How to Start a Coaching Business Without Credentials | Adam Roach on Turning Experience Into Income

[00:00:00] How to Start a Coaching Business Without Credentials Adam Roach on Turning Experience Into Income What if the experience you've gained throughout your career could become the foundation of a successful coaching business, even without traditional coaching credentials?

[00:00:17] The professional coaching industry continues to experience significant growth, creating new opportunities for entrepreneurs, business leaders, and professionals looking to transform their knowledge into meaningful impact. According to BusinessWire, the broader U.S. professional coaching industry is valued at approximately $16 billion, having more than doubled since 2016.

[00:00:44] Meanwhile, research cited by the International Association of Career Coaches suggests that approximately 75% of coaching clients expect professional certification. This raises an interesting question. Can real-world experience, practical expertise, and a genuine commitment to helping others provide an alternative pathway into the coaching profession?

[00:01:08] For aspiring coaches, the challenge isn't simply acquiring credentials or attracting clients. It's discovering how to build a sustainable business that reflects their expertise, personal values, and long-term vision. Adam Roach is a coach, speaker, entrepreneur, and host of the I Love Coaching podcast.

[00:01:31] As the founder of I Love Coaching Co., Adam helps aspiring and established coaches build and scale businesses that reflect their unique experiences rather than following someone else's blueprint. Through the I Love Coaching Co.

[00:01:47] Through the ILC Collective and his proprietary Real Coach Method TM, Adam equips growth-oriented coaches with practical strategies to develop compelling offers, identify their ideal audiences, and create businesses rooted in authenticity, ownership, and alignment.

[00:02:05] His ambitious mission is to empower 100 million lives through coaching, helping individuals recognize the value of their experiences and translate that knowledge into opportunities to serve others. Before entering the coaching industry, Adam built real estate franchises, coached tennis, and successfully sold a company.

[00:02:30] Those experiences helped shape his belief that meaningful success isn't about replicating someone else's achievements. It's about creating a business and lifestyle that genuinely fit the person behind them. Today, Adam combines his entrepreneurial experience with a passion for leadership, personal development, and helping others pursue purposeful growth.

[00:02:56] He lives in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, with his wife, Dana. This week on Let's Have This Conversation, Adam joins host Kevin McShan to explore how individuals can transform their professional experience into a thriving coaching business without necessarily following the traditional credentialing pathway.

[00:03:17] Throughout our conversation, we discuss the importance of aligning your expertise with your audience, developing confidence in the value you offer, overcoming limiting beliefs, and creating a business that supports both professional success and personal fulfillment. We also examine the evolving coaching industry, the relationship between credentials and credibility, and why building a successful coaching practice requires more than simply having valuable knowledge.

[00:03:46] It demands clarity, conviction, authentic relationships, and consistent execution. Whether you're an experienced executive considering a career transition, an entrepreneur looking to diversify your income, or an aspiring coach searching for a meaningful starting point, this conversation offers practical insights into building a business around what you already know. Because sometimes the most valuable qualification you possess isn't a certificate on the wall.

[00:04:15] It's the experience you've accumulated, the challenges you've overcome, and your ability to help someone else move forward. Join us for a thought-provoking conversation about entrepreneurship, leadership, coaching, and creating success on your own terms. I'm Kevin McChad. I'm Kevin McShan. Let's have this conversation.

[00:04:36] Yeah, so Adam, if you're ready, I'll take a moment to welcome you to the program, my friend.

[00:05:10] And I'm super excited to learn about your career in coaching, my friend. It's great to see you all. Thank you, Kevin. I'll follow your lead. And have a Monday to you, my friend. Thank you. Same to you. Absolutely.

[00:05:23] So Adam, I wanted to start our conversation by asking you about the whole idea of effective coaching as executive coaches, because I know that you believe that people should be able to use their expertise in order to make money. So I'm curious to start our conversation by giving your definition of effective and inclusive coaching. What do you think that means to you?

[00:05:52] Kevin, that's a great, great question. So I've been around coaching my entire life. My father was an Olympic swim coach. I played collegiate tennis and then professional tennis. I've been in the coaching world and the coaching of tennis and the coaching of real estate and the coaching of business. And I believe there's an acronym that I use in the coaching world. And that's real, R-E-A-L.

[00:06:17] And real stands for relevant, experiential, authentic leadership. Because if you aren't a real coach, relevant, experiential, authentic leader, you are not doing your customer or the person you're serving a service. You're actually doing them a disservice. And we can break down real.

