From the Marines to Boardrooms: Jon Sheldon on Team Performance Blueprints and Leadership

Most companies can tell you their monthly sales number to the dollar. Far fewer can tell you what actually motivates the manager responsible for hitting it. That gap is where Jon Sheldon does his work.

Jon is the founder of Belleau Wood Coaching and a former Marine infantry squad leader who led 13 Marines on his second deployment to Iraq. In this episode of HALO Talks, he sits down with host Pete Moore to explain why companies know surprisingly little about how their key people function at their best, and how a one-page "performance blueprint" for each team member can fix misaligned roles, sharpen accountability, and protect culture in an increasingly virtual workplace.

For operators, franchisors, and investors in the Health, Active Lifestyle, and Outdoors space, the conversation is a practical look at the people side of the unit economics equation: the part that rarely shows up on a KPI dashboard but often explains why the numbers move.

From Marine Squad Leader to Coach of Coaches

Jon grew up in a small town in upstate New York and joined the Marine Corps as an infantryman right out of high school. After his first deployment to Iraq in 2006, he was promoted to squad leader and led 13 Marines on a second deployment roughly a year later.

After leaving the Marines, he went to college in Rochester, landed an internship at a financial planning company, and turned it into a six-year career, eventually running his own practice and partnering with another advisor to build a team. He was later recruited to serve as a director of sales covering New York State outside New York City.

Along the way, Jon found himself mentoring financial advisors informally. In 2021, he started Belleau Wood Coaching after asking a group of those advisors whether they would pay for a deeper, more structured version of that mentorship. In 2024, he went full time. Today he works with financial advisors, real estate agents, construction companies, owner-operators, and, by his account, a large sports company based in Boston.

Why the Name "Belleau Wood"

The company name comes from the Battle of Belleau Wood, a World War I battle that holds a special place in Marine Corps history. Jon tells the story of Marines who were advised to retreat and instead pressed forward in a full assault across an open field of roughly 500 yards into entrenched German positions.

For Jon, the lesson maps directly onto coaching: when a business hits its hardest moments, leaders need someone standing beside them who helps them run forward instead of backward. As Pete puts it, business is essentially a sport, with one important difference Jon adds: the clock never stops. Every day is a continuation of the one before.

The Diagnostic Gap: Companies Don't Know Their Own People

Pete frames the HALO world as one obsessed with unit economics and KPIs, sometimes to a fault. He points out that some operators track headline figures like cash on hand or sales closed without looking at how many members canceled the same day, which tells you very little about real net growth.

Jon's view is that the numbers are only half the diagnosis. When he starts with a new client, his first question is not about the sales goal. It is about the people: how do the company's key mid-level managers, leaders, and C-suite executives actually function at their best? In his experience, most companies and leaders know very little about that.

Inside the Performance Blueprint

Jon's core tool is a workshop that produces a one-page performance blueprint for each team member. According to Jon, each blueprint captures:

• Purpose: why the person does what they do.
• Vision: where they want to go.
• Ecosystem: the environment in which they thrive.
• Motivators: what fuels them and what they fear.
• Non-negotiables: the daily activities that must happen for the vision to be achieved.

The result is a roadmap a leader can use to manage and motivate each person individually, rather than applying one style to everyone. Jon contrasts the approach with personality assessments like Myers-Briggs or DISC, which he estimates are roughly 80% to 85% accurate. Because the blueprint is built entirely from what the individual defines about themselves, rather than from an algorithm's assumptions, he describes it as 100% accurate.

One pattern he sees again and again: A-players tend to share a core motivator. They want to be surrounded by other A-players. "They want to compete just like in sport," Jon says, and organizations rarely diagnose whether their environment gives them that.

Leadership Means Elevating Others

A consistent thread throughout the conversation is Jon's belief that leadership is not about ego or assumption. Pete raises the example of elite coaches who get the best out of each player by treating them differently, and Jon's answer is that this is exactly the point. Great leaders know their people well enough to adapt their approach to what motivates each one.

In Jon's words: "Leadership is about elevating others."

The Right People in the Wrong Seats

Pete describes a situation familiar to anyone who has walked through a health club operation: someone with outstanding interpersonal skills stuck in a back-of-house role when they should be driving sales or member retention.

Jon says the blueprint process surfaces exactly this kind of friction. When someone's motivators and strengths do not match their job function, it shows up quickly. He shares a client example in which a junior team member in a back-of-house role needed a front-of-house opportunity, and the message from the blueprint was essentially that the arrangement would not work otherwise. The team restructured based on those findings.

The fix is not always the same. Sometimes it is an internal move, sometimes a restructuring, and sometimes it informs who to hire next. But the underlying principle holds: talent in the wrong role is lost performance.

Jon notes that institutional engagements typically run about 18 months to two years, while individual clients typically work with him for around a year, with quarterly reassessments built in.

Virtual Teams and Why Physical Presence Still Matters

Pete brings up a company he describes as 100% virtual, with roughly $50 million in revenue, and executives spread across cities and time zones. His question: where does culture start to break down when no one is in the same room?

