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Jeremy Weisz 5:42
And homeschooling is not easy. Believe it is like, it is a nightmare in our house, but

Josh Fonger 5:49
so she she was doing all this research and this is like, I was like 1314 years ago, and she’s like, we should homeschool. I’m like, please help me talking about homeschooling and And it took me a few years to warm to the idea. Why

Jeremy Weisz 6:02
did she say that?

Josh Fonger 6:04
I she had? Well not to go into long story, but she was a semi professional ski racer downhill ski racer. And so she always traveled with tutors. And so she’s always different parts of the world traveling into she’s broken most bones in her body and multiple concussions, broke her back. And so she stopped bracing, but she was on the pre Olympic team, very competitive. And so she just knew that you didn’t have to do it, like the normal way, or a lot of ways to learn. And I personally didn’t

Jeremy Weisz 6:34
do it the normal way. So she was forced because of her skill set. She had to

Unknown Speaker 6:40
be on the road.

Josh Fonger 6:41
Yeah, a couple hours of tutoring a day was all that they needed to assume she’s quite smart. And so anyway, so that kind of opened the door to her mind to the possibility of it but then to have our kids are special needs. And so when I first was born, we knew that in normal approach was just not going to work out So, we knew that from the beginning and so that got us creative, kind of thinking about options. And you know, he has a major difficulties with a lot of things, but also he has major brilliance with certain things like the first the first first time you read and most people wouldn’t believe me, but he was he was one and a half, two years old somewhere in that range. And we were I was driving around in the shopping cart, grocery store. And he points out he says, cold beer I like cold beer and the wall you know his big sizes cold beer and I was like, Oh, those that’s my first read and my son is

Jeremy Weisz 7:41
even hit you that he was actually reading at that point because you want him to read I mean, you read with him right but a lot of reading with him but

Josh Fonger 7:48
but those were that was the first like just spontaneous reading. And I don’t drink so it was just funny that that was the the first I was like, Huh, I sounds reading and so he really picked up on things really early for some Some things and then really late for other things. And so, you know, he’s probably five years ahead and math right now, but maybe like, multiple years behind some other things that it probably wouldn’t want me to mention. But, you know, just, I think kids grow differently. And so we took a very, I guess, custom approach, which is, which is difficult, which is time consuming. And I would not say it’s for everybody, or even for most people that wouldn’t fit in their lifestyle, but because of being entrepreneur and working from home, it’s given us a lot of flexibility to do it. And I think like we mentioned, now, everyone’s kind of forced into doing it. And there’s a lot of unsavory parts of homeschooling, which is the interruptions the fact that your kids are only 10 feet away at all time. So it does, it does pose some work challenges.

Jeremy Weisz 8:50
You know, now that you say that, Josh, it makes perfect sense. Because no matter who you are, I mean, whether you have special needs or you don’t you’re you’re Gonna be at different levels in different top subjects. Right. But we’re kind of thrown into one size fits all.

Josh Fonger 9:08
Yeah. Which I mean, one size fits all is is efficient for a society, of course, right. But if you have options and means and you want something different, then of course, a one to one approach is would be better and what really changed my paradigm? I think his name is art Robinson. Now he has some very extreme political beliefs, which I think most people, well, who knows who knows your audience, but not everyone to follow that. But I met this guy in Oregon, which was profound paradigm shift for me, which was he had I think he had like six or seven kids. And his wife died. And his oldest kid is like, nine. And he says, You know what? I’m going to teach my kid he’s a brilliant scientist. I’m gonna teach my kids to teach themselves. So he would spend less than one hour a day teaching all nine of his kids, and maybe a six kids, I think it’s 16. Anyways, they all like became like PhDs, they all got full ride scholarships, they all taught themselves like self taught. Hmm. So instead of him teaching, he said, here’s what I need you to do. And they went to the library, got the books, taught themselves soft, self taught, taught each other, and all got full ride scholarships, and they created their own homeschool curriculum, based on materials that were pre copyrights, like 1950 and earlier, and they created their own homeschool program that you can buy. I think they made I don’t know, I’m not quoting this properly, but maybe millions of dollars off of the Ellen. Like they built their own digital product. Like, in the early early 2000s. The kids built a product and sold it. Is it

Jeremy Weisz 10:54
a good resource? Like what Where should we Oh, I don’t find it. Okay.