[00:06:43] Relevant means that you have relevance in that specific space. We actually teach coaches how to build what we call a payoff. And a payoff is in the space of what is the client going to receive. And you better have done that yourself. Experiential is you have experience in that payoff. Authentic, Kevin, is where it's like, okay, I have done this and I know authentically I can show up and bring you value. And lastly is leadership.

[00:07:13] Leadership is influence, as my dear friend John Maxwell says. And what's influence? Getting someone to take action. So I believe that's it, Kevin. Let's be real. Well, you know, it doesn't get much more authentic than that, doesn't it? Right. Absolutely. And Adam, I know you started. I love coaching code.

[00:07:34] I helped established coaches, as you mentioned, scale their businesses through strategic roadmaps and weekly coaching and a collaborative network of ideas and professionals, my friend. So tell me about your company. What do you think makes a dynamic coach and the power of building, you know, connected and collaborative relationships and networks? My friend, what are your thoughts then?

[00:08:04] Well, outside of being real, Kevin, is a coach has to step into a space of clarity first and foremost. Right? For their business to have success, there's seven key factors that they've got to understand. The very first one is the math. Right? What is the math related to the business that they're looking to gain? Number two is payoff. What is the payoff that a client will receive that is specific from you, Kevin?

[00:08:33] That's the difference between being a generalist coach and a specialist coach. The next step is audience. Who are you serving specifically? Because when you understand your payoff, now you know the solution of what people are looking for and you know who to go find. After you have audience, then you have channel. The channel is where you're connecting with people. Right? That's the audience. Then you go into connection.

[00:09:02] Connection is adding deposits to people. Then we go into the space of enrolling and that is where you get to ask for a withdrawal from somebody. And then we have retention. So those are the areas where coaches, in my opinion, Kevin, build their businesses in a content space. Now, let's look at the community. People need community. Why?

[00:09:31] Because building in a silo and building in isolation, Kevin, allows the enemy to come in here and say, you're probably not very good at this. You're probably not going to have success. And if you're by yourself, you'll probably start to believe that and you'll be out of the coaching space. So that's why I've created the I Love Coaching community. No one works for Adam Roach. No one is an I Love Coaching coach. They are community members for each other. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:09:58] You know, Adam, I'm a numbers guy being a journalist. I love numbers and statistics and translating them into, you know, information that people can actually use. So I've got some statistics here from the Ivy League School of Business and I wanted your perspective on them. So bear with me for a moment because they did a study on executive coaching.

[00:10:27] And here are some of the numbers that they came up with. They say that 86% of companies report a positive return on investment when they invested in executive coaching. And they also say that 80% of individuals receiving coaching reported an increase in confidence.

[00:10:50] And then finally, 70% experienced improvement in work ethic performance and self-confidence, my friend. So I'm wondering, what do you make of those numbers? And what do you think it tells you about the power that executive coaches have? What goes on there, my friend? Well, you know, those are all great stats and I actually believe in all of them.

[00:11:16] The one thing that I will share here is that your coach better be a specialist coach, not a generalist coach. So again, in the executive coaching space, we're not handholding. We're not babysitters. We have specific what I call problem solution cycles that we help specific people with.

[00:11:43] Now, there are many coaches in our I Love Coaching community. Again, like I said, no one works for me. It is a collaborative approach to coaching. And these are all coaches of their own, with their own businesses. And here's what I watch. I watch the ones who know how to articulate what the client is going to get. And then they actually attract more clients than the non-articulate or generalist coach.

[00:12:11] So with the stats that you gave there, Kevin, I believe them. Because when, let's give an example here. If I was to come to you, Kevin, and said, okay, you're in the executive space and you're the CEO, I'll coach you. That's generalist coaching. That means absolutely nothing. But if I come to you and say, Kevin, when we coach together, I'm going to help your team perform and have output of 50% greater than what they did last year.

[00:12:41] And your bottom line profit margin will increase by 25%, whatever it is specifically. Now we have key metrics that we can follow, key trackable KPIs. And that's why those numbers are there in my opinion. Yeah, absolutely. And Adam, I'm going to tell you a quick story about myself. Great. As I ask you my next question.

[00:13:06] So Adam, outside of hosting this podcast, I also do some public speaking about the importance of hiring people with disabilities. Because, buddy, at the age of nine, I was told by a doctor that I would never be able to walk because of the severity of my cerebral palsy. So I now work with organizations to tell them about the importance of hiring people with disabilities.

