You walked out of summer and immediately told yourself you need more leads. Your messaging is broken. Your website isn't good enough. Your tech stack is wrong. Your offer needs repositioning.

But here's what Adam and Jess see over and over when coaches come through their door: None of those things are the real problem.

This episode is Part 2 of a series on coaching's number-one business blocker, and it's the gut punch nobody wants to hear. The actual problem isn't leads, conversions, technology, or fulfillment. It's identity. It's who you are as a coach, what you stand for, and whether you've named that clearly enough for anyone else to remember it.

Adam brings the relational angle: coaches come to this space wearing so many different hats, so many different identities from their past lives, that they're essentially split personalities in the marketplace. Jess brings the architecture piece: without a single, memorable sentence about who you are and what you do, you've given your potential clients nothing to hang their hat on. You've made it impossible for anyone to refer you, remember you, or know exactly who you serve.

The frustration here is real. Most coaches who enter this space are multifaceted, multipassionate, high-capacity humans. The word "niche" feels like a cage. But here's the reframe: you're not picking a title or erasing your past. You're finding the thread, the one recurring pattern of behavior that shows up across every industry and role you've ever held. That thread is what makes you impossible to forget.

What You'll Learn:

• Why lead generation fails when your identity isn't clear (even if you're doing everything else right)
• The difference between labels and threads, and why threads build actual revenue
• How to craft a one-sentence identity that people can remember and repeat
• Why imposter syndrome gets worse as you scale if you're leaning on labels instead of threads
• How to stay multifaceted without being generic
• What happens when your marketplace is unclear about who you are

The Big Idea:

Your marketplace can't buy from you if they can't see you. If you need a teleprompter to explain who you are, you've already lost. The coaches who are building real businesses know their thread so deeply that a single sentence is all anyone needs to associate you with a specific problem and a specific solution. That clarity doesn't limit your capacity to serve, it amplifies it.

Notable Quote:

"Your leads will not come to you because they're unclear too. If the people out there that are watching you are unclear of your identity in the space that you could serve them, you're not going to generate leads." — Adam Roach

Resources Mentioned:

• I Love Coaching community: ilovecoachingco.com
• Pack Your Pipeline masterclass (referenced as upcoming event)
• @ilovecoachingco (Instagram)
• @adamrroach (Instagram)
• @thejesswebber (Instagram)

Timestamps:

[00:00] Intro: Why you need to listen to Episode 187 first

[00:51] The setup: What coaches think their problem is vs. what it really is

[02:26] The gut punch: Identity is everything

[03:30] Translating identity into simple, memorable language

[05:00] The generalist trap and why specialists win

[06:14] Finding your thread instead of picking a title

[07:16] Why limiting yourself feels wrong (but works)

[09:15] The real cost of an unclear identity: no leads

[10:31] How to test if your identity is actually clear

[12:08] Why AI won't do this work for you

[13:27] Imposter syndrome, labels vs. threads, and building confidence

[14:51] Defining thread: the recurring pattern that defines you

[17:30] How Adam's thread evolved across industries

[20:03] Pack Your Pipeline: the next masterclass

[20:34] Where to find ILC and what's always coming next

[22:18] Closing: Where to start if you're stuck

Join the Community:

If this hit you where it hurts, you're not alone. Most coaches already know their stuff. What they need is clarity on who they are and permission to stop being everything to everyone. That's what the ILC community is for. Head to ilovecoachingco.com to see what's next.

Jess, we're back. We are back.

And if this is your first podcast of I Love Coaching,

I want you to push pause and I want you to go back to last week's show because last

week's show we started with what do we think the coach's number one problem

is in the building of a coaching business?

And we said, what do they think it is?

Right.

What what what do they

Mm-hmm.

think it really is? So go listen to that one first.

But if this is your, I don't know,

second time listening to this,

here's what the here's what we're gonna talk about today,

Jess, is what it actually is. So last year is what do they think it is,

but we're gonna expose today what we see it is over

and over and over again. And the and the the consistency of this is very high.

It is. And I think this is such a,

you know, great topic of conversation for us right now because we

are headed into fall, you know,

school's starting for people, all these things.

And so often this is when we feel coaches come out of the busyness

of summer and then they start throwing spaghetti at walls trying

to fix their problems. They're like,

Mm-hmm.

~ I now have time, because fall is a little bit of a slowdown or a change

of pace at least.

And so I know that my problem is I don't have enough leads or I don't have enough

business or I'm not hitting my goals.

And I'm gonna go try all the solutions or mimic all the other businesses

to figure out what I need to do.

