A perfect plan is a charming houseguest. It arrives with excellent posture, matching luggage, and no intention of staying past Tuesday. Jacob Larsen has built a business for what remains after it leaves. In the language of Steadfast Coaching, the company he founded with Heather, the useful virtues are not novelty or punishment. They are attention, adjustment, and the stubborn little habit of returning.
This is an unfashionably patient proposition in a trade fond of countdowns. The industry calendar is crowded with thirty-day fixes and six-week reinventions. Larsen's version begins with a less photogenic question: what will fit the person who actually has to do it? Steadfast asks about a client's schedule, goals, experience and available equipment, then builds training and nutrition guidance around those facts. Weekly check-ins and video feedback keep the plan from becoming a laminated artifact.
Larsen uses Jacob on his formal profile and Jake in the gym. He is based in Orem, Utah, close to the state's busy seam of software companies and sales floors. His own route to coaching passed directly through that world. Before Steadfast became the name above the door, he worked in marketing, customer service, retail management, employee recognition and software sales. The jobs changed; the problem beneath them did not. How do you understand what moves another person, and how do you help that motivation survive contact with an ordinary week?
The salesman learns to listen
His résumé begins far from the theatrical clang of a loaded bar. Larsen managed marketing for Union Title, handled customer service at Wayfair and then ran a T-Mobile retail store. In 2019 he moved into enterprise business development at O.C. Tanner, whose work centers on employee recognition. Carrus and Podium followed, with account executive and strategic solutions roles. Later came Awardco, another workplace rewards company, where he worked as an enterprise recognition consultant.
Sales can teach ugly habits, but practiced well it teaches a useful one: do not prescribe before you understand. A discovery call is an organized act of curiosity. The customer explains the present state, the desired state and the annoyances living in between. Larsen's coaching now follows a recognizable rhythm. Steadfast begins with a conversation, creates an individual plan, watches what happens and revises. The old commercial machinery has been put to warmer use.
At Utah Valley University from 2018 to 2020, Larsen studied human resource management, business management and organizational development. The work was practical. His projects touched employee retention, HR systems, staffing, recruiting, training and performance. Even then, his interests sat at the junction of systems and people. A system can invite a behavior, reward it and make it easier to repeat. It cannot care whether the person feels lost. That last part requires another person.
“Every person deserves to feel seen, understood, and capable.”Jacob Larsen, describing his approach to coaching
The line is not coy about the ambition. Larsen is selling instruction, certainly, but also the experience of being noticed. On a gym floor, technique is visible. In a virtual business, attention has to travel through a screen. That makes the weekly check-in less like paperwork and more like the product itself. The exercise list matters. So does the message that proves somebody read last week's results.
A side practice becomes the main event
Larsen had already been coaching for years while building his sales career. Public employment records place him with L8R Lifestyle from 2020 until 2024, overlapping with roles at Carrus and Podium. The parallel tracks make his later move look less like a sudden pivot than a long vote counted slowly. By October 2024, he had founded Steadfast and named himself owner and head coach.
The company is a partnership. Its public introduction is simple: “Hey, we're Jake and Heather - founders of Steadfast.” They present themselves less as distant experts than as coaches “in your corner.” Their mission is to help everyday people feel capable and confident through smart coaching, real connection and sustainable change. The vocabulary is notable for what it refuses. No one-size-fits-all routine. No crash diet. No boring workout. A refusal list can be a founder's earliest strategy document.
Their affirmative case comes in four short principles: consistency over perfection; progress over ego; people over programs; strength that lasts. They are good slogans because they also make decisions. When a client's actual life conflicts with an ideal routine, “people over programs” tells the coach which one must bend. When a messy week ruins the fantasy of flawless adherence, “consistency over perfection” asks only for the next workable action.
The weekly check-in is the plot
Virtual coaching changes the geography of the work. Steadfast says a client can train at home, at a gym or on the road. The plan accounts for whatever equipment is genuinely available. Guidance travels through weekly check-ins, video feedback and deliberate adjustments. Nutrition support is framed around sustainable choices rather than a meal plan handed down like a tablet of stone.
Remote service also exposes any coach who mistakes distribution for relationship. Sending a spreadsheet is easy; remaining present is expensive. The Steadfast model depends on the founders noticing patterns and responding before frustration becomes abandonment. Its public materials repeatedly return to accountability, customized plans and support. Repetition in marketing can be numbing. Here, it is also revealing. A company tends to repeat the thing it believes customers are buying.
The founders say they have helped more than 500 clients. That number gives the young brand a past, though the more interesting proof is the accumulation implied by it. Five hundred plans cannot remain entirely bespoke unless the business learns which parts must be standardized and which must never be. The forms, calls and check-in rhythm may be a system. The response has to sound like it belongs to the person receiving it.
“We train real people - not just bodies that fit into a template.”Steadfast's case for people over programs
There is wit in naming a company Steadfast when its service is adjustment. The word suggests an oak tree; the method behaves more like a sailboat. Larsen's steadiness is not rigidity. It is loyalty to the destination while the route keeps changing. The promise is not that life will cooperate. The promise is that the plan can be revised when it does not.
The founder becomes a beginner again
Entrepreneurship has supplied Larsen with a fresh version of the lesson he gives clients. Recently, he told his professional network that growing the business had been rewarding, but that he wanted the knowledge and tools to expand its reach and serve people more effectively. He started a fundraiser for tuition to a four-month business coaching program.
It was an unusually exposed act for a coach: the person accustomed to offering support asked for it. He explained that he wanted mentorship and guidance to become a better entrepreneur. The posture neatly matches the company he is building. Capability does not mean solitary mastery. A coach can require coaching. A founder can be competent and unfinished at once.
Studies organizational development and human resource management at Utah Valley University.
Moves through employee recognition and software sales while maintaining a parallel coaching practice.
Founds Steadfast with Heather and becomes its owner and head coach.
Seeks business mentorship to expand the coaching company and improve how it serves clients.
His working life now carries two identities. Steadfast is the venture he is growing; a public directory also lists a sales role at FireAvert beginning in 2025. The arrangement is not an embarrassment tucked behind the founder mythology. It is a familiar entrepreneurial reality. Many businesses are built between calls, beside payroll jobs and in hours that have to be claimed deliberately. Larsen spent years coaching and selling at the same time. The overlap is part of the craft.
It also keeps his philosophy honest. Consistency is easy to admire when the calendar is empty and the lighting cooperative. The more persuasive test arrives when work crowds the week and ambition must negotiate for a place in it. Larsen has organized his business around that negotiation, first for himself and then for clients.
The fitness world will always have room for spectacle. Jacob Larsen is making a quieter wager: that attention can be a method, that revision can be a form of discipline, and that showing up again may be the only transformation nobody can sell in advance.