Jon's answer is that the virtual companies that do this well get together in person regularly, with quarterly retreats at minimum, especially for leadership teams. He calls in-person time "massively underutilized." Physical presence, he argues, is central to the ecosystem and sense of community that keep a team aligned.

Pete adds a point about learning: there is no substitute for sitting next to someone more experienced and learning over their shoulder, something that is hard to replicate on a video call.

Accountability Without Micromanagement

When sales teams, particularly virtual ones, struggle with accountability, Jon's go-to tool is simple: a five-minute daily check-in. The focus is not on an arbitrary sales goal but on the non-negotiables from each person's blueprint. What are you doing every single day, and can you show the result?

Jon draws a sharp line here. "There's a difference between being accountable and micromanaging," he says. Good employees want accountability. They want metrics, clear expectations, and direction. Micromanagement, by contrast, stifles culture.

Done well, the check-ins also build alignment. Jon emphasizes that a real team shares a vision and goals beyond individual targets, which is what separates a team from a collection of separate groups.

Should You Cut Coaching in a Downturn?

Pete closes with a question every operator faces when the economy tightens. Companies tend to cut education, corporate events, and marketing first, which he describes as the three things you should not cut.

Jon's response is that fixating only on the numbers during tough stretches can make things worse. When leaders ignore the factors that drive sustained growth and retention, they end up compounding problems outside their control with problems that are fully within it. A third-party coach, in his view, helps leadership stay aligned and build the skills to manage through obstacles.

Key Takeaways for Operators, Franchisors, and Investors

1. Know your people as well as you know your P&L. Most companies track KPIs closely but know little about what drives their key managers. A one-page blueprint covering purpose, vision, ecosystem, motivators, and non-negotiables gives leaders a working roadmap for each person. (08:20)

2. Leadership is about elevating others, not ego. The best leaders adapt their style to each individual's motivators instead of managing from assumption. For multi-unit operators, this is often what separates locations with strong retention from those with constant turnover. (12:27)

3. Misaligned roles are a hidden performance leak. A gifted relationship-builder working back of house is lost revenue and lost retention. Use structured discovery to find the friction, then realign through internal moves, restructuring, or smarter hiring. (15:43)

4. Virtual teams need deliberate in-person time. Quarterly leadership retreats, at minimum, protect culture and alignment in remote or distributed organizations. For acquirers evaluating a virtual business, how leadership stays connected is worth asking about. (19:26)

5. Accountability is something good employees want. Short daily check-ins built around each person's non-negotiables create clarity and alignment without tipping into micromanagement, and they track the activities that lead to results rather than only the results themselves. (22:00)

6. Don't cut the people investment first. When budgets tighten, education, events, and marketing are usually the first to go. Jon argues that focusing only on numbers compounds problems, while investing in leadership alignment helps teams manage through obstacles. (25:00)

A Few Quotes Worth Sitting With

"When we focus too much just on those numbers and not the outside factors that contribute to the sustained growth, sustained retention of businesses and employees, that's where we're going to start compounding a problem that was out of our control." Jon Sheldon

"Leadership is about elevating others." Jon Sheldon

Chapter Timestamps

• (00:00) Pete Moore introduces Jon Sheldon of Belleau Wood Coaching
• (00:57) Jon's background: Marine infantry, two deployments to Iraq, squad leader
• (01:36) From financial planning internship to running a practice and leading sales
• (02:14) Starting Belleau Wood Coaching in 2021 and going full time in 2024
• (06:30) The story behind the name: the Battle of Belleau Wood
• (08:20) Blueprints: purpose, vision, ecosystem, motivators, and non-negotiables
• (12:27) Leadership as elevating others, not ego
• (15:43) Finding and fixing people in the wrong roles
• (19:26) Virtual teams and the case for quarterly in-person retreats
• (22:00) Accountability vs. micromanagement and the five-minute daily check-in
• (24:30) Why coaching shouldn't be cut in a downturn

About Jon Sheldon

Jon Sheldon is the founder of Belleau Wood Coaching, based in the Rochester, New York area, where he coaches leaders, owner-operators, and teams on leadership, growth, and team performance. A former Marine infantryman, he deployed to Iraq twice and served as a squad leader leading 13 Marines.

He later built a career in financial planning, ran his own practice, and served as a director of sales before founding Belleau Wood Coaching in 2021 and going full time in 2024. His clients include financial advisors, real estate agents, construction companies, and owner-operators.

Resources

• Jon Sheldon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-sheldon-pcc-82760a51 
• Belleau Wood Coaching: https://www.belleauwood.coach 
• Integrity Square: https://www.integritysq.com 

Related HALO Talks Episodes

• Episode #607: Building EoS Fitness-Growth Strategies and Leadership Lessons from CEO, Rich Drengberg
• Episode #614: Building Sweathouz (SWTHZ)-Nico Varano on Scaling, Unit Economics, and Operational Excellence
• Episode #596: Lessons Learned Scaling W.O.L.F Fitness-Tony Saxby on Franchise Growth

Want help building a leadership team that can scale and stand up to investor scrutiny? Visit integritysq.com to set up a free consultation with Integrity Square