[00:13:36] So in the world of coaching, my friend, you know, and in the world of speaking, we're always taught about our value proposition. So how do you think our value proposition of our life experience can help us in our professional pursuit of coaching? What are your thoughts there, my friend? Kevin, I love, love, love that. I'd love to come on to one of your events.

[00:14:02] I think it's so spot on. And here's why. It's a difference between coaching from a container. And here's what I mean by container. Container is a place that you came from, right? So I came from the real estate world and the tennis world. Those are containers that I came from. That's what I did. It's not who I was.

[00:14:32] Now, in the same breath, we get to understand, Kevin, what are called problem solution cycles. I'm nearly 50 years old and I've had many problems in my life. And many of those problems I've been able to solve. Not all of them, but some, most of them. And here's the neat part. What is that created inside of me? Experience.

[00:14:56] I've created experience that I can help Kevin with, that I can help Steve with, that I can help Susie with. If, here comes a big one, I have passion around it. Right? If I have passion around it. So Kevin, let's just hypothetically say that you come to me and you want some divorce coaching. I have been divorced myself. I've also been remarried. Would I have passion in that space? Heck no. No, I wouldn't have passion in that space. But could I help you?

[00:15:26] I could. Because I have a problem solution cycle inside of that container. But I wouldn't want to because I don't have any passion in that space. So I agree. Life experiences, as you mentioned, are very good indicators on what you can go serve somebody else in. Only if you have passion though. Don't miss that word. Yeah.

[00:15:50] And I know that you are on a mission to have 100 million lives. That's right. For your real coaching method. So I'm interested in exploring how, you know, that mission is going and how individuals transform their professional expertise and lived experience into a successful business. What are your thoughts there, my friend? Yeah, that's good, Kevin. So here's what I think.

[00:16:19] That was a God given number to me. I'm a very spiritual guy and I prayed on it before I stepped into this lane. And I have a vision statement. It goes like this. Empower coaches. So that's not just me. That's everybody empowering each other in a community. Empower coaches to change and serve 100 million people using our real coach method. And the neat part about that language, Kevin, is that's not me. That's everybody collectively.

[00:16:49] So my job is to help these coaches build coaching businesses where they can go serve and change other people. And the neat part about that is we know how that ripple effect works when you throw a pebble in a water and you get one ripple, two ripples, three ripples, four ripples. Kevin, I have no doubt that after this conversation you and I are going to have, I will have a conversation about you with somebody else. I will say, what an incredible time I had on Kevin's show today. And guess what?

[00:17:19] That person will probably circle back and say, I want to go listen to that show. They'll listen to the show and that wave will continue to go out. And that's how the 100 million is going to be reached. I can't measure that. That's a God sized number. And so at the end of the day, that's where I'm going to stay. And so that's what we get to do is help coaches go serve other people. Yeah.

[00:17:39] And Adam, just talking to you, I'm curious to get your thoughts on the concept of professional merit and how professional resilience can give us merit in our subject matter that we want to teach people on. What are your thoughts there, my friend? Yeah, that's really good. I think it goes back to real, R-E-A-L, relevant, experiential, authentic leadership. Merit is experience, right?

[00:18:08] Getting that experience in a space. Kevin, if you called me up after the show and you said, Adam, I really liked your focus. I liked the way that you, you, you, you lay stuff out. Adam, I want you to coach me to make a billion dollars. I would say, Kevin, I'm going to give you a big old virtual high five, but I'm not going to accept you as a client. Not because I don't like Kevin, but because I've never made a billion dollars in my life. Right?

[00:18:34] And so that experience in that space, if I step in and say, yes, Kevin, I'll coach you. That's inauthentic. And what's going to happen is if I take you on as a client in an inauthentic space, I'm going to show up inauthentically. And that you will feel. So it'll be a waste of your time, your money and your resources. And it'll be a waste of my time, my resources and my reputation as a coach.

[00:19:02] So those past experiences, creating the merit in that space are massively important. But here's what a lot of coaches do, Kevin, is they don't write them down. They don't take the time to slow down long enough to go back and see all those spaces where they've had an experience. Yeah, absolutely. You know, Adam, I'm curious to also ask you about your perspective on professional resilience. And I'll use myself as an example.