Josh Fonger 10:57
I mean, they could look it up, but that that was the best paradigm shift for me about 10 years ago was like, Huh, so you don’t have to have to teach every single thing to your kids, actually, you just need to give them the right standards standards, the morals, the right beliefs, right as their leader, you have to lead them and coach them, but you don’t actually had to teach them if you let them. So he basically said, If I can teach my kids to read, and to write, they can do everything else themselves. And that, that was it. And it was pretty amazing. I was like, wow, you can really do that is like Yeah, definitely. Because he still worked eight hours a day.

Jeremy Weisz 11:37
How did you come across his work?

Josh Fonger 11:40
It’s a long story, but I won’t go on all of it. But basically, because of the fact that I was helping Sam on some of his political endeavors, like seven eight years ago. We met him through Oregon as you’re traveling the state, so it was random. It’s not like you’re like I’m looking for homeschooling resources, and it came up. totally random. Yeah, totally random. And so, and I think the other thing that is, it shows the uniqueness, I think of each person. And if they’re willing to step outside the matrix for just a second, which is a scary place, because you’re different than anyone else. There’s a lot of possibilities. In terms of post Great, so I went, I mean, we’re really going off on a tangent here, but we visited his house, right? And his kids had a fascination with organs. So they would travel around and they would they would get, like you eyes in or maybe animal organs know, like, the musical organ. Okay, I was gonna say, like, like so in their house, they had like eight organs that they had actually purchased, like from churches that were just falling apart, and then they would rebuild all of the pipe organs, which are gigantic, and they would, they would tune them by ear. And it was like, just because why not?

Jeremy Weisz 12:58
Why not? That was like one of their projects.

Josh Fonger 13:00
And I was just like, that’s, that is very strange. And so we mentioned homeschoolers are odd. I would say that’s definitely true. But anyways, the point is, it opened up my mind the fact that it doesn’t require that I have to actually teach eight hours a day, I do have to actually get my kids to structure direction, and coach them and then they can then grow into what what they’re meant to be. And that can definitely look more diversion than just, this is the curriculum.

Jeremy Weisz 13:31
I want to hit on the structure and the standards, because I think that applies universally, you know, to us to our business and talk about the structure for a second How does your wife structure or you structure the

Josh Fonger 13:46
day? Sure, yeah. Well, so I think the the main thing is for anybody This is for business for life is to kind of know where you’re trying to hit. Now what is what is the goal? What is a win look like? And then I’m gonna work my hair out. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 14:00
knows,

Josh Fonger 14:01
and then as to build, you know, build a series of things that we use use checklists and schedules for our kids. For a while they’re choosing to do it with my kids. But we just line out the specific things. And the specific times just like you would in any other school, I guess you’d say. And a lot of the kids do check them off. And when they get a certain number of checks down, they can reward themselves with, with certain things that they enjoy doing. But it’s curated, as opposed to just do whatever you want. It’s very much like, here are the things that must get done. And then we lay them out in the list. And then once you get all these things done, then you can do these things that you probably find more pleasurable than doing math. So we print off a daily checklist and then hand it out to the kids and say, go for it. Right and most of it is self directed self teaching elements or online elements or books, elements of all been outside and then they have to knock those things off. And so that has to do with the other spiritual development. has to do with physical development has to do with, you know, the mathematical, historical and so there,

Jeremy Weisz 15:05
there are categories,

Josh Fonger 15:06
yeah, different categories of what we want to make sure that they are growing in. And so, you know, different people are going to different things. So if you want to get to be an artist, you’re gonna get a lot more time doing art, artwork, we know our kids are not not going to be artists. So we’re not spending a ton of time on painting and drawing, unless maybe they’re making a card for their for their mom. But beyond that, that’s not like a big focus for our family, but another family, they might have the kid do three hours of piano every day. Right? So I think that that it gives you the flexibility. And so each of our kids have different strengths, different weaknesses and different interests. And like my oldest son really enjoys creative writing, like he’s writing a book right now. So he, that’s one of the things he wants to spend more time on. And that’s a good use of time. If he said that in one of his dreams was being a video gamer, then I probably wouldn’t give them a whole lot of time to push that. Push that skill set right

Jeremy Weisz 16:00
Like that’s from you know, 9am 9pm to like 1am you can do your gaming. So, are there any categories that you people should consider? Maybe there aren’t like the typical ones or you know, writing reading math are the only ones that you would urge people to think about that maybe we haven’t thought about.

