Relax, Have Fun, What’s the Difference? with Josh Fox – Episode 450 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

Josh Fox, Founder/CEO of Bottom Line Concepts, talks about going back in time to find hidden money for businesses, digging into the data over the cost of pencils, the shocking error rate of most business invoices, which companies have the greatest opportunities for savings, the treasure trove of unclaimed property, being elected president…just not of the USA, and his mantra of “Thank God It’s Monday”.

About Josh:

Josh Fox is the founder and CEO of Bottom Line Concepts, a performance-based tax recovery consulting firm. He is a visionary entrepreneur in the world of financial consulting and government aid. Stemming from a successful career on Wall Street as a Financial Advisor, Josh’s vision, post the 2008 financial crisis, was to offer a different kind of advisory service – one that was committed to delivering value with no upfront fees. Josh has partnered with companies from every sector including, startups, family-owned business, and the Fortune 100. Over the past 15 years, BLC has grown into the recognized leader in government aid and the Employee Retention Credit (ERC) Program. BLC is a global firm who serves a diverse client base across many industries with companies from every sector representing ~30% of the top 100 accounting firms, ~30% of the top 100 law firms and 20% for the Fortune 1000, processing billions in refunds. BLC was named to Inc 5000’s list as one of the fastest growing private companies in America.

Josh is a dynamic executive, innovator, and leader with over 20 years of experience and whose passion for his work affects those around him. He brings together unique skillsets and teams that are diverse in background and composition, fostering an environment that encourages dialogue, thought leadership, and accelerates outcomes. Josh is an avid supporter of a variety of charities, an enthusiastic animal rights activist, a die-hard Michigan Wolverines fan, and a generous friend. Josh holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Michigan University.

Learn more at BottomLineSavings.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Adam Outland
Hello Action Catalyst listeners. Welcome back. We have with us Josh Fox today CEO and co founder of Bottom Line Concepts, a consulting firm that teams up with organizations to assess the top line items that are adversely affecting the business’s profits. Please help me in welcoming Josh Fox. Thanks for making the time. Josh, I appreciate you being on here with us. And I’d love to start a little bit early in your story. And then we can dive in to a big part of what you do today. But I’d love to hear how you chose the path of call it money in general, what did you get focused on this aspect of business in your life.

Josh Fox
It goes really, really, really far back, Adam, in fact, my great grandfather worked on Wall Street. And so it was my great grandfather, my grandfather, my father, what I ever knew my entire life was, you know, my family working on Wall Street. And in 1977, my father moved to Long Island, New York, and he chose the shortest commute into the city, so that he could be at work every day. And but what I do remember also is that my father was, most importantly, as a family, man. And so when that when the bell rang at four o’clock, he got right on that train, and he made sure that he was home for dinner with his family. And that was, I think, part of what shaped me as a man today, knowing that my father put his family first. And you know, work was important to him, but he wanted to always be around for dinner and for soccer and swim practice. And, you know, that was definitely something that made me a person that was in full of integrity.

Adam Outland
So unlike so many people, I mean, you you literally have this literally in your blood generationally. But but you ended up doing econ. And then what was your first gig coming out of out of university?

Josh Fox
I’ve only really had two jobs in my life. Right after college, I became a independent financial advisor, where I was advising either individuals or corporations on things like, you know, health insurance plans, pension programs. So, you know, very early on, I was advising individual families and small corporations on how to set up benefit programs and how to do investments.

Adam Outland
But roughly what year was this that you were doing the financial advisor?

Josh Fox
1999, basically.

Adam Outland
So you’ve been doing that almost a full 10 years when the financial crisis happened?

