January 13, 2026 – Redneck Resilience James Harold Webb and BelleauWood Coaching Jon Shelton

0:04 Intro 1: Broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration award-winning School for Startups Radio, where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk, or passion. Jim Beach,

0:26 Jim Beach: Hello everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups Radio. We’ve got a great show for you today, two fantastic guests, and I’m just blown away about how good our guests are. I have nothing to do with it. I want to make sure you know that. That’s why they’re so good. First up today, we have James Webb, not the telescope guy, but the Redneck Resilience guy. James built a career, starting off as an X-ray tech, and now is just rich as all could be and worrying about how to pass money on to the next generation. And it’s a great story. He did all of the things that we talk about: doing a business in your own industry, working for a while, learning, and transitioning. It’s a great, great conversation. Equally good, next guest, John Shelton is with us. He is a coach, ex-Marine, and has an amazing story to share with us. We’re going to talk about how you get that first customer, how you set your prices, all of that. Very interesting conversation with John, and so I’m excited for you to meet him as well. So, great guests. Appreciate you being with us. You’re great as well, and we’re gonna get started in just a second. Next slide. You

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2:24 Jim Beach: We are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us. Boy, do I have an amazing story to share with you. Please welcome James Harold Webb to the show. He started off as a radiologic tech in Mississippi, moved to Dallas, and became the director of radiology at a local hospital, and he worked there for the next 13 years. But he decided he wanted to go out on his own, and since then, he has created Texas’ largest outpatient medical imaging company, and has also built one of the largest OrangeTheory franchises in the country. He also has a series of pain clinics. He sold all of that throughout 2017 to 2019 and published a book talking about his pretty amazing life called Redneck Resilience: A Country Boy’s Journey to Prosperity. Damn, James, welcome to the show. How you doing?

3:26 James Harold Webb: Hey, Jim, thank you so much for having me, buddy. It’s a real pleasure.

3:29 Jim Beach: It is an amazing career. Uh, why did you sell everything in 2017 to 19? What was going on then?

3:38 James Harold Webb: Yeah, you know. Listen, it just turned out to be the perfect time. Private equity was heavily involved in the fitness sector. That’s when I sold OrangeTheory in 2019. Prior to that, we’d had our imaging medical company and our pain management company for 17 years, and there were people knocking at our door, and we finally decided as a group that it was time to exit. So it’s just timing, no real reason other than that.

4:02 Jim Beach: Okay, and what did you decide to do after that? Though it sounds like you’re retiring when you sell everything.

4:10 James Harold Webb: Yeah, you would think, but as a dumb country boy from Mississippi, I never learned about retiring. So I started a couple other franchises with a few groups. Right now, we’re focused on the dog grooming space, and we’re on the rise to about 25 stores in the Dallas market. We’ve got six built and number seven on Scenthound. Yes, sir.

4:30 Jim Beach: All right, I love that dog space too. I mean, people pay more for their pets than themselves.

4:36 James Harold Webb: I was really shocked at the dog space and the pet space in terms of comparing it to the medical imaging space, compared to the fitness space. I mean, dollar-wise, it’s so much bigger than I ever thought, and that really was one of the motivating factors getting in that direction.

4:52 Jim Beach: Yes. Do you think that being a redneck has been your secret advantage?

4:59 James Harold Webb: You know, it’s funny. People ask me that, and I absolutely can tell you the truth, it has. You considered a meeting in New York City with a bunch of, you know, investment bankers, and my little voice comes out sometimes, and they always laugh about it, pick on me about it, but it has absolutely helped a little bit, for sure.

5:17 Jim Beach: And people think that you’re stupid because of a Southern accent. I live in Atlanta. We get that here all the time.

5:24 James Harold Webb: You know, you’re dead on, spot on, dead on that. People do sometimes think, because of that accent, that you’re stupid, but they learn pretty quick that you’re not. And you get by that part of it, laughing and quickly, and then get on to the real part of business.

5:38 Jim Beach: Now, did you actually become a medical doctor?

5:43 James Harold Webb: I was not a medical doctor. The short story, if you don’t mind, is I was working in high school at a print shop and was the head pressman at the print shop when I decided to go to a local junior college, and I saw a little sign walking through the science building that said, “You want to be an X-ray tech? Call this number,” and I decided to become an X-ray tech. And I did a two-year slave labor program at the local hospital and got my little associate degree as an X-ray tech. So that’s kind of how I started my medical career.

6:12 Jim Beach: How are you able to run pain management and other things like that that would require MDs? Would you go out and hire the MDs? And then, I know pain management a little bit. I have been on oxy for a while, that part of my life. I’ve had to go to a pain management doctor. A lot of rules there, right?

6:31 James Harold Webb: Tons of rules. And we stayed away from the drug side of it. Our focus was on the injection side of it. And we were the operation side of the business. We built the surgery centers. We had 11 surgery centers across Texas. We had 53 pain doctor partners, because in the medical field, and if you’re in the surgery center business, you can have doctor partners. And so, you know, they would join us in these ventures, and we would have anywhere from five to 10 doctors per location, and they would bring you in as a patient and put a needle in your back or in your neck and inject you with pain medicine. We would treat you, take care of you, and send you home.

7:05 Jim Beach: And how did you get your first one up and going? Tell us the first one story.

