Steve Fultz, PhD — Psychologist. Operator. Builder.

The intersection

I sit where three worlds almost never meet.

Consultants understand strategy but have never signed the front of a paycheck. Coaches understand people but cannot survive a Tuesday on the shop floor. Technologists understand machines but have never run a thing. I have spent my life in all three rooms at once. That is the whole advantage.

01

The Mind

Psychologist

A PhD in counseling psychology and years serving on church staff before business. I read the person before I read the spreadsheet, because the bottleneck in a family company is almost never the numbers. It is the owner who cannot let go.

02

The Floor

Operator

I came into the family companies my father built in 2010. My daughter Sarah joined in 2014, our third generation. Three businesses, roughly fifty employees. Trucks that break down. Vendors who call. Payroll every other Friday. I do not teach from theory. I teach from the companies I co-own and run today.

03

The Machine

Builder

We do not just talk about AI. We employ it. Our companies use AI agents I built to complement what our people do, taking the repeatable work off their plates so they can focus on customers. The frontier is here. We are building on it.

The proof

We run the businesses we teach.

Everything I share is field-tested first. Not in a classroom. In real companies, some older than I am, with real customers and real consequences when I am wrong.

Operating · since 1964

Post Leasing & Sales

Equipment marketplace · Knoxville, TN

Six decades of buying and selling equipment. One of the longest-running names in the market, and still moving iron every week.

Operating · since 1993

Knox Trailers

Dry van trailer service & repair · Knoxville, TN

Dry van trailer service and repair since 1993, plus a new parts and service division now open in Crossville. Boots-on-the-ground work, every day.

Operating · since 1987

Post Onsite

Petroleum transport repair · mobile & in-house

Repairs petroleum transport equipment since 1987, both out in the field and in our own facilities. Wherever the equipment needs to be, that is where the work happens.

Operating · launching 2026

PartsNow.ai

B2B parts marketplace · Knoxville, TN

The next operating company, born AI-native. A marketplace connecting aftermarket parts vendors with the equipment dealers who need them.

The frontier

We do not just use AI. We employ it.

Most owners are still asking whether AI can write an email. We went further. I built AI agents around our own standards and put them to work alongside our people, on the repeatable tasks that used to pile up. It is the same move I now help other owners make, without the years of trial and error it cost us.

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Agents, not gadgets

We do not just have AI tools. We have AI agents with real roles, standards and a chain of approval, working alongside our people. That difference changes what a small team can carry.

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Built on how I actually think

I spent months teaching an AI my exact judgment, voice and patterns. Now it makes the calls I would make, in the language I would use, when I am not in the room.

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The owner gets their life back

The point was never the technology. It was the Saturday. The dinner. The decade I want back. AI is how I am buying it, and how I help owners buy theirs.

What we are building

The work, made shareable.

Melissa is not behind the scenes. My wife and business partner is in every one of these companies with me. Together we take what we learn running them and turn it into things other owners can use. The strategy practice, the writing, the book, the course. One voice, owner to owner.

Live

The Fultz Group

Where Wall Street meets Main Street.

The strategy practice Melissa and I built in 2015. Corporate-grade business growth, made for family business owners.

Live

Owner Shift

For owners tired of being the bottleneck.

The newsletter and the mindset. How to stop being the engine of your business and start being its owner.

Course

Obsolete By Design™

Build a business that runs without you.

The six-week method. You have not finished building your business until it can succeed when you are gone.

Book

Family Business Facelift

From bottleneck to breakthrough.

The book behind the method. Four moves to get your brain out of the day-to-day and back onto the business.

Newsletter

The Fultz Factor

Where leadership meets laughter.

Owner-to-owner writing with the humor only forty years in the trenches can earn.

You have not finished building your business until it can succeed without you.

The idea everything else hangs on

The Owner Shift

The move from being the engine inside your business to being the owner of it. Every other idea is downstream of this one.

Obsolete By Design™

Make yourself unnecessary to the day-to-day on purpose. Not so you can leave, but so you finally have the choice.

The Ownerless Business Ladder™

Five honest levels of how dependent your company still is on you. Most owners are a rung or two below where they think.

The Marriage Board Meeting

Steve and Melissa have met off-site, on the same cadence, since 2015. The business of the family, run like a business.

Steve & Melissa

It was never a solo act.

I bring the vision and the why. Melissa brings the execution and the how. The porch conversation and the dashboard. The brand only works because both halves are in the room, and years of marriage taught us how to run one without burning down the other.

I was the engine my businesses ran on. That is risk, not strength. Melissa and I build companies that need no one person.

Start a conversation

If any of this sounds like you, let's talk.

You built something real. You are tired of being the one thing it cannot run without. That is a good problem, and it is a solvable one. Tell me where you are stuck.

Email Steve & Melissa → Visit The Fultz Group