You think you know who your avatar is. You're probably wrong.

Not because you haven't thought about it. Not because you lack experience or expertise. But because most coaches are describing their avatar from the top of the mountain, in language that makes total sense to them and zero sense to the person at the base.

That is the avatar problem. And it is not the avatar's problem. It's yours.

In this episode, Adam and Jess are naming the thing that sits underneath every marketing frustration, every slow launch, every "I don't know why this isn't working" moment in a coaching business. If you are not getting enough clients, your avatar clarity is almost certainly part of the reason. It's not the only variable, but it is the one that makes every other variable harder to fix.

The avatar problem shows up in a few specific ways. Some coaches have it because they are trying to speak to everyone and therefore speaking to no one. Some coaches have it because they have built their messaging around a job title or industry rather than a lived problem they have actually solved. And some coaches have it because they are so deep in the expertise of their niche that they've lost the ability to speak in the language of someone who hasn't arrived there yet.

Adam and Jess have had every version of this problem themselves. The challenge was called the "10K Coaching Offer Challenge" for years. The intensive was the "Quarter Million Coach Intensive." Both were named for an old version of an old avatar, built around aspirational income language that made sense to them and filtered out the exact coach who needed them most. When they ran their own positioning through the Maslow Mountain filter, they renamed both. Not because the content changed. Because the avatar did.

IN THIS EPISODE:

- Why "if you don't have enough clients, you might have an avatar problem" is the fastest self-diagnostic you can run right now

- The Rory Vaden principle that actually defines who you are built to serve (and it has nothing to do with credentials or certifications)

- Why the specialist always beats the generalist, and the cardiac surgeon story that makes it click permanently

- The two ways coaches speak about their avatar publicly, and why only one of them generates referrals

- Adam's 30-year-old tennis evaluation sheet and the moment he realized he should have been coaching serves, not tennis

- The relevance pitch framework, what it is and why "internal niche, external relevant" is the rule that ends the verbal vomit problem

- What happened to the challenge participant who walked in with a five-minute monologue and walked out with a six-word sentence

- Why imposter syndrome, silo-building, and unclear avatar language are the exact same problem wearing three different outfits

- How Adam and Jess renamed both their challenge and their intensive after running their own language through the Maslow filter

THE BIG IDEA:

Your avatar is not defined by who you want to serve. It is defined by who you are actually built to serve, the person walking the path you have already walked. The coach who gets clear on that stops chasing clients and starts attracting them. But here is the part most coaches skip: your language for that avatar cannot come from the top of the mountain. You have to climb back down, remember what it felt like to stand at the base, and speak from there.

MEMORABLE LINES FROM THIS EPISODE:

"The avatar problem is not the avatar's problem. You have an avatar problem because you don't know specifically what you solve."

"We don't want you to appeal to the masses. Do not appeal to the masses. We want you to appeal to a very small subset of the masses because you are a specialist in this space."

"Internal niche, external relevant. That's the key."

"I can't tell you the majority of the nurses that were in my son's NICU room, but you bet your bottom dollar I can name first and last name the doctor who did my son's heart surgery."

"The worst language that we hear comes from the people who build in a silo the most."

YOUR ONE THING THIS WEEK:

Run the two-question self-diagnostic. First: do you have enough clients? If the answer is no, your avatar language is worth a hard look. Second: take your current way of describing what you do and read it out loud to someone who has no context for your niche. If they look confused, ask more questions, or go quiet, that is not engagement. That is polite disengagement. Start there. Simpler, cleaner, more specific to the problem. Not to the credential. Not to the methodology. The problem.

CONNECT WITH ADAM AND JESS:

If this one hit close to home, come find us at ilovecoachingco.com. That is where our upcoming events live, where the community is, and where you can connect with us directly. If you are ready to stop building alone and start getting real feedback on your avatar and your offer, the Sellable Offer Challenge is the place to start. ilovecoachingco.com/challenge If you know a coach who keeps saying their marketing isn't working but can't explain who they help in one clear sentence, send them this one. That is exactly who this episode is for.

Follow the show: @ilovecoachingco on Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook

KEY THEMES:

- Avatar clarity as a business diagnostic, not a branding exercise

- Maslow's Mountain as a positioning filter

- Specialist vs. generalist in coaching

- Relevance pitch: internal niche, external relevance

- Lived experience as the foundation of authority

- Silo-building and its relationship to imposter syndrome

- Public language vs. enrollment language for coaches

- Feedback as a competitive advantage in offer development

Jess, we are here on episode five, and this is probably gonna be one of my favorite ones.

2

And here's what the problem is, you all is so we've been discussing Maslow's mountain,

hierarchy of needs.

