Episode #617: From the Marines to Boardrooms-Jon Sheldon's Lessons on Leadership and Team Dynamics

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This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks NYC. I have the pleasure of

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bringing straight out of Rochester a coach of

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coaches and one of the leaders when it comes to

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blueprints and mapping out your vision into

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reality. John from Bella Wood Coaching, welcome to

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Halo Talks. Hey, appreciate, uh, being here. Thanks for having me on, Pete.

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Awesome. So as I was stating before we got on here, There's

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nothing like a whiteboard and having concentric circles and actually

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illustrating and seeing what you want to achieve and then actually putting

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that as a photographic memory in your mind, which is how kind of

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Dave and I run our business and our strategy. So look

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forward to hearing what you have built over time. Maybe start with your

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background so people understand where you came from and all the different levels of

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expertise and, you know, organizations that you've worked with to kind of get to a

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point where you can say, hey, I can get you from here to there. Yeah,

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yeah, I appreciate that. So, um, so right out of high school,

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obviously I'm from originally from upstate New York, not Rochester, but a little tiny

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town between here and Syracuse. Um, right after that, I joined the Marine

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Corps as a Marine infantry. Um, after

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my first deployment to Iraq in 2006, I was a—

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I got promoted into being a squad leader. Um, so running and,

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and leading 13 Marines for my second deployment to Iraq,

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which was approximately a year later. After my

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time in the Marines, after that second deployment, I decided to get out and come

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back home, go to college, which is how I landed in Rochester. Long story

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short, landed in— landed an internship with

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a financial planning company, which turned into a

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great, a great 6-year

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career. I ended up running my own practice and then partnering up with another financial

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advisor and building a really cool team. Uh, and then I

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got, uh, I got, I'll call it what it is. I got poached or

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recruited, uh, to run and be a director of sales for, uh,

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the territory of, of New York outside of New York City for another

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company. And so, um, that's, that's where I

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landed there. And then in 2021, um,

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I started Bella Wood Coaching, uh, after coaching a bunch of

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financial advisors to some pretty cool levels of success, uh, mentoring and

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coaching and Basically, just called a bunch of them and said, hey,

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if this turned into something more than just a

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mentorship and more of a paid coaching and got a lot more in-depth

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with what were going on with not only business but life as well, would

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that be something you guys would be interested in? And at the time,

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every mentee that I had but one said, yeah,

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sure. And then, a couple of years later, In

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2024, I ended up going out and starting Bellawood

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full-time, leaving my corporate job and rocking and rolling. So,

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I work with a lot of financial advisors. I work with a lot of real

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estate agents, construction companies, a lot of owner-operators.

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That's what I would call it. So, I work with a pretty large sports company

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as well out of Boston. And it's really owner-operators, got

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people that are doing the work, running leadership teams, growth. Um, all

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the things above, and especially leadership. Gotcha. And what, what's the, uh,

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derivation behind the name of Belleau Wood? Oh, interesting. Yeah, so

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Belleau Wood, uh, is a famous battle in the Marine Corps from World War I

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called the Battle of Belleau Wood Forest. Um, long story short,

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the Army— it's where the Marines got their nickname Devil Dog, actually. And it's a

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pretty cool story of why I named the coaching company that, if you're interested. So—

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Please tell me. Yeah, so, um, the Army was, was stuck

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in, uh, on one side of this large field in Belleau Wood Forest.

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And the Germans were heavily entrenched on the other side. And it was really the

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first land battle that the Marines were really involved in in any

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serious capacity. And the Marines were only there to reinforce the

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Army. So they showed up and the Army commander said, hey,

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we're not even sure why they sent you. We can't get through. We're

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going to retreat. And the Marine commander

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supposedly and famously said, retreat? Hell, we just got here. And

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he you know, ordered a full-on assault across this 500-yard-ish

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field into those— into the woods on the other side where the Germans were.

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And through the way of the afternoon, the Marines ended up

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overtaking the Germans and winning the battle. And

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after the battle, the German commander wrote in his

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journal, who are these new—

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who was this new unit that just showed up? They were much different.