7:10 James Harold Webb: First one is, I was in the imaging business, and I noticed that one of our largest customers on the imaging side was pain management doctors sending you in with your bad back for an MRI scan, and I learned that they had two options at the time. One was to do it in their office, and one was to do it in a hospital. And in the office, I was a little concerned about that, because it couldn’t do anesthesia. And in the hospital, it was a price issue. And so we developed, initially, what was called a pain center, which was an unlicensed surgery center where doctors would come in and inject, because we’d have to have a license in Texas to do the small procedures. We would provide anesthesia. We would have nurses and treat the patients, wake them up, get them well, send them home. Eventually, we converted them to licensed surgery centers at the request of insurance companies, and that’s kind of how we got into it. Just really, just a jump, so to speak jump, so to speak.

8:05 Jim Beach: Okay, let’s go back even further than that. You were a tech, and then you just said that you owned an imaging center. How does a tech get enough money to own the whole center?

8:17 James Harold Webb: Well, first of all, I was a tech, and I was involved in the MRI industry when it first came out in 1986. Not as a tech, but on the operation side, with what was called mobile MRI in those days. We put the machines in these trucks, and we ran around the hospitals, and I just worked my way up the chain and became president of a couple of companies. And one day, a doctor came to me and said, “Would you like to bring MRI and heart catheterization to the Caribbean and Latin America?” And I knew my company would not do that, but I would. And so I jumped. And at that point, I knew enough people to raise a little money, bring on one key investor who was a doctor friend of mine. The rest of it, because of my reputation in the industry, I was able to borrow. And so I borrowed boatloads of money over the years, and always paid it back, and kind of just grew and learned as I went. It wasn’t something they teach you in school. You just kind of learn as you go.

9:12 Jim Beach: Yeah. Have you ever met a doctor that had any business training from school?

9:18 James Harold Webb: Not from school.

9:21 Jim Beach: Business training in school?

9:25 James Harold Webb: Not this type of business training. You know, I’m a firm believer in education only because it matures you and gives you a chance to grow. But a lot of stuff on the entrepreneurial side, a lot of stuff on the estate planning side, they just don’t teach you that in school. And my family has a silly joke, because I’ll sometimes say, “They didn’t teach me that at Jones County Junior College,” and then my sons make me do a tequila shot every time I say it.

9:51 Jim Beach: Well, you’ve already said it four times today here, so you owe somebody something. I’ll be having a Margarita

9:56 James Harold Webb: When we finish with you, brother. I promise.

10:00 Jim Beach: Excellent, excellent. It’s been an amazing career. Are you surprised that it turned out this well? Did you secretly know that you were going to be different from all the other people in your imaging class and your high school class? When did you realize that you were different?

10:19 James Harold Webb: Yeah, not a chance. In the beginning, you know, as an X-ray tech, I enjoyed my job, but I’ve always said this in my whole life: I always wanted more. There’s a cute little cassette out there that I’ve actually heard from my high school brunch at my local church where the teacher said, “James, what do you want to do after high school?” In a very tiny little redneck voice, I say, “I want to change the destiny of a family,” and that’s really what’s been motivating me my entire life, is to go from this economically disadvantaged family to being able to offer my family and others, you know, a different lifestyle.

10:57 Jim Beach: What part of Mississippi? Tupelo?

11:01 James Harold Webb: No, we were way south of that, people. That’s Elvis country. We were in Laurel, Mississippi, about 90 miles from the coast, about 90 miles south of Jackson, right in the central part of Mississippi.

11:12 Jim Beach: How do we solve the medical problem in rural areas of America now?

11:17 James Harold Webb: Yeah, that’s a good question. It’s an economic issue. It’s definitely a supply chain issue, and I don’t know if I have the right answer for that one, because for an entrepreneur, that’s not the market I need to be in. I need to be in the big city markets where I’ve got access to lots of customers. And so this really gets down to the county stepping up, having the appropriate technology, and then compensating their people to get them to stay. I was not compensated. One of the reasons I left Mississippi, I couldn’t advance my career there.

11:51 Jim Beach: Interesting. It’s a word you choose to move to.

11:54 James Harold Webb: So my first—another silly side story—is I was sitting in my house with a Miller Pony in my hand, and I was 22 years old, and I flipped a coin and said, “Heads, I go to Atlanta. Tails, I go to Dallas.” The next day, I packed up a pickup truck and a bass boat and headed to Dallas, Texas, and slept in the mall parking lot for two nights trying to figure out what the heck I just done. Wow. Could have easily been Atlanta, where you live.

12:21 Jim Beach: They won’t let you sleep in the mall parking lots here.

12:26 James Harold Webb: We’re talking 1983. It wasn’t a problem then.

12:30 Jim Beach: What kind of bass boat?

12:33 James Harold Webb: You know, I can’t even remember. I just remember the green one, and I bought it, you know, as an X-ray tech, and could go to the local lakes fishing. I’m a big fisherman. I wish I could remember the name of it. I can’t.

12:46 Jim Beach: All right, so you’ve had some troubles in your life too, James. Will you tell us about that?