Josh Fox
Yeah, that was the “aha” moment, Adam, you know, if the listeners out there can really vividly remember the mortgage meltdown of 2008. That’s when I sat back, I was working on Wall Street, I was following in my family’s footsteps. And all we saw in this country during the Oh, eight meltdown was lots of companies just firing their employees, you know, everybody needed to save money. Everybody wanted to save their business. And it seemed like the quickest, fastest way for businesses to just save money tomorrow was to cut headcount. And that was not something that felt good to me, that wasn’t something that was a long term strategy. Like, let’s not cut headcount. And so I said to myself, was there a way to start a business where we could go to some of the largest corporations on Earth, and help them figure out ways to do one of two things, to go back in time and look for refund past opportunities where we could get the money back from the past? Sometimes we could go back 20 3040 years, and which we’ve done, so half of the model was going back and looking for refunds, and the other half of the model was figuring out strategies to help them save money on their expenses, without sacrificing people without cutting headcount.

Adam Outland
Do you feel that your experience prior had given you insights before 2008? Were you were seeing a lot of just overweight expenses in certain areas? What were you because I feel like that’s generally the role of an auditor to see that side of the business. So what gave you that insight?

Josh Fox
Well, simultaneously, Adam, I was actually voted to be president of my condominium in New York City. Okay. And so I was responsible for about 220 families, and as the President of the building my job, unpaid job, volunteer job, right. Like my volunteer job as the president of the building was to help control the cost of the building. And so I was renegotiating contracts with like, with the electricity and the gas and the water. I was helping lower union fees. I was looking for cheaper supplies for the buildings. I was looking for bank accounts where we could get higher interest on our money. Like I really use my financial skills that I had learned to become this great president of one of the largest and newest condominiums at the time in New York City. I got written up in the Wall Street Journal I got written up in the New York Times, I was protecting their investment and I was protecting the building.

Adam Outland
Yeah, so it was your as your volunteer job that actually gave you the first insight. So because we have a, we have 18 different companies in our family of companies for the Southwestern Family of Companies. And we have some shared corporate resources for things like marketing. And so I’m just kind of playing this out as an example from like, what I see day to day, so I can better understand it. But let’s say you hire brilliant marketing people, because they’ve got an eye for marketing and how to build something, but someone in marketing may not be trained around how to handle and vet proposals or contracts with vendors, right? Is that kind of what we’re talking about, like where it might be a department that’s really skilled at their craft, but part of every business units responsibility are going with outside vendors. And so you’re just assessing, are we doing what’s right with outside vendors, contracts? And that’s one area that’s being squeezed by companies in some cases?

Josh Fox
I mean, there’s, there’s a fancier term today called procurements, you know, it used to be kind of negotiations, or know that there’s, there’s companies that are buying, you know, millions and 10s of millions of stuff every day for their business. I mean, it could be pens and pencils, it could be light bulbs, it could be anything that they’re buying to continue to run your business. And as you grow as you acquire companies, as you, as you said, you have all these businesses, like there’s lots of inefficiencies, you know, you might be using staples in one company, and Office Depot in a different company, and you need to coordinate, you know, buying the supplies, maybe from one vendor and getting price breaks and getting better prices, because you’re able to consolidate that kind of stuff.

Adam Outland
When companies grow quickly, they don’t always sit down and reflect on their buying power and how that adjusts with scale.

Josh Fox
But the other thing is the data, Adam, you know what I mean? Like, if you’re buying a pencil for $1, how do you know if that pencil should be 80 cents, 70 cents, or 60 cents, if you have our data from hundreds and 1000s of other companies on what other companies were paying for that pencil, you have power, you have knowledge to be able to go back to a vendor and say, Hi, I know other clients that are using you that are paying 1020 30 40% less, I would like the same deal or close to the same deal that you’re giving my other clients. And that was the, you know, the beginning of things like GPOs group purchasing organizations where they would band together hundreds or 1000s of companies, and they would go to vendors and they would say, Listen, I have not one company, I have 1000 companies and I want to buy these products for all my clients at a discount. And that’s where the GPOs have really been powerful.

Adam Outland
One of the things I think you’ve shared is that you say in many cases, you’ve seen over 50% of monthly invoices containing errors or miscalculations that waste money. But why is that error rate so high?

Josh Fox
I mean, think about it, every time I go to dinner, like a lot of people just like sign the cheque and they just move off. Like it’s very, very frequently when I look at the bill at dinner or lunch, you’re charged for an extra water or you’re charged for an extra coffee, you know, this eye dish shouldn’t have been included in the meal. Like it’s just a question of looking and reviewing and taking the extra time to look at this stuff.

