I Love Coaching Podcast

Building a coaching business can be a lonely place, and the loneliness costs more than you think. It costs you trust, honest feedback, and the referrals that only come from people who actually know you. Most coaches try to fix it by posting more. Adam Roach and Jess Webber just watched a different fix work in about a day and a half.

Fresh off a live workshop in Charleston, the two sit down to talk about what happened when a room of ten, with six states represented, worked on the business of coaching out loud. Adam brings the human side. People walked in as unknowns to each other, sized each other up, and by the end of day two they were hearing their own problems in someone else’s business and offering to send each other referrals.

Jess brings the language and the architecture. Coaches arrive with 90 days of aspiration and leave with 90 days of actual, because being close to other people makes you honest about where you are versus where you want to go. From there the conversation moves to the Trust Ledger, the difference between connection and enrollment, and why both hosts now talk about people happily paying for a payoff instead of being closed. Jess also shares how pricing herself, instead of her payoff, held her back early on, and Adam owns his past as a recovering transactional thinker.

What you’ll learn

• Why proximity builds trust faster than content, and what moved a room of strangers to trusted peers in a day and a half
• How aspirational language turns into language you can actually market when you work on your business out loud
• The difference between connection and enrollment, and why connection has to come first
• How the Trust Ledger works: make value deposits the way your client wants to receive them, so a later ask feels like a no-brainer
• Why “happily pay for it” beats a closed sale, and what it means to price your payoff instead of yourself
• How to create proximity if live events are not your thing, from a VIP one-on-one upsell to connecting your clients with each other

The big idea

Trust grows with proximity, and proximity can be built on purpose. Live is the strongest form of it, but any setting where people get close enough to be seen and to see others will do the work. When you make real deposits first, enrollment stops being a push and becomes an invitation to people who are ready.

Notable quote

“Connection is not enrolling someone. Connection is building trust.” (Adam Roach)

Resources mentioned

• Sellable Offer Scorecard (15 questions, a couple of minutes): ilovecoachingco.com/scorecard
• Earlier episode on the Trust Ledger: “The Two Funnels You’re Mixing Together”
• ILC community: ilovecoachingco.com
• Instagram: @ilovecoachingco / @adamrroach / @thejesswebber
• YouTube: youtube.com/@ilovecoachingco

Timestamps

[00:00] Intro: Charleston and the power of proximity

[00:43] Why building a coaching business can feel like a silo

[01:10] Inside the room: ten people, six states, business work done out loud

[02:21] From 90 days of aspiration to 90 days of actual

[03:34] Unknown to unknown: walking into a room of strangers

[05:10] From trust to referrals by the end of day two

[05:24] Intimacy without competition (and a few tears)

[06:31] What this means for your own coaching business

[07:44] How to create proximity without hosting an event

[08:50] Connection is not enrolling

[09:43] The Trust Ledger: deposits before withdrawals

[10:48] Letting go of transactional thinking

[11:34] “Happily pay for it”

[13:12] Investment, not payment: pricing the payoff, not yourself

[15:13] Why live is the highest form of trust building

[17:00] Why you don’t have to build solo

[17:55] Wrap and where to start

Join the community

Ready to build a coaching business you’re proud of? The ILC community is where coaches go to stop guessing and start growing. Start with the Sellable Offer Scorecard at ilovecoachingco.com/scorecard to see where you stack up, then explore everything else at ilovecoachingco.com.

You have the career, the credentials, and a long list of results. So why does introducing yourself as a coach still feel like wearing someone else’s cape?

Adam Roach opens with Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, and Peter Parker (Jess keeps him honest on the Batman one, since her five-year-old is the resident expert) to ask a bigger question: is who you are really who you are? Adam and Jess see it constantly. Professionals who mastered another field arrive in coaching convinced they can only be the container they just left.

Jess brings the story behind the episode. She just came home from her 20-year high school reunion, where she watched who was still wearing the labels from 2006 and who had let them go and chosen a new life. She has changed careers three times, so she knows how different she is from the person people remember. Adam adds the community lens: when imposter syndrome hits, coaches go borrow authority from someone else, and it makes things worse. From there the conversation moves from the big picture to the practical, covering fixed versus growth language, metacognition, and what to do when your own client is stuck.