Buy into a challenger six, you know,

whatever it is.

And here's the interesting part of this.

Your problem isn't leads. Your problem isn't conversions.

Your problem isn't fulfillment.

Your problem isn't scale. You'd probably think that it is one of those,

right? Or technology.

Or technology, like your website's not good enough,

Sure. Mm-mm. Mm-hmm.

or whatever the case may be. We named a lot of things last episode.

We did.

We're gonna come right out, and this is this this may be a gut punch.

It it may be a punch in the nose.

It may be like, holy cow, I didn't even think about that,

Jess. I'm gonna tell you what it is.

And and I can share and I can speak to this all day long.

It's identity. Right? The the number one biggest problem that

we watch coaches transition through,

or at least hope they transition through,

is who are you? Right? Who are you?

As a coach.

What is your identity?

Yeah, as a coach. Who are you as a coach?

Who are you? What is your identity in this coaching space?

Right? Who

Yeah.

are you and and what are you actually what do you stand for in this space?

Number one, what do you stand for?

What's your payoff? Why you? Right?

What is

Mm-hmm.

this about?

What we see coaches come into this coaching space with with

so many different hats, with so many different capes,

with so many different identities.

That Jess, I'm sure there's been quite a few movies with split personalities.

And we've seen a lot of that in this coaching world with with people with with

misidentification of who they really are,

as a coach.

There's one literally

called split, which is like a,

you know, docu, not a docu horror,

just a horror, you know, thriller type thing.

But anyways, split, here's here's what we know.

And I feel like identity sounds like big macro language.

So let's, I mean, if you go simpler than that,

~ it's your language or your messaging around yourself as a coach.

And that's what

Mm-hmm.

Adam summed up so beautifully in the word of identity.

And the reason we feel like this is the number one problem is because

of people not knowing how to put themselves out there and be known

for one unique problem, one solution in a simple sentence.

Because I don't know if you've done this before.

I laugh every time it happens when I go to an event and I said,

what do you do? And they're like,

I'm a coach, a business coach,

an executive business coach. And

Mm-hmm.

I'm like, Okay, but what do you coach?

And then I get.

~ a run-on sentence with multiple punctuation marks,

and then sometimes it turns into a paragraph.

And I'm like, I didn't get any of that.

And it's not because I'm not intelligent,

but I'm like, I will never remember that and associate it with you as a human.

So, but if I walked into a room and I said,

you know, hey, my name's Jess Weber and I help make big things simple,

that's memorable. That's that's something that somebody can go,

~ Jess is the simplifier. Jess can.

Create clarity from chaos and like do all these other things.

But I didn't need to give them all that language.

I gave them something simple to hang their hat on.

And then we could have a conversation from it that made everything stickier.

And so our number one problem with coaches in their coaching identity

is the fact that they don't have a simple sentence that people can hang their

hat on. They don't have a coaching identity that is simple

Well yeah, well

and clear.

and it and it stems though from so many years of

of of of being in so many different containers.

And again that that is our own internal word of of container,

but so many different worlds, so many different

Problem solution cycles, right?

So many different identities that when they get into this coaching space,

they want to wear all the hats.

They want to wear all those problem.

And you we again, if you've listened to many of these podcasts,

you've heard us say numerous times:

Yeah.

generalists versus specialists,

right? Generalists versus specialist.

So j just is big idea is made simple.

And quite frankly, I'm just a master business builder.

That's that's what I do, right?

That is my

Yeah.

simple and you know.

This is full transparency, everybody.

This woman to my left, or if you if you're not watching,

the Jess at Big Ideas Made Simple helped me even in that space,

right? She's helped me identify that.

And you need to know that though.

Because you can be a master of of a lot of things.

What do they say, Jess? Be a be a be a master,

Jack of all trades, but you're a master of none.

second of all trades, a master of none,

right? Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Is that where you were headed?

Yeah.

Yeah. And so that that's what we want you to catch right here.

Who are you? What type of

Mm-hmm.

coach are you? What who who and that this was the other one,

Jess. This is this is a big one.

Because when you're in that generalist space,

when you can't identify that, you you can't find your one avatar.

Right? And when you can't

Right.

find that one avatar, well, this one avatar will show up,

or this one avatar will show up,

or this one will show up. And you're like,

but I have to coach him differently and her differently and him differently.

If you have one and if you know what your true messaging is,

if you know what your true identity is as it relates to

problem that you're solving, it's easier.

