Hi, I'm Dr. John Fulwider.

Dr. John Fulwider helps business owners get out of the center of everything so their companies can run, grow, and become more valuable without depending on them. The work involves transferring roles, decisions, knowledge, and relationships out of the owner's head and hands and into the business. This frees them up to grow aggressively, sell on their terms, or keep the business and leave the grind.

John believes that making and protecting owner-level decisions is the atomic unit of business success. His Solve Problems Pretty Darn Quick coaching method challenges owners to clearly define the Problem that needs solving; the Decision they know they must make to solve the problem; and the Question they need answered before they can make the decision.

John regularly speaks about eliminating owner dependence to business owner peer groups, groups of professional advisors to business owners, and service clubs. His latest book, Get Out of the Center: How to Keep the Business, Leave the Grind, and Create More Exit Options, comes out March 4, 2027.

John co-founded Exit Advisor Coalition, a group of professional advisors who want to collaborate to help business owners exit when they want, to whom they want, on the terms they want, for the price they want. He is a Certified Exit Planning Adviser trained by Exit Planning Institute, and a former Professional EOS Implementer trained by EOS Worldwide.

John is the creator and so far sole user of The 10-13-16 System for Epic Dad-Kid Memory Creation, or 101316SEDKMC for short. (Ask him to pronounce that ... and maybe don’t ask him if it’s one of his passwords.) John takes each of his kids on epic two-week, just the two of us trips:

• At 10, John chooses where to go

• At 13, John and kid decide together where to go

• At 16, kid decides where to go

Before founding his business coaching firm DRIVE Growth Now, John helped 40 business owners install business operating systems like EOS and Pinnacle. He was Founding Guide #007 at Pinnacle Business Guides, a system launched in 2020 that combines the power of Scaling Up with the simplicity of the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). Before that, he was a Professional EOS Implementer trained by Gino Wickman and his team.

Before focusing his coaching on business owners, John worked for seven years as an executive coach to visionary not-for-profit CEOs. During that time he wrote four books for not-for-profit professionals, including Better Together, a how-to guide for developing the crucial CEO-board chair relationship. It’s big in Canada. (Seriously.)

When he’s not advising and coaching business owners, you can most often find John rock climbing, bicycling with his kids, or cooking for a crowd, the bigger the better. He was never more satisfied than the day 150 people came through his backyard and he had to pull out the emergency lasagnas he keeps in the deep freeze so he never runs out of food.

Five things you might not otherwise know about John:

1. He’s an infertile dad with three beautiful children, who advocates for understanding men’s experience of infertility. His TEDx speech “Infertile Dad” is here: https://youtu.be/U5tK0iM8390

2. His favorite cuisines are Ethiopian, Indian, and German, in that order.

3. He once completed a five-rappel descent off Cat in the Hat in the dark, without a headlamp.

4. He’s a redhead whose hair has gone brown. (Sad.)

5. He adores functional public transportation systems.

Other tidbits and bullet points:

• Decision-making expert. John has 16 years’ experience facilitating individual, small-group, and large-group decision making. Since 2017, he has facilitated more than 300 full-day business strategy and execution planning sessions.

• John has written thousands of news articles about decision-making—he wrote for newspapers in his first career, specializing in legislative politics.

• Decision-making was the focus of his academic research, as well:

  • His master’s degree thesis was on a group decision making process often used by medical advisory groups to create standard-of-care policies.

  • His doctoral dissertation examined state policies regarding insurance coverage for infertility care.

• TEDx speaker on understanding men’s experience of infertility; wide experience speaking on other topics such as exit planning, business operating systems, leadership team development, and nonprofit board development.

• Author of four books on not-for-profit organization leadership and management:

  • Better Together: How Top Nonprofit CEOs and Board Chairs Get Happy, Fall in Love, and Change Their World

  • Better Together: The Companion Workbook

  • Advance Your Career through Nonprofit Board Service

  • The Nonprofit Book of Awesome

• Co-author of a book on rural economic development:

  • Energizing Entrepreneurial Communities: A Pathway to Prosperity (third author, with Don Macke and Deborah Markley)

• Client company size has ranged from $1.5 billion in revenue and 6,500 employees to $600,000 in revenue and 4 employees.

• Taught nonprofit management courses for the corporate university of NeighborWorks America.

• Taught political science for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

• Avid acquirer of acronyms and advocate of alliteration.