What you’ll learn

• Why leaning on a past title or credential feels safe, and what it costs you right now
• The difference between borrowed authority and your own, and how to tell which one you are using
• How fixed phrases like “I’m not a tech person” turn into brick walls, and how to reword them
• Why praising the process instead of the label (“you’re smart”) changes how people respond to hard things
• How metacognition and the deep dive “why” questions slow down fast-thinking clients without labeling them
• Why visionaries who want exponential growth can’t get there with linear, fixed thinking
• Why identity can’t be built in a silo, and what a good reflective community gives you

The big idea

Most of the labels we carry were handed to us before we could choose them, and many coaches keep wearing them because the known feels safer than an unknown future. The way forward is to examine each label, decide on purpose which ones travel with you into tomorrow, and listen to your own language, because fixed phrases are usually where the stuckness lives.

Notable quote

“You lose sight of who you really are because you’re using yesterday’s container as your identity for today.” (Adam Roach)

Resources mentioned

• Be Your Future Self Now by Benjamin Hardy
• Mindset by Carol Dweck
• Coaching offer scorecard: ilovecoachingco.com/scorecard
• Virtual three-day Sellable Offer Challenge and live workshops: ilovecoachingco.com/events
• ILC community: ilovecoachingco.com
• Instagram: @ilovecoachingco / @adamrroach / @thejesswebber
• YouTube: youtube.com/@ilovecoachingco

Join the community

Ready to build a coaching business you’re proud of? The ILC community is where coaches go to stop guessing and start growing. Start with the scorecard at ilovecoachingco.com/scorecard and see what’s coming at ilovecoachingco.com/events.

If someone asked your best client what you do, what would they say? If you can't answer that with confidence, it's the real reason referrals feel slow, and it has very little to do with how much content you post.

Adam Roach and Jess Webber pick up where the last four episodes left off. After building the Sun, the Planet, the Moons, and the channel that connects them, they turn to the one attractor that skips the line: someone else saying your name in a room you're not in.

Adam brings the equation. A referral comes from a payoff you've named clearly, a client you actually get there, and a result good enough that they can't wait to tell someone. He tests it against his own life, from restaurants to his son's haircut, and the pattern holds every time. Jess brings the trust layer. Moons and lead magnets are built for people who don't know you yet. A referral borrows trust from the person making it, which is why it bypasses the whole queue. She builds a lead magnet nearly every week, and she still says an introduction from Adam does more for her business.

They also get practical about numbers. Ten clients at a 20% conversion rate means about 50 conversations, not 50,000 followers. Adam walks through the referral math live: 20 one-on-one clients, 80% reach the payoff, that's 16, and two referrals each is 32 warm introductions. (He got there on the third try. Jess kept the arithmetic honest.) From there, Jess shows how those referrals plus your original clients can seed a group of around 50 without hunting for 50 strangers.

Adam also gets a little spicy about titles. "Executive leadership coach" sounds impressive, but Jess points out it still reads as a generalist statement: nobody knows what they get on the other side of it. Adam's answer is that people don't buy clever, they buy clarity, and people open up to safety, not to impressive. He says it without shaming anyone, and Jess adds that ILC had to practice what it preaches. They rewrote their own website language after being told it was confusing, because every coach needs a coach, no matter how much success they've had.

Once referrals start flowing, Jess says the game gets fun. You can reward the people who send them with a referral fee, extra time, or other incentives, which builds even more trust. It all depends on being clear about who you are as a coach and getting people the result you named.

The conversation ends with where this is headed: the new ILC Community, a coach network where coaches get to know each other and practice saying what they do in a safe, trusted space. Details are still taking shape, and there's a waitlist below.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

• Why content gets you seen and a referral gets you chosen
• Why moons and lead magnets are for people who don't know you, and what a referral skips
• The referral equation: a clear payoff, a client who gets there, and the receipts that turn results into trust
• Why "executive leadership coach" and other generalist titles give nobody words to repeat
• Why you need a few referrals, not a crowd, and the 80/20 math behind 50 conversations
• How 20 one-on-one clients can turn into about 32 referrals and the start of a group
• What the new ILC Community is shaping up to be, and how to join the waitlist

THE BIG IDEA:

Referrals are not luck. They are the result of three things in order: a payoff you can name in plain language, a client you actually get to that payoff, and the receipts that turn the result into trust. When those are in place, clients almost can't contain themselves. Adam's version is that transformation inspires transformation. Jess's version is simpler: people don't refer what they can't repeat, and they won't repeat what they don't trust.

