Your Business Isn’t Broken. It’s the Person Running It.

The marketing is fine. The team is capable. The market is there. And the business still won’t move.

You’ve read the books. Hired the consultants. Rebuilt the org chart twice. None of it touched the actual problem, because the actual problem was never in the business.

It’s fear. It’s ego. It’s the story you keep telling yourself about what you can and can’t do. It’s the “personal stuff” you’ve been leaving at the door every morning — except it doesn’t stay there. It walks in with you and runs the company.

I’m Jay Izso. I’m an Executive Performance Coach, and I work with CEOs and founders of $5M–$50M companies who’ve hit a wall they can’t explain. I don’t fix algorithms. I fix the behaviors and mindsets that are strangling your growth.

No Motivational Platitudes

I find the personal behavioral pattern that’s driving the business dysfunction. Then I help you disrupt it so the company can actually grow. That’s the whole method.

No vision boards. No affirmations on the monitor. Diagnostics, intervention, results.

If you want to feel better about your business, hire a hype man. If you want it to change, keep reading — because where I learned to do this isn’t a place most coaches have ever set foot.

Raised on the Farm. Trained in Psychology.

My approach comes from two places most coaches never set foot in.

The farm. I grew up a farmhand in Ithaca, Nebraska — population 100. I started working at nine. By fourteen I was castrating boars, and nobody was coming to do it for me if I froze. By the time I left for college I’d spent a decade learning that you can’t cheat the harvest, that pain is part of the job, and that the work gets done whether you feel like it or not.

That’s not a charming childhood story. It’s why I don’t flinch when a CEO’s real problem turns out to be uglier than the one they hired me to fix. I’ve done harder, dirtier work than a hard conversation.

The forensic unit. In graduate school at Washington State University, I trained under Dr. Thomas Brigham — co-author of the Handbook of Applied Behavior Analysis — in a human behavior lab built around real-world problems, not theory. I followed that into a Clinical Psych II role at Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake, Washington: a forensic setting, evaluating people charged with the most serious criminal offenses.

Sixteen months reading human behavior at its most extreme teaches you one thing fast: how to get past what someone’s telling you and see what’s actually driving the decision. That’s not a metaphor I use with executives — it’s the literal skill I use on them. Most consultants react to what a CEO says the problem is. I was trained to find what’s underneath it.

How the Work Actually Happens

We find the pattern. Not “leadership style” — the specific behavior that shows up under pressure and quietly runs the company into a wall. The decision you keep re-making. The hire you keep avoiding. The conversation you keep having in your head instead of in the room.

We name it, out loud, without the corporate padding.

Then we disrupt it — deliberately, on purpose, on a schedule — until the new behavior is the automatic one. Not a seminar. Not a one-time breakthrough you feel good about for a month. A rebuilt habit, tested against your actual business, week over week.

If you also want to hear how this plays out in other people’s companies before you talk to me, that’s what the show is for. Every week on A New Direction, I sit down with CEOs, founders, and the researchers behind the science of leadership performance — the decisions that built their companies, the mistakes that nearly ended them, and the breakthrough that changed everything. The podcast is where you can watch the diagnosis happen to someone else first.

Who This Is For

This works if you’re the CEO or founder of a $5M–$50M company, you already know — or strongly suspect — that you’re the bottleneck, and you’re willing to look at that directly instead of managing around it.

This doesn’t work if you want a quick fix. I can’t help you if what you’re after is a pep talk before your next board meeting.

I work with people who value authenticity and effort. If you’re ready to dig in, find the root cause, and grow — keep reading.

Your Growth Journey Starts Here

Big idea, bold goal, or a wall you can’t explain — start the conversation. Schedule your audio session and tell me the one thing about your business that doesn’t add up. I’ll tell you, straight, whether it’s a business problem or a personal one wearing a business costume.

Thank you everyone for listening to A New Direction with Coach Jay.

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