About
About Erik Carlberg
Understanding the arts of love
I knew at the ripe age of twenty-two, nearly eighteen years ago, that I wanted to be a professional dating coach. At the same time, I didn’t want to be the “fake it ‘til you make it” kind. I wanted to be the real deal. That meant putting in serious work.
So, I spent a solid four years dedicating myself to learning everything I possibly could about the dating game before taking my first clients in my mid- to late-twenties. After working for another company for roughly four years, I started my own dating coaching company at the age of thirty – Coast to Coast Dating Coach.
Over the next decade, I continued to refine my coaching methods, networked/partnered with some of the biggest names in the dating coaching industry, and continued to rack up happy and satisfied clients.
While a detailed breakdown of my entire backstory would undoubtedly be of benefit, let’s summarize it with this: I’ve seriously dedicated myself to understanding the dating game. This isn’t a hobby. This isn’t a side hustle. This is my passion. I’ve been into many things in my life – sports, music, and martial arts, to name a few – but this one takes the cake.
All of that being said, I don’t place the same expectations on my clients. Everyone’s journey is different. I work with guys that are as obsessed with this stuff as I am – guys that are looking to push their skills to the max – and I work with guys that just want to make a few improvements, find a compatible partner, and not take things so seriously. No matter where a guy falls on that spectrum, I take my responsibilities as a coach very seriously, as do all members of my team.
Datingcoachformen.com is the most recent iteration of my journey. It’s the culmination of nearly two decades of intense focus on my own love life, and the love lives of my diverse range of clients. Here’s a snapshot of what we’re about:
Natural and Technical Fusion
There’s been an age-old debate going on in the dating community: Do humans come with pre-installed flirting and courtship skills, or are they learned? Proponents of “natural game” argue that everything a man needs to attract women is already largely within him, just waiting to be unleashed.
With enough experience, our inborn skills will be activated, and grow, organically.
Practitioners of “structured game” claim that we are not natural born lovers, but learn tactics, techniques, and strategies as we age, knowingly or not. Even if we do come preinstalled with some abilities, through conscious effort they can be greatly enhanced. In the same way that formally trained martial artists generally have an advantage over naturally gifted street fighters, men that train in the arts of love have an advantage over guys that seemingly have “natural” gifts.
We believe in a best-of-both-words approach. Some of our clients want/need to heavily focus on natural game. They’re bogged down and turned off by technicalities. Once they make some mindset adjustments and get out of their own way, their love life organically takes flight. Contrarily, some of our clients are very science-minded and linear. They learn best from structure, systems, and procedure lists. Technical details matter to them.
Most clients benefit from a blended approach – a natural/technical fusion, if you will.
Reality
Nothing we teach is based on speculation. What we impart to our clients was hard-earned. We always encourage questioning our ideas, and methods - challenging them, if necessary. Our coaching is rational, effective, and based. Even our most abstract teachings (and we do have quite a few) have...
reasoning behind them – reasoning we can explain. We never ask clients to throw away their critical mind. We never demand unquestioning obedience.
If/when proven wrong on a particular topic, we make adjustments.
Time and again, clients say to me, “There’s something that’s just different about your teachings. What is it?”
Short answer: This is the real deal.
I didn’t decide to become a dating coach overnight, and throw up a website the next day. This wasn’t a learn-as-you go venture. I diligently pounded away at this for years, only my most trusted friends knowing the depths of my focus. I’ve watched countless coaches boldly claim themselves to be the industry leader, best dating coach, number one – whatever. I’ve also seen what happens when one of those coaches gets an intermediate/advanced student that asks tough questions – that knows the game better than they do. Spoiler: It doesn’t end well.
I prefer the underpromise-overdeliver approach. I prefer to focus on my craft – truly understanding the game, and being able to effectively convey what I know in ways that are actionable.
Digress.
Options-based
We don’t push one-size-fits-all methods onto our clients; rather, we focus on providing a multitude of options through which one can construct his own ideal style of game. All too often a guy will have breakthroughs with his game – realizations that lead him to believe that he’s found "the holy grail of...
attracting women”. He’ll then go on to teach these concepts to other men with conviction, sincerely believing that he’s discovered “the secrets to attraction”.
