Roundtable.

Unlimited access to our staff of expert teachers is available for only $200 a month. In a few hours, that price goes up permanently to $300/month.

Starting next year, we’re also going to be editing every question that’s asked an uploading it to a categorized private knowledgebase of Q&A. This means that we’ll be producing 20+ hours of recorded & edited content that will be available to Expert Roundtable customers. (Currently, the raw 1+ hour sessions are available to all students.)

Additionally, every customer gets access to a private Slack community with other subscribers and the teaching staff (because a quick message is often enough.)

We think this is a hugely valuable service, and I couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve put together.

Expert RoundtableHere’s what’s included:

  • Live coaching sessions hosted via Zoom, webcam-to-webcam
  • All of your sessions are recorded, so if you miss a scheduled Expert Roundtable, you can watch the replay at whatever time is most convenient for you
  • Hosted hours range and rotate from 9am – 8pm Eastern US time, so just about any timezone can take advantage of our sessions
  • As we get more demand, we’ll have multiple sessions a day and at multiple times
  • Membership to a private Slack community with others in the Expert Roundtable and the teaching staff
  • Max 4 attendees per live session
  • Unlimited monthly access

You can either join monthly, or you can get 2-months free by paying annually.

(Note: we’re offering 1 year of free access to Expert Roundtable for those who join the DYF Academy.)