NOTABLE QUOTE:

"People don't refer without trust. People don't refer without receipts." (Jess Webber)

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• ILC Community waitlist: ilovecoachingco.com/waitlist
• The REAL Coach Method Blueprint, Phase 2 (your first ten one-on-one clients) and Phase 3 (one-to-many)
• Nick Saban's documentary "The Process" on ESPN (Adam's plug)
• The earlier I Know a Guy episodes, Pts. 1 to 4 (the Sun, the Planet, the Moons, and the channel)
• ILC community: ilovecoachingco.com
• Instagram: @ilovecoachingco / @adamrroach / @thejesswebber
• YouTube: youtube.com/@ilovecoachingco

JOIN THE COMMUNITY:

Ready to build a coaching business people can refer with confidence? Start at ilovecoachingco.com, and join the new ILC Community waitlist here: ilovecoachingco.com/waitlist.

You made a lead magnet. You put it out there. And nothing happened. Before you scrap it and start over, there is a good chance the magnet was fine and it was sitting in the wrong channel, or you never decided what "working" looks like.

Adam Roach and Jess Webber are wrapping up the solar system model with the piece that connects everything: the orbit. You already have a Sun (your gravity), a Planet (your one offer), and Moons (your lead magnets). The question this conversation answers is how people actually find the Moon in the first place. Jess calls it an orbit check. Without it, you have a pile of disconnected stuff floating in space.

Adam brings the flow. He is the first to say he needs to see how things connect, and he walks through a simple mailbox story that makes the whole model click. A postcard shows up (the channel), the coupon on it (the lead magnet) sends his son to the oil change shop (the planet), and once the oil is changed, the upsells start. Air filter, transmission fluid, tire rotation. Jess brings the strategy: every channel needs its own entry point, every magnet should lead to the same planet, and a lead magnet only solves a micro problem, which means it only earns a micro amount of trust.

What you'll learn:

• Why every channel you use needs its own Moon, and what makes a lead magnet low friction with a quick win
• How channels run from ads (lowest trust) to keynote speaking (highest trust), and why that changes how fast people convert
• Why you can have one lead magnet or twenty, as long as they all lead to the same planet
• How having more than one magnet lets you A/B test which channel connects with your solution
• How the oil change postcard maps to channel, lead magnet, planet, and upsell
• Why you need to define what "working" means before you pick a channel
• What to do when your first channel does not work (spoiler: do not just repeat it)

The big idea:

A channel is how people meet you, and a lead magnet is how they decide whether to come closer. If you expect a cold ad to convert someone tomorrow, you are going to be disappointed. If you give away a lead magnet from the stage halfway through a keynote, that is a very different level of trust. Pick the channel that fits your people, give it a Moon, define working, and run the play.

Notable quote:

"Go define working and then pick the channel. Run the play and watch your solar system work." Adam Roach

Resources mentioned:

• Lead Magnets Made Simple class with Jess Webber: jesswebber.com/leadmagnets
• The I Love Coaching solar system page (all the series episodes plus a lead magnet Jess built as a live example): ilovecoachingco.com/solarsystem
• ILC community: ilovecoachingco.com
• Instagram: @ilovecoachingco / @adamrroach / @thejesswebber
• YouTube: youtube.com/@ilovecoachingco
• See it in action: ilovecoachingco.com/solarsystem

JOIN THE COMMUNITY:

Ready to connect your offer, your lead magnet, and your channel into one clear orbit? See the full solar system series and the lead magnet Jess built as an example at ilovecoachingco.com/solarsystem, then come hang out with us at ilovecoachingco.com.

You've got decades of experience, a coaching offer you believe in, and a real desire to help. So you hand people everything at once: the full program, the 50-page workbook, the whole planet. And they don't come closer. They back away.

This is Part 3 of the "I Know a Guy" series. Adam and Jess already built the Sun, which is the tension you solve over and over, and the Planet, which is the one offer built around it. Now they're adding the Moons: the small, attractive pieces that orbit your offer and pull the right people toward it. In plain terms, lead magnets.

Adam brings the food court. Anyone who walked through a mall in the 80s remembers the person holding out one piece of orange chicken on a toothpick. You didn't get the whole plate. You got one bite, it was good, and you went and bought lunch. He also points to Sam Gaudet on Instagram as an example of giving simple, specific value with no strings attached. Jess brings the build: what a lead magnet actually is, why it should deliver a win in under 30 minutes, and why half of what she gives away is a Google Doc. She's grown her own email list almost to the size of ILC's in six months, mostly through lead magnets. She's not bragging; it's what happened, and it shows how easy the trade is when the value is obvious.