Josh Fonger 16:22
Oh, subjects.

Jeremy Weisz 16:22
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. He mentioned spirituality. I don’t know if people would necessarily lump that into homeschooling, you know, which is interesting. Like, great. Like, there should be a section of exploring that right.

Josh Fonger 16:34
Yeah. Uh, well, so I mean, as most people know, like every every college and university primary purpose initially when they’re built in the US was for spiritual development, right and development morality, like that’s why all the churches, all the hospitals had that as their starting point. So for us, that’s kind of a an important starting point for education because like what, why are Here, What is this for? What is the purpose? And who are you working towards, and what are you working towards. So that’s an important kind of grounding starting point. So we typically start each day with that, mix it into, you know, meal time, then at the end of each day, and they have some alone time to do that. So I think that’s probably more of a focus on ours, and then most people, but that’s, I think that’s part of the challenge of homeschooling. It’s like starting businesses, because you have 100% control, to make as many mistakes or positive things as possible. And you get to, you get to curate it. Like we have people who, frankly, do homeschooling, and they are just obsessed with a certain subject and that’s, that’s just gonna be their thing. That’s fine, right? They get they get to choose, right, they have the freedom to choose that. And

Unknown Speaker 17:50
a lot of people don’t,

Josh Fonger 17:53
I think are worried they’re gonna make a mistake or they are concerned with responsibility and so it’s just easier to know not have to think about those things. But what I found is that as you’re stacking up your kids days with with things that you think are going to be most valuable for them and for their life.

Unknown Speaker 18:12
Usually, they

Josh Fonger 18:15
still have a ton of free time. Right? Like, if we have our kids do three hours of school day, they’ll still be years ahead of their peers, because it really doesn’t take that long. That’s what we’re discovering. Yeah, do most like okay, I

Jeremy Weisz 18:30
finished it two and a half hours, like, what are you doing in school all day?

Josh Fonger 18:33
You know? It? Yes. Well, that because, exactly, just to be it’s it is, obviously it’s partly for education. But partly it’s to keep your kids away. So you can work eight hours a day, so they kind of line up. But yeah, so that we want our kids have tons of times to explore what they’re interested in what they enjoy what’s fun for them, because they’re not going to have maybe as much time as that when they’re working. And so they have some time to Figure out what what is their skills? What is their boundaries, what are what are they gifted in? And what are they interested in. And it’s kind of fostering that opportunity, I think is, is an important thing. And not everyone has a chance to do that I had a chance to do that my work career. Similarly, my dad worked the same job his entire life, he was an eye doctor like 22. And he retired at 65. He was a doctor the whole time, worked in the same location, same business every day, you know, which is better one or two, over and over and over and over again. And did you ever think about being an eye doctor? I did, and he said, don’t do it.

But I am not to say there’s anything wrong with that. But he just, I think that he was the

Jeremy Weisz 19:44
optometrist or out of town versus an optometrist.

Josh Fonger 19:47
But I, I was in real estate development and once I got laid off in 2008. I had this opportunity to basically be unemployed for nine months with the Apple kids. And it sounds scary to me. It was you know, last house car now savings, all retirement massive debt and lives in my last condo. It’s pretty bad. But, but um, what I did get is I got nine months of reflection, and nine months of, you know, opportunity to really understand what what do I enjoy doing? What am I gifting and what is the next chapter? And I think a lot of people don’t, don’t get that and maybe it’s because it’s not forced onto them was forced on to be, but they don’t get that

Jeremy Weisz 20:32
a lot of people right now Josh, it’s forced onto them. They don’t I mean, so this is a really, really perfect time for a conversation about that. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 20:41
I think I mean,

Josh Fonger 20:43
there is the the need to survive, obviously you need to pay, to have food, and to have electricity and stuff like that. But what I know, you know, found out through that experience is that everything that actually matters can’t be taken from you. You know, Friends, family, When you get laid off, yeah, when you have nothing left. I mean for Christmas, we went to Walgreens and we looked at toys to play with them and the, but we didn’t buy any of them which went home. Because, you know, money, right? Um, so, but all creative workarounds?