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And Jess, we, including myself, the biggest problem that we have is we stand on top of

that mountain and we speak down to the avatar.

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I don't mean like

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down as a negative.

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I mean we look down and we say, Hey, Avatar, come on up here where we are.

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But the problem is sometimes, Jess, we have a tendency to have an Avatar problem.

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We speak to too many and we speak to too high of of the of the desires and the needs

there.

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So we're gonna talk about that today.

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Yeah, I think this is going to be a great conversation.

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It sounds simple, and yet we know that so many coaches struggle with it.

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And I know the last couple episodes we talked about your messaging, we talked about your

marketing, but none of that lands if you don't have clarity on the avatar and how to

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specifically talk to them or reach them.

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And so that's why I feel like this is an important conversation for us to have in the

context of this series.

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Yeah.

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Because here let's let's let's be real here for a second.

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You feel like you're speaking to the right avatar.

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You s feel like you're speaking to an avatar, and yet you're converting nobody.

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Right.

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If you're not converting anybody, take a look at this specific one to say, wow, is my not

only my language, which we talked about last time, but am I really focused on a singular

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avatar or a singular

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I mean avatar is such a a fun word to use.

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That's what we use, Jess, though some people will say client.

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Some people will say my ideal person.

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So that's what we're speaking about when we say avat.

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Or my other favorite acronym that I learned was ICP, ideal customer profile.

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Like there's lots of industry lingo, but the the gist of it is is who is the right person

for your offer?

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And how are you speaking to them?

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How are you connecting with them?

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And how are you sharing who they are to people who might not be that ideal customer, but

they might know that ideal customer.

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And you know what I love that you said there is because we just came off of our challenge.

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And our challenge is the sellable offer challenge.

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And there are so many generalists out there, Jess.

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There's there's so many generalist coaches out there because they like to coach to

everything or are, in our language here, nothing because they're not coaching to a payoff.

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But I love what you just said there is coaches have to identify the

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Payoff, which then helps them identify the avatar.

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And if they don't do that, and they don't know what problem they're solving, then they

actually have no idea what avatar they're actually going after.

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And the crazy part about that is coaching when used as a this is what I do, it's such a

generalist approach.

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And therefore, when they go out and attract, they have to they use generalist avatars.

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Yeah.

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Well, I don't mean this to sound negative to anybody who's gone through it, but going

through like the International Coaching Federation ICF certification to become a life

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coach annoys the flip out of me because I'm like, great, now you have a piece of paper

that says you're allowed to talk about life.

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You know, that is like the most generalist coaching in the world in my head.

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Granted, I have not gone through it.

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I can't speak to it.

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I am sure there's lots of value in it for the people who go through it, but

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At the same time, that is not what we talk to, speak to, coach to in our world because we

know that having that defined payoff and then being able to be known for it is the thing

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that generates expertise, authority, trust, referrals more so than a piece of paper and

credentials.

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Try it.

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So let let's let's go into what we're doing.

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Is I want you all listener-wise to sit with you have an avatar problem.

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Okay.

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You have you may think you know who your avatar is, but here's the general way to answer

if you have that right.

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Do you have enough clients?

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And if you don't have enough clients, you might have an avatar problem.

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Jess, we can be fully transparent here.

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How many avatar problems have we had?

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We've had many avatar problems, right?

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It's attracting the right avatar.

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based on the desire that you wanna have for the payoff, meaning the client is going to

receive.

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Okay, so let's let's go and help them identify this.

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How how do how do we help them in this space to to identify who they're actually built to

serve?

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Well, I think first and foremost we have to go back to our buddy Rory Vaden, which we've

quoted, I think, every single w episode of this series.

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royalties there or play the old drinking game.

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How many times can they say Rory Vaden or you're most powerfully positioned to serve the

person you once were?

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Take a shot, right?

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Exactly.

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But that's the key thing here is it's not about the piece of paper certification.

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It's about who you were and what journey you've walked and how you have solutions to

problems and how you can help people who are walking in the same shoes or the same path

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right behind you.

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And so how to identify who you're actually built to serve when we ask that question for

people, we ask, who were you?

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You have to do a little bit of a

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um autobiographical analysis at to to really figure out your avatar.

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And it doesn't mean what is your last job role.

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It doesn't mean what is the last industry you worked in, but it's it's more focused on

where have you had success in overcoming something, in solving problems, and how does that

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align with how you want to show up in the world and serve others?

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Yeah.

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Yeah, it's it's very, very true.

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And again, that goes back to being a journalist versus a specialist.

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And most people just get a little scared with becoming a specialist in a space because,

well, I'm not appealing to the masses.