What you'll learn:

• What a lead magnet actually is: a small solution to a micro problem, exchanged for an email address
• Why a quick win in under 30 minutes builds more trust than a 56-page workbook
• How to lower the friction (and why "book a call" or a ten-field form kills the trade)
• Why the gift is a microtransaction, not a sales pitch, and why that still builds a relationship
• The long play Sam Gaudet and Caleb Ralston run, and why most coaches need a shorter one
• How to build lead magnets from content you already have, like ILC's Maslow's Mountain series
• Why you can have several moons for different rooms, all pointing back to one offer

The Big Idea:

Experienced coaches struggle with this more than anyone. They either want to give it all away or keep it all locked up until someone pays. Neither works. People don't want proof of how valuable you are. They want a payoff on a problem they already know they have. Give away one piece of your best stuff, small enough to finish and good enough to trust, and the bigger conversation gets much easier.

Notable Quote:

"You have to let go of some of your highest and best things, and those become the attractors, the moons that orbit the planet." — Jess Webber

Resources Mentioned:

• Lead Magnets Made Simple (Jess's class recording, built to help you launch a lead magnet in under an hour): https://jesswebber.com/leadmagnets
• Big Ideas Made Simple Ep. 34, "They Don't Need All of It, They Need the Best of It" (Jess's episode from the same week on simplifying what you teach): https://jesswebber.com/bigideasmadesimple/simplify-what-you-teach
• Jess's inbox organization lead magnet, as an example of a low-friction opt-in: inbox.bigideasmadesimple.com
• Maslow's Mountain series and workbook, as an example of a lead magnet built from existing podcast content: ilovecoachingco.com/maslow
• ILC's "Find Your Path" / "Start Here" lead magnets: ilovecoachingco.com
• Sam Gaudet on Instagram (Adam's example of simple, value-first lead magnets)
• Caleb Ralston and Ralston Select (Jess's example of the long audience-building play)
• Ep. 192, "I Know a Guy, Pt. 1: Find Your Coaching Gravity"
• Ep. 193, "I Know a Guy, Pt. 2: Find Your One Planet"
• Instagram: @ilovecoachingco / @adamrroach / @thejesswebber
• YouTube: youtube.com/@ilovecoachingco

Timestamps:

[00:00] Intro: Star Wars, Star Trek, and the Moons

[00:51] Recap: the Sun, the Planet, and why the whole offer overwhelms

[01:44] Gravity, tractor beams, and pulling people into your world

[03:45] What a lead magnet actually is

[05:20] Adam's mall food court: orange chicken on a toothpick

[07:13] Sam Gaudet and value with no strings attached

[08:25] The long play: Sam Gaudet and Caleb Ralston

[09:43] It's a microtransaction, not a sales pitch

[10:30] The under-30-minute win (and why 56 pages misses it)

[11:00] Jess's inbox lead magnet and the easy-to-remember URL

[12:33] Lower the friction: the form fields nobody needs

[14:19] Build from what you already have: Maslow's Mountain

[15:10] Google Docs count, and how Jess grew her list in six months

[16:20] Big thinkers give away too much, or nothing at all

[17:11] People want a payoff, not proof of your value

[18:20] The toothpick vs. the whole plate

[20:18] Multiple moons for different rooms, one offer

[21:50] Where to go next

Join the Community:

If you've been giving away the whole planet and wondering why nobody's orbiting, start with the simple stuff. Head to ilovecoachingco.com and click Find Your Path to see ILC's own moons in action, and find the live events where Adam and Jess help you build yours.

You've got the framework figured out. You could build ten different offers tomorrow if someone asked you to. That's exactly the problem.

This is Part 2 of the solar system series, and if you haven't heard Part 1 yet, go back and listen first. Adam and Jess already covered the Sun, your core gravitational pull, the tension you solve over and over. Today they're building the next layer out: the Planet.

A planet is your singular offer, payoff, or outcome built around that Sun. If your Sun is uncertainty, your planet might be a specific group coaching container that solves one defined outcome. Not three offers. Not a menu. One. Adam openly admits he wanted to build a dozen planets when they first mapped this model together. Jess shut that down immediately, and this episode is why.

