EP 649: From "Good" to Great: How Daily Habits Transform Your Business, Marriage, and Life
17 Mar 2026 · 16 min
Jesse Ewell argues that breakthroughs in business, health, and marriage come from daily habits with clear purpose, not information. Weaknesses in one area like health spill into others like business. He warns against the "good" plateau, where complacency disguises stalled progress.
The purpose of this show, the purpose of this show is to guide you to realign, guide you to realign with habits that get you to live the life, live the life.
Welcome back to the Habit Based Lifestyle Podcast. I'm your host, Jesse Ewell. Today I'm going to do a little different episode. So if you've been listening to this show for years or maybe you're just tuning in, you've probably watched a little bit of evolving from when I first started the show. I had just sold my gyms, my personal training gyms, to starting a coaching business, which is Habit Based Lifestyle, to then kind of helping more health professionals and business owners the last, last 5 years. And something that's kind of became clear to me is that oftentimes the biggest breakthroughs people experience in business, health, marriage, leadership, they don't come from information. They come from our daily habits. And these daily habits have have an outcome attached to them. They got to have meaning. They got to have, you know, a clear definition of, hey, why am I doing this habit every single day? And that's really what I created this podcast about years ago. And I really want to kind of like segment to where I want to go now with this show. So, for those of you who's been listening to this, you know, I want you to know that I'm, number one, I've really dedicated myself to coaching just in the last 25 years between health, fitness, to coaching men. I spent about 5, 6 years exclusively coaching men on how to improve their life, their business, their marriage. Their relationships with their kids to really the last 5, 6 years helping coach health professionals through marketing, building their business. And, you know, in doing this, you see common behaviors. I think one of the reasons why I got into more coaching men and more coaching business owners after I started to kind of phase out of my gyms was because many of the conversations I was having with clients were centered around business, being an entrepreneur, trying to balance that with family, trying to balance that with showing up and different things like that. And what I started to realize is it was oftentimes what people were doing outside of business that impacted what they were doing inside of their business. And the ones that had built their daily habits, the ones that were successful, it was typically because they had a consistent pattern of the way they lived their life, of the way they showed up in their business, of the way they showed up in their families. Now, I would also see an inconsistent pattern. And oftentimes, you know, in the training industry, even though a lot of times people were there to lose weight, they were there to, you know, transform their body, you saw that they had an inconsistent pattern in their body and it began to kind of show up in other areas of their life. And I would have the conversations with them, like tens of thousands of conversations. I got to see very successful people be really good at business, maybe not be so good in their health or other areas. I saw, I just saw consistent patterns of you know, people doing things and I got to learn from them. And those conversations were really powerful. But the last, you know, several years, you see the same inconsistencies when it comes to business owners. Maybe they're lacking in their health. Maybe they're lacking, maybe they're so focused on helping other people, they forget to actually help themselves. Maybe they're so focused in business that they're forgetting that there's this whole other life that they have, whether it be their marriage, whether it be their health, like we talked about, maybe even spirituality. And so oftentimes the things that are disrupting your business are actually outside of your business. The things that are disrupting your health are actually outside of that. But one of the cool things is, is when you begin to work on the areas that you need to grow in, you begin to not only transform that area, but so many others. And, you know, really in the last 5, 6 years, I've been fortunate enough to help over 400+ business owners grow their businesses. Since 2019, I've grown this podcast to over 647 episodes. Times I've been really consistent with it. Other times I've been inconsistent and really wanted nothing to do with it. But I realize how much it helps me as much as it does help my audience with consistency. And you know, what's cool is when you begin to help people, you start to recognize, you start to recognize patterns in yourself. You start to recognize areas where you need to show up better, where you need to, you know, step out and lead more. But the cool thing is, is that doing a podcast, it helps you get really clear clear on how to deliver a message. It gets you really clear on the things that you need to work on yourself. And those are some of the things that I never even recognized when I first started my podcast. I can remember doing my first 50 episodes and not really even wanting to listen to my own episodes. And then I started listening to them. I started being like, wow, I can really take something away from that. And I knew once I could listen to my own show and take something away, I knew how much more powerful that would be. So in doing this, it's as much as an accountability as it is wanting to help other people. It's an accountability with myself. It's kind of like, okay, if you're going to teach on this, you need to make sure you're doing this. You can't just talk about it because when you talk about things, it comes off as, hey, this is just information. It's regurgitated. I hear this everywhere. And I never really wanted to do a podcast that way. In fact, you know, those are the ones that I don't like listening to or the ones that's like, hey, this sounds like another Tony Robbins message or this sounds like, you know, some Joe Rogan thing. But I never really wanted to make it about that. I always wanted to make it about, hey, if I could help one person, I don't care if there's a million listeners. I don't care if there's a million subscribers. I just want to make sure that this message resonates with one person. But here's the things that I see people struggle with today. Number one, We live in a world of distraction and I can get caught up in this as much as anybody. You got social media, you got AI, you have, you know, your phone. You have so many things competing to distract your time, your energy and focus that if you don't build a strategy on how to stay focused, you're going to be distracted. There's times I can look at my phone and see that I've spent, you know, 5, 6 hours on social media a day. Maybe I'm spending an hour or 2 hours on AI. Although you can learn a lot from AI, it can be very distracting as well. And you can have people texting you, calling you on your phone, and all of a sudden you put all those things in a blender, you get done at the end of the day and you're like, what the heck even happened? I feel like I can't even think