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Running on EOS: Vision, Scorecards, and the Systems That Stick · Remodelers On The Rise

• Kyle: If you're at the RISE conference this year, you may have caught Logan Shinholser's breakout session. He runs contractor growth network, and his whole talk came down to one premise. Your next project is probably within a mile of the project you're finishing right now. That's what CGN builds for modelers, a system where your finished work does the selling so that the job you're wrapping up brings you the next one. Instead of worrying about a list of tactics to market your company, you need a system of marketing your individual projects to the neighborhoods that you want to be in. To learn more about this strategy, or if you want to watch Logan's talk, you can find both on contractorgrowth network.com in the resources section. That's contractorgrowthnetwork.com. Welcome to the Remottelers on the Rise show. Was just chatting with Victor Lebeg. He is my guest today. Tell the people hello, Victor. Victor: Hello. Kyle: Hello, people, he says. he is with VL Builders in Lakewood, Colorado. Two things that we were talking about pre-show. One is a little trip you took to Italy. Tell the people, just like one little nugget, if you if you go there, go to the following. What comes to your mind for that? Victor: Yeah, if I was to go, I mean the food culture there is amazing. So I would Kyle: Mm. Victor: go to Florence and I would go to this restaurant called La Buquetta, and they have about the best Nokia and steak that you could ever get in your life. And then you you Kyle: Some people are listening some pe some people are listening to this. It's like twelve thirty PM and or they haven't had lunch yet and we just ruined their day. Victor: Yeah, totally. And if I was to do it again, the Sistine Chapel is a must see. Kyle: Hmm. You look and I said one thing, but that was good and now I want to know more. Like you look at it from a architectural standpoint, you look at the painting, what like what what took your breath away? Victor: Honestly, the thought of most of the artwork throughout the Vatican and Sistine Chapel is work that took men their entire lives. And so it's just like the relentless pursuit of excellence is all you see everywhere around you. and it's incredible to think that people spent, you know, 40, 50, 60, 80 hours a week staring at a ceiling with a little artist brush day after day after day. over and over again for years of their lives. Kyle: Relentless pursuit of excellence. How does the relentless pursuit of excellence show up in your life, sir? Victor: one percent better every day. I think every single day taking a period of reflecting on what you could do better. And I am far from perfect and have a lot of growth left in me. but just being able to reflect on how I show up for myself, my people, how I treat work and life and and reflect on balance between those. Kyle: Hmm. The 1% better every day. I I think I understand the concept. For some reason it's never resonated with me because I was I'm I'm kind of like, well, the early one percents are exciting. Like, Victor: Sure. Kyle: when I'm when I'm at 40% and I move up to 41 and 42 and 43 and I make like these big improvements, it's exciting. It's like, I should have been doing that for so long. Wow, look at the impact that has. But the one percent better when you're already pretty good, it it It turns into a little bit more micro improvements. And Victor: Mm-hmm. Kyle: it's still a good concept to have. And frankly, and and you can add your tag to the end of this, but as entrepreneurs, our goal is maybe to not have these, wow, look at what I just implemented. Because the the frustrating part or the I'll just say sad. The sad part of business for me has been, I don't have that it's energy, excitement, pit in my stomach feeling of, I just figured this out. That you have early in your business. Now they're just micro improvements. At the same time, the reason that's gone away is because the foundation in the business is strong and the business is built with good solid pillars, and there's not as much, whoa, I never even thought of that. and that's okay. Frankly, that's kind of our goal a little bit in business. And then maybe we just need to go to Italy and be inspired. by the Sistine Chapel so that you can dig a little deeper into your one percent there. But but tag on a little bit. What does the one percent every day mean to you? Is it you do you feel it? Do you sense it? Do you see it? How does it work? Victor: no, you're you're pretty right. It's almost like a weight loss journey, right? Like when you start Kyle: Yeah. Victor: a weight loss journey, you lose a lot of weight pretty quickly. And then that last five pounds just drags on for months and months and months. it's really just about being disciplined so that I can enjoy other areas of my life. I Kyle: Mm. Victor: think for the first several years when I was in business, similar to you, I really enjoyed that, yes, I got this thing feeling, or you know, crushing a goal or overcoming this big obstacle. And then after a while, it didn't really feel like we were doing that because we were just doing what we were really good at and then we were following Kyle: Mm-hmm. Victor: the processes as we designed them. And so I would end up causing chaos in my business to feel excited Kyle: Hehehehehe Victor: or feel needed or