Well, and and we know that this is a trap for so many people because most people

that enter the coaching space has have had two,

10, 22 careers. I don't know how many you've had,

but you have the ability to do a lot of things.

You are a high capacity, high,

highly capable human, multifaceted,

multi-passionate.

And so when somebody says, go pick one thing,

you feel immediately limited. And

Mm-hmm.

and the key thing that we're telling you here is please,

for the love of Pete, do not think that I am telling you to pick one title,

one past experience, because that's not what this conversation is at all.

Mm-hmm.

It

is what is the one thread through all the things that you've done and

all the things that you're passionate about.

That you can go help others with.

And so that's why like the language for me became,

and it took me a long time to get there,

y'all. I mean, we've told the story before.

I built other brands, other identities,

but it was finally settling on I help make complex things simple.

And I can do that in speaking and training and coaching and all this other stuff.

So I can still be my multifaceted,

you know, hyphenated self.

But I have a singular thread of what I do really well.

And so if I'm talking to the right type of person,

my avatar, which for me, I love working with coaches who are trying

to organize all of their intellectual property from their years

of experience and turn it into something their clients can actually use.

Mm.

That now is my primary avatar for me,

Jess Weber, but it doesn't mean I can't go serve other people in other spaces.

Right.

And it just it made it so clear though,

because I can go walk up to somebody else.

I could go walk up to your wife,

who is not somebody trying to organize IP,

but she could remember that I am just the one who makes big ideas simple.

And that's, and I I I don't want this to be about me.

That's not the point. It's it's the getting to a space where you are

so confident in your thread that.

then everybody knows that your thread is your thread and you are known for

it in a such a beautiful way that when somebody goes,

my gosh, I'm so frustrated by this thing,

they're like, you need Jess. You need Adam.

You need so and so. And and we want to help you get there.

Well so so let's let's turn it around,

right? So if you're confused or not clear,

right? Maybe you're not confused,

but maybe you're not clear. And you say,

Well, that's not true. I just need more leads.

Your leads will not come to you because they're unclear too.

Right? If if if

A hundred percent.

if they're not clear, if the people out there that are watching you,

I don't care in what channel that is,

whether that's Instagram, Facebook,

maybe you're on TikTok dancing.

Right. If if they are unclear of your identity in the space that

you could serve them, you're not going to generate leads.

So when

Mm-hmm.

you come to us and say, Well, I just need to generate more leads,

our first question to you will be,

Well, share with your share your identity.

Share with us your your uniqueness,

your problem solution cycle that serves a specific person.

And then show me where you are actually sharing that with people.

Right. Show me where

Yeah.

you are actually either educating people on how to overcome this,

share with share me share with ~ us where you're you're entertaining people

on how to identify you as that brand specific to that that identity

and that problem solution cycle.

Because if you are not clear there on it yourself,

your

Mm-hmm.

marketplace is not clear on it.

And that's a that that's the biggest challenge right there is is

if your marketplace is unclear,

ain't no money coming to you.

Exactly. I mean that's why I'm saying like if you need a note card

or a teleprompter to tell people who you are and what you do,

you got a problem. And I mean ~

Well memorize, internalize,

personalize it. Maybe you need that teleprompter first and then you can get it.

Yes, but

But not for one sentence

without punctuation other than a period at the end.

Like the

Mm-hmm.

second that you start, you know,

like I said, hyphenating or adding commas with like run-ons,

that's when we really see the problems start because people can't remember that.

They want something simple and clear and identifiable.

And if you lead with a role like executive business coach or,

you know, whatever, higher education coach or life coach.

That's generic and boring AF, right?

But then it's like, okay, great.

Well, what do you do? What kind of specific thing?

Like people will ask more questions if you give them something

to ask questions about. And

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

and if you are somebody who's stumbling over the words because you lack confidence,

it's probably because you haven't named your thread yet.

Yeah. Yeah.

And and so the second that you can have confidence in your thread,

it makes answering all those questions abundantly easier.

But see, here's the thing, is just we could have some listeners right

now that would say, Okay, this is good.

I want to identify my thread. ~ so I'm just gonna go ask one of my AI agents,

right? And then

~ no.

they and then they go in there and they ask.

And they get these long I I I love my mother.

~ you get her name is Emily. You get these long Emily text messages.

I mean, she sends me books when she text messages me.

I love her. And I hope she continues to send them for like the next forty years.

But that's what you get when you throw this into your AI agent.

And it's not, again, specifically your words.

You've got to

Right.

identify that yourself. It can go help you.

And it's fun when Jess and I

Teach our whether they're webinars or whether they're master classes or challenges.