Yeah. But all the things that mattered.

They can’t, I mean can’t be taken away from you and your job is taken away from you. And so that you know, your value as a human being your purpose, all of those things that are innate, don’t go away when your job goes away. And so that that time period was was I think it was essential in building who I am now because it makes you fearless as an entrepreneur knowing like, what’s the worst that could happen? That wasn’t so bad. And so it I think that was a really important step as I became an entrepreneur became a business consultant

and also realizing that

I think that, you know, God has a unique plan for each person. So in my case, I wrote my business thesis when I got my MBA about why you should never hire a business consultant. Right? I thought that the most part, they just, they didn’t really help people that much. They usually just took their money gave them boilerplate solutions is a solution. I gave everybody else here to go charge you an arm or leg and get out the door and the long term effects and solutions didn’t usually stick. Because homegrown or internally grown solutions I my thesis was they actually work better, right. And so the only job I could find after nine months of being unemployed was to be a business consultant. And so I you know, after thousands of resumes out there, tons of interviews, that was the only one and so I said, Sure I’ll take it and just just fell in love with the profession and the impact and realizing how important it is to be a catalyst for change how important it is to help people see things better. an outside perspective how important it is to grow. The skills and the tools and the abilities of a team from the outside that an internal team just can’t do or can’t do as fast. And so that’s really been what I’ve done over the last 10 years and meeting Sam carpenter, which we’re getting to the kind of the idea that the main structure of this talk was their instrumental of this talk.

Jeremy Weisz 23:24
This is just about your journey and the interesting, you know, portions right.

Unknown Speaker 23:30
So when I met Sam,

Josh Fonger 23:33
what I was realizing it was I was burning out from consulting, I was flying from place to place to place and I was helping people with their inside sales, outside sales. I would do I build people’s merchandising plans, I would help them with hiring. I helped them with firing. I do layups, we did several bankruptcies turn, turnarounds, build out financial forecast, budgets, everything and it I was gonna imagine get kind of burned out when you’re, you know, you’re in Tampa and then it

Jeremy Weisz 24:04
sounds like somebody you know, taxing but also sounds emotionally taxing to sign the stuff you’re doing.

Josh Fonger 24:11
Yeah it was it was horrible. It was I mean I grew a lot but what was the toughest situation you

Jeremy Weisz 24:16
had to be in as far as maybe layoffs or or helping people with

Unknown Speaker 24:23
AI the toughest situation? Well, there’s lots of them I mean, there’s there’s several people that it’s horrible to watch someone’s business get shut down into the vending business for you know, for decades. That the turning point for me and the really the big reason why I connected with Sam’s message Work the System and, and his whole philosophy was a client that I helped turn around in California and I won’t name details about it, but we went in there and had to laugh at people. We had to restructure it had to change the strategy, the pricing, liquidate a bunch of materials. It was extremely complex, work with them for six months. And that was okay. Now they’re going to be successful, right? And, you know, cultural redesign new strategy, and they start to go up. And I’m like, always, we saved that company. And, and then a couple years later, I’m on LinkedIn. And I, the person’s picture pops up in my feed. And instead of being the owner of a $5 million, multi location business, he is the salesperson, like a junior salesperson at another, another competitors company. So he went from owning and having, you know, hundreds of employees to just being a salesperson, right, like probably what he was doing when he was 25. He was, you know, 63. And he was doing that. I’m, like, wow, that implementation didn’t work. Well, it’s because we didn’t actually document the systems that we built. We said here, here’s a system for If you go here is this would hand you know, spoon feed hand deliver this thing. And then it ended up that it none of it stuck, you know, because we didn’t actually help them grow it themselves, you know. So we didn’t in our, in our philosophy, we change the owner and the team’s mindset, then we build them a strategy, and we build them principles and procedures. And the whole idea is that this infrastructure is going to stay stable infrastructure is going to guide you and your team. And whether people come and go or whether you come and go, the business is based on this, this rock this foundation that is scalable, and is not, doesn’t talk get tossed back and forth. It doesn’t fall apart when it has a bad day. You know, 1.1% leaves, it doesn’t totally change your business strategy. It actually that strategy is scalable, and built to last and is gonna be worth something someday. So we basically we put the business over here and the owner is over here, as opposed To the owner being the business and in his case, he was the business and when he was having a bad day or bad month, the business was having a bad day bad month. And so Sam’s methodology that works this method really is the method that I find is is not the sexiest but it’s the most useful for actually extracting an owner from having to be there all the time to building this entity of value production that scalable that is not required on any one person but as required three people are required to work it good people to work it but it can then can scale and grow.