you know, feel helpful. and so now I look at that and I just focus on being disciplined at following following the plan that we've set up. Kyle: Hmm. And we're we're gonna talk about a main topic here. I'll tell you what it is in a second, but I'm having fun poking around here, which started with just a little cistine chapel. I think it's interesting. I like I like what you said, and I'm disciplined in my business, and my business is humming along so I can enjoy other areas of life. Let us be reminded business people out there, whether you're owners, whether you're employees, etc., as we Gains success and our business is less chaotic. We need to learn how to enjoy other areas of life. Frankly, a lot of business owners work their faces off for 10 years, 11 years, 12 years, 8 years, 6 years, whatever it is. And it is just very much controlling a lot of your life. Hopefully, you've balanced it the best to the best of your ability in a somewhat healthy way as you go. But there's a there's a speed at which you implement and do things and find the next thing and find the next thing. And then to the point we've already talked about, a lot of it is running pretty smoothly. We need to learn how to rest. We need to learn how to set boundaries on our work time. We need to celebrate the idea of closing your computer at 5 p.m. and being done for the day instead of the years that a lot of us had spent. it gets after dinner, or we take care of this or that or kids or or hobbies or whatever. And then at nine o'clock we fire it back up for two hours. Frankly, the it might be a good goal to not do that and then to not have that as part of your life anymore. But it seems foreign when you've done it for so long. It's almost like I'm being am I being lazy. Is something wrong? What's going on? Do the disciplined work, get the business in place, implement EOS, which is what we're going to talk about today. So that you can enjoy these other areas of life. And that is a skill. I've been grappling with that a little bit more lately. Of I need to learn the skill Victor: Mean so. Kyle: of resting and of not feeling guilty for not working or filling time. This is a good thing and it's a new challenge. Wait, you two, you said? Victor: Yeah. Yeah, Kyle, I've been I've been wrestling with that. I'm I'm at a point now where I've started to cut my hours back at work. And you know, for the first, I don't know, three, four years of business, I was working 16 to 18 hours a day. And then eventually it was like, you know, 55 hours a week, and then it was 50. And I've just always worked 50 hours a week. And I'm at a point now where I can realistically work between 30 and 35 hours a week. But I find myself not being okay to set work down and go figure out another area of life. Maybe I want to, Kyle: Mm-hmm. Victor: discover a new hobby or something like that. Because I think, at least for myself, I grew up in this period of survival. And so I've always lived in survival. And to survive, I've always worked a lot of hours. and I now have to change my thinking and change my brain and rewire it to say, hey, it's okay to, you know. not focus all of your time on VL builders and spend time in other areas of your life. That's what you worked so Kyle: Yeah, that's good. Victor: hard for. Kyle: Yes. I think that resonated if it resonated with both of us, it's resonating with with other people listening too. Again, a s you have to learn the skill of that. We we need as entrepreneurs, as business people, we need to we need the next mountain to climb, so to speak, the next thing to work on. And that's a quirky one. That's an interesting one. That's a mental one. That's a spiritual, emotional, all of that mixed in. cool. All right. So let's keep let's keep cruising there. You did say, and then there's one other thing before the EOS part that you mentioned. That you guys are implementing a three-day weekend once a month. And what I love about that is I guarantee your team members are super excited about it. It is not like a crazy, we're gonna take a we're gonna work four days every single week or anything like that, but once a month. It's almost like a little something to look forward to. Where did that idea come from? And then how's it, how's it been for you and your team so far? Victor: Paul McManus. I saw Kyle: Ale Victor: I I believe AJ Ballantyne or somebody posted in the Remodelers on the Rise or the Job Tread Facebook group. And it was talking about employee benefits. And Kyle: If it was was it a good post? Was it the was it an amazing post? It probably was in my group for sure. Although the job tread one's Victor: It it was. Kyle: good, it is in second place. There was a there was a giant poll taken by me of me voting and like I say right to Eric's face, my group's just a smidgen better than yours, buddy boy. So it was obviously it Victor: It is. It is. Kyle: was obviously in here, yeah. Victor: Yeah, totally on in there. And I I'm sure it was actually now that I think back to it. But it was just talking about what do you, what do you offer your employees for benefits? And I've always been huge on offering employees good benefits. And I was like, you know, we have unlimited PTO and we take, we shut down for the week of Christmas and New Year's and we take all these holidays. And then Paul McManus was like, I give my employees, I think it was one three-day weekend a month. And I was like, I like that. Kyle: Okay. Victor: So I literally turned around and emailed my I'm gonna call her Kyle: Mm. Victor: my office manager. And I was like, Hey, I wanna do one three day weekend a month, make a new holiday calendar and let's just do it. And it's been great. One, it gives me a chance to unplug for three days out of a weekend and and you know, get some stuff done around the house. I'm sure my employees love it just as much as I do. Kyle: Yeah. And I think there's I've seen it in a couple cases where it almost for for one client I'm thinking of in particular, Oddfellow's contracting did this for a while, where they kind of rotated the the even the field team was taking one Friday a month off and they kind of rotated it. And I remember them talking about how the employees seem to in the couple days leading up to it, seem to have a little bit more pep in the step, you know, getting getting back to the truck for materials a little bit quicker, realizing, okay, I'm I'm only working through Thursday today. So when we when we thought about it, we're like, How much production are we really losing here when the employees pretty excited about, cranking out work in order to take the Friday off? And I don't think the I don't think the gap was that big of how much productivity loot you're missing. Victor: No. Yeah, I think the I think the studies show four day work weeks aren't really any less productive than than five day work weeks. Kyle: Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. All right. So you're running this lovely little business out in in Colorado. at the Rise conference, you came and you did a breakout session on EOS, entrepreneur operating system. That's what I wanted to spend the rest of the time on. tell the people a little bit about just your business kind of employees and size and whatnot of where you're at. And then where did this EOS thing come along in your in your business journey? Victor: Yeah, so we've been running on EOS for about nine years. we are a design build remodeler. We focus on main floors, whole homes, additions. we are a team of nine currently and always growing. our focus is on improving our clients' everyday living experience through expertly crafted interior remodels. EOS for me has been a very long journey. yeah. Yeah. Kyle: ti time out, timeout. EOS, you're gonna get back the OS. Did you just share a mission? Say that mission again and and let me hear it nice and clear. What is Victor: Yeah. Kyle: that? Victor: Our our mission is to improve our clients' everyday living experience through expertly crafted interior remodels. Kyle: Has that mission been helpful? How would how has that been helpful in the business and the culture building? What have you found there? Victor: Yeah. it keeps us focused. So it keeps us aligned on the types of projects, who we're serving. so Kyle: Mm. Victor: we're looking for clients who are looking to invest in a long-term home. And it keeps us guided to always be focused on doing the best thing for the client and making sure that every solution that we bring to the table is the best thing for those for those clients. Kyle: Hmm. mat matches up core core values, mission, this is who we are. Good. All Victor: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Kyle: right. Sorry, some Victor, I apologize. I've interrupted you a couple Victor: That's okay. Kyle: of times, but every time I've done it, it's led to you sharing some really smart, brilliant things. It's helping the people listening. So I'm just gonna keep interrupting, whether you like it or Victor: Yeah. Kyle: not. Plus I'm the host. Plus, I'm the man in charge here. You understand? Victor: You get to do what you want, Kyle. Kyle: that's right. I didn't know Victor had that side of him. he also is holding up hold up that mug. It's a big fat lie. says says world's best boss. My team got me the same thing, but it was like certified by Guinness Book of World Records as world best golf. That is that's that looks like n a a not true one. Victor: Yeah, it's from the office. One of my employees got it for me as a gag gift. Kyle: Love the the office for so clever. So clever okay. You were saying EOS. Well EOS came along in the business. Go ahead. Victor: Yeah. E I think EOS realistically came along in my third year of business. I read the book Traction. And I was like, yeah, I'm gonna have a leadership team. I'm gonna do all these things. And I just like went ahead and tried to implement all of it and quickly realized that we were not ready for a lot of the things that we implemented throughout that time. so we have been running on EOS now for about six years, and today I would say we have most everything implemented into our company. We do quarterly conversations. We have department level L10 meetings. The only thing that we're missing is a true leadership team meeting Kyle: Mm. Victor: that happens every week. We do have a cross-department L10 that we treat as our leadership meeting, but we have scorecards, everyone knows their numbers and what what good looks like every single week. we are aligned on mission, vision, values and we hire and fire and reward around our values. we have good documented processes for the most part. That's a forever evolving part of our business. And then we are always discussing issues and solving problems for the greater good of the company and trying to solve them forever. Kyle: Bam, bam. That's so that's that's EOS in a nutshell. I think if you