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We don't want you to appeal to the masses.

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Do not appeal to the masses.

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That is not what we want you to do.

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We want you to almost appeal to a very small subset of the masses because you are a

specialist in this space.

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That's it.

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a it a perfect example of this.

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I know we use medical stuff a lot, but that's where my context comes from, is I cannot

tell you the majority of the nurses that were in my son's NICU room or cardiac ICU room,

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but you bet your bottom dollar I can name first and last name the doctor who did my son's

heart surgery.

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There is a big difference between being a generalist nurse and being a specialist cardiac

surgeon.

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And and that's what we're asking you to be precise in and become known for is a specialty

in a coaching field.

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Because I when I think, I've got a cardiac question, I don't go try to find one of the

random nurses.

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I'm like, no, I want to ask the surgeon or the cardiologist directly.

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about the thing because I trust them, I know them, they have authority, I respect what

they're gonna say, and I believe that they have my best interest in mind because they've

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done it so frequently over and over with others.

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And that's what we're trying to get at here for you is again, it's not about the industry

or the role, but it's about what have you lived, experienced, and overcome.

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and or helped others overcome in such a way that you can be trusted and known specifically

for that, so that you're the first person that people think of when somebody says, I have

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this problem.

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That's right.

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And as it relates to Maslow, here is once you have that identified.

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You know, it's it's funny, Jess, I shared this with you earlier.

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YouTubers, if you're watching, I'm holding a piece of paper here.

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And and and this was from my college tennis playing days of my coach giving me feedback,

but me also having to go through and identify strengths and weaknesses per stroke in

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tennis.

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So serves, volleys, forehands, backhands, you name it.

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Mindset was even in there.

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And what's what's really interesting as as we're talking about this, this was from 96.

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So 30 years ago, Jess.

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That's just dumb to me that that was 30 years ago.

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because it feels like it was just yesterday.

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I can remember that coach making me puke all the time, but that's a whole nother podcast.

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And yet then I went to go teach tennis, right?

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I went to go teach tennis after this this career was finished.

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And and I was teaching tennis because that's generalist.

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But when I look at this, where I should have specialized in was serving.

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Right?

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I was a great serve and volleyer in tennis.

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And that's what it says right here, even from 30 years ago.

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And my favorite line, Jess, that it has right here is weaknesses.

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from a serve standpoint.

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This is my writing.

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weaknesses, they're pretty minimal.

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I'm a damn good server, is what I put here.

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30.

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30 years ago, my ego is still driving things.

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Okay, pause for a second.

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And now let's go to Maslow.

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So when we're on top of the mountain and we are a damn good server, you have specialized,

you can coach that specific action.

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You can't look down at that mountain where the Avatar lives, right?

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And I say that looking down because you need to know where they are on Maslow's hierarchy

of needs and say,

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You too can have a world class serve.

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Hey, this is what I need you to mm.

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I well sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.

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Um, you were saying that's what I need you to do, and that's where I was headed.

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Was the thing is, you can be you too can be a world class server, but here are the steps

that you need to take to get there, and I will walk next to you the whole way is the key

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that everybody forgets.

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They're so good at talking about being named a world-class server and being able to coach.

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to being a world-class server that they forget to go back down and and basically relive

the journey with each avatar client.

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And so it's so important that when you find somebody you know that you can help coach, you

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Go meet them where they are on the mountain.

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And and so I love that you're bringing this up because that is the whole point of this

series is referencing that mountain and helping you understand as a coach that your

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journey on the mountain is not just to climb it once, but it's to literally be able to go

up and down and up and down and up and down with every single client that has that same

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problem that you've identified and you've become a specialist in.

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So much so that you're the most sought out.

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guide or Sherpa to climb that mountain ever.

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So anytime somebody sees that mountain, the first person that they want to go to to get up

the mountain is you.

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That that is what we are speaking to right now.

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Mm-hmm.

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Yeah.

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And and and again, let's go back to the title of this podcast is the avatar problem,

right?

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Again, the avatar problem is not the avatar's problem.

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It's you have an avatar problem because you don't know specifically what you solve to go

find the right person that wants to become the world class server.

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Well, yes.

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And let's let's also talk about here how you talk about your avatar, which is part of the

reason you're having trouble connecting with them.

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I uh so when you're standing at the top of the mountain, you can look down and be like,

well, I help upcoming tennis professionals create the the systems and strategies to

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develop a world-class serve.

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Like that sounds like top of the mountain language, right?

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uh-huh.

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you need to do is talk about where they are.

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And when you're in public, you need to have a very clear, simple, singular sentence

statement that doesn't include a lot of jargon from whatever niche you're in that people

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can understand and hang their hat on.