12:51 James Harold Webb: Yeah, you know, my book is called Redneck Resilience because resilience is not just in business, it’s also your personal life. I was married to a young lady named Marcia. We had two little boys, and when she was 57 years old, she was unexpectedly, and with no clue, diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. Six months later, she was— from MD Anderson. On that exact day, I was diagnosed with stage three renal cancer. I forewent chemo and radiation, simply told them, “Cut me open and gut me,” because I had to take care of her. And I survived, and she didn’t. And I ended up raising two little boys that were 11 and 14 at the time. So, you know, tragedies in your life, but I think part of it is recognizing that it’s a chapter, and I like to close chapters, and I did. And then I went on Match.com and had what I call my first first date in 22 years, and it was the last first date for the rest of my life. I met Kathy, and we dated for three years, and then she came in and helped me raise my boys. So it’s been an interesting journey, and that’s just one of the many stories.

13:59 Jim Beach: I’m sorry to hear about that, but glad that there was a second chapter for you there. Absolutely. I love that you compare yourself to the Rockefellers. And I know that you’re very interested in estate planning. I think there’s huge—maybe a great book—comparing the Rockefellers versus the Vanderbilts. Yes, the Rockefellers are still rich as hell, and the Vanderbilts are not. What’s your obsession with the Rockefellers?

14:33 James Harold Webb: Yeah, it is that transitional wealth is, again, something that I’ve talked about a lot. When you start a business, you don’t really think about the success side of it long term. You’re too focused on paying the bills and getting this thing up and operational. And I’ve done that many, many times. But I’ve learned that, had I thought a little bit in the early days about estate planning, had I structured my business appropriately, and then I got lucky and made a little money, I’d be able to now pass that wealth on to my children without exposure to things like estate tax, and, you know, able to educate them. And just really focused on transitional wealth that hopefully can benefit generations down the road. That’s one of my passions.

15:16 Jim Beach: All right, so how do you set that up to make that happen? Walk us through that kind of estate planning. Is it a trust fund? Just tell us the story. How do you make that happen?

15:25 James Harold Webb: I’ll give you the short story. I had an attorney one time tell me that the greatest thing in life is owning nothing and using everything. And part of what you do is you establish a 678 trust that owns everything so you don’t own it. The trust owns the LLCs that you operate your business in. The trust owns the LPs you operate your business in. You can be the trustee, so you control it all, but you don’t own it. So when you finally grow and make wealth, it’s inside the trust, and 678 trusts are outside of the estate. So when you kick the bucket someday, most of that money is in the trust passed on to your children, who also, by the way, have 678 trusts. And those trusts have a 300-year life. And so the money stays over there in your estate, which is subject to estate tax. In my case, it’s a house and a couple of cars. And so, you know, you try to separate the two. And the one thing I wish I could teach people: guys, I wish I had done that day one, because when you get bigger and you’ve made money, then you have to sort of, quote-unquote, sell your assets to your trust, and that can take some time.

16:37 Jim Beach: Took me 14 years. All right, so are we going to look silly if we go into our lawyer and say, “We want one of these trusts,” with our $100,000 portfolio in existence?

16:50 James Harold Webb: They might think you’re silly, but again, it’s the appropriate estate planning attorney. It’s not just your guy that’s involved in the lawsuit, you know, that set up your LLC. This is an estate planning attorney. They get it. There are specific firms out there that do this. And for me, it was finding the right firm. And I’ve actually used several different ones to kind of go back in and re-evaluate what the first firm did, just to make sure, you know, everything looked good. But no, I don’t think if you go to the right kind of attorney they’ll pick on you.

17:22 Jim Beach: All right, what are some of the lessons in the book? You’ve got great chapter titles. I’d love to hear some of the stories behind this. Just tell us some of the stories from the book and some of the lessons that you want us to learn from it.

17:34 James Harold Webb: Yeah, I think one of them is the willingness to take a jump. And a lot of people hesitate at that. And for me, being, you know, asset-free, that allowed me the opportunity to borrow lots of money using my name. But the reality was that if I had gotten in trouble and I needed to bail on the deal, the bank would get me. I didn’t go bankrupt. They never got my money. So teaching people about how to be asset protected is really important, I think, too. You know, focused on not just your business, but this really important part about being focused on your family. And for me, having a partner that understands that I’m going to work 12 to 15 hours a day for the next five to 10 or 15 years, and it’s going to help raise my children, help raise my family, was a really important factor to me. Those are some of the several lessons that come up. You know, I ask a lot about “ask why” and not “why not.” You know, I want to know why I should do this, not why not I should do it. I do a lot of living in the moment. I also believe, as I mentioned earlier, in education, but I like specific education. I’m not a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration guy. You know, I want you to get a specific education that can be anything from being a welder to a plumber to an accountant to specifics in finance, things like that. I also talk a lot about contributing and don’t just take. So a lot of people want to take money off the table quickly. And for me, it wasn’t. It was reinvesting in my business, growing my business. And if you think about things like tax, if I take money off the table, I’m paying an income tax rate of somewhere close to 36%. If I leave the money in the company and sell it eventually, I’m paying a tax of like 20%. So there’s reasons to keep money in your business and then have those exit strategies. And there’s a lot of other things like that, but those are some of the basic ones to me.

19:37 Jim Beach: What is your bulldozer story? No room for a bulldozer.

19:42 James Harold Webb: That’s a funny one. I had lost my job, and I learned a lot about being an entrepreneur. Early days, I was a regional operations manager for a company. They sold the company, and since I didn’t have equity, my job was eliminated. I landed a job in Atlanta, for the record. I was there for 18 months, and the head of the company there was just a—I won’t use the term—but he was a bulldozer, and I did not like it. And after about 18 months, I found another opportunity, and I left, and he came to me. He brought me in his little office, took his little Rolex off, put it on the table, and said, “James, I’m going to fire your boss and give you his job if you will take it and stay with me. You have 30 seconds to answer.” And I won’t tell you the answer I gave him. I will simply tell you this: the attorney who was in the room came running down the hall and said that was the best exit he’d ever seen. And I just left and did not have room for that kind of guy.

