The Owner Shift™ · Obsolete By Design™
You didn't build it to babysit it.
Obsolete By Design is the method for owning the business instead of being owned by it. Available now as a self-paced digital course. The live six-week couples cohort returns later.
Same method. Different depth. Digital is for any founder or family business owner. The cohort is for couples.
The problem nobody names
Every decision routes through you. Every Sunday at 5 a.m., the laptop comes out.
You know your craft cold. You've earned the gray hair. What you don't know is how to run the business without being the engine.
Every decision routes through you. Every senior employee's knowledge lives in their head. Every vacation gets cut short by a phone call you can't ignore. Every Sunday, the laptop comes out at 5 a.m. because the week won't start without it. Your spouse has stopped mentioning it because she already knows the answer.
That's not a character flaw. That's what happens when a company gets built to run on one person's brain.
The fix isn't working harder. It isn't hiring better people. It isn't a consultant who'll tell you what you already know.
The fix is the slow, specific work of taking your brain out of the business and putting it into a system. While the business is still profitable. While you still have energy. While your spouse still remembers what you looked like at 40.
That's what Obsolete By Design is.
The method
The R.E.S.T. Method™ — Four moves and a meeting.
The exact sequence we used to get our own businesses out of our heads and into something that runs whether or not we're in the building. Not a set of concepts. A set of installations. Maps 1:1 to chapters 3 through 7 of the book.
Record the Rules
You build your Owner's Almanac™. A working document your team starts using before the second week ends. Not a binder that sits on a shelf. A live reference for the decisions you've been making by instinct for two decades.
Empower the Team
The Trust Transfer Script. The Delegation Pilot. The day someone else decides and you don't fix it. The 10 to 15 hours a week that come back start here.
Systematize the Flow
AI as succession-proofing, not productivity. The transfer of judgment from the founder's brain into a system that doesn't take lunch breaks or vacations. Starts with documenting what you've been doing. Then automates the parts that should never have required you in the first place.
Test the Trust
The Ownerless Drill. Twenty-four hours, no calls, no email, no fixing things from your kitchen. You watch what holds. You see where the system actually works and where the next cycle needs to go. The first time most owners have done this in over a decade.
The Marriage Board Meeting
The chapter most couples come back to and wish they'd read first. A monthly rhythm that protects the marriage you've been outsourcing to the business and rebuilds the operating partnership underneath it. Facilitated live with us when the OBD Cohort returns. Not included in the digital course.
Two ways to take it
Same method. Different depth.
You can take OBD on your time, at your pace, with the worksheets and the community. Or you can do it live with us in the next public cohort when it returns. Read both. Pick the one that fits where you are.
Available now
OBD Digital · $497
Self-paced. Any founder or family business owner.
The R.E.S.T. method in pre-recorded video segments you work through on your time. The worksheets and templates we use ourselves. A private buyer community where Steve and Melissa drop in monthly. Lifetime access to all updates.
Best fit if you're ready to do the work but a six-week live commitment isn't right for your calendar, or if you want to start before the next public cohort opens.
Returns later
OBD Cohort · $997 per couple
Six weeks. Live with us. For couples.
The full Obsolete By Design Cohort. Hot seats with other operator couples. The Marriage Board Meeting facilitated in real time. Six weeks of working through R.E.S.T. live with us, with weekly office hours and direct access during the program.
The next public cohort opens when the digital community asks for it. Join the waitlist and you'll be the first to know when the next one starts.
OBD Digital — $497, lifetime access.
The self-paced course built for any founder or family business owner who wants the R.E.S.T. method without waiting for the next live cohort. You work through it on your time. You reach for the community when you want a second set of eyes. We drop in monthly.
What's included.
- The full R.E.S.T. method in pre-recorded video segments. Record, Empower, Systematize, Test.
- The Owner's Almanac template — the same one we use ourselves, fully customizable, yours to keep.
- The 90-Day Map worksheet to put the work on your actual calendar.
- The Ownerless Drill protocol — exactly how we run a 24-hour test day.
- The SOP Sprint — the 80/20 process for documenting what only lives in your head.
- Access to the OBD Digital buyer community — peer feedback from other owners doing the work.
- Monthly drop-ins from Steve and Melissa in the community.
- Lifetime access to the course and to every update we ship.
What's not included.
The Marriage Board Meeting facilitation is held for the live OBD Cohort. The digital walks you through the four R.E.S.T. moves and gives you everything you need to install them. The MBM is the live couples experience, intentionally kept for the cohort tier when it returns.
There's also no live office hours, no hot-seat slot, and no scheduled six-week container. If the live structure is what you need to make the work happen, the cohort is the right tier when it returns.
One-time payment. Lifetime access. No subscriptions, no upsells, no email funnels.
OBD Cohort — Live, six weeks, $997 per couple.