haven't, if you haven't, if you're not familiar with EOS, you're gonna hear about it here. we'll unpack some of what he just shared. but you use your favorite AI tool to have it summarize it. Pull it up on YouTube, watch some summary videos of what is EOS. Yes, pull up the book traction and spend some time in it because reminder for all of us, myself included, time spent actually reading a full book really allows us to absorb. Content a lot more than an AI summary or whatnot. Just keep we all need to keep that in mind. but you went around the horn to to several aspects of it. The EOS model has the vision, data, scorecards you mentioned, process, you mentioned that, traction, asking about kind of quarterly rocks and some of those meetings, issues and people. It's not rocket science. It's not, I've never heard of that before. It's you mentioned you mentioned Paul McManus and and being inspired by that. I think Paul's not a big fan of EOS, which is which is fine. But whatever model we are using's probably got a lot of a lot of similarities, right? There's nothing pre the thing I've liked about EOS is I've read through the book and this and that of like, he's just kind of grabbed some unique stuff that's kind of IP to himself, intellectual property for himself, but he just grabbed best practices of all of these brilliant business minds over the years. And put it into a framework that not only the owner can understand, but the team members can understand, which is exciting. So why don't we go through maybe each area if if we could? would and we start maybe with vision. And or if you don't want to do that, we can we can go another another route. Do you like that? Do you like that approach? Victor: I I like that approach, Kyle. Kyle: Okay. Okay. So on the vision side, let's just kind of go through, let's go through those six areas. On the vision side, tell us what you kind of implemented and what you dug into in that. Victor: Yeah, so in Vision, you need eight questions that is shared by everyone on the team answered. and so that is what does your business look like in 10 years? Who is your target market or your ideal client? what are your core values? What is your core purpose, passion, and or niche? and What is your three year picture and one year plan? Kyle: Some others. if you have all ten if you have if you have all of them memorized you have all of those memorized? Victor: not fully, but mostly. Kyle: gonna say that was that was impressive there. That was impressive there. out of out of those questions, which kinda had been most impactful to you or which ones moved the needle the most? Victor: Well, I always say the goal of an operating system is to bring alignment, clarity, and accountability. And in my idea of a mission is you are bringing alignment to a team. You need to be able to set a direction for your business. and I believe that core values and and your tenure target is really those two things that allow Kyle: Mm. Victor: you to truly align people as well as your core purpose, passion, and niche. Like what is it that we're what is it that we exist to do? Where are we going with this? And then how do we want to build a team and a culture that is able to execute upon this? Like what is what is our minimum acceptable standard is kind of what I look at when I look at values of Kyle: Mm. Victor: people that we want to work with and and partner with to go through this journey together. Kyle: I like that. So purpose of purpose of all this is alignment, clarity, accountability. That's that's some leadership best practices right there. And then you said, out of those, the core values, which help us really align the team, helps with our hiring, helps with our leadership of our team members, both good and and and challenges and bad. and then the tenure target. Where are we going? Talk to me about the tenure target and how that's been helpful at at VL. Victor: Yeah. So the goal of a 10-year target is to set a B hag. We love a big, hairy, audacious goal. and what that allows us to do is is really take a moment and step outside of our comfort zone and really think of where where could we be in 10 years and where do we want to be in 10 years? and then the goal of that is that you you set that goal and and you work backwards and you break it down into smaller bite-sized steps. And I think what that's allowed us to do is really just a accomplish a lot more than we ever thought was possible every single year. some years we feel like we get nothing done and then we write everything up on the whiteboard that we did. And we're just like, it's a list of 27 items that, we worked through and and solved. and every year stimulates progress. Kyle: Hm. Excellent. where are you going in ten years? Victor: Our goal is to be a at you know 12 million in revenue. we want to geographically expand locally through doing more like satellite showrooms and things like that. We're still working on it. We just had our annual Kyle: Yeah. Victor: meeting on Friday. So we're we're actually in the process of changing what our original 10-year goal was. and we have a meeting tomorrow to go through and solidify that. Kyle: Awesome. You excited about the meeting? Victor: I am. Kyle: Why? Victor: I think what I enjoy most out of this is every time I do an annual planning meeting or a leadership L10 meeting and we talk about the the future of the company, my team and I are just so like we're we're telepathically