20:42 Jim Beach: Wait, what? Yeah, so you didn’t tell us what you said, but then you said it was the best thing he’d ever heard. That’s not fair. Did you tell him just to fu—?

21:09 James Harold Webb: He was a real bully. He was a real bully, and he did things to us, and they were a publicly traded company, and he had options, but if anybody ever dared exercise their options, he would fire them. And then when he exited the company, he made a bunch of money, and nobody else did, but he was just that kind of personality. He reminded me of the little kid in high school or in grammar school that got picked on in the playground, who was now the boss getting revenge on everybody. Yep. And I’ve never used his name out in public. I didn’t use it in the book, but yes, I did tell him to fu— you can blame me blank—and walked out the room. One of my prouder moments in life, because I was only, I think at the time, 29 years old, something like that.

21:52 Jim Beach: And maybe that’s the entrepreneurial risk right there that some of us need to take, is to say fu to our boss.

22:02 James Harold Webb: Yeah, it was. And it was easy to do for him, because he just wasn’t a good guy. And then, you know, I went to work for another gentleman that was just the opposite, and he was a doctor, and he had started a medical imaging company with doctor investors. And then the Stark laws came out, which prohibited doctors from being investors, and I had to go in and redo the entire company. And I learned a lot from the name of Steve Shulman. Learned a lot from Steve, learned a lot that you could take care of people, you could be a passionate medical person, and still build capitalism. And that really is what drove me to become an entrepreneur. I knew I could still take care of people and make money.

22:41 Jim Beach: How do we fix the current system? I asked you about rural. Let’s go macro now. How do we fix the current medical system? I’ll give you my thoughts after I hear yours.

22:52 James Harold Webb: Yeah, I might need yours more than mine. I have to tell you, it’s highly driven by insurance. Insurance. It’s getting worse and worse and worse about telling people no. Insurance has huge lobbying groups that keep themselves protected. I don’t know if I have the answer for that one. I just know that there’s high demand right now, and for an entrepreneur now, prices are being driven down by insurance companies, and they just put more and more money in their pocket.

23:24 Jim Beach: What if we had a bifurcated system and said, “Everyone gets exactly what they want.” We’ll have a more or less like—what’s it called—the medical system for the veterans, the vet hospitals? What’s that system called?

23:42 James Harold Webb: Yeah, I always got the VA system, but I’m not—

23:44 Jim Beach: Sure. We’ll have a VA for anyone who wants it, and then anyone who wants to go get their own private insurance can do whatever they want, and let people choose, and then get rid of all the regulations. What do you think of that system?

23:59 James Harold Webb: I think the system’s fine. I think the problem is going to get that done. And again, I pointed out that insurance companies have huge lobbying groups that keep things like that from happening. People don’t necessarily believe that, but I do.

24:10 Jim Beach: Oh no, I believe that. I’ve had some run-ins with some insurance companies, and they are just the lowest people on earth, in my opinion. I don’t know how people work at those companies.

24:22 James Harold Webb: I don’t know how you can sit there. I just heard a story from a doctor that one of his clients had cancer and was on their last leg of chemotherapy, and then they died, and the insurance company came back and declined the last session. It was 90,000 bucks to his family. So now you got a hospital system with a high price for this stuff, insurance company saying, “No, I’m not going to pay for it.” Man’s already passed away. His family stuck with it.

24:48 Jim Beach: James, what do you say to the kid, the person who’s sitting on the sofa, can’t decide what to do, wants something out of life more, but they’re just stuck. Get me off the sofa and go. Motivate me to go do something.

25:01 James Harold Webb: Yeah, I think one thing I’m very keen on is I don’t chase my passions. And a lot of people sit on the sofa and think about their passions. I chase opportunity. So get off the sofa and get out there. And you know, the franchise world was an interesting thing. Now that I’ve been in that for a while, there are certainly opportunities there. But for me, it’s taking that risk on something that I’m not necessarily passionate about, but I want to enjoy it, and that I know has an upside. That’s just trying to figure that out. And until you get your butt off the sofa, I’m not sure what else you do.

25:39 Jim Beach: I love the way you said it. “I’ll enjoy it.” That’s enough, isn’t it? You don’t have to love every business you do.

25:46 James Harold Webb: Now, if I was going to love what I did, I’d be a professional fisherman or a golfer. But you know, I was passionate about taking care of people. I was passionate about radiology in certain ways, but mostly from a business perspective, because I knew there were opportunities there to grow it. And same thing with Scenthound, same thing with the pain management, same thing with OrangeTheory. I mean, I got involved with OrangeTheory and they had 90 locations, and now they have 2,500. And I wasn’t—I never—I took the class two times in my five-year run with them. I wasn’t an OrangeTheory class taker, and I was extremely, extremely happy with the product.

26:25 Jim Beach: I like to say I will sell anything, as long as it’s legal and kind of moral, but I don’t like to use it. If I’m a user, I’ll use my inventory, and so I don’t sell things that I like. I absolutely agree with you 100%. So anyway, Mr. Webb, it’s an amazing career. You should be very proud, and your sons should be very proud, and your wife is looking down from heaven and being very proud, and Kathy as well. A-pluses, and you’ve been a great guest. Thanks for sharing all this. How do we find out more? Get the Redneck Resilience book, get in touch with you to buy a franchise, get some Scenthound, all that.