straight. And this is the competition we're really up against today. I know a lot of people are worried about competition in the marketplace, but the real competition is battling to distract you from the very thing that you may want to do. And I'll be the first to admit, social media can really help you grow your business, but it can also really distract you from growing your business. AI can really help you grow your business, but it can also really distract you from it. Your phone. Can help you grow your business, but it could easily distract you. And those are the things that we have to build a strategy around and focus around. But, you know, the biggest thing is, is like growth starts with, with you. Growth requires a strategy and that strategy has to have habits. If your habits are strong, if they're consistent, typically that goes into leadership. Typically, that goes into discipline, that goes into other things as well. Here's the other thing I see. We're all really strong in one area of life. So, oftentimes on this show, we'll talk about physical health, mental health, relational health, spiritual health, financial health. Here's the thing that I've recognized is that every entrepreneur is weak or has an anchor in one of those areas. It's up to you to define what that area is. Now, here's the other thing we see. Let's say, I mean, I've worked out forever, so I could just say, hey, mine is going to be, my easiest habit is going to be health. My probably hardest habit is going to be spiritual. Not because I don't want to learn, but because it just requires a higher level of focus to read the Bible, to pray, to do all those things that requires a different level of focus than it does to just wake up and go to the gym. And so here's what we'll do a lot of times is I can compare or get caught up comparing my health to somebody else who maybe their number one thing is like, hey, every day I pray, I read the Bible, I do all these things. But oftentimes what we'll do is say, well, you don't work out, and I do, and we'll kind of highlight the area that we're best at instead of leaning into the area of growth. And what I really think is, is like getting around people who are better than you at the area you want to focus on. So getting around maybe a pastor, getting around a spiritual leader that can really teach you can not only help you spiritually, but you start to understand the frameworks that they work through, the way they think. The way that they, the habits they have. And that's really what I want this show to be about. I want you to be around people like I get to interview people and I'm going to be interviewing a lot more people who are, are stronger in these areas so that I can learn from them, so that I can grow. And so my audience can do the same thing. So I want to talk about leadership. I want to talk about habits. I want to talk about discipline. But I'm not naive to the fact of the areas that I need to work on and I need to grow. And that's really what I want to bring to you guys is I want you to listen to this show and I want you to come on this show and be like, "This is an area I need to work on and address." But the cool thing is, is that we get to learn together, we get to grow together. And that's really what living a habit-based lifestyle is about. It's about growth. It's about understanding the areas that you can grow in. And here's what's really cool is when you start understanding the areas you need to grow in, it usually impacts every area of your life, not just one. And, you know, right now my big focus is really on helping entrepreneurs, health professionals build businesses that really support their life, support their lifestyle, support their family. And, you know, And the other cool thing is, is I love building business. I love being able to just help people get out of their own way because those are really the things that I'm passionate about. Like if there's a bottleneck, there's typically a reason why, and it's typically ourselves, but we just got to figure out what it is. Oftentimes we can't see our own bottleneck and just having someone else come alongside of us, they can kind of help us work through that. I think Today, what I see in the coaching space is it's not super deep. It's very surface level. You know, with, with AI and things like this in the last few years, we can get a lot of information. The problem is, is information alone is not necessarily going to be the thing that transforms you. Right. And so there's a fire that we all have as an entrepreneur. As a business owner, but that fire has to be lit in order to want to change, in order to want to do things differently. Otherwise, we kind of stay in this area of good. And I can say for myself, I've gotten caught in these where, hey, life is good. And that's almost worse, a worst area to be in because we often, it's like good sits between bad and great. If we're bad, we know we have to work ourselves out of it. If we're great, we know we're operating at a high level. Oftentimes if we're good, it's camouflage. We don't really, it's kind of status quo. I don't know about you, but being an entrepreneur, you're not going to survive being status quo. You're not going to make the money you want to make. You're not going to grow where you want to grow. And you know, the truth is this is really about growth, but we need to be equipped in order to grow. Oftentimes it requires walking out the growth that we need, not just knowing where we need to grow, but actually walking it out and having someone to do that with. And that's really what this podcast is about. It's about understanding, hey, where do we need to grow? But also walking it out. For me, you know, that means being a better husband, a better father, a better leader. That means having a greater level of purpose and responsibility, being able to serve more people, being able to impact more people. Because if we're not doing those things, We're not growing and the people that we surround ourselves are not either. What are you going to get from listening to this? Well, you're going to get conversations around business, marketing, leadership, discipline, faith, purpose, health, physical performance. I'm going to be talking about some of the things I'm doing in my own health, some of the things I'm helping health professionals do. We're going to be talking about marriage and just family leadership. And then obviously integrating habits into all of these. Because at the end of the day, habits are what build everything, but they have to have purpose and they got to have meaning. And that's really what we're going to be talking about on here. So, if you guys, you know, you've been listening to this podcast, whether you've been doing it for years or you're brand new, I appreciate you being here. If you're new to the show, my goal in the podcast is simple. I want to give you practical frameworks. I want to give you lessons. I want to give you an honest conversation that helps you build your life, helps you build your habits with purpose. So if you're listening today, keep showing up. I'm going to keep showing up. Keep building your habits for the future and begin to live a habit-based lifestyle. I'll see you in the next episode.
You've always dreamed of. This is the Habit-Based Lifestyle Podcast. With Jesse Ewell.
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