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than the other ones, when they would, uh, when they would get shot,

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their guys would pick them up and run forward, not backwards, like

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they are dogs from hell. Oh, wow. They never stop coming. So

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that's what I truly think that embodies what I view as coaching is,

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right? Business is hard, um, sales, uh, right,

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mentalities, like it gets challenging. And in those moments,

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you need that person to stand beside you and pick you up and

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help you run forward, not backward, right? And so that's what I think

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coaching embodies for me is like, how do we get to that next level? How

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do we accomplish that mission? Yeah. I mean, the

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one thing that we do a lot of sports analogies

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with what we do, building great teams,

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and if business should really be called probably business ball

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because it really is a sport. I think the one

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difference— Yeah, for sure. One difference between sports and business is that

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the clock never stops, right? So it's not like, hey, we ended a

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game, we could decide whether we, you know, we'll find out if we won or

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lost and then we get to play the next game. It's basically every day is

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like just a continuation of the, of the day prior. And,

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um, you know, you got to figure out what your scorecard looks like and you

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got to push forward whether you lost the last week or last month or,

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you know, last year. You know, it's, it's a, it's a new day, it's a

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new season, and you just got to keep you know, moving forward on it.

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Absolutely. You know, one of the things that, that we spend a lot of time

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on with our, um, community, and we call that the

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HALO sector— health, active lifestyle, outdoors— is really to kind

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of understand, like, what are your unit economics? What are

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your key performance indicators? And if you're going to bring in

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investment, or if you're going to have a team that you share your financials with

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and you share your performance with, how do you optimize those key

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performance indicators? And some of the groups that we work with, they'll look at

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some very simple indicators such as like how much

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cash is in the bank or how many sales did I

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close without actually looking at how many people

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canceled on the same day, like what's my net

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revenue growth. So when you take a look at some of the clients that you

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work with currently, and maybe there's some that are more

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akin to what happens in running a sales and marketing engine

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in a bricks-and-mortar business. What are some of the things that

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you see or diagnose upfront and say, okay,

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this is how we have to approach tackling these types of

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KPIs, or this is how I could help optimize your business? And

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obviously that is through leadership and focusing

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time on the right things. Yeah, I think one of the first things that I

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do goes to that word that we brought up in the beginning,

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the blueprint. So I find that it's really interesting

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how companies and leaders know very little about

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how they're— especially their key people, their mid-level

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managers or leaders, even some people on the C-suite

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council most of the time have really no idea how they function at their

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best. And so that's one of those things that I dive into immediately is how

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do we function as a team? And what are those things that,

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'cause look, we could, we can focus. And what we find a lot of times

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is, you know, sales management, sales management, sales management,

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right? We can get the KPIs and the numbers and you're, you're on, you're off,

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lead indicators, lag indicators, et cetera. You know, what, what is actually

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funneling those things and sticking to the basics and the habits? Something I talk a

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lot about is non-negotiables instead of these arbitrary

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goals. Like what, what will you do every single day? And let's track that

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because we know that there's a clear level of success. Mm-hmm. All revolved around there.

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But we can't really figure that out and how to, how to grow, in my

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opinion, especially on the leadership and teaming level, without understanding our

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people on a really deep level, which is where that, that performance blueprint

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comes in. And so one of the first things that I do with teams is

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sit them down for a workshop and go through the blueprints,

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briefs, and battle plans, meaning let's identify what

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everybody's real purpose is. Real Vision, the

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ecosystem and environment that they thrive in, and what actually

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gets them going and motivates them. You know, a lot of A-players are motivated

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by very similar things. I think that's a topic that we don't talk about

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enough. We think that an A-player employee, A-player

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salesperson is just like all the rest of them. Yeah, potentially.

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But we never really think of what actually gets them going. And one of the

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number one things is being surrounded by other A-players. And if we

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don't truly diagnose that, then we're leaving them out to dry and

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they're going to be not performing at their best, right? Because that's one of

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the number one things they want to be around is other people that are performing.

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They want to compete just like in sport, man.

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Yeah. One of the questions I had for you related to

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being like an outside coach effectively. And I

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was just watching a documentary, I think it was on Mourinho.