27:05 James Harold Webb: Yeah, the website, www dot JamesHaroldWebb dot com, tells my stories, tells how to access the book, provides my email if anybody wants to reach out. I certainly enjoy the mentoring and helping folks. That’s the easiest way to do it. My LinkedIn profile is decent too. So just as I tell people, I’m the luckiest redneck on the planet and happy to have the opportunity, Jim, to talk with you and share this story.

27:32 Jim Beach: I bet you were bummed when the telescope went up.

27:37 James Harold Webb: So real quick side story: my stepsister thought it was really me that did it. She told all her friends I was that guy. So I led her on for about a year, and then finally I broke it to her. She was so mad.

27:52 Jim Beach: James, thank you so much for being with us. Great story. Congratulations on the book.

27:56 James Harold Webb: Jim, thank you so much, sir, and we’ll be right back. You.

28:14 Intro 2: Well, that’s a wonderful question, actually. Oh my gosh, I love the opportunity to do this. Thank you, Jim. Wow, that’s a great one. You know, that is a phenomenal question. That’s a great question, and I don’t have a great answer. Great question. Oh, that is such a loaded question. And that’s actually a really good question. School for—

28:34 Jim Beach: School for Startups Radio, we are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us. Excited to continue with another great guest. Please welcome John Shelton to the show. First of all, thank you for your service, John. He was a Marine, I guess, for four years, and served in the worst location that you could serve. I’m sure he had some other locations, but he’s also stationed at Kaneohe Bay in Hawaii, where they filmed Gilligan’s Island, by the way, so that was a tough gig there. After that, he has become a serial entrepreneur, starting businesses in several spaces, insurance and construction to name a few. He is now owner of Bello Wood Coaching for the last five years. He helps business executives and leadership people become better at, particularly leadership skills, I think is what he focuses on most. The website is BelloWood dot coach, and that’s B-E-L-L-E-A-U Wood dot coach. John, welcome, and thank you for your service. How you doing today?

30:05 Jon Sheldon: Yeah, first off, no shot. I was not interested in being an entrepreneur right off the get-go. I kind of liked the structure. I felt like I kind of needed the structure. But I didn’t really have any breaks, so I went straight to college right after the Marine Corps. I was literally in my first class about 10 days after I exited. The entrepreneurship part really came when I started that landscaping company while inside of college. From there, the transition, honestly—

30:38 Jim Beach: Was really tough. Were you bored?

30:40 Jon Sheldon: I just thought that,  Well, no, actually, it wasn’t, but I honestly thought college was kind of a joke. I’m being super straight with you, compared to—like they—

30:51 Jim Beach: But I didn’t learn a damn thing in college except how to—I don’t, I don’t—

30:55 Jon Sheldon: Yeah, I don’t really think I learned anything, to be honest, either. But that part of it came from: I started the landscaping company because I was working at a landscaping company and felt like I was just remarkably undercompensated for the work that we were doing. I was a hardscaper, so I was designing and building patios. I’ve always been a relatively intelligent human being, and I was like, “Man, this is pretty low for what you get.” So I even Googled, like, “What does a person like me should be getting paid?” And I was getting paid like a third. I had asked smart questions to the designer that was designing the patios on, like, the profit and stuff. I was going to college for business management, so I always had an ear for economics. And by the end of it, I decided that, wow, if I even had literally one client over the summer, I would make more money than if I worked for you 40 hours a week for the entire summer. And so my buddy and I were on the same page. We would leave our job at the end of the day, we jumped in his car, we made flyers, and we went around neighborhoods and handed them out, and ended up getting like 10 clients in like the first two weeks, and made, honestly, really cool income for being, you know, mid-20s, going to college. And that was off to the races from there, yeah. For the landscaping thing, we did that for a couple years, and then ended up packing it all in when we decided what we wanted to do with—

32:23 Jim Beach: What was wrong with the landscaping business? Why didn’t you stay in it? I mean, it’s only sweating and T-shirts all day and stuff.

32:32 Jon Sheldon: Yeah, it was mostly that the guy I was working with, super awesome human being, in general. But you know, when you kind of thought through, like, how old he actually was and how old he actually looked, you could tell that this job was just remarkably physically taxing. And I mean, there’s still passion. Honestly, I still do about two patios a year for friends and family that ask for it. I got all the equipment, and it’s fun. I like the design aspect of it, but for me, it was just—I knew that I couldn’t do that my entire life.

33:04 Jim Beach: That’s 100% true. On the other hand, for those of you who need a business, if you are two good-looking guys in a truck, you can start a landscaping business and have 10 clients in three months, I think, easily. I don’t want to disregard what you did, John, but I know a lot of—

33:36 Jon Sheldon: No, I don’t disagree that it’s not that hard. Landscaping—because so many people need it, and it’s so hard to find someone who shows up when they say they’re going to. That’s the entire business, isn’t it?

33:36 Jim Beach: —Isn’t it?