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What I mean by that is too often we have people who will go to a dinner party, a

networking event, whatever, and they have crafted some multi-sentence or run-on sentence

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that has 47 commas in it, trying to squeeze everything they know and everything they can

do into one breath.

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And yet it's so convoluted and messy or jargon-heavy that people don't land with it.

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They don't remember them except that they're overwhelmed by their statement.

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So there actually is a negative emotional reaction to the verbal vomit.

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And so when you have very clear understanding of who you help and how you help them.

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It becomes easier to start creating a simpler statement, which in the I Love Coaching

World, we call this the relevance pitch.

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And it's because you don't want people to tune out or self-select out because you say, I

only serve collegiate, semi-professional tennis players.

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If I said that, then any person who wasn't a semi-professional, collegiate tennis player

would be like, or who doesn't know them, be like, I'm out mentally or physically.

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I don't need this.

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This is not related to me.

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Right.

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But if you say, I help people, I help entrepreneurs, I help athletes, I help women, I help

men, if you start more vague and then you name your problem and your solution so simply,

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more people will then engage with it and want to ask more questions, which then makes it

easier to talk about things without being a verbal vomiter.

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Yeah.

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Now let's let's go.

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We had in our challenge a very intelligent individual.

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This individual was probably one of the biggest brain people that I know I had personally

worked with.

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And he lived in that space of being so knowledgeable about the solutions that he could

provide.

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To the problem with the avatar that he he could talk for five straight minutes.

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And actually he did in the beginning.

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And what was so fun to watch him by the end of the third day, he literally took a five

minute explanation to us in the beginning and narrowed it down to a very simple, almost

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like what, maybe a five or six word sentence?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Well, it's I help people become more successful with less effort.

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Was I think how we he ended from that five-minute um monologue.

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And and again

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And his part of the pushback that we got initially was, well, I need to be specific and I

need to be interesting.

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And you're right, to an extent, but not so specific that people self-select out.

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That's the key thing about the relevance pitch, is if you're standing in a large room or

you're standing at a dinner party with 20 people, all eyes on you, and you get one

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sentence, you do not want every person at the dinner table to pull out their phone or turn

to their neighbor.

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You want them to be like they you want them to ask more questions.

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So you have to have a simple sentence that is interesting enough to ask more questions

around.

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And that's where I think people struggle with this avatar problem is they immediately go

towards the niche language and they make people ignore them by being too specific too

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fast.

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So hear this if you're listening and you're like, wait, you just said be specific and then

don't be specific.

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You be specific internally and through your enrollment process, but you don't be that

specific public-facing because referrals are going to be your best friend.

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We are relational beings.

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It's a relationship-based business.

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And you want people to connect you to your avatar.

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Because they understand the problem that you solve for your avatar.

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And if you are jargon heavy too specific, then they are not gonna remember enough to

connect you with your avatar.

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So internal niche, external relevant.

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Yep, that's so good.

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And again, what we are defining here for you and helping you solve is this avatar problem,

right?

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The avatar problem simply stating that you are in a space of not attracting the right

who's.

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Right?

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You're not attracting the right who's.

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And we we've lived in this space before because of the language that we used.

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And we talked about this in the last podcast around marketing that will work for you.

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And the podcast before that around messaging.

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And this all is something that you need to consistently be paying attention to until you

find the right avatar that lands or is aligned with, as Jess just kept saying, your

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basically your problem solution cycle.

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Mm-hmm.

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Well, and you don't have to make it hard.

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I mean, I love coaching helps people build businesses from their unique experience.

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Oh, interesting.

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Tell me more about that.

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The Jess Weber brand helps people create a clear path through their information to their

outcome, right?

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Oh, interesting.

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How does that work?

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Like your language here needs to be so easy that you don't have an avatar problem.

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And and

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If you're ever struggling with that, then it's something that we would challenge you to

connect with others and get feedback on.

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Because I think that the worst language that we hear comes from the people who build in a

silo the most.

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Mm-hmm.

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Mm-hmm.

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Yeah.

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When you're building in a silo, it's it's one of those things where you may not know that

you're doing it, right?

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And we see this all the time until you hear, I need that solution, or oh, I need that

community, or oh, I need proximity to to that individual.

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And then when you get that, you're like, I'd been hiding in this little silo that I

really.

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don't have a clear path on direction or whatever.

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Well, and and I think that people hide in a silo because they have imposter syndrome,

because they're building something new and they don't have confidence in what they're

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building because they don't have clarity on a specific problem that they solve.

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Mm-hmm.

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Mm-hmm.

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You know what's so neat about that?

