In this episode: Is your baby ugly? Not literally. Jon Peyton means your business. He walks through the hard questions that reveal where a company has drifted from its identity, how to fund and track a plan to fix it, and why the same honest review can transform your personal life too.
Key insights
- Drifting from your core values and offering attracts the wrong employees, clients and vendors.
- Once you find the “ugly” areas, a plan to fix them only works if you can fund it and track it.
- The same honest review applies to your personal life: relationships, time and your own well-being.
- Pick metrics for both sides of life and check them on a regular rhythm.
- It’s easier to keep a flywheel turning with small, regular pushes than to restart it from a dead stop.
Episode timeline
- 0:00 Is your baby ugly?
- 1:02 Have you drifted from your core values?
- 2:33 Signs of stagnation and decline
- 3:15 What to do with the answers
- 4:11 It starts with your budget
- 5:31 Applying it to your personal life
- 6:09 What Jon sacrificed while building
- 8:25 Metrics for business and life
- 9:09 Jon’s reading habit
- 12:25 Keep the flywheel turning
- 13:36 Knowing when it’s time for a change
The episode in brief
Is the business you have the one you built? After a gut check, ask the hard question. Is the company still true to its core values and beliefs? Has it drifted from its core offering? Are you doing things you shouldn’t be? When a business loses its identity, it starts attracting the wrong employees, clients and vendors, and they affect everything else.
Diagnose the problem. If you’re stagnating, look at what’s limiting your upside or keeping you out of new markets. If you’re declining, ask why. Is the sales cycle broken? Is the organization top-heavy with managers, or full of entry-level staff with no one to train them and no path upward?
A plan you can fund and track. Once you find the weak spots, whether operations, people or marketing, build a plan to fix them. But a plan you can’t afford never gets executed, and people with no accountability or tracking won’t move it forward. Ask three questions: Is my baby ugly? Can I afford the fix? How will I know it’s working?
Apply it at home. Founders and executives spend most of their time in the business, so they fix what they can control there and let their personal lives slide. Jon admits that while building his companies, he always made time for his children but let almost everything else go. Some months he barely spoke to family. As the businesses stabilized, he used the same principles he’d used to build them to rebuild his relationships.
Measure both sides. In business, that might be cash flow, the balance sheet or client growth. In life, it might be time with friends and family, dates, trips or simple “me time.” For Jon, that’s reading business books, which set his mind racing with new ideas. Check your metrics weekly, monthly or quarterly so you know whether you’re moving in the right direction.
Keep the flywheel turning. If you stop reviewing, you can drift into unhappiness without noticing, and getting back means grinding from a standstill. A flywheel is far easier to keep moving with small pushes than to restart. A regular review also tells you when you’re ready for something new, whether that’s a pivot, a sale or the next chapter.
Key action items
- Ask the hard questions in writing. List where your business has drifted from its values, offering or ideal customer.
- Cost out the fix. For each problem, estimate what it would take in money and people, and whether the budget supports it.
- Choose two metrics for each side of life. Pick two for the business and two for your personal life, and track them monthly.
- Calendar your review. Set a recurring quarterly date to ask the question again.
Listen next: Episode 22: Where Should You Invest Your Energy?
This episode is educational and isn’t legal, tax or financial advice. Speak with your own attorney and advisers about your situation.