The full Obsolete By Design Cohort. Six weeks of working through R.E.S.T. live with us, the Marriage Board Meeting facilitated in real time, hot seats with other operator couples, and weekly office hours. For couples.
When the cohort returns.
The next public cohort opens when the OBD Digital community asks for it. That's a real trigger, not a calendar date. When we see consistent signal that owners working through the digital want the live experience, we open the next cohort.
The waitlist is the right place to be if the live version is what you want. We email the list first when the next cohort opens, before anything goes public.
What the cohort includes when it returns.
- Six live weekly training modules with Steve and Melissa.
- Weekly live office hours for stuck-points and real-time Q&A.
- The full R.E.S.T. method, taught and facilitated live.
- The Marriage Board Meeting demonstrated and walked through in real time.
- Hot seats with other operator couples in the cohort.
- The Owner's Almanac template and every digital course asset.
- Direct email and Loom access to Steve and Melissa during the six weeks.
Both you and your spouse are in the cohort at that one price. We don't run single-partner enrollments for the live experience. The cohort is for the couples conversation, not the solo work.
Waitlist signups are first in line when the next cohort opens. No spam, no pressure, no fake scarcity.
Your guides
Steve & Melissa Fultz.
Melissa came from the Fortune 5 world. Twenty-five years generating more than a billion and a half in revenue. Steve has a PhD in psychology from the University of Tennessee and twenty-five years on church staffs. We left both worlds to run brick-and-mortar companies in Knoxville with about 50 employees and payroll every other Friday. Our daughter Sarah is our controller.
We're not coaches. We're not consultants. We're operators, and we're a married couple running the thing we teach. We've been through the betrayal, the key-employee departures, the seasons where the business ate the marriage, and the slow work of getting our Sundays back. Every framework in OBD is one we lived through on the operational side before we ever taught it on the advisory side.
The digital is built so you can install R.E.S.T. on your own time. The cohort, when it returns, is capped at 20 couples because that's how many people we can actually be present for in a live setting. Both versions are us. Different format, same method.
Read this section carefully
What we don't promise.
If any of this bothers you, this isn't your program. Applies to both the digital and the cohort.
We don't promise outcomes.
We promise a method, a standard, and the most direct access to us you'll find at this price point. The outcomes are yours to create, because you're the one doing the work on the business.
We don't offer refunds on the digital.
This isn't a gotcha. It's a filter. People who do the work get the results. The digital is $497 lifetime, structured so you can preview the first module before committing. If that's not enough to know whether it's for you, the program isn't for you.
We don't sell theory.
By the second module, you'll have your Owner's Almanac in draft. By the fourth, you'll have active delegation pilots running. By the end, you'll have run a real test day where you step away and see what holds.
We don't do countdown timers.
No fake scarcity. No "only 3 spots left." The digital is always available. The cohort waitlist is real and honest about when the next cohort opens.
We don't run a pitch fest.
The digital is direct-buy. No call required. When the cohort returns, the waitlist gets first access, and the discovery conversation we offer at that point is a diagnosis, not a pitch.
We don't sell access to an associate.
The community drop-ins are us. Not a facilitator. Not a content manager. When the cohort returns, you're working directly with us for six weeks. That's why the cap is 20 couples and not 200.
We don't promise this works for every situation.
If you're trying to fix a broken marriage by signing up for a business program, that's the wrong order of operations. Repair the marriage first. We'll be here.
After the work
What happens when you finish.
Worth naming, because most programs pretend the ending is the destination.
When you've worked through R.E.S.T., you'll have done something measurable. You'll also have a clearer view of what the next layer of work looks like. The parts that R.E.S.T. can start but can't finish.
For some owners and couples, that next layer is the Caribbean retreat we host. Three or four days with other operator couples who've been through this. Not a pitch fest. Community. Nominal group fee; you arrange your own travel and lodging.
For some, the next layer is a deeper advisory relationship with The Fultz Group. Quarterly intensives, direct operator-to-operator work on succession, technology, and long-term legacy architecture.
For many, finishing R.E.S.T. is enough, and they take what they built and run with it. That's a good outcome too.
The point: neither the digital nor the cohort is a funnel to the next thing. The work stands alone. If more is right for you, it's right for you. If it's not, it isn't.
Frequently asked (actual) questions
The questions people actually ask.
Final word
Here's the last thing we'll tell you.
Most owners in your seat don't move when something changes on a website. They move when something changes in their life. A key employee walks out. A health scare shows up. A spouse asks a question at the dinner table that doesn't let them off the hook.
If any of that has happened in the last 90 days, the digital is the right next move. If the live experience is what you need, the waitlist is the right place to be.
Either way, you don't have to wait for the right time to start.
One operator talking to another. No countdown timers. No pressure.
— Steve & Melissa