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who's one of the legendary soccer coaches in Europe. Yeah. You

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know, he's coached like 6 different championship teams in 6 different

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leagues. And they interviewed his players and each one of

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his players basically said like, this guy knew how to get the best out of

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me. Exactly. And some of them were like

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completely radically different on how

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they, you know, someone's based off of fear and based off of like, Hey, I

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think you're awesome, but you're not awesome today, you know, and I'm going to, like,

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call you out on it. Others was like, hey, I got to reiterate,

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John— I mean, John Holmberg was saying the other day, like, for me to get—

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for me to criticize someone 10% of the time, I need to compliment them

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90% of the time because then they'll, they'll, they'll understand that I'm, that

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I'm coming from the right place. So when you go into and kind

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of diagnose a group that you're working with,

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And you are trying to figure out like, what hot buttons do I

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hit with certain people? You know, how does that— to

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talk about that as like a, like a, like a coaching

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strategy. Yeah, you're— this is perfect. Um,

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so it goes into the deliverable

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of what that blueprint is. So when you're done with that workshop and

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that exercise, every single member on that team that participates in it gets a

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one-page blueprint That separates their purpose, vision,

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ecosystem, their non-negotiables for their vision, and

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their motivators. And so, not only do they understand that about

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themselves, but we then pass that to the organization. Most of the time, the

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leaders are in the same room, and we say, hey, look, there's

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no excuse now. You know exactly how this

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person chooses. And look, the assessments are great,

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like all the assessments out there. There's so many now. There's 360. Like Myers-Briggs

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things and like 100 questions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're all awesome. They're based on so

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much psychology and data. data, and I'm

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not saying they're not valuable at all, but they all give you

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who you are, right? You answer a bunch of questions and they give you who

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you are. And most of the time, I would say they're like 80% to 85%

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accurate, right? With this

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methodology, it's got to be 100% accurate because you're the one

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that filled out every single word of it. There's no assumptions made. Right.

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You said this was your purpose. You said this was your vision. You said this

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was your ecosystem, and you said this is what actually motivates you. What fuels you?

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What fears you? Like, what scares you

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about the vision? How are you going to make that more,

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I guess, larger? And what you're going to actually— not only what the vision is,

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but what non-negotiable is a part of that vision are you looking to accomplish?

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And when you pass that on to leaders, if you knew that about yourself, how

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much more could you be? How much better of a performance

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could you be? And especially when we talk about athletics or especially when we talk

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about leadership. And then if you knew that about every single person that

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you were leading, kind of like your comments there of they knew how to motivate

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you, this tool essentially does that.

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It gives you the blueprint that they came up with, and it's your choice to

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lead them the way that they need to be or not. And if you

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don't, then, you know, that kind of dives back into ego, and

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leadership isn't about that. Leadership is about elevating others. We always have to keep that

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in mind. Yes. So we combined that personal

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blueprint then to KPIs and we say, okay, great. We

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need you to hit this based on everything that we know about you. Here's gonna

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be the best way that we're gonna be able to track that to set you

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up for success in the best way possible. And we get really good results by

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that. This

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is Pete Moore. I wanna let you in on a little secret. There's this company

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called Promotion Vault, and what they do is they give out rewards from

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retailers. that allow you to incentivize your members

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without having to do zero down and one month free, or

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giving away shakes or giving away t-shirts. What you want to do is

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build a rewards program that lasts, that people value,

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and that doesn't discount your own products and services. So here's the deal.

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There's something called Rewards Vault. The Rewards Vault is going to allow

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a member to set up their own profile. They are going to answer

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questions. You are going to get those answers. You're gonna be able to target those

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members and you're gonna reward them inside your club,

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inside your spa, and outside of the club and outside of the spa

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to get them to become loyal, to get them to pay their monthly dues,

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and to be rewarded properly for the actions. A lot of

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companies are cutting back on rewards. You shouldn't be. Promotion Vault's your

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answer. Trust me, this is real.

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And from when we started this podcast, you

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listed out some of your clients and the way you spoke about

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it made me feel like those were long-term relationships. They're

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not like, hey, John, come in here and do like a 3-month assessment and

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then like you're out. It sounds like these are companies that you're basically

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growing, you know, season after season. Yeah. It's

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my interpretation of that. My question for you is

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this, and the reason, let me tell you where it comes from first and then

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you can respond to it. I'll go into a health club operation where they have

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like a dozen people. And being an outsider,

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either helping them raise capital or helping them sell their company, it's very

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obvious to me at times that you have a great person and

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then they're in the wrong position. Yeah. Like, there's somebody who has like— They're in

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the wrong seat. Yeah, yeah. So they have like amazing interpersonal skills.