Adam Outland
You’re the guy at the dinner date that reviews the receipt.

Josh Fox
I think it’s worth taking a few minutes to make sure it’s correct.

Adam Outland
My wife would applaud you. I should do that more. So I guess what particular areas of business? Are you most likely to have hidden savings? Is it what you were mentioning earlier where it’s kind of the hard resources that a company might use as they scale? like light bulbs, staples, like kind of the office supplies? Or are there other hidden areas?

Josh Fox
I think that companies that tend to have the most opportunity for efficiencies and savings are the ones that have the most locations, you know, once you’re located in 20 states, 30 states 40 states, and you’re all over the place like how do you manage a business that has so many stores, and so many locations? You know, one of the things that we’ve been doing since the very beginning, one of the coolest programs that we found out was something called unclaimed property. Like there are so many lost checks out there in this country, where a vendor will send a check to an office a store or location and the business move the business change like they’re not located there anymore. And that money never ends up in the rightful owner. So there’s a shipment process in our country where the vendor who wrote the check cannot keep the other vendors money, they must sheet the money over to the state where they initiated that check. And so like California is like number two, New York is number one. I mean these states are holding billions and billions and billions of dollars of launched. Check See, that belongs to either individuals or belong to corporations. And corporations don’t necessarily even realize that the money is available to them. And that’s one of the most unique programs that we’ve been doing here for 10 plus years, is helping corporations identify unclaimed checks, and helping them recover that money.

Adam Outland
So there’s just kind of a natural ROI for the work that you do, because you’re saving companies a lot of a lot of money when they invest in that service.

Josh Fox
Yeah, and we built a different model, Adam, you know, in the fact that we were willing to do all of the work, we were willing to do all of the research, we were willing to do everything to take the project to completion. And our clients never had to pay us anything until it was successful. So we give them a very easy way to say yes to this, like, yeah, go get me my money from the state of New York, or go get me my money from the state of New Jersey. And if you can get me the money, I’m happy to share a portion with you. So you really allow the client to get the benefit without having to pay a fee until it’s done.

Adam Outland
Internally, in your company, you have a sort of a mantra of “thank God, it’s Monday”, which you believe is really important philosophy for people talk about that. What does that mean?

Josh Fox
When you love what you do you love going to work? You know, for me, I’m sad on Fridays, because the workweek is over happy on Sunday night, because I know the next work week is available. And we’ve helped so many businesses, Adam, and when we think about the work that we’ve done, like all of the wonderful benefits of what’s happened to the money that we’ve saved and recovered for these companies. One of the most important things I think, that we see at corporations is what kind of benefits packages are being offered to its employees, retaining employees, hiring key employees, having great talent is the key to a successful organization. So when people are interviewing at companies, they’re saying, what kind of health insurance plan do you offer? Do you offer time off for paternity and maternity leave? Do you offer retirement plans? Do you match retirement plans? Do you still have pension programs like that’s very, very, very important to employees when they’re choosing a place to work. And so what we found is that as we started to save and recover money for these businesses, they were able to enhance and improve the benefits packages that they offered to their employees to make it a more attractive place to work.

Adam Outland
I love that, thank God, it’s Monday, that’s a good that’s good mantra no matter what business someone’s in, right, you need to have that attitude around your line of work. And speaking of work, this is so kind of shifting gears for a second. Josh, we got a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to our podcast, as well there that are actually at the start of their career in business. And in taking a chance on building something, you know, 10 years in as a financial advisor. I mean, it’s 2008, we talked about the recession and your change of heart focus with the line of work you did, but there’s something that it’s in my head that I want you to answer is this. I mean, I’m an executive coach, I work with a lot of people in wealth management, 10 years into a financial advisor career, it’s hard to leave. I mean, you’re making good money. You’re the president of your condo, like things are going great. I get there’s there’s a big impact in the marketplace. But like why take a risk to do this?