[00:19:32] So Adam, I originally graduated college with a sports journalism degree. I wanted to be a sports reporter. And when I graduated college back in 2010, I went on 10 consecutive job interviews. And they all said I was qualified. But because of my disability, they said they didn't have the infrastructure to support me. And they wished me well on my journey in life.

[00:19:58] And that's part of the reason I became a professional speaker is because I want people to know that resilience can be, you know, a catalyst for success. So I'm wondering your thoughts on competitive and professional resilience and how that can be a journey or a pathway to prosperity for coaches. What are your thoughts there, my friend? Hmm. It's a great word, resilience.

[00:20:29] And if you don't have a coat of armor on you, Kevin, you are going to get beat up in this world. Let's be real, right? This world is not nice. This world is very... It's a tough world, Kevin. I mean, if it was sunshine and rainbows and unicorns, we'd all be whatever we would be. But resilience is what makes us, right? Think about that. Again, being a very faith-oriented man, God slams doors.

[00:21:00] God slams doors, man. And it's not our job to kick them open again. If they're slammed, move on. Move on. You've got to have resilience and know that you're probably going to get knocked down more than you're going to stand up. And then when you do stand up, guess what? You're going to probably fall. And the neat part about it is in my world and just Adam Roach language here, you got to have faith, right?

[00:21:28] And faith is going to impact that resilience all day long. But Kevin, I lived in a self-reliant space for a long time where I shouldered everything. And it wasn't until my dad died in 2019 that I had to step into a faith path because I felt lost, right? I felt empty.

[00:21:53] And that meant that I was acting alone and I knew I couldn't act alone. And so just like you had doors slammed, I had doors slammed as well. And I had to see what was on the other side of it. And at the end of the day, Kevin, we are better people because of that, right?

[00:22:13] That resilience, that space of standing back up and moving off, as they say cliche-wise, dusting yourself off and keep moving, you got to. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, Adam, I want to now talk to you about organizational culture because I know that you spent years leading organizations to operating systems inside organizations. And now you help entrepreneurs and coaches to do the same.

[00:22:42] So I'm wondering about making that transition, the role that your faith plays in your career pivot into coaching and why you believe that having a, you know, a clarified vision of purpose and prosperity is important. What are your thoughts there, my friend? Well, let's talk about what culture is. Culture can mean many different things in many different people.

[00:23:12] But I look at creating environments around values, right? Creating the environment or ecosystems or whatever you want to call it, whether that's physical or virtual or whatever it is. Culture means a lot, right? You've got to find the values that you want to build foundationally upon and then build the culture around it.

[00:23:37] And I say this all the time, Kevin, you'll attract who you're supposed to attract and you'll detract who you're supposed to detract or not attract, right? And at the end of the day, that is your job is to find the values that align with you. Everyone wants to know, Kevin, that you have an opinion. And if you are just an amiable person walking around, maybe spineless, that's not going to be a culture that people will stay.

[00:24:08] So that's number one. Number two culture is we can attach it to vision, right? And vision of the collective group or vision of the leader or vision of the individual leading the organization is so important when it comes to building the culture too. Why? Because without vision, people perish, right? They want to know where they're going. And at the end of the day, if you don't have vision, you're probably not going to have a culture.

[00:24:35] Because people will leave leaders. They don't leave companies. They leave leaders. And if they are not following you, probably had to do with your vision, which then in turn impacted the culture. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, Adam, we're talking about being a successful coach. It requires more than just successful business strategy.

[00:25:01] It also requires, you know, the ability to authentically connect with the human behavior of individuals. Because I tell organizational leaders all the time that your people are your most important asset.

[00:25:21] And if you're not invested into their success outside of the office, then it's going to be hard to motivate them, my friend. So tell me about the importance of human behavior and investing in people as coaches. What are your thoughts there, my friend? Well, it goes back to being authentic. Right? It goes back to being a servant.

[00:25:48] It goes back to understanding that at the end of the day, Kevin, none of this really matters. Right? And so the question that I always ask, because I was on the wrong side of the tracks with this one. I chased success. I didn't chase significance. And the difference between chasing success and significance is success, in my opinion, is very individual you focused.

[00:26:15] Significance is where you are having a significant impact in a space, in a person, in a group or whatever it is. Success will follow significance. And at the end of the day, that's our job is to pay attention to that. That's our job to pay attention to how are we serving? How are we impacting other people in an authentic way, in a real way, and then having success follow?