33:36 Jon Sheldon: Yeah. So honestly, that’s a great—this is a great little topic here. That’s what our differentiator was. We could do it quickly. We were very good. We both picked up the skill very quickly in that first year. It’s a lot of math, right? It’s a lot of math and it’s a lot of just kind of eyeing and design. So we could do it quickly, and we were cheap, right? And we were good enough, right? And the reason we were able to be cheap, obviously, is because it was just us two and a truck and a trailer that we borrowed from his dad, who had had a construction company. So we were like, “Okay, well, that’s easy.” We got saws and rakes and all that stuff we needed to buy. But we also had that grind mentality, which I think is so important, where we didn’t just quit our jobs. It was like, “Okay, let’s try to find a couple clients first.” So we were going out until nine o’clock at night, handing out flyers. You know, that’s what we were doing, shaking hands, doing stuff like that. And then we just worked off referrals when that happened, which we honestly got kind of plugged into this retirement community, and they all had this similar walkway. And once we did the first guy’s, all of his neighbors hired us. I think we got 10 jobs right there just from doing that.

34:50 Jim Beach: It was referrals. “On time, I’m going to tell 20 people about you.”

34:55 Jon Sheldon: Yeah, exactly, yeah. We never canceled. We worked in the rain, you know, if they wanted it done. The next day, we say, “Hey, as long as we can work until sundown.” And you know, most landscaping crews—when I was doing landscaping—the guy that was my foreman, I mean, he was tapping out. And I know this isn’t normal for landscaping companies, but he was clocking out at like four. You know, he was, you know, in his early 50s, and he’s like, “I’m not working past four.” And so it was kind of easy to start a side gig, because I had, especially in the summer, another five hours, you know. So that’s kind of how it went.

35:28 Jim Beach: I remember a landscaping guy showing up to give us a bid. He showed up in a brand new Range Rover. I’m not going to hire a landscaper that shows up in a brand new Range—

35:44 Jon Sheldon: Yeah, I get that. I get that. I’m looking for a truck, little wear and tear, yeah.

35:49 Jim Beach: Yeah, I want you to show up in a beat-up Chevy, for God’s sake. Yeah, I get that. I get that. It’s not hard. I mean, my dad had a fake car that he drove to meetings for that particular—you know, he didn’t drive that car every day. He only drove it to meetings with those customers, you know, right? Sometimes you have to do that. So that’s what the services do, and how they teach leadership so very well. Why are they better at leadership than everyone else? Because they can shoot.

36:25 Jon Sheldon: You know, I think it’s born out of necessity. I think the majority—there is this aspect of it, though—that there’s this deep, deep, deep down— I was in the Marines—so deep down there is this leadership aspect of every Marine, I believe, and I truly believe that. And then it’s whoever, right? It’s so competitive that you’re rising to the top. And I think one of the reasons that the military in general can produce really good leaders is because when you’re in it, it really is about everybody else, which is the pinnacle of leadership. It can’t be about you. And when you look at the essence of the Marine is it’s really not about him. Most—I don’t know a single Marine that joined for his sake. It’s not like you get paid well. It’s not like it’s a safe job. It’s not like it’s comfortable. It’s miserable, right? So there’s this aspect that is ingrained, and I think, at least—I can’t speak for the rest of the military—but at least the Marines, that it’s a—you signed up for something different than yourself. And then you have all of these guys that did the same thing, and so you’re consistently trying to be better, which is also, I think, a big piece of leadership. So I think those are two of the bigger ones, is that you’re constantly others-focused, and it really matters. And so, like, every decision actually matters when you’re in the Marine Corps, right? Where you kind of screw up sometimes here or there in the civilian world, and it’s like, yeah, okay. Well, in the Marine Corps, you’re concentrated on perfection in a lot of senses, and so that kind of breeds into you this thought of, “I need to be the best I possibly can be at all times, and I got to make sure that I put myself last.” I think those are two things that is why you cultivate this leadership from the military perspective.

38:18 Jim Beach: And then how do you teach that in the entrepreneurial setting to employees, and how do you use that yourself as the entrepreneur?

38:26 Jon Sheldon: Yeah, it’s having tough, tough conversations. I think that’s another thing you can strip away from the Marines in general, is I’m not afraid to have tough conversations with myself and with others. That’s pinnacle to being a good leader. It’s not always popular. There’s a cost to leadership, and you have to be willing to pay that cost. I mean, most people aren’t. And so teaching them through guidelines, not only of leadership, but also helping them find out what type of leader they really are, right? You’re kind of forced to do that in the military. In the civilian world, you’re really not. And so there’s some systems and processes that we use, or I use, to help people really define that leadership blueprint of what type of leader are you, not what book you read, like what type of leader are you actually. And so building it off of that, because if you can’t be authentic in the way that you lead, it’s not going to be effective. It just isn’t.

39:18 Jim Beach: What are the different leadership styles?

39:22 Jon Sheldon: I mean, there’s a bunch. There’s, you know, you’ve got the dictator—

39:28 Jim Beach: The list, yeah. Which one of those do you buy into?

39:34 Jon Sheldon: I think every leader needs to be a good listener. I think every leader needs to have some sort of empathy. I also think, for me, it’s tactfulness and toughness at the same time, right? Firm but fair is the basis of what I think leadership should be, right? So you have to have that empathy, you have to be able to be a really good listener, and then you also have to be tough when it comes time to be tough. And I think that’s in the civilian world where it falls pretty short a lot of times, is they’re not willing to have the tough conversations, the crucial conversations, when it comes up. So I call it firm but fair, tactfully tough.