Jeremy Weisz 27:39
Can you talk a little bit about the some of the methodology you know for Work the System for people who aren’t familiar with it?

Unknown Speaker 27:48
Sure. Yeah. And and they can get you know, more information at workthesystem.com or get the book for free there for download or audio but the main components are that Winners typically see themselves as being the business in the reactionary so they react to all incoming things coming in. And they work way too many hours are totally stressed out. And they don’t have good perspective. So the first thing is we help them change their mindset, which we call the system’s mindset, which is being outside and slightly above, elevated above your business, looking down on it. And you see is this one system called answering the phone is another system called processing a check has another system called delivering the package each of these separate systems, you see them, right? And you’re aware that all of these things, if perfected individually, and combined could make a perfect business that’s scalable, so you first need to understand that the business is not based on you always being there. It’s based on these systems running well. And so your job is to make the systems run well, not for you to run yourself into an early grave, which is what most owners do, and most of the business so we make it not about them or anyone personally about systems. That’s the first piece. The second thing is a strategy. We call it this strategic objective. Most people are aware that a company’s have direction is to know how they’re going to get there. And so we help companies to find that which usually is a pivot, and people are watching this during the Coronavirus time, maybe there’s a small pivot you need to make in your business instead of just being entirely physical. And there’s a percentage that’s virtual or percentage of business that now is done online. But we help companies develop that strategic objective to give them clear focus, speed, and they know what they’re building then. Otherwise, owners tend to build what the customers want. And then they just they go all over the place instead of just building a structure and a strategy that’s going to endure and scale and grow. So we build that strategic strategic objective. The next piece is the operating principles. those principles would be the guiding beliefs, the decision making guidelines for all, all activities. So whether it’s hiring, firing, time management, productivity technology, how do you decide What is the right choice? And and you want to empower everybody in the company, including yourself with these decision making guidelines so that, you know, if there’s a spill on the floor, should you clean it up? Or should you wait till the maintenance person cleans it up? Or should you put a sign out there that says, somebody clean this up soon? Like, what is the right decision? You know, in your culture? Is it hey, we all get our hands dirty, and we take care of things as they happen? Or are you in a culture where, Hey, everybody has delegated the roles? Don’t go in someone else’s roles.

Jeremy Weisz 30:30
So now it kind of goes back to core values. core values.

Josh Fonger 30:33
Yep, exactly. So that’d be another way to say core values would be an example of

Jeremy Weisz 30:37
one of those that how maybe you made a decision or one of the companies you helped made a decision based on operating principle.