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You can see the passion, you can see the energy, and they're

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back of the house, right? And I'm like, wow, this person should probably be like,

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head of sales or, you know, like head of like retention or community,

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um, you know, engagement or what have you. So when you get involved in a

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company as, as part of like your scope, or maybe, you know,

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in augmentation of what your original scope was, do you kind of say like, hey,

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like you got a great team, but like they're just not doing the things that,

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that I know that they've said, this is what drives me. So have you had

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any situations like that, or how do you address certain things where

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People might know that they're in the wrong box, but they won't speak up.

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Absolutely. Yeah. The blueprint exercise specifically ends

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in not only the physical blueprints, but an analysis of how you all should

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work together and, you know, pressure points and strengths

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and where you're going to need to adapt and friction. And I think that's really

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helpful too, because if you see too many people— this is a good

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example. You know, we were— I was working with a firm Earlier this

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year, probably closer to the beginning of the year actually, and still work

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with them today. But there's been a lot of changes based on the work that

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we've done, not because I've said you need to change this stuff, but

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in more of the nature of coaching, of

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revealing shortfalls. And so this perfect

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example, Pete, like these 2 individuals, there's 3 of them,

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but 2 of them were— Super, super, super, super, super similar.

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But one of the individuals in a junior role was supposed to be more of

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back of house, right? So, you've got this

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opportunity. It's like, okay, well, either get in the front of the house or this

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might not work. Right. Because this is, this is really the friction

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point that we've identified is everything that you've told me about the blueprint,

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right? There's so much alignment. But then when we get down to the ecosystem, we

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get down to the motivators, you're not motivated by the current role that you're in.

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Right. You know, and it's kind of like you just said, like, hey, and

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in that situation in particular, those, those 2

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people decided that, hey, maybe this actually isn't a great,

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great teaming aspect of it and maybe we should figure out

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how to restructure that. And that's what they ended up doing. There's been,

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there's been some where people hire, there's been some where they restructure,

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there's been some where everybody's in alignment and now we tweak and it gives

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them and the leader something to go off of and coach on. And that's— I

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think that's the, the, the benefit. Like you said,

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you know, with institutions I work with, generally

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it's been about 18 months to 2 years. With individual

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clients, you know, it's anywhere between— it's right around

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a year that I work with people. But they're most, most individual clients

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at least have the opportunity and we reassess every single quarter. That's what my

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contracts are like. But institutionals have to be at least a year long because the

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work is long. Yeah. So let me pivot the conversation to something

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that is, I think, super relevant right now and something that

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we've got an investment in, a material investment in a company that I'm

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concerned about. It is a 100%

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virtual company with $50 million of revenue,

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and every executive lives in a different city.

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Almost every single one of them lives in a different time zone. Yeah.

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my concern is where, where does a company top

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out and where does the team, um,

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element and culture disintegrate without physical

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presence? Yeah, that's where you start to see a lot of, um—

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yeah, great question. Um, I think, I think

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essentially, you know, COVID really changed a lot of things with that. Um, and there's

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companies that are absolutely thriving in virtual cultures, but one thing that I notice

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about them is they're doing A lot of this

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virtual stuff, obviously that's the obvious answer, but they're getting

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together on quarterly retreats a lot, especially leadership teams.

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And I think that that's something that's massively underutilized.

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It's something that I'm very, very familiar with. But some

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people don't prioritize that stuff and community

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ecosystem is incredibly important. So, you know, again,

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understanding each other and where each other is. Somebody on that team might

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be totally fine with the culture of, I like working from home, I don't want

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to whatever. But almost forcing people to

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spend a couple of days in offsite retreats, especially on leadership teams on a

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quarterly basis at a minimum, I think is incredibly important for

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ecosystem and culture and really building what we all want, which is community.

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Yeah. I mean, you've seen in New York City, as an

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example, a lot of the big banks have basically said, hey, if you're going to

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get paid a New York City salary, you're going to work a New York City

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job, and that's in the office. And I do think there's a lot to be

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said for that. Also, I think from a—

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in finance, you know, in investment banking or in financial,

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you know, wealth management and some of the clients that you work with, there's

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nothing like learning from somebody else. And it's much easier to learn from them over

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their shoulder. Yeah. Or them over your shoulder than, you know, you sitting in your,

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you know, your apartment, you know, with your bed right next

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to you and, you know, maybe you're wearing a pair of shorts, um, right, you

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know, and you just kind of rolled out of bed, um, you know, you're probably

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not gonna attain the same level of results as quickly, you

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know, in that kind of framework. Do you, do you see companies

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that you're working with that bring you in on like a, you

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know, hey man, I got, I got like a team crisis, whatever the,

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you know, level of crisis that is, and what are the

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solutions might be like, hey, you kind of let people wander too

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much, especially in sales where people can

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put stuff into salesforce.com. I made so many calls today and

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here's the callbacks, but there's no really way to audit that.