40:13 Jim Beach: I love it. That’s, I think, a great method, great idea. Let’s transition into your coaching business. How did you—why did you decide to do that? How’d you get started? How’d you get your first client? Walk us through all of the birthing of Bello.

40:28 Jon Sheldon: Yeah. All right. So I was in financial planning. So after the landscaping company, I got into financial planning, ran a practice, worked my way up for about 14 years, became a director, a sales director of a company, and did that for eight. So total time in finance was about 15: seven as a financial advisor, eight as a director of sales. And through that entire time, I mean, all the way back to 2000, my second year in at my first company, you know, I got tapped—or I got kind of volunteered—to run the internship program, be one of the leaders of the internship program. From there, they wanted me to go into leadership, but I was so focused on my individual practice, it wouldn’t work. So I bailed out of that, because there were a lot of extra responsibilities. But that actually opened up—because I was honest—that opened up another avenue, and they approached me and said, “Well, you don’t want this entire leadership team commitment, which I didn’t at that time in my career. Would you consider coaching and consulting, mentoring new financial advisors that come through the door?” And I was like, “I love that. It’s a big part of what I did in the Marine Corps. I’m all in.” So that’s where I started. That was always kind of an underlying aspect of my financial planning career, especially when I got to the director level. And honestly, I was offered part— the option—to be a part owner in the last company that I worked with, and after being on the executive team for a long time and seeing the behind the scenes of the financial planning and financial services industry, I just honestly wasn’t interested. We can leave that one at that. Just didn’t like what happened behind the scenes. Thought it was actually anti what I believe in. And so that gave me kind of a unique position to be in of like, okay, where’s your career going now? Because you took this role. Why would you leave your individual practice to go to the directorship if you weren’t going to end up owning one of these companies at some point in time or being an executive at that level? And so I started Bello Wood, got it approved through the company, and I actually— to your last question— how did you get your first client? I called some of the mentees that I had in the past and said, “I’m going to do this as an official business. Would you be interested in working with me again, but you pay me for this advice, pay me for this consultation, pay me for the coaching?” And I was very lucky, I guess, and fortunate—of the work I had done with them in the past as a mentor—and all five of them said yes. So that’s how I started it, really. They said yes, and I was like, okay, great. And then when it really took off is that company I was continually working with, I ended up restructuring my contract with them as a consultant for them, instead of an employee under my coaching company. And that’s when it really took off.

43:34 Jim Beach: Excellent. Good story. How did you get your first client that you had never met before? Was it through an introduction?

43:45 Jon Sheldon: Introductions. I am still to this day— I have one client to this day that found me off of a— I think it was an Instagram post I made, actually. Now I have two. One just called me today. But everything else has been referrals, introductions. That’s my— if I have any claim to fame, it’s doing that. I built every single business outside of the flyers in the mailbox initially for the landscaping company. My entire financial practice, I never made a single cold call, and I can still say that to this day. With my last five years of coaching, I’ve never made a cold call or any sort of cold marketing at all. No emails, nothing. It’s all word-of-mouth, all introductions, and there’s a system for that. So yes, introductions from—

44:30 Jim Beach: Another client. And you say there’s a system for that. What is that? You beg people to refer and give them—

44:37 Jon Sheldon: No, no, no, no, not even close. So in order to get a referral, that requires two things: it requires a good product and a good service, right? So the product is obviously the coaching, and the service of the experience is the other thing that most people unfortunately forget a lot of times. And that is incredible. Most people think about those two aspects. And how do you get a client? How do you keep a client? When you think of it, getting a referral is, in my opinion, vastly harder than getting a client, because in order for them— a person can easily say yes to your products and services, because it’s their decision, but to put their name behind you, you have to offer a higher level, and you also have to bring it up. And that’s, again, what most people don’t do. They just offer their services, they get paid, they’re like, “Oh, thanks so much.” Then maybe it’s in the bottom of their email or something like that. Getting referrals can be as easy as just telling every client that you’re actively growing and looking for more clients. I know that’s super basic, and there’s a bunch of language that we don’t have even close enough time to go through. But just something as simple as that generally changes the tide for a lot of people. It’s just openly saying—because at the end of the day, as much as there’s negativity everywhere you look now, people like to help other people. And if you tell people you’re actively growing your practice and you’ve chosen only to build it off of introductions and referrals, it’s really surprising sometimes how many clients will show up for you and start referring you to other people. So I’ve never begged for a referral. Have I asked for them and told people how I run my business? Absolutely.

46:10 Jim Beach: What do most of the people who come to you need? What is their problem, their deficiency?

46:22 Jon Sheldon: Clarity. A lot of times. I work primarily with small unit leaders, and that crosses many, many industries. So I primarily work with that active practitioner who’s also trying to grow their team. That’s who I primarily work with. So generally, referrals come in that regard, where they’ve already become pretty successful in whatever they’ve been doing, and they’re looking to scale, and they have to run that dichotomy of being—let’s say like I’ve got—I’m heavily inside of the construction industry. That could be, “Hey, I’ve got one team that I’m actively working with, and I’m really trying to grow this to seven, eight, 10 teams, and me just running the company and being that type of leader.” That’s where a lot of my clients come from. Financial advisors, real estate agents, attorneys—all very similar client profile of they’re in the growth stage, and they don’t know how to balance it both. They were a great producer or they had a great idea, and now, if they’re growing a team, they feel really lost and maybe undertrained on how to become that best leader and be a father, mother, and be a practitioner as well. I think that’s why people generally— they’re in that big transition phase, and they need that extra outside perspective on their business.