Case in point: Many men that get into improving their love lives feel as if they’ve always been “too nice”, especially with women. They then learn to be more dominant, centered, and not put up with second-class treatment. Because they’re behaving differently, they get different results, and, often, these results are better than what they were getting before. So, naturally, they double-down on these new behaviors, and often see a compounding effect on their results. But, there’s a problem: they often swing too far, to the extreme, becoming caricatures of masculinity. They mistake different results with ideal results. They then go on to teach this hyper-dominant style of game to others, not realizing that having stronger boundaries was an isolated breakthrough – a breakthrough that they personally needed to experience.
Here’s another one: I often see coaches claiming that lines, tactics, and techniques are unnecessary, and even manipulative. Too much focus on technicality makes men robotic, they assert. All a man needs is to stop overthinking, focus on building his lifestyle, and results will automatically flow. Once again, these key concepts often had groundbreaking effects for the coach in question, personally, but that doesn’t mean they’ll have the same effect on everyone. In fact, some guys need to focus very heavily on the technicalities of the dating game.
I could go on with countless examples, but here’s the point: Every client is unique, and it’s our job to find the right solutions; thus, we believe in options-based training; we believe in attacking sticking points from every possible angle, calibrating on our approach as we go, and doing so with constant feedback from the most important person in the equation: the client.
Comprehensive
One of the most common complaints that I hear from men is that they don’t have a comprehensive understanding of the courtship process. They only have bits and pieces of incomplete maps. They’ve picked up a few tactics along the way, they’ve had some shifts in mindset, and they've...
gotten some great advice on building an attractive lifestyle, but nothing close to resembling a start-to-finish breakdown of the process.
To be clear, we don’t claim to have a “complete” picture; after all, knowledge may infinite. However, we do believe that we offer one of the most complete systems that’s ever been created. Yes, that’s a bold statement, but after nearly two decades in this scene, and training under some of the most highly-regarded coaches in the world, I stand by it. I’ve just completed a 600+ page book that details my system, and I’m hoping it will be ready for distribution within three to six months.
Understanding the dating game – having a bird’s eye view – doesn’t guarantee success. The map is not the terrain, as the saying goes. Nonetheless, it’s important to have a foundational lay of the land – a general sense of direction. No matter what a client’s goals are, I generally encourage learning my system, even if it’s only conceptually. It’s designed to expand one’s scope. It helps to categorize and contextualize old and new information. It can be used to develop an extremely technical and systemized approach to dating, or it can serve as a background program, mildly directing and coloring one’s experiences.
In any case, we can offer targeted training – training designed to target your specific sticking points, but we also have the know-how to take your understanding of the game to very high levels.
Results and Journey
Above all, we do our best to get clients to become journey-centric. All me to explain: If we obtain optimal results in our love life, but we don’t like the journey to obtaining them – the process – then our results will ultimately suffer. We may not be able to sustain what we’re doing, if it’s filled with drudgery.
We’re going to want to make adjustments, if we’re to have a sustainable experience. Conversely, if we love the path that we’re on – the journey – but we’re not getting results, then our path may not be so enjoyable in the long run, either. Once again, we’re going to want to adjust our process, if we’re to obtain different results.
In either case, do you see how we come full-circle back to the journey?
As stated, you don’t have to get into the game to the full extent that we are; your life need not be defined by your ability to attract your ideal women. But, we’ve got a few tricks up our sleeves to help guys commit to this for the long haul. We don’t offer quick fixes, hacks, or shortcuts: Shortcuts don’t exist.
Rather, we try to get guys to invest a reasonable amount of time into developing this crucial area of life – whatever “reasonable” means to each individual – and trust that the results that are meant to come, will come.
There are many more noteworthy things that I’d like to share about datingcoachformen.com, but let’s leave it there for now.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
More about our coaching...
Absolutely. Our training goes far beyond lifestyle and mindset. While both are important, we believe in giving guys concrete processes to follow – ones that can also be modified. That includes giving examples of exactly what one can say and do. At the same time, we strongly encourage developing one’s own conversational material, and developing the ability to freestyle and speak off-the-cuff. But, yes; rest assured, our comprehensive training addresses this major sticking point.
We place a strong emphasis on meaningful connections, and relationships; we don’t emphasize short-term encounters. That said, we understand that not everyone is looking for a long-term relationship, and we understand that initiating physical contact in a smooth, consensual manner is an area of great concern for many men. On that note, we do teach men specific strategies for every step of the courtship process, and that includes physical bonding. But, we do not give men green lights to mass approach women, manipulate, sexualize interactions quickly, and rack up numbers. Spoiler alert: Guys that have that mentality typically don’t wind up doing so well for themselves.