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This is where we get to shamelessly plug the community.

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Is because at the end of the, I mean, it we we we've had podcasts around this before, and

and I do believe this sentence to be true, and I'm gonna use it in the context of this

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podcast, is it doesn't start with why, it does start with who, right?

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So as it relates to this podcast, we're talking about the right who's.

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Though we're talking now from a coach, you, the coach perspective, that who you surround

yourself with really does matter because you're probably building an asilo right now,

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anyway.

245

And you know who we are speaking to.

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You you feel it internally right now that they said, Oh shoot, Justin Adams said I'm

building an asilo.

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And you're like, Well, at least they can't see me.

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We know what you're feeling right now with when we say you're building an asilo, because

that that is that is a high, large percentage of coaches.

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Jess, we

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We've met a few in the last month or so that are amazing coaches with amazing backgrounds,

and some of them with amazing revenue that are doing it by themselves.

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They're doing it by themselves.

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And they've just gotten, I'm gonna say lucky, but they've just gotten to a point where

they're at a ceiling now, and they're like, my gosh, this is okay, but it's not great.

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And I'm gonna need some help.

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And what we identify for them is that path and that.

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placement, if you will, on how to continue to grow it.

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And it all starts with the avatar.

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It really does.

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And it like I said at the beginning of the podcast, it's simple, but it doesn't, it's not

always easy.

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But it's way easier if you leverage feedback.

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And and so that's why we're having this conversation with y'all, is because we ourselves,

Adam and I, have gotten so much feedback from people we know, like, and trust.

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on our avatar and our positioning.

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And we we constantly are upgrading our website, changing the language to better align,

being very intentional with our lines, our relevance pitches, things like that to our

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avatar.

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And so it's a constant evolution of getting feedback through connecting with other humans,

whether it's connecting with your avatar or connecting with people who know your avatar

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and can speak to it.

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But

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To eliminate the avatar problem, you have to be open.

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Yeah, you definitely have to be open.

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I mean, I mean, let's let's we'll create and share here some of our own progression is

with our challenge.

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Our challenge used to be called the 10K coaching offer challenge.

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We ran that five, six, seven times, had success, though the feedback we got helped us

identify an even clearer avatar, a more specific one, and we changed it to sellable offer.

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Yeah.

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We we we literally change it to sellable offer.

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Same thing with our intensive.

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We called it to $250,000 coach intensive.

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It is now called just drum roll.

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The scalable offer intensive.

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And and part of that came from feedback that originally we named things based on a desired

monetary outcome for a different defined avatar.

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So the quarter million coach intensive or the 10K coaching offer challenge, those were

named for an old version of an old avatar.

280

And when we got clearer and we got feedback, we pivoted the language of our avatar, we ran

it through the Maslow Mountain filter, and then we renamed things.

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So we haven't pivoted our core pillars, our core beliefs, our core teaching, but we

pivoted our language to better align.

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So we we Adam and I took some, you know, of our own medicine and climbed down the

mountain, essentially.

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That's right.

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And that to me, right there is what we do so well helping others in as in, you know, in

the sense of the community, in the sense of the challenge, in the sense of the intensive.

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And so, you know, if you are somebody who has been doing this alone, whether you've made a

hundred dollars or a million dollars, I can guarantee you that if you're building alone,

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there's still an opportunity for in feedback and improvement that can help you grow.

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And so that's where, you know, I'll I'll do the invite here of please check out I

lovecoachingco.com and you will see our upcoming events.

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You are welcome to connect with us in our community because truly this is what we know to

be true, that coaches should not be building alone.

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Coaches need coaches.

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Yeah.

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And and a great example.

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Literally, this was just from la yesterday in our community at 922.

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A coach shared exactly what we're talking about.

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Hey, I've got a masterclass.

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I need three to five honest opinions of it.

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Right?

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So so this coach is putting it out there that he's created something and he wants more

eyes on it to give him the feedback.

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So that he understands the actual process.

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Now he understands who the avatar is specifically, and he'll probably go out and have more

success than had he had done it by himself.

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Yep, for sure.

301

Okay.

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So landing the plane here, you've already done a good job of plugging the I LoveCoing

Co.com website.

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Is I want to engage those who who do want to not build an asilo.

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Go to I LoveCoaching Co.com and go to the events.

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tab.

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You'll see we have two events that we consistently run.

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And we want you to engage in one of those.

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Grab one of those events, come register and and come hang out with us and let us continue

to help and serve you.

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Jess, anything you want to say there?

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No, that's it.

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We are we are here to serve and thank you so much for listening.

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Yes, thank you so much, and we'll see you next time.

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See you bye.