Josh Fonger 30:45
Yeah, so um, one that we’re doing right now is that stagnant waters deadly that’s what I like to say is that if you are not going to move forward, you’re going to fester. Things are going to start to rot the other Like a pond. And so this idea of stagnant waters as a means movement is better than no movement and movement is going to define or educate you or inform you on your next movement. So, during this Coronavirus time, it’s not like, well, I guess we should just pause. It’s like, No, we should, we’re going to keep moving, we’re a river, we’re going to continue to make content and continue to podcasts, we’re gonna need to build our systems. And so we’re not stopping. Because we know that, you know, the principle of stagnant water is deadly. We also have another principle, which is best idea wins. And so with that principle, you know, whether it’s our newest, newest hire, or someone who’s been with us for a long time, or it’s an idea from the outside, or it’s gonna explain the customer, no matter where the idea comes from. best idea wins. It’s not, it’s not about whether it’s my idea is the owner. And so this gives everybody the ability to speak up and the desire to speak up and to not, you know, not hold to my idea wins. It’s best idea wins, right? Any one of these different principles is going to guide the way we make decisions during gray areas, areas that are outside of normal business, right? I mean, the normal processes of your business, those are already defined, but things that are slightly outside or unique situations are exceptions to the rules. You want to know how to think about and interpret and make decisions based on it. I’ve had a client dental dental office, where it a principle about teamwork, and one of their most dynamic employees who was the most bubbly, and people loved. They realized that she was actually not a team player, she she would come and go she wouldn’t keep your work organized. She was disruptive and they said you know what, this person just you know, everyone else is playing to help each other but this person is really just in it for themselves. And we have let her go she’s she’s disrupting the team too disruptive and so we know because that so that was one of the unique fire in speakers. It hasn’t had a cheesecake factory, remember that one. But so every principle at you want to make sure you apply it, there’s not just to put on the wall, they’re not vanity principles or principles are gonna decide, or they’re gonna inform how you make decisions. I had one client where they had a principle about procrastination. And within that principle, it said, lateness is a form of abuse, which is pretty strong language. And immediately they put the principal place. They were all of a sudden on top of everything, because this principle helped them change how they operated their business. And they really, it really transformed the repeat customers, their referrals, and the experience that that new customers had because they stopped being late all the time. So it can be very powerful. The last piece is working procedures, which is probably what we’re most known for, which is this concept of every thing that you do in a repeatable fashion. You want to have a working procedure, written procedure that tells you how to do it properly. So that you can improve the quality by looking at you could measure it, you can delegate it, you can cross train it. And as you build these various procedures, or procedures, you’re going to build out stability, infrastructure and, and value in your business because then it can grow beyond just the the skills of any one person. So that’s the last piece of puzzle.

Jeremy Weisz 34:26
Thank you. That was That was amazing. I really appreciate that. And how do you you know, if you go into a company, do you find that there’s companies that don’t, I mean, maybe they don’t have core values or they have them in this just, you know, in their desk drawer, they don’t abide by them. If they do it, maybe that means they’re not really core values. If it’s just written on a piece of paper, how does someone accompany you know, form them and implement them? Is there a certain starting place for that?

Josh Fonger 34:57
Yes, the starting place would be to The owner to believe that there’s actually some value in doing it. So a lot of them don’t really believe there’s value in doing it. And so they don’t, or their owners who think it’s gonna make their company or their employees happier or make them look better to their customers. So they’ll just write a quick list of core values, they look good on the wall, core values, we’re going to be nice each day, and we’re going to smile, or whatever, you know, so they just do it just to do it to check it off list. So you really have to decide, is this going to empower enable my team to do the best work? And is it going to allow me as the owner, to not have to babysit, like I don’t have to babysit anyone in my new team? Because I say here, here’s a strategy. These are principles. If you follow this, this strategy, these principles, you know, whether you’re programming some new automation, or you’re designing something, or you’re writing something, you’re going to be really close to how I would do it because this is my mind and my team’s mind, best attempt at determining where we’re going to go and how we’re gonna get There, and so extremely valuable for efficiency. So I think that principles get done, if the owner actually believes they’re valuable, they don’t get done if they don’t. But then from a practical standpoint, once they are done, you have to talk about them. either bring them up during the weekly meeting, you have to actually bring them as part of your onboarding for your new team, you have to continue to go back to them. So when someone makes a mistake, so let’s just see. So one of our one of our principles is a business for grownups. Right. So if we’re trying to sell to somebody, and we’re like, gosh, this person just is on the fence and not seem to, it’s because we sell to people who are mature business owners, we sell people who actually are mature enough to invest in their infrastructure to scale. So if we’re having a hard time with somebody, and they’re not improving, it’s because they actually didn’t fit one of our core values. Right? They’re actually they’re not there. I thought I got the right maturity, right. And so we we kind of have to bring those principals on a regular basis to remind ourselves of who we are and what, what lane we want to stay in. And so I think that that’s it. The other thing that owners have trouble with, if I was if they hit us more would be, they’re not good at writing, which is fine. And so they think that they have to produce all the principles. And I think that their their ideas and input matter and leadership, but they can have someone on their team or a writer come in and write some of these principles for them. Right. So just because something’s important doesn’t mean you have to do it yourself. We really want to encourage our owners. That’s why we have consultants and procedure writers to help companies they say, Gosh, this sounds awesome. I know that most owners don’t. Yeah, yeah. But they know it’s important. And so that’s where we come in to whether it’s through training or having a consultant do it or a procedure writer, we come in to help fill in the gaps where they’re just not gonna do that one piece. But they they still want to lead it and they know it’s important, I think that’s, that’s really where we try to fit in is to help owners make that shift.