We give workbooks. And the first thing I say to any of the participants

is do not please take this workbook,

throw it into your AI agent and say,

fill it out for me. No, put your own unique brain into it first,

then throw

Mm-hmm.

it in there and have it enhance and/or ~ supplementally help you,

right? And that's why this is so important.

If you can't figure out your own thread.

~ you gotta follow a model or a system and and I'm gonna pat ourselves on our back.

That's what we've created, Jess,

and that's why so many of the people who are in the community

are having revenue success, but they also have clarity on their identity.

Yeah. And the ones who have been in our world who maybe didn't have that success,

it was because they weren't in a space where they were ready to let go

of that past container, those past identity labels or whatever it is.

And we're saying all those labels don't matter.

And that's a hard

Mm-hmm.

thing for some people to understand or wrap

Mm-hmm.

their head around because it's what they were conditioned to understand and believe.

But the key thing for us is is.

you can you can keep the labels you can discard the labels i don't really care

the the key thing is i want to know more you are more than a label as a coach

Mm. Mm-hmm.

and so if all that you can put out into the world is your list of labels then you're

probably not very confident in the way you can serve other people and

and we know from again like adam said all of the events that we host and

all of the coaches that we work with

That imposter syndrome is one of the first things that people really struggle with

and then continually struggle with as they scale,

if they're leaning on labels versus threads as their identity definers.

Just go ahead and identify for them and define thread.

Just because again, that's kind of

Yeah.

some of our

own internal language. But let's let's just for the for those that don't know us,

or maybe this is the first podcast that they're listening to us,

let let's let's identify thread.

Well, thread is kind of the ~ recurring pattern of behavior that shows

up no matter what industry or role or experience you've been in.

Mm-hmm.

That's the short version of it.

~ I've done several podcast episodes on my own podcast,

specific to threads, because it took me a while to get there

and understand it myself. So I totally

Mm-hmm.

respect if that's new language for you.

But what we know is that like

Industry and role labels tend to be very small containers,

very specific things. And a thread is that pattern that runs between them.

And so to use me as an example again,

not to make it about me, I have a history with education.

And then I launched ed ed franchises,

and then I got into real estate.

Then I met Adam and I love coaching.

Those are different industries,

education, real estate, and coaching.

And yet throughout all of them,

I had the same pattern of behavior of making.

complex things simple for people.

So I did that when I was teaching history or math.

I did that when I was in ~ real estate and people were overwhelmed.

I could ask questions and say,

hey, here's how you can build your business based around who you are.

Now I do it in coaching. So my thread is making big ideas simple.

And Adam, you have the same thing with helping people

Yeah, I mean when

build businesses no matter the industry or role.

Well, and see that that's that's the neat part is when you understand that thread,

right? Because very similarly,

tennis world, real estate entrepreneur,

turned real estate broker owner,

turned I love coaching, those are all I mean for from the most part,

~ those are four different industries,

three different industries.

Yeah.

And but the common thread was simply that.

I help people build businesses,

right?

You forgot

your SAS model in there too. You built another business around that.

Yeah, that's right. Yep. SaaS model's in there.

But again,

that that was peop that was me helping people build businesses.

I helped the r I helped the tennis club.

Great. I was general manager. Fantastic.

Yeah.

Turn into real estate. I became a team leader and operating principal.

Turn into I love or recruiting bridge.

Great. We were helping them build their businesses through recruiting.

Now the I love coaching. Helping coaches build their businesses.

So that's the thread that we're talking about there.

And that is what

Really starts to help you identify yourself

as that type of specific coach that can serve people.

Because now, if someone

Mm-hmm.

comes to me and says, Hey, I hear you're a coach.

Yep, that's right, I'm a coach.

Can you coach me on how to ice skate?

Nope. That is not part of my threat,

right? That's a simple,

Right.

simple, simple way of starting to remove avatars that are not your avatar.

Because here's the thing.

Could I help someone learn to ice skate?

Now I can ice skate myself. But the answer is probably not very well.

Right. ~ and that's that's where you're going to have some problems.

So that that's why

Well,

we're having

this conversation.

and the thread makes the filtering easier,

it makes the avatar easier because again,

the avatar doesn't have to be industry specific,

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

it can be thread specific. So

Adam can have somebody say, Hey,

I am building a business in real estate,

I am building a business in coaching,

I am building a business in tennis or any other industry.

I'm building a insurance-based business.

Great.

Mm-hmm.

He doesn't need to know the industry,

he needs to know the the mechanics of the build.

