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.

Jess, we are back. And you know what's interesting is in my head I see Star Wars.

And for those Star Wars lovers out there,

you are going to love this podcast because we're gonna talk about not

the Death Star today. We're talking about those little moons,

those little planets all around the Death Star.

And in my head, I can see like that.

What was it? The the the Millennium Falcon?

Is that what it's called?

And and like this

Yeah.

coming into the Death Star. We're gonna be talking about those today,

though in the context of coaching.

Jess, this is gonna be fun.

This just made my little nerd heart happy.

I mean, my my child has decided that we're de dressing up as ~ Star Trek characters

for Halloween this year. So I just ordered

~ nice.

his costume because he wants to be Lieutenant Data,

the android of all things. But

Of course he does.

but no, I and again, every time we bring up something,

whether it's the solar system,

which we've now talked about for several episodes or anything else.

The idea is to give you the visual or something to hang your hat

on for something that we have conceptually discussed and and understood.

And we're like trying to give it to you in a nice neat package now.

And so I think this is a great conversation for us to have because

we talked gravitational pull, we talked your sun,

right? Then we talked about how your coaching offer is a singular planet that lives

inside your gravitational field.

And now

As you promise listeners, we gotta talk about how do you attract people

to the planet? What what do you do to bring them in and bring them closer?

And because if you give somebody all of your coaching offer,

that can overwhelm them, but you can give them pieces of it,

taste tests of it. And so that's really what we need to talk about today.

Well, so let's let's think about this and again we're gonna stay in

in the language here of this analogy that we're using.

Let's let's use the word gravity,

right? Gravity does what, Jess?

Gravity pulls people in. Isn't there from Star Wars?

Now I'm gonna back to my my my childhood days.

Wasn't there something in Star Wars or the Death Star where it pulled

the the enemy ships in or something like that?

Or did I just make that up?

I think you're making that up,

but that's okay. It was

just a giant ship the size of a planet.

~ now

Right.

when we don't have to go there.

When it blew up other planets,

then there would be an issue with gravitational pull changes and things like that

Okay. Alright. Okay.

because of the planets being destroyed by the Death Star.

But don't make me go full nerd,

Gotcha. Yeah, my my yeah, my

Adam.

my my my knowledge in this phase is really bad.

Okay. ~

Wasn't it called a tractor beam?

Did the tractor beam do something there?

Tractor

beams are something that ships usually have to pull in something else,

yes. And and yes,

Okay, so there we go. That's what I'm talking about.

Okay, good. Yes.

the Death Star I think has one,

Okay. All right. Sorry,

and a lot of larger ships typically do too.

sorry.

Listeners, I apologize. We're getting off on a on a bad Star Trek.

Or Star Trek. No, no. This is ~ whatever

6 space conversation.

we're talking about. Gravitational

poles, right? Let's talk about gravitational poles.

Because if you have a solar system that's out there,

and you've got stars, you've got moons,

you got planets, and everything's just kind of

Floating around and not being gravitationally pulled into it.

That's what we're gonna talk about is how do we bring people into your world?

How do we bring them into your ecosystem?

Outside of just your your boyish or girlish good looks,

right? It's we have to bring them into your world some way,

shape, or form. And Jess, your big idea is made simple.

and I know you've been talking about lead magnets.

I think you actually just did a class on this is one way to start talking about

this. So I'm gonna turn this over to you and I want your brain just to

go nerdy on them in the lead magnet space.

Let's go.

Well, lead magnets for definition is a small attractive thing that brings somebody

into your world. So it solves a very specific pain point or a micro problem

and it gives them the solution in that sense.

And you're usually exchanging your how-to,

your how you, your information for their contact information.

So a lot of lead magnets are like,

hey, go fill out this little form.

Give me your name and your email and tell me where to send a PDF.

Tell me where to send a Google Doc.

Tell me where to send a video.

That kind of thing. And that's exactly what you probably need if

you don't already have it for your coaching offer,

your planet, your ecosystem. Because again,

just putting out some sort of landing page or document about your entire coaching

product might not be the thing that attracts people because they don't know that.

you can solve their problems and their very specific problems.

And so by going smaller and simpler micro problems,

micro solutions that you can give away and prove what's going on,

that builds immediate trust and authority in you without you having to

get on a sales call or something like that.

And then it allows them to get in your ecosystem.

So

To to go back to Adam's analogy,

it brings them into your world.

It actually gives a little bit of gravity to you when you attract them with

something that they actually can identify that they have a problem.

So I want to take this back to dating myself.

basic, basic lead magnates for maybe those born

in the 70s and 80s. Remember walking through the mall.

I know some of you have never been to an indoor mall before,

but here's the thing. Indoor No,

It's like, don't lump me into that.

hold on.