Jeremy Weisz 38:06
Yeah, that’s huge and we are always trying to improve this part of our company and you know, we have a all hands meeting once a month and we will talk about some of the core values in which we make decisions and we have people kind of tell if they noticed one of the someone demonstrating one of those core values and kind of give some examples a way to reinforce in our minds. And one of them is, you know, always work with nice people and but that means clients and staff and if someone a client is not being nice to one of the staff, I don’t care who it is. It’s not someone you know, we want to work with, like, you know, and so, we’ve had to let clients go because they were just, I wouldn’t say use the word abusive, but like, sometimes people are really strong with their language via email, they wouldn’t say in person and it just is is not fun. So, yeah, it’s definitely something that we are always trying to improve on and helps them make decisions on like you said the teamwork things a great example right? Or someone from the team not not in not nice, I mean a lot of different things. But so thank you yeah for reinforcing that and in pointing that out you know, so just feel good check out workthesystem.com. I have two last questions for you. But I want people you know, point people towards that that resource and also give a shout out for your podcasts, they can check that out. Where else should we point people towards Work the System? Where can they find the podcast? And in any other places we should point?

Josh Fonger 39:41
towards? Sure. Yeah, I mean, whatever social media platform they’re on, they could look up work the system, or maybe Josh longer but that our main, you know, the main place to send people is their website, because then they can get the most resources or podcasts as their blog posts. They can see any of the, you know, I used to have a big problem with selling years ago, but I realized that the only way I can really help somebody is to is to sell them something to get them to move. And so, yeah, all of our products that are available for sale are there. And that’s what we’re doing. That’s why we’re here. What are some

Jeremy Weisz 40:11
of the things that you have? So they? What are some of the, I guess, ways to engage with work the system?

Unknown Speaker 40:18
Some offerings?

Josh Fonger 40:19
Yeah, well, so I don’t know when this is going to air but we are launching a new product I’m very excited about it’s called systemize to thrive. So it is going to air in about four weeks, it’ll be live. And that is designed for owners and their owner second, second command, small teams who want to finally you know, go through this whole method we talked about they want to go from being working in the business to working on the business, they want to go from being an employee in their own business to actually owning a business. So that helps them through that transition. So that’s our premiere, our lowest way to get in now at least expensive, but I think critical for any, any small business so we got countless testimonies on that one, the one above that would be certification. So if you’re thinking, gosh, I want to get certified and what you do certified business systems managers, we’re offering that in a few weeks. And that’s going to be kind of a flagship for those who want to get certified. And then I have a team of consultants, so consultant to do this around the world in different verticals. And they’re certified business systems professionals, and so they are not they’re literally doing what happened last 10 years. So they’re coaching, consulting, flying and handling,

Jeremy Weisz 41:27
like full hands on approach

Josh Fonger 41:29
hands on actually doing it for you, it’s a done for you. And, you know, whatever it takes, I mean, I had this one client who was on the fence about working with me for six, seven years ago. And, you know, he came back seven years later, and he’s, he’s, he was the exact same spot as he was seven years later. And he said, Well, you’re too expensive. I, I did the math and it was I won’t go through that. But the whole point is like nothing After seven years except for what happened in seven years, his health went tragically downhill major cancer in his company and his wife who was a bit smarter, they divorced. And I had to help them separate the company remove half the family. It was a much harder was horrible. We have our challenge

Unknown Speaker 42:20
seven, seven years down the road. Yeah.

