I spent years building a business that technically worked.

I started Strong Jon Fitness in 2016, the same year my first son was born. The business and the family started together, and for years I treated that like a scheduling problem. It wasn't. The business was built around a version of me who had more room than I actually had.

Hockey taught me early that you don't question the direction, you just move forward. Dark mornings at the rink. You lace up because that's what you do. When I found fitness and coaching it felt like the same thing, and it felt like relief. Show up, lift, get stronger. Clean feedback, no noise. For a brain that runs five tabs at once, that simplicity mattered more than I understood at the time.

So I built the business the way I'd played. Say yes to everything, push harder, more clients and more offers and more platforms. Every move made sense on its own. Every move worked just enough to keep going.

By 2022 and 2023 it was working better than it ever had. In July of 2022 I had 72 one-on-one clients, and that same month I stepped into a bigger role, more money and more responsibility and all of it at once. On paper those were the best two years of the whole thing.

Then 2024 came and I pulled back, because I had to.

I remember sitting at my desk one night with tabs everywhere and half-written content, making money and helping people and feeling completely behind. Not tired. Behind.

My ADHD forced me to see what I'd been avoiding. I didn't lack discipline. I was carrying too many open loops and too many decisions, and the business was still shaped like the guy who started it in 2016 and took anyone who'd pay. I didn't need more motivation, I needed less on my plate.

The part I couldn't get around was the kids. You can't tell yourself you'll rest later when your kid is waiting at the door, and you can't keep pushing later when later never comes.

In 2025 I went all in somewhere else as a marketing director and business mentor, working with hundreds of coaching businesses. That year taught me the pattern wasn't mine alone. Talented people doing well on paper and trapped anyway, scaling offers they quietly resented, stuck fixing instead of leading. I saw the same picture almost every time.

That's why I built the DONUT Framework. Not to add more, but to help coaches remove what doesn't fit, and to design a business that doesn't require them to abandon themselves. Rest fixes exhaustion. It doesn't fix misalignment.

Now I'm on my own again, doing this work under my own name for the first time since 2016.