I remember them all fondly.

Think about the malls, right? Remember walking through the

cafeteria areas or the food court areas and they would have people standing

out there with little bite-sized things of of the chicken sandwich

or the milkshake or the ice cream or whatever it was.

Or what if you walked by, I don't remember what they were called,

but the boutique perfume and cologne places where they were outside spraying perfume

in cologne all day long, right?

To me those are just death clouds because I'm allergic to all that stuff.

Of

course you are. But those are for the sake of this conversation,

those technically are lead lead magnets,

right? Those are lead

They are.

magnets. You tried that piece of chicken,

you're like, that's what it was.

Remember the Chinese restaurants in those food courts?

Yeah, Panda Express.

Yeah, they would give you a little piece and you'd like,

wow, that was really good. I want more,

and you go buy it. Same thing.

I like the smell of that perfume.

I like smelling that cologne. I'm gonna go in and smell some more.

And then you usually get hooked.

Same concept, same thing.

Now, let's change this, Jess.

Stay with lead magnets, but now let's talk about it maybe from

the social media world. I let's go to Instagram specifically.

Sam. what's Sam's last name who he used to work with,

or I think he still probably does,

Dan Martell. ~ yeah,

Starts with a G I wanna say Godot or something like that,

here. Yeah, something like that.

but that's not quite

right.

So he's the first one that came to mind.

~ yeah, G A U D E T. Yeah.

~ if you go watch his social media as it relates to lead magnets,

I think he's probably one of the best.

He's very simple on there. ~ he's not overpowering,

he's not in your face, he's not polarizing.

He's literally just providing value.

And then he does have a call to action on there.

Where he says comment something and he gives a lead magnet,

right? He gives some

Mm-hmm.

form of value that is specific to the problem that he is solving for you,

i.e., the perfume because you smelled or the cologne because you smelled

and you need to cover it up, right?

He's giving you something to handle a challenge that you may have.

Now, here's what I love about Sam,

Jess.

Mm-hmm.

He does his with no strings attached,

right? So unlike

Yeah.

the chicken or unlike the per like the perfume is you they want you to come

in and buy. Sam right now has no desire to launch anything other than

to consistently give value to people.

Now, the moment that he does, the guy will be an instant gazillionaire because

all he does is provide value.

Well, that's that's the play that he is

running, and it's a long-term play.

Not every coach has the ability to do this,

but there are some that run the the same play.

And actually Caleb Ralston, who we've mentioned before,

is another example of that. Caleb didn't have a coaching program on

the other side of his YouTube when you first got introduced to it well over

a year ago.

Yeah.

And then he added a 56-page PDF workbook to go with the YouTube.

He

collected emails and then when he launched Ralston Select coaching program around

building a personal brand, he had a massive email list because he built

an audience over time. N not everybody has that ability to play,

but that is the play Sam is making,

I can guarantee you right now,

Yeah. Well,

is he's doing the

long play.

and and again, what are we doing here?

We're talking about gravity, right?

We're talking about pulling

Mm-hmm.

people into your world, but let's do this from the service space.

Do this from a space of providing value to people,

not transaction, right? Transactions

Correct.

will make you feel salesy. Transactions will make people not trust you,

though you do have to have

A gravitational pull to bring people into your world and lead magnets

is one of them.

Well, you're doing a transaction,

but it's a microtransaction. You're giving them a piece of value that

is actually to them worth way more than what they're giving in exchange.

And the what they're giving in exchange is access to their email.

And so you are transaction transacting not financially,

but you are still transacting with these humans and getting into some sort

of relationship with them.

And so the big thing there is building trust.

And so whether it's Caleb or Sam or anybody else,

the idea is you deliver more value than you ask of them.

And you keep doing this, and this builds authority and trust.

And so whether you're running a long play like a Sam or a Caleb,

or you're somebody who's already in business like Adam with I Love Coaching,

you are still giving away value with your lead magnet.

And then

On the other side of it, there is always an invitation.

If you found value here, here's the other thing that I offer that extends that

value. So you're giving them something small,

concise, simple, achievable. When I taught the class,

I suggested that it be something that they can get a win on the other side

of in under 30 minutes, because then that builds the trust automatically.

If you're giving a like

Caleb's giveaway of a 56-page PDF workbook is actually the opposite of what

I taught in my class because it's so large that it doesn't give you that quick win.

It feels like a heavier task. So the things that get the best results

are the things that are smaller and simpler.

And a great example of this was years ago,

I built a PDF on how I organize my Google inboxes.

Cause I have about 10 of them that I manage every day across multiple businesses.

And I spend less than 30 minutes in email across all 10.

And it's because I have a specific way that I set it up.

And this is not using AI to respond or anything like that.

It's just changing the structure of the way I get the data and the information.

Turned it into a PDF. I've given that way a bunch of different places and times.

And all I did was I made it really easy and really accessible and

low friction for people.

To

build trust. And so anybody who's listening,

if you want to go see what I'm talking about,

inbox.bigideasmade simple dot com.

And you'll notice I made my lead magnet URL something easy that I could remember.

So I wasn't like, go DM me and then get this and then do this and jump through this

hoop. I made it low friction. So that way somebody could go get it if they wanted

it and it was valuable to them.

And then again, the friction behind the URL is give me your name and your email

and tell me where to send this.

And then you get the PDF immediately.

And that's it. That is me giving

Mm-hmm. Well and

away value doing a transaction in exchange for somebody joining my email list.

Well, and and the neat part about what you said there is where I think people have

opportunities to get better. And that is number one,

low the f lower the friction. Remove friction

Yes.

as much as possible. What is friction?

Well, I want your first name, your last name,

your phone number, your email address,

the date of birth, and the last four of your social security.

That's that's pretty high friction.

Industry, ~ business name,

Yeah. Or

how long

have you been in business? What's your revenue number?

Like, my God, you don't need all that data.

Way too high.

Okay, let's continue with high friction.

Book a call, high friction. Okay.

Yeah.

None all of those remove.

Okay. The other thing, Jess, you said,

and and great example with Caleb there is Caleb's doing this

for a different approach, but let's let's really look at this through

the lens of value. We as humans that have great problem solution cycles

want to just show the world.

How valuable we are. And you're very valuable.

I'm not gonna discount that. But if you give too

big of a 63-page document,

Yeah.

it it's it's too much, right? It's too much.

We were just talking about this with a new idea that we have coming up

of how simple we are going to create something to give to listeners,

to give to people that are engaging.

~ I won't let the count of the bag here because I'm really bad at doing that.

But we're gonna keep it so simple.

The what we're gonna give you is so stinking simple,

but yet massively valuable.

Mm-hmm.

And the friction to get it will be almost zero.

Right? It's gonna be almost

Right.

zero. Yeah.

Well, and we have lead magnets that already exist.

So, like a great example of that is we did a podcast series on Maslow's Mountain.

Then I built a small little ~ workbook around that to help people through what

we did in a seven-part series.

And then we put all of that in a consolidated landing page on our website

and now use that as a lead magnet.

So we didn't even build it all at one time.

We built it in pieces and then made it easy for people and reduced friction.

So

instead of me going, go find the ILC podcast,

go look up Maslow's Mountain, make sure you find the first episode,

and then go do this thing. I said,

go to I Lovecoachingco.com/slash Maslow and you can get the whole thing,

the podcast episodes, the workbook,

all of the stuff combined to make your life a little bit easier

if you're struggling with the language and messaging around your coaching offer.

And so that is yet another example of you don't have to have

A ton of pretty things. You don't have to hire some graphic designer.

Half of what I give away are literally Google Docs.

I'm not even kidding, y'all. One of my best performing lead magnets,

Adam, and I've grown my email list ~ significantly in the last six months just

by lead magnets. I mean, I I have almost the same number of people in

my email list that I love coaching does,

and I've been doing this six months versus six years.

and I don't say that braggadociously,

it's just that's the fact. People will give you emails for lead magnets.

Value when it's perceived, it's an easy trade.

One of my favorite ones was I gave away the templates of how I organize

my notes at a live event. I didn't even give away the notes,

my friends. I gave away the Google Doc that was structured with tabs

for each speaker in the order and the agenda and their social media links.

And my Amazon affiliate link for each book for the people who were authors.

And that was it.

Yep. Yep. Well, and again,

Like and

w w

we laugh, but here's the thing,

Jess, is this is a problem

of being a really big thinker.

This is a problem of

Yes.

wanting to to maybe maybe and and I know there's listeners out there that

are massive heart centered people and they would just want to give everything away.

And that's good. Give it all away,

but give it away.

In the smallest little increments that you can.

Yeah, you wanna give away your best stuff is what they always tell you.

Give it away though in small little increments.

Small little increments.

You need to give away one piece of orange chicken.

That's it. Like and and that is so

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No no it was a piece of orange chicken

on a on a on a ~ on on a toothpick,

right? It was a small little piece

Right.

of orange chicken on a toothpick.

That's right.

Right. Well, and that's that's the thing that I think is so hard for people who,

especially in the coaching industry,

they've done the thing, they've had years or decades of success,

and they find it so hard to be like,

I want to showcase how valuable I am,

because they're trying to price themselves and value themselves

and their experience and their expertise.

And it's like, no, people don't give a heck about that.

They want a payoff, they want the solution to the problem they have.

And so if you can give them a small solution to a small problem that builds trust,

then they're happy to have a conversation about bigger problems

and they already trust you some enough to have that conversation

and hear your solution to that problem.

Yeah.

And so the people who are these big thinkers,

high capacity humans, massive experienced people really,

really struggle because they want to either give away everything or they want

to keep it closed chested until there's a payment.

And it's like,

You have to let go of some of your highest and best things and and those become

the attractors, the moons that orbit the planet that you've already defined

as your coaching offer.

So let's look at this real quick.

So again, we're talking about the small little piece of orange chicken

in the toothpick on that

Mm-hmm.

plate walking through when if you ordered it,

they gave you an obscene amount of it that rocked your stomach for

the next 48 hours.

Yep.

And and so I want to use that as an example.

So I'm on Sam's Instagram right now.

And his most recent post was how to build

Your personal brand starting from zero.

Okay, so he's calling it out, right?

And he's got five steps.

Five little steps. Okay, five little steps.

let me see when did he post this?

He posted this 21 hours ago. Okay.

21 hours ago. 21 hours ago.

Hold on here real quick. Okay.

So and and this one did not have a call to action.

Okay. So this was him giving, attracting people into his world.

With these five simple steps that he had on there,

and I watched it, it was really,

really good. 46,000 people have watched and

Mm-hmm.

engaged with that one. Because on that,

let's go back to Caleb. Caleb did a six hour free building your

brand. And I watched it on 2X.

~ and he also has the big documents that you were talking about,

and he has great traction. Okay,

so I'm not.

pitting each other them against each other here.

But I'm just showing you the simplicity of that one little small little piece

of orange chicken with a toothpick.

That's Sam. And then the whole

Mm-hmm.

plate is Caleb, right? Sam's got forty and that's his that's one of

his biggest ones over the well,

there's 189,000. ~ but forty six thousand is

a huge lift for building gravity into

his ecosystem.

Yeah. Well, and we can we can even do another episode talking about channels where

you share your moons because I think that's a whole separate conversation.

Our goal with this episode was really just talking about when you have defined your

planet, your coaching offer, you need to attract people to it.

And it's not about, you know,

just trying to hand people a planet.

It was really give them a small thing and and

The

reason I like lead magnets is like I the class I taught,

I taught them how to build them in under an hour and launch them.

Cause you could have three or five of them that attack something from

a different angle or present a different thing.

And you give them prescriptively based upon the audience and

the conversation and the environment you're in.

So like Adam might give away Maslow on a podcast episode,

but might give away our coach scorecard on a stage.

There are different lead magnets for different environments,

but they all

All roads lead to Rome, all things point back to our one offer.

And I think

That's right.

that that's where so many people get stuck is it's not one lead magnet to one offer.

You can have multiple moons. I mean,

if you go look up the planetary bodies just in the Milky Way,

a lot of them have multiple moons,

and Earth is one of the unique ones with only one.

So start somewhere. Start small,

simple of a solution to a problem that you've already solved that attracts

the same people who would be attracted to your planetary offer.

And go with that and go start testing them,

see which ones land and resonate with people.

And

Yeah.

I actually talk a lot more about this on the episode of my podcast dropping

or dropped this week as well, which is hilarious to me.

But ~ so anytime that Adam and I can help you with this concept of,

you know, planets and moons, gravitational pull,

please join us or find us, whether it's one of our live events that you

can find on ILovecoachingco.com.

Or you reach out to one of us,

we're here to really help make this easier,

even while laughing about perfume and orange chicken.

Mm-hmm. Or Star Wars, yeah. Or Star Wars.

Or Star Wars, Star Trek, all the and Adam's understanding of tractor

Star Trek.

beams. It's all good. We just want to pull you into our world some more,

That's what we're doing.

so

We're just pulling you in with our tractor beam.

That's right. ~ so I trust this landed for all of you.

And yes, to to Jess's point, yeah,

come find us. Go to ILoveCoaching Co.com.

And inside of there, we have our own.

You'll see. What does it say, Jess?

It says right there, it says, Find your path,

Start here. Yeah.

right? Find your path. Get on find your path.

Those are our simple

lead magnets, if you will, and they're very valuable,

right? Okay. So Jess, that's all I have.

Great job today. You have anything else to add before we go?

No, I am I'm excited to hear what people have going.

And like I said, if there's always a question about a lead magnet,

come find me because this is like one of my favorite things to build.

Adam laughs at me because I probably build one a week just randomly at like 3 a.m.

when I think of something. So

She does. She does. All right.

Thank you all for listening. We'll see you next time.

See bye.

Bye.