The instinct to build everything at once is a visionary trait, not a strategy. Jess makes the case that people should be able to name your planet the way they name Earth or Mars, instantly, without effort. When your offer is that clear, your network stops needing you to explain yourself and starts being able to refer you. That's the entire point of "I know a guy." Nobody refers a menu.

What you'll learn:

• Why one clearly defined offer builds more referral traffic than a full suite of services
• The difference between your Sun (the problem you solve) and your Planet (the specific offer built around it)
• Why the planet includes naming the container, the "how," not just the outcome
• How going one-on-one first, before building out a full offer suite, sharpens your language faster
• Why a single clear offer lets you price the payoff instead of pricing yourself
• How having one planet actually crushes imposter syndrome instead of feeding it
• Why doing things in sequence, not all at once, makes you faster, not slower

The big idea: A menu of offers feels like more value. It's actually the reason people can't refer you, price you accurately, or trust you. One planet, clearly named, is what makes an offer easy to invite people into instead of something you have to sell.

Notable quote: "Great, but which one are we colonizing first?" — Jess Webber, on the twelve things Adam wanted to build when they met

Resources mentioned:

• Walt Disney's original mind map, referenced by Adam as an example of one Sun (Walt Disney Studios) spawning multiple planets over time: framerusercontent.com/images/eNS3np8QbwJRoO7t8fBSR7Yts.jpg
• Ep. 192, "I Know a Guy, Pt. 1: Find Your Coaching Gravity" (referenced throughout)
• ILC community: ilovecoachingco.com
• Instagram: @ilovecoachingco / @adamrroach / @thejesswebber
• YouTube: youtube.com/@ilovecoachingco

Timestamps:

[00:00] Intro: back in the solar system for episode 2

[00:30] Quick recap: the Sun from Episode 1

[01:18] Today's topic: the Planet, and why it's one, not twelve

[02:22] Defining the planet: your singular offer around the Sun

[03:10] Why "one" gets the emphasis (Rocket Fuel results: 50/50 Visionary-Integrator)

[04:36] The nerd test: people should be able to name your planet like Earth or Mars

[05:43] How clarity turns your network into mouthpieces for you

[05:52] Adam's recruiting story: "150 people in a year" as his one planet

[06:56] Why they teach one-on-ones first, in reverse of Adam's own path

[07:12] The planet includes naming the container, not just the payoff

[07:29] No menu of offers, no menu of outcomes

[08:10] "Which one are we colonizing first?"

[09:20] Sequencing beats doing it all at once

[09:46] Preview: next episode covers the Moons

[10:58] Why one clear offer builds more trust than a menu, and lets you price the payoff

[11:19] Why they're not talking about sales yet: confused people do nothing

[12:16] Confidence and imposter syndrome: the burden of handing someone a Sun

[14:11] Walt Disney's mind map: Walt Disney Studios as the original Sun

[15:04] Slowing down to speed up

[15:25] Why talented coaches still fail: it's clarity, not skill

[16:41] Wrap and tease: next time, the Moons

Join the community:

Ready to stop juggling a dozen ideas and build the one offer people can actually refer you for? The Sellable Offer Challenge walks you through it: ilovecoachingco.com/challenge

You've got the results, the testimonials, the big ideas. But when someone says "I need a coach for that," your name still doesn't come up first. That's not a marketing problem. That's a gravity problem.

In this first episode of a new series, Adam Roach and Jess Webber build out what they call the solar system model of coaching positioning, starting with the center of it: your Sun. Adam brings the relational frustration, the years he spent wanting the whole world to know him before he understood that being known isn't about being everywhere. Jess brings the architecture, walking through why "coach" itself can never be your gravitational pull and why so many coaches confuse niche, brand, and gravity when they're three completely different things.

They pull in real examples to make it concrete. Dave Ramsey's Sun is debt and financial peace. Brene Brown's Sun is shame. Adam's own Sun, the one he found through Rory Vaden's Brand Builders work, is uncertainty. Jess's is reducing complexity, the thread that runs from her background in education straight through to Big Ideas Made Simple. None of these are niches or job titles. They're the specific tension each of them solves for, over and over, for the right people.