[00:26:40] So, Kevin, these podcasts I love being on are of the significance play. This is not about Adam Roach. None of this is. This is my commitment to stepping into space, to meeting amazing podcast hosts like yourself, and to serving your people. This isn't about me. This is about serving them. And that's a significance play. How do we help other people? How do we get to impacting and changing a hundred million people? Significance. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:27:08] And Adam, I know that you've spoken catacly in the past about spending two years believing you had a pipeline problem. But you soon realized that your calendar was empty and that you had a lead in consistency. But you eventually found a way out of that sort of malaise, my friend.

[00:27:36] And I'm curious, how did we get over a pipeline problem and become really servants of others as leaders? What are your thoughts there, my friend? Well, let's look at what it is. So if we go back to the seven vertebrae of your business. Pay off. I'm sorry. Math. Pay off. Audience. Channel. And here's what we have a tendency to do, Kevin.

[00:28:03] We go find the audience in the channel that they're living. Social media, podcasts, newsletter, ads, events. And we miss one thing. When we connect with that audience, we go to enroll right away. We want to sell. We want an offer. But you have to connect first. What does connection mean?

[00:28:31] Kevin, you and I are connecting right here. But I, when we finish, will follow through and follow up with making deposits in Kevin's world. Not for a transactional sake, but for a value add sake. And inside of that value add space, eventually I can come to Kevin and ask for a withdrawal. What's a withdrawal?

[00:29:00] Kevin, join my community. Kevin, who do you know that needs what we have? But I have to make enough deposits first. And Kevin, most people miss that. They go right from channel to try to enroll. And if you ever have gone to the bank, I know I've done this before. And you go to make a withdrawal and you haven't made any deposits. Kevin, you ain't got no money. That's so true. The bank isn't going to give you any money.

[00:29:28] And the same thing holds true in this space right here. If your pipeline is filled with names that you haven't made a withdrawal, I'm sorry, that you haven't made any deposits with, you cannot expect withdrawals to come out of it. Yeah, absolutely. Adam, I'm curious, just out of my own personal curiosity, to ask you about the equity of equality. And what I mean by that is this.

[00:29:58] You know, so many people are concerned or consumed with outside perception. And they make excuses not to execute on the vision that they have for their life. And, you know, Adam, it's ironic that I'm a podcaster and professional speaker now.

[00:30:24] Because when I was a little guy, Adam, I spent seven and a half years in speech language therapy. Because my eyes and my teeth didn't always, my brain spoke faster than the words coming out of my mouth. So I spent that year, those years in therapy trying to get my brain to catch up with my words that were coming out of my mouth.

[00:30:53] So I'm curious, when you look at equity of equality in both business, coaching and societal life, why do you think we've created such a divide in the way that we talk to people?

[00:31:09] How do you think coaching can help heal the societal divides so that we can have more equity of opportunity for folks that want to get into coaching and quite frankly into life as well? What are your thoughts there, my friend? Yeah, that's a heavy question, Kevin. That's a really good one. Gosh, I could take this question so many different ways from an answer standpoint.

[00:31:36] At the end of the day, though, it comes back to the word leadership, right? It comes back to leadership. My coach, my mentor, my friend John Maxwell says all the time that he is leadership sad, right? As we look at it from a society standpoint, he's leadership sad. And that's because we have leaders sometimes at the top of our organizations, top of our food chain, so to speak, who aren't the most authentic. They're not the most leadership oriented.

[00:32:05] But we have to ideate what does leadership even mean? And if we look at it, leadership is influence. What is influence? Influence is getting someone to take action. Well, if we look back in history, we can define leaders all through history. Great leaders who did amazing things for humanity. Take Jesus Christ.

[00:32:27] All the way to bad leaders who still influence people on their ideology. And they did horrible things. Hitler, he was an unfortunate leader of a country who did horrible things. But guess what? People followed. So it goes back to values, Kevin, in my opinion, that people need to look at their values.

[00:32:55] You've got to have, you've got to have, well, in my opinion, Kevin, if you ain't got Jesus, you ain't got anything. But at the end of the day is you've got to understand the values, the moral code of life. You've got to get in there and say, okay, fine. Coach. If you are a coach, what do you believe? What are your values?

[00:33:21] And if they're not, gosh, this is such a loaded question, Kevin. And if you're not in a space of high morals, high ethics, if you're just trying to be a transactionalist with someone, just take their money and just show up with them for an hour a week or whatever it is, but you're not moving their needle forward either in growth or in business. You're doing that person a disservice.