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Yeah, I think it's a— I mean, yes. So one of the

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things that I would say is I, I,

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I do deal with that a lot. Um, one of the most effective,

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really small but helpful tools in those

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situations is check-ins. You know, like

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I think again, if I, I always get this like look of, oh man, it's

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such a pain in the butt, but man, a 5-minute check-in

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and, you know, look, we gotta prove it, right? That's why I use the word

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non-negotiable and not sales goals. It's like, what, what are you doing on an

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every single day basis? Like, and, and prove it. Like, show, show me the

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result. Because eventually, especially if we have a good

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handle on like how much of our lead time versus lag time is,

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you'll, you'll get to, you'll get to know really quickly if somebody is

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fudging the numbers, making real calls, making real

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relationships, or just being a professional coffee

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drinker, even if it's virtually. Right. You know, and, and, and that's,

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that's the, that's been the problem. And a lot of times is

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not being— and there's a difference between being a— this is, I think, what it

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comes down to, Pete. And I love the question. There's a difference between being accountable

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and micromanaging. And that's where every manager and every leader

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wants to stay away from, is that word micromanage. I don't want to be that

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guy. I don't want to be up my people's whatever, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

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At the end of the day, there's a thing

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called accountability that's expected and people want. They desire it.

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They desire it. They want metrics. They want expectations. They

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want clear direction. And most of the time we haven't done a good enough

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job saying that and then being accountable to that. Not

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knowing you're managing and say, well, let me, let me see every single thing. No,

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it's let's check in on a daily basis. Let's be on the same page. Let's

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work as a unit, as a team. How can we help each other? Now

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you do this like, how can we, we work to get to this goal and

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have a shared vision and shared goal? And that's again, especially in

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larger organizations where we start to fumble a little bit. It's always about sales numbers

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and projections. Absolutely valid. That's how companies make money. I'm totally aware

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of that. But every unit should have one of those shared visions

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and shared goals of what we're creating together, because that is the definition of a

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team, right? Instead of a bunch of separate little groups.

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This is Pete Moore. Here's the last tip for you of the podcast.

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00:23:27,929 --> 00:23:29,833
We are partnered up with a company called Hire

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00:23:30,984 --> 00:23:34,161
HigherDOSE.com. They are the leader in

377
00:23:34,595 --> 00:23:37,579
workout recovery products, infrared technology,

378
00:23:38,221 --> 00:23:41,784
LED light masks, neck enhancers, and

379
00:23:42,041 --> 00:23:45,427
other products such as PEMF mats and sauna

380
00:23:45,427 --> 00:23:48,780
blankets. If you have not gotten on the workout

381
00:23:48,780 --> 00:23:52,616
recovery train yet, your time and your stop is

382
00:23:52,728 --> 00:23:56,547
now. You gotta get these products in there before these workout recovery and

383
00:23:56,563 --> 00:24:00,320
spas end up saturating your market, having your members

384
00:24:00,352 --> 00:24:03,739
walk out of the club and going into one of their locations for $200

385
00:24:04,590 --> 00:24:08,283
per month where they're paying $39 to you. Let's become an

386
00:24:08,283 --> 00:24:11,879
expert in workout recovery if we are already an authority in

387
00:24:11,975 --> 00:24:15,668
workouts. HigherDOSE, check it out. There's a

388
00:24:15,668 --> 00:24:19,425
wholesale code and we look forward to helping you

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00:24:19,842 --> 00:24:23,438
augment your products and services to meet the demands of your members.

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00:24:23,955 --> 00:24:27,387
And hey, let's get people happy, healthy, and sweating,

391
00:24:27,859 --> 00:24:30,348
and the recovery should be just as good as the workout.

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And in closing here, every time there's an economic downturn where

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people start to tighten up their budgets, the 2 things that they

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typically cut, at least what I've seen in the last 25 years, would

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be education, corporate events,

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getting people together like you referenced, Yeah. And marketing,

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you know, it's like the 3 things that— those are probably the 3 things you

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shouldn't cut. So just kind of like in closing here,

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00:25:00,398 --> 00:25:03,818
you know, talk about the value that you or that other

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executive coaches and, you know, how pivotal that is

401
00:25:08,442 --> 00:25:11,702
and how you run a professional, you know, sports team

402
00:25:12,280 --> 00:25:15,861
with a reduced number of coaches, right? That would be the last thing you'd cut.