Josh Fox
You know, Adam, 67% of American businesses are small businesses. It’s the heart of America. It’s capitalism. It’s what makes America great that you can start something from nothing, and build it into something awesome. And I wanted to do that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, I wanted to start something from scratch. I remember when I was a kid, like sitting with my grandmother, I was always interested in building things. I love games and building things. And that’s really who I wanted to be. I wanted to provide an opportunity to start a company and to grow a business. And you know, today, we employ over 300 people that love to come to work that truly believe in TGIM. We have people that work at the company where there are husbands and wives that work here. There are you know, mothers and fathers that work here, like there’s like family members that work for the company. And it’s just such a great atmosphere here. I am very, very, very, very passionate about the environment and the oceans and 40 of us from the company on a Saturday here in Florida. We gave up our Saturday, we went down to the beach, we went there with plastic bags, and we collected 124 pounds of plastic off of the ocean. Like as the leader of the company, like that’s the stuff that inspires me. That’s the stuff that makes me warm my heart that we have a group of people here that started from a small company, and then we had people who really care to go clean up the oceans. I mean, that’s pretty special.

Adam Outland
I can appreciate that. That’s awesome. You know, there’s no real Disney story if ever Anything goes perfect Josh, right? Like there’s and there’s probably very few stories where you start a business and everything works perfectly from the beginning. And there’s never a problem. And so let our listeners in a little bit on this, because I feel like everybody runs into a wall. I know a lot of our listeners run into a wall when they’re building and starting a business. So speak to that for a minute. What are some of these challenges that you found as the leader of the company building the business itself?

Josh Fox
I did something kind of unique Adam, I ended up hiring and working with many, many, many, many of my old friends here at the company. So I have friends that work here that I’ve known since middle school, I have friends that work at the company that I’ve known since summer camp, I have friends that work at the company that I went to college with, I have friends that I went to high school with, and the camaraderie and the friendships and the leaning on each other in the tough times and tough moments that we are here together. A group of people that I’ve known for 1020 30 years, has allowed any of those issues or storms to be weathered. It’s such a positive way, because we all know each other for so long.

Adam Outland
That’s great. One last question that we’ll leave you with is this advice that you knowing everything that you know today that you would give your younger self, I mean, if you went back to the 21 year old, Josh, that’s just completely University, going down this path that you’ve been down, what would be the one piece of advice you’d give yourself?

Josh Fox
I mean, I’m sure people say this. But this is really to need the one atom, you have to love what you do. If you’re just there for a paycheck. If you’re just doing something to make money, you’re going to be burned out quick, you’re going to be unhappy. Like when I say TGIM, like that’s the truth. Like I love to go to work, I love the people I’m working with, I love the clients that I’m working with. And I love our mission. Our mission is to help businesses, our mission is to help small businesses reinvest in themselves. Like it’s so incredible when we see the money that we’ve helped these businesses get and what they’re doing with it, how they’re reinvesting it into their businesses, how they’re making their employees better how they’re expanding their businesses, like the American dream.

Adam Outland
And for listeners, where can they find more of these resources and information on you?

Josh Fox
Our website’s bottomlinesavings.com. And I’ll leave you with this one, Adam, it’s relax, have fun. What’s the difference? And what I mean by that is like, relax, right? Like, don’t take everything so seriously. Like, we’d sometimes take things way too seriously, like, just relax, you know, have fun meeting life is all about having fun. Life is not about not having fun, let me want to enjoy every day that we’re on this earth. And then I think the last part is really the most impactful and like, what’s the difference? Meaning that what seems so important today will seem so unimportant tomorrow, live in the moment, you know, like enjoy the day that’s here, the only guarantee we have is today and enjoy it and live in the moment no matter what you’re doing. And if you really are unhappy in your job or your career or what you’re doing. The great thing is you can make a change. You can try something different, like go for it like take a risk like I did, like go find something you love to do.

Adam Outland
Well we’ll share that message with our listeners. And I appreciate you taking the time that you did to jump on our show here at the action catalyst and share a little bit about what you do and the experiences that you’ve had. Thanks for joining us.

Josh Fox
Listen, you guys are amazing. I love what you’re doing. I appreciate you having me on and really enjoyed the conversation.