Josh Fonger 42:22
So anyways, I think that if your ambitions are to get bigger, whether you work with me or anyone else do, you’re gonna have to put the structure in place. So if your ambitions are to stay really small, and just to stay, you know, everything you can touch and feel, then then our approach is not for you. I mean, just just know that you have a job and you better show up and not get sick.

Jeremy Weisz 42:46
pressure. Sure, the last question or two questions really quickly, I know you have to go in a couple minutes but I always ask what’s been a low moment and I pushed through and what’s been a proud moment

Unknown Speaker 42:59
and I don’t know That

Jeremy Weisz 43:00
Nestle low moment you consider when that whole layoff period or not, and how you push through what your mindset was then compared to now is obviously more optimistic when you’re going through it. It’s a lot tougher, I’m sure. What would you consider a low moment and how you push through? Yeah.

Josh Fonger 43:21
The probably the low moment was when I first started consulting. I was it was just paid based on what I what I sold and what I did, I got paid a commission on. And so I was given a list of about 3000 companies. And he said, just call these companies and anybody you sell you could have you could have it so I had to build financial forecasts for companies. And it was in December, and I was standing my in laws condo and there’s nowhere for me to work except for outside. So I’m sitting outside with a jacket and a hat and gloves on making cold calls on a patio. And I had to call 3000 people in December to convince them to buy thousand dollar financial forecast or something like, it was horrible. And once I realized that with enough hard work and determination, I could make it in the consulting world. I think that was probably the low point. But I think it was a good experience in terms of realizing that if you need to eat, you’ll, you’ll figure it out. Right. And so that was probably the starting in my consulting career and really helped me to learn a lot and realize that books like you can see books are my friend. So that that, you know, that month is like, I read three books on cold calling. I wrote my first cold calling script and then I got to work. And I think that you know, now whenever I want to learn something new, there’s always great resources. So that was a big deal. And in terms of high point, I forgot what the question was.

Jeremy Weisz 44:47
Will it stick on that for a second? So what are your favorite books of all time? Or were some of the ones behind you that you in any any category?

Josh Fonger 44:56
I mean, yeah, I there I would say, find the best books that have been around the longest in the category that you’re interested in. Right? There’s, there’s so many good books and I would I wouldn’t even be able to direct you into into one. This one, you know, this one’s a good one work system was so much in the video, but otherwise known as a ton. So I don’t even want to I didn’t want to recommend one. I said it’s children’s book, if you’ve got a children’s book I’ve ever wanted to read is a book called pilgrims progress. That’s the one I love for you with my kids, which so look at because we talked about that in the beginning of the program, and that is really like famous books. There is the most famous book in the world, which of course is the Bible most read book was published. The second most famous book of all time is those burgers, which no one knows. That one of course is written I think in like the 1700s. That one is a good one. If you like old English, but again, business books, I mean, you name it. I mean a lot of my business books Just on my phone, so I don’t even I don’t even have back there because I just listen to him. Yeah, I think I try to consume a book a week. And I think that that’s books are usually more dense, thorough and helpful in my opinion than

Unknown Speaker 46:17
than just pithy blog posts. They roll by their whole life work into a book for sure.

Josh Fonger 46:22
Yeah, I prefer books, as opposed to blog posts, as opposed to trolling the internet because I think that those are more dense. I just read again, just last week with Eric Reese’s lean startup. It’s a great book, but that’s kind of important to what I’m doing right now in my business and so it was relevant book, you know,

Jeremy Weisz 46:43
Josh, thank you, everyone. Check out WorktheSystem.com.

Josh Fonger 46:47
Really appreciate you. Alright, likewise. Thanks, Jeremy.