And what steps they need to take next.

And if he's

That's right.

an expert in that, then they can hire him for that.

Now, his primary avatar is a coach building a business,

but it doesn't mean that he can't help and serve others.

And the same thing with mine. I love organizing curriculum

and intellectual property, but it doesn't mean I can't help somebody else organize

other chaos. I have, you know,

years of experience in operations.

So

I can organize an entire business that Adam's helped build,

you know? And that's

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

part of probably what makes our partnership so great.

But the idea here is you gain so much more confidence when you're

not niched on industry or role and you're niche on threat.

Totally. Totally, totally, totally.

And you know, we we offered last time,

~ spontaneously by me,

cool figure, a a master class.

And we're still gonna offer that masterclass.

So if you are listening to this and this is post what is that gonna be that event,

~ August twenty-sixth, right?

Twenty sixth. Yeah.

Sorry, you missed it. But if this is before that,

~ we we wanna invite you to this,

right? We're calling this pack your pipeline.

Because at the end of the day,

this will be for people who are already in the coaching space and they need help

in building their pipeline. But the neat part about that is we're going

to help you identify your identity.

We're going to help you identify who the who is in that space when

you have that identity identified,

i.e., I'm not going to go coach an ice skater.

And then where to go find that?

individual or group or whoever it is that your thread can now serve so that

you can pack your pipeline. That's the beauty

Mm-hmm.

of when you understand this very first part,

right? So so we we have titled this podcast very simply the number

one problem that coaches have.

What do they think

Mm-hmm.

they have was last time? What do we actually know that they have is today?

And this is why we want to uncover this for you and

You know, Jess may or may not have tried to slap my hand virtually and say,

Hey, don't do those spontaneous things anymore.

But I do think that that was for a reason,

Jess, so that we can help them in all of this space right here.

Well, and if for some reason they're listening after the twenty sixth and they want,

You missed it. Sorry. No, I'm kidding.

you know, they they

want some other help with us. I'm just gonna say you

Okay.

can always

engage with I LoveCoaching Co dot com because we're always hosting events.

So it might

Yeah, always.

not be this event, it might be the next event,

and that's okay too. But the idea is we've developed

Yeah.

our understanding of how we help people scale their coaching businesses,

whether they're launching or they've got one and they just wanna get

to the next level.

And so we offer events around that.

And and it's because we're confident in our threads as personal brands

and individuals that work together beautifully.

You know, we I joke we braided ours to build I love coaching into the

Mm-hmm.

entity it is now. And and so if that sounds like something that you want

a little bit more clarity or help on,

come find us. Because we know how.

Counterintuitive it is to say,

hey, ignore all the past and just find the pattern.

And

~

yet when you can do that, it can completely change the way that

you perceive building a coaching business and it can exponentially amplify

the success that you have and the speed with which you have it because

of the fact that there's clarity there and it's something that people

can understand. Cause let's face it,

people are not Googling.

Mm mm.

The thing that you probably wrote down on a note card or a teleprompter.

And so they're not going to find you if that's the thing you lead with.

Mm-hmm. It's very true. Yeah,

that that's very, very true. And the more clarity you have there again,

the clearer the audience the potential buyers will be.

That's it.

Exactly.

That's it. Okay, just land the plane.

Good job.

Well, that's it, friends. If if you are somebody who's listening to this

and you need a little bit extra help because you recognize that you thought

it was leads, you thought it was technology,

you thought your problem was something else,

and now you're listening to us and you're like,

I don't know what the heck I my one sentence is,

Mm-hmm.

come find

Adam or I and engage with us, and we are happy to help you move in that direction.

So

Yes, for sure.

And just we we have to celebrate here real quick.

So ~ we surpassed ten thousand downloads of this podcast.

Congratulations. Thank you to all of those listeners who have downloaded

our podcast. I mean, ten thousand,

that's to me, that's a that's an i that's an insane number.

Ten thousand.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well,

it's because there's people out in the world that are either coaches

or wanna be coaches and it we've found our superpower and now we're trying

to help them. So thank you to every person that takes the

Yeah. Thank you. Yes.

time to download, to give us a review,

to to engage with us. That means the world to us.

Yes. Thank

you, thank you, thank you. That is that's blows my blows my mind,

Jess. That is just absolutely I mean,

I'm just humbled by that number.

And now we gotta add another zero to the end of it.

Let's get to a hundred thousand

Let's do it.

downloads. Okay. Thank you all.

We appreciate you and we'll see you next time.

See you bye.

Bye.