47:50 Jim Beach: And how do you work with them? Is it one-on-one talks? Or do you give them readings and homework? Or what does the actual work look like?

48:00 Jon Sheldon: Yeah. So my coaching style is actually pretty in-depth. So I write the first words on my website are, “Coaching is for the ready,” because I truly believe that for my process and procedure, it’s all the things that you just said. So it’s one-on-one sessions about biweekly, so 50 minutes every other week. In between, you’re never leaving a conversation with me without an action that you’re going to push your business forward or push your personal life forward. Every two weeks, you’re getting a new set of actions that you’re committing to. I’m not coming up with it. You’re committing to metrics. We track growth metrics, like how are you growing as an individual based on your goals. We identify your vision and purpose. We identify what ecosystems you’re best suited for, and what truly motivates you. All of those things go into your end goal, which we’re coaching through consistently. So we’re doing one-on-one sessions. There’s a bunch of files and resources that I’ve accumulated over the last—let’s call it ever since 2008—that we have in the system that I share with my clients. There’s courses that they can go through, if I’ve already developed a system or something that they’re really interested in doing. Every course that I’ve ever created is free to my clients. They just—“Hey, work on this course for the next two weeks, and we’ll have another session after when you’re done,” or something like that. So it’s everything you just suggested, and built in this really cool tech package that I’ve been working on for the last couple years that’s really slick at this point.

49:34 Jim Beach: And how do you determine pricing, and how do you tell people that price without feeling guilty, especially start off talking about how hard business is right now, you know that they’re challenged—

49:47 Jon Sheldon: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s a good question. So I’m totally open about this. When I first started, I had no idea what to charge. So I just charged, really, what I would have felt comfortable paying. That’s what I started charging—right, wrong, or indifferent. It didn’t really matter to me. And then I had a rule that every three clients that said yes, I would increase my prices. And I just got a lot of yeses. So I just kept increasing my prices, honestly, for that first year and a half. Just people kept saying yes. And now it’s getting more to that 50/50, which means I feel like I’m in the right place at this point in time. But that’s kind of how I started with my pricing structure. I just kind of started and saw what the world was willing to pay me, essentially. And as far as feeling bad, I’m a pretty generous person, to be honest with you. So I’ve given a lot of free resources to people that aren’t ready to pay for my services. Is that for everybody? No. But if I’ve ever felt at a point where, “Hey, you’re not there yet, but I’ll give you one free session on the house, and here are four resources to work on for the next six months. Let me know how those work out,” I’ve 100% done that multiple times. But I actually don’t believe in discounting. So my price is my price, and if you can pay it, perfect. Hire me full-time. If you can’t, okay, let’s work together down the road or something, and here’s some resources that can help you get to that space. I actually don’t believe in discounting your time at all. I give things away for free, or you pay it full price.

51:24 Jim Beach: And would you mind sharing what your full price is?

51:27 Jon Sheldon: Yeah, it’s fine. It varies for teams, but for individuals, it’s $4,000 a quarter. So that’s six sessions.

51:36 Jim Beach: So you meet every other week every other week, correct? Okay, for 4,000 for like an hour or something?

51:44 Jon Sheldon: Yes, 50 minutes, but yeah, usually goes about an hour. Okay. And then teaming is totally customized to what the team needs. If it’s just one person, it goes back to the individual pricing. If it’s any more than two, there we start getting into more creative ways to support the teams that goes all the way up to quite a bit, or down to the four grand. And then I do have the optional one. I think that’s—it’s called overcoming an obstacle. Generally speaking, what I tell first-time people that have never hired a coach before, I don’t even let them do anything but that package: three sessions. Let’s get over an obstacle that you’re facing, create the value, and then, to date, I’ve never had one of them not sign up for another three. So that’s kind of how I run it. So it’s a smaller package. If they have never hired a coach before, I get that as kind of ambiguous sometimes. Once we create the value, then, you know, my average client stays with me for about 18 months.

52:39 Jim Beach: Hey, fantastic, John. Thank you for all those insights into the business. That will be great for coaches to figure out what to do. And I’m sure a lot of people listening will be interested in hiring you as well. How do we get in touch, find out more, follow you online, all that, please.

52:58 Jon Sheldon: Yeah, so you already mentioned my website before. It’s BelloWood dot coach, B-E-L-L-E-A-U-W-O-O-D dot coach. And then my Instagram is BelloWood, same way, underscore coaching. And my name is Jon Sheldon on LinkedIn. But really, the Instagram and website—Jonathan—oh, it is Jonathan Sheldon on LinkedIn, yeah, yeah. And so really, if you want to see more about me, I put weekly videos out on Instagram every single week. Those are 92-second videos, just to give value to the community. I don’t expect clients from those. I will do that until I die. I think it’s important. So if you want to learn more about me, check out those videos. You’ll get to know me pretty well. We’ve got probably 70 of them out now.

53:44 Jim Beach: Fantastic, John. Thank you so very much for being with us today. Great stuff, and we’d love to have you back.

53:47 Jon Sheldon: Appreciate you, man. We’d love to be back.

53:51 Jim Beach: We are out of time for today, but you know what we do. That’s right, we come back tomorrow. Be safe, take care, and go make a million dollars. You.