Misfit Story — Joel CESSNA
He named his self-doubt "Brutus." Then he told it to shut up.
Joel Cessna, sales advisor to healthcare brands and founder of Cessna Sales Solutions, came to Band of Misfits to grow a business. He found a mentor, a network, and, somewhat unexpectedly, a way to manage the voice in his head that almost talked him out of it.
0 to full plate …
A year into his new business, Joel has a full client roster.
Creating space
With a steady client pipeline, Joel’s next goal is to say no so he can say yes to his other life goals.
Self-appointed BOM ambassador
Referred multiple new band members to BOM.
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“Stephen is more than a coach. He's a mentor whose own story mirrors mine. And the community he's built has genuinely changed how I think, how I plan my week, and how I show up for my clients and my family.”
The leap looks a lot less scary when someone's already made it.
Joel Cessna spent years selling into hospitals and health systems before deciding to build something of his own. Through Cessna Sales Solutions, Joel advises healthcare brands and the organizations they sell into. It's a leap a lot of people talk about and far fewer actually make.
Joel made it because he had a guide who'd already walked the path. He and Stephen had crossed paths years earlier, both selling into the same world. When Joel was ready to go out on his own, Stephen wasn't just a name in his network. He was someone whose own story of leaving a company to build something independent mirrored exactly what Joel was about to attempt.
“He's more than a coach," Joel says. "He's a mentor whose own story mirrors mine.”
That distinction matters. Coaching tells you what to do. Mentorship shows you it's possible, because someone already did it.
BOM in action
How Joel got here: Joel's path wasn't a straight line into BOM. It started with a leadership mastermind, then a healthcare-specific mastermind, and ultimately landed in Band of Misfits about a year and a half ago. Each step built real relationships before Joel ever needed anything from them..
The business is working.
Now for the harder part.
Here's the honest version of Joel's story, and it's a good one: his business is close to hitting his high income target. Real clients. Real revenue. The thing he set out to build is, by the numbers, working.
What's not yet working is the time.
Joel is currently putting in 50 to 55 hours a week. His goal is 35. That's not a small gap, and it's not an abstract one. He has two kids in college and a child in high school. The whole reason he went independent was freedom: time with his family, time to exercise, time for life outside of work. He's not there yet, and he knows it.
His honest diagnosis of why: he doesn't say no enough. He recently took on a project that adds multiple hours a week for six weeks. It’s valuable work that’s building toward a repeatable framework he wants to scale, but it’s also one more yes in a season that needed fewer of them.
Joel hasn’t yet solved this challenge.
He’s still working through it. But it's exactly the kind of problem the room is built for.
Because everyone is wrestling with some version of the same thing.
The Shift
The Life Coin framework gave Joel a way to look at his whole life — not just the business side — and start planning weeks instead of just days. He's since started teaching the same practice to the sales reps he manages: review the full week ahead, not just the next task.
Enter, Brutus.
Every person launching a business has a voice in their head that shows up right when things start to matter. The one that says you're not ready, you don't know enough, who do you think you are. Most people just call it self-doubt and try to push through it.
Stephen gave Joel a different tool. Name it.
Stephen led an exercise on identifying your inner critic as a specific character. Something concrete enough to talk back to. Joel named his "Brutus." It's not a metaphor he keeps in a notebook somewhere. He uses it. Out loud, in his own head, probably weekly: Brutus, shut the hell up.
It sounds almost too simple to matter. It matters because it works. Turning an abstract feeling into a named character you can argue with and dismiss is the kind of practical, slightly irreverent tool that defines how Stephen coaches. Never preachy, always usable, occasionally hilarious, genuinely effective.
"It's helped me stay focused," Joel says. Which, for a guy trying to build a business while reclaiming 20 hours a week, is no small thing.
The BOM result
The tool: Naming your inner critic isn't just a feel-good exercise. It's a cognitive distancing technique that helps separate your sense of self-worth from the noise of self-doubt. Joel's "Brutus" has become a go-to mental reset whenever imposter syndrome creeps in mid-pitch or mid-decision.
The room changed how he thinks. The people changed how he plans.
Joel credits BOM with fundamentally shifting how he approaches his business and his week. Not in a vague, inspirational way, but in the specific, practical sense of thinking differently about priorities, planning, and what actually moves the needle. He’s gotten clients from BOM connections. He refers others enthusiastically. He’s watched BOM reshape how he shows up at work and at home.
What he’s building now is a scalable, repeatable process-auditing framework he intends to turn into a productized offering. BOM is part of how he will get there. Not as a source of content to consume, but as a room of people to think alongside.
“BOM sessions feel like the best class you had in college, except the problems are yours and the answers are real.”
The BOM result
The result: Leveraging the Life Coin framework, Joel is a system for his business and more room for his life.
The BOM ambassador who keeps bringing friends.
Joel doesn't mince words: he calls himself a “fanboy” for Band of Misfits. He's referred multiple colleagues into BOM and into Stephen's one-on-one coaching — several of whom have joined.
He’s the kind of advocate every program hopes to have. Joel isn't referring people because he was asked to. He's referring people because he genuinely believes what happened for him can happen for them too.
What he values most isn't any single framework. It's the room itself. Watching how members like Patrick handles contracts or how fellow BOM member Mike approaches LinkedIn. The outside experts Stephen brings in, like a schedule-management specialist and a wellness coach, because Stephen insists on looking at the whole person, not just the P&L.
"It makes me think differently," Joel says. "It pulls me out of the task in front of me to see the whole picture."
He's not at 35 hours a week yet. He's not done becoming who he's working to become. But he's got a name for the voice that used to stop him, a network that's already paid for itself, and a mentor who's already walked the road he's on.
Joel Cessna
Sales Advisor, Cessna Sales Solutions
Specialty
Partnerships, marketing strategy, relationship-building
Based in
Hugo, MN
In BOM since:
~18 months
BOM tools he's worked with:
Life Coin (whole-life planning framework)
"Name the Dog" (inner critic exercise)
Weekly business-planning practice
Peer learning from fellow Misfits' pricing, contracts & LinkedIn strategy
What shifted
Real client relationships, a profitable return every month, and a practical tool for managing the self-doubt that almost every founder fights alone.