What you'll learn:

• How to identify your coaching Sun, the gravitational pull that makes people say "I know a guy" for what you solve
• Why "coach" is never your gravitational pull, and what actually is
• The real difference between niche, brand, and gravity, and why coaches keep collapsing them into one thing
• Rory Vaden's one-word exercise from Wealthy and Well Known, and why it clicks for some coaches and not others
• Why you don't have to name your Sun today, or ever use it as your marketing message
• How taking one-on-one clients in Blueprint Phase 2 helps you find your Sun through pattern recognition instead of guesswork
• Why feeling like you have two or three "Suns" right now usually just means the inside work isn't finished yet

The big idea:

your Sun isn't your niche, your title, or your brand. It's the one tension you solve over and over, the thing people would refer you for even if they couldn't explain your job title. You're not responsible for naming it perfectly or turning it into a tagline. It's there to anchor every other decision in your business, from which clients you say yes to, to what you build next.

Notable quote:

"Gravity is not brand, gravity is not niche, gravity is the solution to the problem that you're naming." — Jess Webber

Resources mentioned:

• Wealthy and Well Known by Rory Vaden, Brand Builders Group (referenced for the one-word positioning exercise)
• REAL Coach Blueprint, Phase 2 (one-on-one coaching clients as the training ground for finding your Sun)
• ILC community: ilovecoachingco.com
• Instagram: @ilovecoachingco / @adamrroach / @thejesswebber
• YouTube: youtube.com/@ilovecoachingco

Join the community:

Ready to stop being the generalist and start being the guy or the gal people refer? The live Next 90 Workshop is built for exactly this work: https://ilovecoachingco.com/coachworkshop. Or head to ilovecoachingco.com to see what's next.

You know your value. So why is it still so hard to say no?

In this conversation, Adam sits down with women's empowerment coach and international DJ Samantha SAvvy to talk about the real skill behind confidence: boundaries. Samantha built her coaching brand around the roadmap she wished she'd had in her twenties, one that teaches high-achieving women how to stop giving their power away in relationships, jobs, and friendships.

What makes this episode useful for coaches is how practical Samantha gets. She doesn't talk about boundaries as a mindset shift you either have or don't. She breaks it into a repeatable process: recognize your patterns, pause before you react, and build courage the same way you build any skill, through small reps done consistently. Adam connects her framework to his own relationship coaching experience, including a simple question that changes how any hard conversation goes: do you want me to feel it or fix it?

Samantha also draws a direct line between her coaching work and her life as a touring DJ. Stepping on stage in front of a crowd in Europe never feels automatically confident to her either. She steps into it every time. That's the same muscle she's teaching her clients to build.

What you'll learn:

- How to identify the specific patterns that keep you from speaking up in relationships, at work, and with friends

- Why pausing and truly listening in the moment matters more than knowing what you should have said afterward

- A simple reframe for hard conversations: you and the other person against the problem, not against each other

- How to build courage in small, low-stakes reps before tackling bigger confrontations

- Why trusting your gut instincts is a skill worth developing on purpose, not an afterthought

- How unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence applies just as much to boundary-setting as it does to any other skill

The big idea:

Confidence and courage aren't traits some people have and others don't. They're built the same way any skill is built, through recognizing your patterns, then practicing the uncomfortable thing in small doses until it becomes automatic.

Notable quote:

"It's really about learning to take back your agency and learning to say, no, actually, you don't get to do that to me." — Samantha SAvvy

Guest bio:

Samantha SAvvy is a women's empowerment coach who helps high-achieving women set boundaries and break free of people-pleasing patterns. She's also an internationally touring DJ specializing in Kizomba and Urban Kiz, and a professionally trained Latin dancer.

Resources mentioned:

- Samantha's coaching and masterclass info: https://www.samanthasavvy.com/savvy-shift-mastermind/

- ILC community: ilovecoachingco.com

- Instagram: @ilovecoachingco / @adamrroach / @thejesswebber

Join the community:

Ready to build a coaching business you're proud of? The ILC community is where coaches go to stop guessing and start growing. ilovecoachingco.com

You're posting content, you're nurturing your email list, you're showing up on stories, and somehow it all still feels like pushing a square boulder up a hill. Adam Roach knows that feeling well. He spent years lumping every audience together into one funnel, and it never worked.

In this episode, Adam and Jess break down a distinction most coaches never make: the attraction funnel and the trust funnel are two completely different systems, built for two completely different jobs. Confuse them, and you'll either come across as a salesy stranger to people who don't know you yet, or you'll under-serve the people who already trust you by treating them like cold leads.