[00:33:47] So it comes back to that word leadership around influence and influence getting someone to take action on something. Kevin, as an example, if I felt that I was working with a client who didn't have clarity on their values or who didn't have clarity on what they believed in, you know what I tell them to do? Kevin, go for a walk. Go for a walk. Go get quiet. Let me give you a series of 10 questions to go ask yourself and just sit there. Go get quiet.

[00:34:17] Because a lot of people don't do that, Kevin. They don't go get quiet. They just go, go, go, go, go. And then they don't understand what their values are and they don't actually understand what they believe in. Your clarity of purpose is so important, my friend. And, you know, I wanted to ask you, you know, one of the best things that I tell leaders is that you have to be vulnerable as a leader in order to be humanized.

[00:34:47] And I know that you believe that it's important to feel safer when you fail with strangers, my friend. And I think there's parallels between what I just said and that philosophy.

[00:35:06] So I'm curious to ask you about the real reasons you're avoiding warm leads or creating relationships with people and how we get around that bottleneck. What are your thoughts there, my friend? Well, if we look at relationships and warm leads, I know what you're talking about there.

[00:35:30] And here's what here's what that YouTube was all about was we've got to look at our database into four categories or even the channels. And that four categories is unknown. These are people that I don't know and you don't know them. The known group, these are people that know you, but they don't know what you do or what problem you solve. Then there's people that like you. These are people that know what problem you solve and they know what you do. They just haven't trusted you yet to spend money. And then we have the trust group.

[00:36:00] The trust group are the people that spend money with you one way, shape or form, or they refer you somebody. But that's just not another different type of currency. A warm market and a relationship market. They actually can go hand in hand. But a lot of people will skip that place. Right? A lot of people will skip that space of people who have trusted me before, but I'm not going to go back to them.

[00:36:28] I'm not going to ask them for anything because they've already paid me money. It doesn't mean they want to pay me again. That's not true. Right? Or the people that like us. Well, I'm not going to go into my database because I don't want to rock the boat. I'm going to go spend time up here with the people that are unknown because, well, it won't hurt my feelings if they say no to me. That's wrong. The people who have spent money with you, they will spend money again if you brought them value and if you brought the payoff forward.

[00:36:58] People who like you just are unclear on when they need to be in your space. But if you're not in their space consistently, then you won't be able to convert them or build a relationship with them. So you've got to be able to stay there in those two categories so that you can build relationships which then turn into warm leads. Yeah, absolutely. And I don't know.

[00:37:23] You believe that one of the greatest challenges to successful entrepreneurs or coaches or executives face the tradition between sort of being the operational leader to being, you know, the strategic voice on how to delegate things.

[00:37:46] So because I believe that the power of delegation is one of the most important things that we can have as coaches and giving the delegation of authority or the permission structure to executives to lead without micromanaging. So I'm curious, Adam, for you, what does it mean for executives, coaches, or leaders to lead without micromanaging, my friend?

[00:38:16] What are your thoughts, then? Well, let's look at what micromanaging really is. Micromanagement is a disbelief in somebody, in my opinion. If I'm being micromanaged with a thumb on top of me, I need to ask the question, what specifically can I do to get that thumb off of me? Right? Because that is not the way that I ever operate in a micromanagement space.

[00:38:43] But if you are the one that is micromanaging someone, you have to look in the mirror yourself and ask the question, where are my insecurities with this person? What's causing me to have either disbelief or untrust with that person, which makes me keep my thumb on them at all times? There is an answer there for them. They just have to figure it out.

[00:39:09] And if you feel that you are being micromanaged, ask the question, what specifically can I do to earn the opportunity not to have to check in or not to have to come to that meeting every single day? Or whatever it is that you're feeling micromanaging, you can ask that question. And a good leader will give you an answer. A good leader will – I'll give you a silly example here, Kevin.

[00:39:36] My daughter, she's 16, and I give both my kids – I have a son who's 18 and a daughter who's 16 – an allowance. Now, they have to earn that allowance. But then I watch where they spend the money. I watch where they spend the money. And my daughter, who I call a consumer, is a consumer of all things with her money. And most of that consumption will either go to Starbucks or Chick-fil-A.

