How To Make More And Work Less Using Systems - With Josh Fonger
May 13, 2021Tom Bailey, Founder Of Succeed Through Speaking, Interviews Josh Fonger.
Josh Fonger is a Business Performance Architect and the co-founder of Work the System. He is an international business consultant, coach, and speaker. He has the unique experience of personally helping hundreds of businesses grow simply, using the WTS Method. His specialty is taking stressed out entrepreneurs from working “in” their business to working “on” their business using systems so that profit and freedom can become a consistent mechanical reality.
Why you've got to check out Josh's episode:
- Discover how Josh helps business owners stuck in the day to day that want to scale and grow, as well as take the ideas they have in their head and get them down on paper in systems.
- Learn how business owners wearing all of the hats in their business typically hit a wall or a plateau and stay stuck until eventually they fail.
- How a failed business can also have a big impact on your relationships, your health, your family and other parts of your life. This implosion can have a huge ripple effect on your life and business.
- The key thing to getting this right starts with mindset and developing systems thinking and have an elevated view of your business to see the systems that exist within your life and your business.
- Understand how to prioritise and make the time to enable you to utilise your prime time to work yourselves out of your day job in your business, to scale and grow your business using systems.
- Get access to a free copy of the Work The System book so that you can build efficient and effective systems in your business.
Resources / Links
Transcript
Tom Bailey: Hello and welcome to the Flow And Grow Expert Interviews. The place for experts and entrepreneurs who want high value ideas to boost business results.
Hello. I'm Tom Bailey. And I'm joined today by Josh Fonger, who is an international business consultant, coach and speaker, as well as being a business performance architect and the co-founder of Work The System. So Josh, hello, and a very warm welcome to today's episode.
Josh Fonger: Glad to be here.
Tom Bailey: Thank you. And whereabouts are you in the world right now?
Josh Fonger: Right now I'm in Scottsdale, but if you go to the other rooms of our house, we're actually packing to move to Kauai. So, wow. Ask me again in two weeks and we are not here anymore.
Tom Bailey: Fantastic. Well, good luck with the move and, and let me get into the subject of Josh then in more detail. So Josh has personally helped hundreds of businesses to grow using the Work The System method and his speciality is taking stressed out entrepreneurs from working in their business to working on their business, using systems so that profit and freedom can come become a consistent mechanical reality. The title for today's episode is How To Make More And Work Less Using Systems. And Josh is going to show us how to do that in just seven minutes. So, question number one for you today is who are your ideal clients?
Josh Fonger: Well, first off, I only budgeted six minutes for this interview, so we might've cut it shorter than seven minutes. But you know, the business owners who are stuck in the day to day are our ideal clients and they want to scale. They want to grow, but you know, all of the good ideas are in their head and they need to get them down into systems and we, we help them do that.
Tom Bailey: Excellent. Thank you very much. And what's typically the biggest challenge that they face in their businesses.
Josh Fonger: Well, the business is usually made up of, of them. So again, they're wearing the hats. And so the biggest challenge is that they work nights, they work weekends, they don't take vacations and they don't know how to scale and grow or recruit because it all resides in their head. And so that's, that's the big challenge is eventually they hit a wall, they hit a plateau and they stay stuck and that's their most small business stay. As they stay stuck. Until eventually they fail. And as you know, most companies fail and that's, that's why.
Tom Bailey: So, failing, I guess, is the ultimate impact of, of not having these systems in place. But what are the impacts does, do you typically find, and the business owners have as a result of not having these systems in place?
Josh Fonger: Yeah. Well, so, you know, failing business, it might be one problem, but it ultimately hurts your relationships, your health, your clients, your vendors, your employees, everyone that works within you. And when your business fails, it's a kind of a big implosion that happens. And so, it has a ripple impact. And so, what we want to do is basically help these owners lead well, build these systems so they can do more good and, and instead of imploding.
Tom Bailey: Got it. Thank you. And so, what is one valuable piece of advice that you might give to somebody to really help them solve this problem and make sure they don't implode.
Josh Fonger: Yeah. Well, I think the, the key thing that really starts off our whole methodology is getting the right mindset. We call it the systems mindset, and so anyone can do this. And the way to do it is to see yourself outside your business. So, you would see your business as one entity and you'd get above it.