403
00:25:17,023 --> 00:25:20,602
Yeah, I mean, again, business is business is business. I understand the numbers to it.

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00:25:20,731 --> 00:25:23,035
My analogy for that always is,

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you know, if you're looking for growth and how many

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stages and opportunities does it make more sense to

407
00:25:33,096 --> 00:25:36,567
cut versus invest? Mm-hmm. You know,

408
00:25:36,745 --> 00:25:40,167
and when you're looking at obstacles down the line, does it make more

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sense to then to save money, which it might, you know, I'm very

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conscious of that, but obviously that impacts me in my business, right? But

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00:25:48,069 --> 00:25:51,505
rather than, well, how do we, how do we build the skills to

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manage and build through these obstacles that we're facing?

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And I think when we focus too much just on those numbers and not the

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00:26:00,033 --> 00:26:03,453
outside factors that contribute to sustained growth,

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sustained retention of businesses and employees,

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that's where we're going to start compounding a problem that was out of our control

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and start compounding with stuff that is absolutely in our control. And things like the

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00:26:15,225 --> 00:26:18,986
work that people like I do at the corporate

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00:26:19,002 --> 00:26:22,666
and business level does have real impact in overcoming

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obstacles and getting a 30,000-foot view of outside of your situation to make the

421
00:26:26,633 --> 00:26:30,331
best informed decisions possible with your people and get them all on the same page

422
00:26:30,428 --> 00:26:34,209
for the trial ahead. You know, you never want your company going through the waters

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00:26:34,322 --> 00:26:37,995
without a good game plan. And

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00:26:38,028 --> 00:26:41,575
obviously, like most companies do that, but even from a third-party perspective, it was like,

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00:26:41,591 --> 00:26:45,066
hey, are we all aligned? on what's going through here? Do we have a solid

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00:26:45,098 --> 00:26:48,824
vision and plan to weather this storm instead of just

427
00:26:48,824 --> 00:26:52,629
saying, hey, we need to cut costs? Yep, I'm

428
00:26:52,629 --> 00:26:56,065
with you. All right, well, John, thanks for coming on. You can follow John on

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00:26:56,097 --> 00:26:59,935
the Unforget Yourself Show. We'll paste all of his

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00:26:59,935 --> 00:27:03,403
show notes on here. Uh, welcome to the Halo sector at

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00:27:03,403 --> 00:27:06,984
large, and, um, glad everyone got a little bit of history

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00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:10,610
lesson on the, uh, on the Battle of uh, Bella Wood, which I'll now probably

433
00:27:10,610 --> 00:27:14,430
reference in the future, and I'll make sure to footnote that I learned

434
00:27:14,430 --> 00:27:18,250
it from you. So thanks for coming on and dedicating yourself to helping other people.

435
00:27:18,390 --> 00:27:20,230
Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much for having me on, Pete. It was a

436
00:27:20,230 --> 00:27:22,850
pleasure. Awesome. Awesome conversation. All right, man, good stuff.

437
00:27:28,630 --> 00:27:31,970
This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks, your captain

438
00:27:31,970 --> 00:27:35,591
speaking. I am the founder and managing partner at Integrity Square.

439
00:27:36,008 --> 00:27:39,757
We've been around now for 15 and a half years. We have been

440
00:27:39,934 --> 00:27:43,780
helping people like yourselves get capital, do mergers and

441
00:27:43,780 --> 00:27:47,449
acquisitions, consulting, strategic advice in the health,

442
00:27:47,626 --> 00:27:51,455
active lifestyle, and outdoor halo sector, trying to help as

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many entrepreneurs as possible get to the next level and

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take that inflection point and be the force behind your growth.

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We are helping companies that have at least $3 million of

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EBITDA, around $10 million of revenue, and

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we are positioned to help you get institutional growth capital

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or to negotiate deals with strategic partners. If you go to

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integritysq.com/ISQ,

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you can see our capabilities deck. Happy to set up a consultation at any time

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that is free of charge, and we look forward to helping

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solve Obesity, loneliness, and diabetes. Go

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Halo.