[00:40:06] And so I showed her over a March through September period how much money she was spending on food outside of the house. She could have saved money if she was just eating at the house, but she didn't. So I micromanaged her. Here was the micromanagement. Here's the micromanagement. You don't get your money the next month without a profit and loss statement.

[00:40:34] And the profit and loss statement has to show you where you spend your money. I said, but you can ask me a question on how you cannot do that. She says, okay, Dad, what do I need to do to not do that? I said, it's very simple. You're spending my money, but if you want to spend your money, go get a job, spend your own money, and you don't have to give me a P&L. And she said, oh, that's how I earn the right not to give you a P&L. I was like, you're absolutely right.

[00:41:04] So that's what I would say there, Kevin. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I'm curious to hear you brought up your faith a number of times during our conversation this afternoon. So how do you think faith and how has your faith influenced, you know, the societal decisions that we make and the way that we help our neighbor? What are your thoughts there, my friend?

[00:41:30] Well, I think everybody has their own unique journey down that path. And like I said, I'm a recovering transactionalist and a recovering self-reliant person. I like to shoulder everything. I like to carry on the responsibilities. I sold my companies for a few different reasons. But one of them was, Kevin, that I was chasing success. I was chasing success, not significance.

[00:41:59] And my father had passed away. And John Maxwell asked me a question. He says, when are you going to start chasing significance as hard as you chase success? And after my dad's funeral, I came back here to Charleston, sat on the beach, and I called a beach chair moment. And I heard God loud and clear. He said, surround yourself with different people. Surround yourself with different people. Now, my pastor always told me that I needed to go find scripture based on what I was hearing God say because that's his word. So I took what I was hearing to him.

[00:42:29] And I keep it right here on my wall all day, every day. And that's Proverbs 13, 20. Walk with the wise and become wise. For a companion of fools suffers harm. As a self-reliant person, Kevin, I would make decisions on my own. I would make my decisions in a silo. I wouldn't pray first. I would just be a quick start and go get it done.

[00:42:51] And when I heard that phrase, when I heard that gospel, walk with the wise and become wise. For a companion of fools suffers harm. I was like, wow. That is such a blanket statement on everything that I've ever done in my life. It was all about the who's. And that's when I sold my businesses. So I sold my businesses based on scripture and based on prayer because at that time I was not around the right who's.

[00:43:21] And that's when I decided to build a coaching community that I would select the right who's. That I would pray upon the names that would come into my community. If Kevin decided that he wanted to interject inside the I Love Coaching community, great. We would do an introductory call and a deep dive call to see if there was alignment. Alignment in what? Alignment in values. Alignment in beliefs. Because at the end of the day, I'm to serve and walk with the wise.

[00:43:50] Because I'm still growing, right? I'm still growing with these coaches. And so my faith walk has just been so instrumental in every decision that I make going forward. Because again, as a recovering, self-reliant person, I thought I could do it all myself. I thought I could do it alone. I was, boy, was I wrong. I've made a lot. I've lost a lot, Kevin. Well, I have to say that, you know, anyone that knows me, there's a shot in my office at them that says,

[00:44:19] the day we start up learning is the day that we die because a heartbeat of significance isn't there anymore. Because I always say no matter how many degrees you have on the wall, you can always learn from somebody from every level of an organization, right? Totally. I agree. Absolutely. Adam, I've got a trio of questions left for you.

[00:44:49] So I'm going to bang through these as quickly as I can. And I wanted to ask you about helping entrepreneurs and coaches, you know, think we are their limitations and really believe in themselves. Because, you know, we can't believe in our message if we can't see ourselves.

[00:45:15] So talk to me about the importance of helping leaders recognize their limitations, looking past them and growing through listening to others. Because what are your funds there, my friend? Audio and visual has to match, Kevin. The audio and visual has to match. If you are coaching and you're not practicing what you preach, the audio and visual doesn't match.

[00:45:44] Authentic is the A in real. You have to be authentic. Always, always, always. Your clients will know if the audio doesn't match the visual. You know, I say this and I don't mean to be judgmental. And I'm not being judgmental. It's just an awareness. If I'm going to go hire a fitness coach, I'm more than likely not going to hire someone that is massively obese.

[00:46:17] If they're in the nutritional space and they're massively obese, I may question their authenticness. And so coaches have to realize that through the real approach, relevant, experienced, authentic leaders, their authentic piece is what's going to serve themselves and their clients the most. And that's how they get over imposter syndrome. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:46:44] You know, Adam, I'm curious to ask you about identifying blind spots as leaders, because I tell leaders all the time about the importance of collaborative leadership, no matter how many years in an organization that you put in climbing the ladder, you can always learn something by empowering your staff.