Adam opens with the four trust tiers every coach's audience actually sits inside: Unknown, Known, Like, and Trust. He walks through his own Kia Telluride buying journey to show exactly how a person moves through those tiers in real life, and why rushing that process backfires. Jess ties it back to the "I know a guy" language from the recent Coaches #1 Problem series: if the people who already know you can't name what you do in one clean sentence, that's a bigger opportunity than any cold audience ever will be.

What you'll learn:

- The four trust tiers your entire audience already falls into (Unknown, Known, Like, Trust) and why treating them the same kills conversion

- What the "Trust Ledger" is and why deposits have to come before you ever ask for a withdrawal

- How to audit your own database in under ten minutes to find the relationships you're leaving on the table

- Why approaching strangers with an offer is the coaching equivalent of selling pink highlighters on a street corner

- The real difference between top, middle, and bottom of funnel content, and the 50/40/10 ratio that actually works

- The one filter question to ask before every post: am I trying to get seen by someone new, or trusted more by someone who already knows me?

- Why relationship-based conversion is consistently the easier, faster path to a sale than a transactional pitch ever will be

The big idea:

It's simple but easy to miss: your existing relationships are your highest-leverage, lowest-cost growth channel, and most coaches skip straight past them chasing strangers instead. Fix the order, and both funnels get easier.

Memorable Quote:

"Social media channels are meant to connect, not to convert." - Jess Webber

Resources Mentioned:

- Coaches #1 Problem Series (Ep. 187, Ep. 188)

- ILC community: ilovecoachingco.com

- Instagram: @ilovecoachingco / @adamrroach / @coachjesswebber

- YouTube: youtube.com/@ilovecoachingco

Timestamps:

[00:00] Intro: two funnels, two completely different jobs

[02:04] The four trust tiers: Unknown, Known, Like, Trust

[03:56] Adam's Kia Telluride story: how attraction becomes trust

[06:14] Tying it back to "I know a guy" language

[07:40] Where most coaches get the order backwards

[08:44] The Trust Ledger: deposits before withdrawals

[10:12] Why transactional focus shrinks your bottom tier

[11:55] Audit your database: the trust list and the engaged list

[14:05] The pink highlighter analogy: selling to strangers

[15:36] Why relationship conversion is the easier lift

[16:34] Top, middle, and bottom of funnel content, defined

[18:40] The posting filter: new eyes or deeper trust

[20:17] The 50/40/10 content ratio

[21:32] Breaking the habit of selling on social media

[24:26] Wrap up and where to go next

Ready to stop guessing which funnel you're even in? The ILC community is where coaches go to build the relationships and the systems that actually convert. ilovecoachingco.com

You've spent three episodes hearing us name it: your problem isn't your leads, your funnel, or your tech. It's clarity. So now what do you actually do about it?

This episode closes out our three-part series with the how. Adam and Jess walk through the exact path from "I'm a business coach" (a title anyone can slap on themselves) to language so clear a third grader could repeat it back to you and want in. This isn't theory. It's the same process Jess used to build her own brand, and the same one they've walked community members through in real time.

Adam brings the challenge coaches need to hear: if you're carrying a title from something you haven't actually done yet, that's the first thing to let go of. Jess brings the system: how to find your thread, name your payoff, and simplify your language until it actually sells instead of just sounding smart.

What you'll learn:

- Why "I'm a life coach" or "I'm a business coach" makes you forgettable, not credible

- The difference between a title and a payoff, and why only one of them sells

- How to find your "thread," the consistent pattern in the problems you've already solved

- Why your language is probably still too high, even after you think you've simplified it

- The "third grader test" for knowing when your language is actually clear

- Why aspirational and inspirational language don't convert, and what does

- How clarity changes what you can actually charge

The big idea:

you don't have a leads problem, a funnel problem, or a tech problem. You have a clarity problem, and it traces back to using someone else's labels instead of your own lived experience. Once you name what you're actually known for solving, everything else, including your pricing, gets easier.

Memorable Quote:

"Aspirational language doesn't sell. Inspirational language doesn't sell. Clear language sells." - Jess Webber

Resources Mentioned:

- ILC community: ilovecoachingco.com

- Instagram: @ilovecoachingco / @adamrroach / @thejesswebber

- YouTube: youtube.com/@ilovecoachingco

- Reference: Ep. 187 and Ep. 188 of this series

Closing and how to connect with ILC

Ready to stop guessing and start growing? The ILC community is where coaches go to get this exact kind of clarity. ilovecoachingco.com