Own The Room: How to Control Perception, Read the Room, and Win High Stakes Conversations
Sep 24, 2026 · 30 min · 13 segments
Your sales are flat. That feels safe. It isn't. If costs went up and revenue didn't, you didn't hold steady — you lost ground. Most business owners never see it that way, because "flat" doesn't feel…
Jake StahlHostJohnHost
And so I think the answer people come back with, David, a lot is, "Listen, I, the answer for me is just to simply work harder.
Put in longer hours." And I'm curious, in your experience, is growth more of an execution problem or is it a strategy problem or is it something completely different?
Because when you think about it, when you launched your business, I hope and pray you had a business plan.
Let me remind people, March 2020 we got hit with COVID and d- what did you do? You had to pivot, right? Think of what needs to happen at every juncture, and I know business owners say, "I don't have time for this," but literally every three months, at worst every six months, and the real worst is annually, [laughs] is to go revisit that document and say, "What's changed? What do I need to do? What do we gotta do to grow?" And there are a lot of great, easy documents.
But the idea is that he has a document, and there are others like it, but I've used his.
You don't have to fill out the 16 pages, but it gives you a clarity of, like, where do we wanna go, how do we wanna get there, and crap, how do we have to start, and what does l- the next 90 days look like? And a lot of business owners are trying to wing it.
You gotta get to the source of the problem as to why you're not generating revenue, why you're not generating cash flow.
And I can say it again, if you say the only solution to our problem is sales, it's not.
There might be an internal problem that you're not recognizing that you gotta deal with today.
And so I think the answer people come back with, David, a lot is, "Listen, I, the answer for me is just to simply work harder.
Put in longer hours." And I'm curious, in your experience, is growth more of an execution problem or is it a strategy problem or is it something completely different?
Because when you think about it, when you launched your business, I hope and pray you had a business plan.
Let me remind people, March 2020 we got hit with COVID and d- what did you do? You had to pivot, right? Think of what needs to happen at every juncture, and I know business owners say, "I don't have time for this," but literally every three months, at worst every six months, and the real worst is annually, [laughs] is to go revisit that document and say, "What's changed? What do I need to do? What do we gotta do to grow?" And there are a lot of great, easy documents.
But the idea is that he has a document, and there are others like it, but I've used his.
You don't have to fill out the 16 pages, but it gives you a clarity of, like, where do we wanna go, how do we wanna get there, and crap, how do we have to start, and what does l- the next 90 days look like? And a lot of business owners are trying to wing it.
You gotta get to the source of the problem as to why you're not generating revenue, why you're not generating cash flow.
And I can say it again, if you say the only solution to our problem is sales, it's not.
There might be an internal problem that you're not recognizing that you gotta deal with today.
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