[00:47:13] So I'm curious to ask you about the concept of empowering ourselves as leaders to recognize our blind spots and reach out for assistance when we need it. And the importance is collaborative leadership. What are your thoughts there, my friend? Well, collaborative leadership is, in my opinion, second to none, right? So you've got to work with other people.

[00:47:41] If you're building a silo, if you're building an isolation, and you're not able to collaborate, you're not able to hear other experts in your space's opinion, you're going to think that your word is the word. And sometimes, right, for example, we have a framework called I Know a Guy Framework. And the I Know a Guy Framework teaches coaches how to articulate what specifically they do and who can refer them, right? How to be referred.

[00:48:09] And what's really fun about that is you can be in your space for 10, 15, 20, 30 years, and sometimes you can't articulate what you do. But when you get around collaboration and other people to help you, you can get it done just like that. We had a workshop here two weeks ago, and I had 10 coaches. I only take 10 coaches at a time. We had six states represented. And what was really neat is they didn't know each other before they came here. And by the end of the day and a half workshop,

[00:48:38] they were considering referring each other because they had so much clarity on what each other did. It was so good. Yeah, and Adam, I wanted to end our conversation by asking you about clarity of purpose. You know, when I go to talk to people and they hear my story about not being able to walk at the age of nine

[00:49:00] and sitting in a hospital conference room and a doctor had told me at the age of nine after seven surgeries that I wouldn't walk for the duration of my life. And in that moment, I had a decision to make about my clarity of purpose.

[00:49:19] So I made the decision that I was going to use my, what would be perceived as a liability or a misfortune, having a disability, to view the world in the lens of collaborative, you know, intelligence of inclusion

[00:49:44] and having a community of people that I could surround myself with that could promote my prosperity. So I'm curious to ask you as we end our conversation today about the idea of collaborative and prosperous prosperity and how we can get more leaders and coaches to value their legacy in that regard.

[00:50:13] What are your thoughts there, my friend? Well, I like to talk about transformation, right? And transformation shows up in three different ways. The very first one, transformation begins, Kevin, with humility, right? Humility is where you show up and share where you're a mess, right? And you can't do that alone in a collaborative space. That's just me being open. That's me being honest.

[00:50:42] This is where I'm having troubles. This is where I'm not doing very good. This is where I need help. How many people actually say that daily? Not many. So when you have a community, when you have a collaborative space like that, you can do that. Number two, I believe transformation thrives in a community, Kevin. Transformation thrives in a collaborative space because you're with peers.

[00:51:10] You're with others that you're seeing have success. And so transformation thrives in that community. And the last way that I'll say transformation works is transformation inspires transformation. So if you're by yourself, that transformation, watching others transform, you're going to miss. But if you're in a collaborative space and you're in a community where people are serving each other, transformation will inspire you to transform yourself.

[00:51:37] And I watch those three things happen every single day, Kevin. Absolutely. And Adam, if I want to tell me if people want to get connected with you personally or the I love coaching community, what's the best way they can do that? Yeah. Just come find me on any social platform. Adam R. Roach. There's a middle initial R in there. Roach is spelled just like the bug, Kevin. R-O-A-C-H. There will be an adamroach.com coming up.

[00:52:06] You can go to ilovecoachingco.com. And here's what I want you to do. When you're on there, if you are a coach or if you have an offer, I want you to take our sellable offer challenge. The sellable offer challenge is about 15 questions. It's maybe about two or three minutes. And the idea is it will show you what we believe how your offer will perform out in the world. And it'll also expose where you need help. So go take our sellable offer challenge.

[00:52:34] But, yeah, you can come find me on any social media platform, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Adam R. Roach. And I am the one who will reply to you on DM. Not a team member. Not a bot. It's me. Well, it goes back to the A in your real coaching method. It's all about authenticity, isn't it? Yes, sir. Yes, sir, Kevin. Absolutely.

[00:53:00] Well, Adam, I think we just completed an authentic conversation about leadership coaching and everything in between, my friend. I want to applaud you for the great work that you're doing. And thank you, my friend, for engaging in conversation with me this afternoon. It's most appreciated. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you for having me on your show. This has been a blast. And it's been my favorite podcast year to date. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir.