The Avatar Problem: Why You're Not Getting Enough Clients (Maslow's Mountain Pt. 5)
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. If you don't have enough clients right now, the fastest self-diagnostic you can run is to ask whether the way you describe what you do makes immediate sense to someone who has never heard of you. If they look confused or go quiet, that is not engagement. That is polite disengagement.
"The avatar problem is not the avatar's problem. You have an avatar problem because you don't know specifically what you solve."Adam Roach · I Love Coaching Podcast
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.
Show Notes + Resources
What You'll Learn
- 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 — 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
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
Memorable Lines
- "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. 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."
Resources Mentioned
- Get Paid to Coach free guide: ilovecoachingco.com/get-paid-to-coach
- REAL Coach Method Membership: ilovecoachingco.com/discover
- Instagram: @ilovecoachingco / @adamrroach / @thejesswebber
- YouTube: youtube.com/@ilovecoachingco
No matter where you are in your coaching journey, ILC has a resource built for you.
The I Love Coaching Podcast is hosted by Adam Roach and Jess Webber of I Love Coaching Co. New episodes drop weekly wherever you listen to podcasts.