We call it slightly elevated and outside your business, and then look down. And if you have that perspective, you can start to see. The separate entities that make up your business, the processes, the tasks, the repeatable routines that happen again and again, and realize that your life and your business is made up of these separate systems. And we help people work on those systems. But a lot of times people don't get the mindset, right. And so, they, they don't understand how this shift really can affect everything in their life, not just a business.
Tom Bailey: Great. And just to ask one additional question around the mindset. Do you typically find that business owners say that they're too busy to take the time to have this helicopter view of their business?
Josh Fonger: Yes. I'm being busy is the number one thing out of time out of money or they kind of the two biggest things and really. The only solution is to, is to make the time, which is prioritization, right? Everyone has 24 hours a day. It's just what you're doing with it. And so, it's a big kind of dramatic shift we do with all of our clients in the beginning is, is to free up time. And then to use that time, we call it prime time to work themselves out of their day job. And there's no, there's no silver bullet. Like it doesn't happen in a day. It's something you work yourself out of. And we say that we only work with mature business owners, owners who are willing to finally do the tough work, that's going to get them there as opposed to, you know, chasing shiny objects.
Tom Bailey: Yeah. Got it. Understood. Thank you so much. And the next question for me is what is one valuable free resource that you can share with people to really help them solve this problem and implement these amazing systems in their business?
Josh Fonger: Yeah, so. Behind me, but right here. So get this book, Work The System, but can get it for free. At our website, if you go to workthesystem.com Sam carpenter actually gives away the PDF version of the book, or she could, you can buy it anywhere, but that's a great way to get started. It's free and there it's just changed so many lives. So, I would highly recommend that.
Tom Bailey: Absolutely. So www.workthesystem.com. I'll put that link into the show notes below this episode. So, people can click that, get in and download that PDF. Fantastic. So slightly off topic for a second. Then what would you say is your greatest failure that you've ever made either in life or business? And what did you learn from that?
Josh Fonger: Yeah, well, there's, there's been a lot of them. I'm sure everyone says the same thing, but one that I think would be helpful for, for this audience is that early on, as a consultant coach, I've been doing it for 10 years. I really focused on what do I need for my family to how much money do I need?
How many clients do I need? What kind of business do I need to build so that I can just live where I want do what I want and have that kind of income. And so, I based my decisions as a consultant, as a coach on just building a business like that, like a lifestyle business. But what I realized is I was missing out on actually doing the most good and making the biggest impact and really you know, accelerating the impact in the world at what this method can do.
And once I made that, Mindshift, we've really been able to dramatically help, you know, way more clients and as no surprise, you actually make more by helping more people by providing more value. And so, making that shift, instead of putting a ceiling or a cap at what I can do personally broaden into like how much can this, this business do.
And again, you know, same thing, mindset shift. And because of that, you know, we've, we've certified consultants in our work system method all over the world and they're making amazing impact, you know, even bigger than the impact I was making. And so, I think a lot of owners of companies and consulted coaches, they really just cap their business at themselves. And what they can do instead of what their, their method can do or what their business can do. And I would say, learn that lesson early on and build a team to make a bigger impact.
Tom Bailey: Fantastic. Yeah. Great piece of advice. And I guess, you know ultimately you do need to have that financial capital behind you to be able to make an even bigger impact. So, like you said, don't, don't cap yourself at a certain level just for your own personal expenses. Great. So, the final question from me then is what is one question that I should have asked you that will also add great value for our audience today?
Josh Fonger: Probably the mystery where anyone who has not heard of the book Work The System is what is this work the system method?
What does that? It's a real quick, there are six pillars to it, and you can even apply this to yourself. The first one is the mindset shift. Number two would be having a strategic objective. So, a strategy for your business, having operating principles, having documented procedures. Having a team to execute this and then investing your team and yourself and your money and your time into the system of your business instead of just doing the work.
So instead of just selling, building a selling system, right. Instead of just building the widget building, you know, building a system to build widgets. And so that would be kind of the key thing. And lastly, probably one of the things, and I've mentioned it a couple of times, is that if you are a consultant or a coach or an expert we're always looking for new people.
I'm recruiting right now who want to get certified because we're making a huge impact. So, I'd love to see them. I worked the system back home.
Tom Bailey: Fantastic. Thanks so much. So, make sure you do go to workthesystem.com to find out more about those six pillars. And Josh I just want to say, thank you so much again for your time today.
I really appreciate you joining us this episode.
Josh Fonger: Yeah, that was great, Tom. Thanks a lot.
