Latest news with #AndrewDunn
Forbes
01-08-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Why Smart Coaches Are Selling Access, Not More Offers
Andrew Dunn has scaled 450+ companies over 10 years and writes about marketing, systems and scaling small businesses into big ones. Let me tell you about the biggest mistake I see coaches and consultants making in 2025. They're building what I call "offer suites"—multiple different products, courses, masterminds and done-for-you services. On the surface, it seems smart. More products equals more revenue streams, right? Not always. The problem with offer suites is that when you improve one product, the others don't benefit. Your course gets better, but your mastermind stays the same. You refine your done-for-you service, but your group coaching remains unchanged. You're essentially running multiple businesses under one roof, each requiring separate marketing, delivery and optimization. I learned this the hard way. After helping drive trackable revenue for clients and building multiple successful companies, I discovered something counterintuitive: The most successful coaches aren't selling more offers—they're selling different levels of access to the same expertise. This proximity-based model is exactly how I scaled my last company. The Proximity-Based Model Here's how it works in practice, with some sample pricing: Start with a newsletter and free community. Beyond simple lead generation, this is how you build your foundation. Share your best insights, case studies and frameworks. Build trust at scale. Offer focused workshops that solve specific problems like video sales letter (VSL) scripts, ad funnels or funnel set-up. These aren't separate products—they're concentrated doses of your expertise. A business coach might turn a $100 VSL workshop into a $30,000 one-on-one client using the same frameworks. This is where the magic happens. Group coaching provides accountability, community and regular access to your expertise. Here's the key: Everyone in group coaching gets access to all the same workshops and content as higher tiers. The difference is the level of access to you, accountability and proximity. This level includes private access to your expertise with maximum accountability and personalized application. Customers get the same workshops and content as group coaching members, but with direct access to you—such as your DMs, private phone number, unlimited Zoom calls. You don't need to deliver different content here; you're just providing the highest level of proximity to your knowledge and experience with a completely tailored experience. Create equity deals and retainer arrangements where you're essentially becoming a strategic advisor. This represents the ultimate proximity—ongoing access to your expertise with aligned incentives. The beauty of this model? Every improvement you make benefits every layer. When you develop a new framework or workshop, it enhances your free content and gets added to group coaching and one-on-one consulting simultaneously. Compare this to traditional offer suites where improving your course doesn't help your mastermind or done-for-you service. A Self-Liquidating Marketing Model But here's the real game-changer: This model enables you to sell without sales calls (if you want to). When you're running weekly pricing models, the "buy now" number is small enough that people are willing to take action through a cart rather than jumping on a sales call. Monthly or annual pricing typically still requires calls. Traditional high-ticket coaching requires endless discovery calls. You may be constantly jumping on video calls, qualifying prospects and delivering sales presentations. It's exhausting and doesn't scale. With the proximity model, your lower tiers serve as natural qualification and trust-building mechanisms. Someone joins your newsletter, attends a workshop, experiences results, then naturally ascends to group coaching. By the time they're ready for private consulting, they already know your methodology works. The "sales call" becomes a strategy session about implementation, not convincing them you can deliver results. This creates what I call a self-liquidating marketing model. Your workshops and group coaching generate immediate revenue while funding the marketing that attracts higher-tier clients. The psychological advantage can be profound. Clients understand they're getting the same valuable knowledge—they're just choosing their level of access and accountability. This eliminates the confusion and decision paralysis that comes with multiple offers. Leveraging Proximity Complexity is often the enemy of scale. The most successful coaches I work with understand that people don't buy products—they buy outcomes. And outcomes come from expertise, not from having more stuff. When you sell proximity to your expertise instead of more offers, you can create a business that scales with your knowledge, not your time. Your expertise could be your most valuable asset. Stop diluting it across multiple offers, and start selling different levels of access to it. That's how to build a coaching business that actually gives you the freedom you may have started your business to achieve. The information provided here is not investment, tax or financial advice. You should consult with a licensed professional for advice concerning your specific situation. Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
Yahoo
06-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
I know speech is protected at Davidson College. I see it all the time.
Conservative writer Andrew Dunn recently questioned whether Davidson College protects 'controversial' speech, particularly pro-Israel views. I've spent the past few years at Davidson looking into, reporting on and teaching about the importance of free expression. Every issue of importance is being discussed on campus. But every false claim of censorship, as YAF alleged here, further roots in the public consciousness a distorted perception of colleges, who are stuck having to play Whack-a-Mole to correct the record. A conservative student group, a chapter of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), handed out an anti-Muslim pamphlet made available to them by national YAF to counter what they believed was an anti-Israel campus atmosphere. The group also retweeted what some considered transphobic. They then faced the usual student disciplinarian process and could choose between a hearing, where they could be found guilty or not guilty for harassment, or accept an accountability plan. They chose neither, convinced they were targeted for their beliefs. But they weren't. The college was responding to complaints from other students, some of whom said they felt unsafe because of the pamphlet's contents, which was handed out near the student union's entrance. Davidson is required to take seriously every student concern for legal, practical and ethical reasons. That's what triggered the potential hearing – not the group's stance on the Gaza war. I know this because I know pro-Palestinian students and others have faced the same process disciplinarian, which is necessarily opaque because of privacy laws. I know pro-Israel views are welcome because professors, students and staff shared them before the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack on that country, and since. I know because those voices can be so loud and persistent that they can pressure the college to cancel a Jewish speaker critical of Israel, as happened just weeks ago. (The college didn't cave.) I know because I have colleagues holding pro-Palestinian views who've rethought public presentations for fear of being falsely labeled antisemitic. I know because colleagues expert on the long-complex history of the Israel-Palestine conflict led well-attended teach-ins on the subject. They explained every side of the issue from an educational rather than ideological perspective. I know because students have shared those views in my classes during deliberative discussions and debates infused with passion. Here's what's also true: Students, faculty and staff often disagree about this subject, and many others. Many often feel reluctant to speak openly about this Israel-Gaza, and many other subjects. They fear the judgment of peers – a human instinct not unique to college campuses. Many of us even disagree about the nature of the student disciplinary process. Should speech of any sort short of flagrant-obvious harassment – like the hurling of epithets or stalking – be subject to that process? Or maybe it would be better to allow students to resolve uncomfortable disputes among themselves. Many Davidson students, faculty and staff disagree about when free expression advances or hampers the college's mission. When a student spreads misinformation on an important topic, should the college remain neutral to honor that student's right to speak freely? Or point out the falsehoods and correct them? If so, how can that be done in a way that doesn't feel punitive? What if a professor's expression of personal beliefs makes it less likely students will engage in class, even if inadvertently. Should the college step in? Colleges aren't gloried debate clubs who don't care about facts or the context in which they need to be grounded, the kinds of exchanges regularly on display in prime time on cable news. Free expression is a right. But it comes with responsibilities, particularly for institutions of higher education whose objective is greater than simply gathering together people to exchange words no matter if truth is cultivated or undermined. It's hard to determine where to draw the line between protected speech on a college campus, and that which should be shunned. But trying to get it right becomes more difficult each time an underinformed argument misleads the public about what we do and who we are. Issac Bailey is a McClatchy opinion writer in North Carolina and South Carolina.