communicating. And I don't even have to tell them where I want to go in 10 years. They they tend to bring up the idea themselves and Kyle: Mm. Victor: then we get to discuss it and get aligned. And I think that just goes to show that. the payoff of the hard work of building this team that I've been building for, years. Kyle: Yeah. And yeah, and the and the alignment, they're they're part of it. The idea, you compare what you just described of we make a we've got a ten year ten year target and goal. And here you are, as you're going through it, adjusting it, which by the way, everybody, that's fine. That's fine. adjust it. And then you've got a one year plan and you're and you're, man, my team is just really united behind this. You look at a c that's the type of company everyone listening to this wants to build and wants to move towards. The opposite of that is, well, it's Monday. We got we got projects going on right now. what's going on next week? We got, you know, we got to get this project through and get this signed. This client's kind of a pain. Just the the up highs and lows of business can just consume us. Tell me about get your head out of the out of the nitty-gritty, out of the dirt. Look up here. Look up here. Where are you taking this thing? And when you get really clear with where you're heading. The energy behind that and the enthusiasm behind that and the clarity behind that can really, really make a difference. So if you're listening to this, and if I said and Victor asked you, hey, five years out, what is this going look like? And you said, I don't know. That is an area you need to step back. You need to take a little three-day weekend for yourself. You need to ask some of these questions and get yourself inspired. As entrepreneurs, we can just get beat down and we're pouring out day after day after day. We need to refill our tanks. And get getting clear with the vision can be such a helpful thing. It's been huge for you, Victor. It sounds like and and I can and and echo that. If you're at the RISE conference this year, you may have caught Logan Shinholser's breakout session. He runs contractor growth network, and his whole talk came down to one premise. Your next project is probably within a mile of the project you're finishing right now. That's what CGN builds for modelers, a system where your finished work does the selling so that the job you're wrapping up brings you the next one. Instead of worrying about a list of tactics to market your company, you need a system of marketing your individual projects to the neighborhoods that you want to be in. To learn more about this strategy, or if you want to watch Logan's talk, you can find both on contractorgrowth network.com in the resources section. That's contractorgrowthnetwork.com. Let's move over into the data side. So we have vision, vision, pie in the sky, yibbity yabbity, b hag. let's go into the data side. So data in particular, tell us about the scorecard. how how has that worked for your business? Victor: scorecards are great. I'm a I'm a data nerd at heart. I'm very type A analytical. so scorecards allow you to essentially figure out the, you know, five to fifteen numbers that are most important to keep your business on on track for its goals. so you get to essentially sit down and figure out, you know, if I'm doing this much revenue, how many leads do we need? How many of those need to be qualified? How many consults do we need to do? And what it Does is it really builds a predictable system for your business? I now know, you know, if our scorecard's red for eight weeks in a row, I know the quarter ahead of me is going to be a bit tough. And I need to start Kyle: Yeah. Victor: thinking about that and making decisions around that. alternatively, it gives your team the ability to know what good looks like that week. So my salespeople know that if they're hitting, you know, at least three consultations a week, they've done a good job that week. My project manager knows if his customer satisfaction score is 98% or better on all the surveys that we do, he's doing a good job. And he knows how many projects he needs to start every month to be able to keep cash flow coming in the door and and everything Kyle: Mm. Victor: else. So just it brings this level of clarity to your company that takes all the feelings out of it and really just gives you something to look at that is concrete and make decisions around. And I I think for the longest time. the first few years of my business, I was just wavering around in the dark, making decisions that I thought was helping my company and maybe wasn't. And now I have the ability to just segment everything down, dial in on what's not working and fix those areas of my business. Kyle: Hmm. Ba Bailey and Cassie were we were talking in our, it was actually in our level 10 meeting. and we were looking at the podcast and looking in particular which episodes have been most viewed and watched. And I think the top one for 2026 is an interview I did with Sean Billings. It was a little bit more of a coaching call type style interview, but in particular, Sean was wanting to dig into how do I set some KPIs? How do I How do what's some scorecard type things for my project manager? How do I let them know what success looks like and frankly provide and and try to get some accountability against the things that are most meaningful? So it was interesting. We took note of that. Of I think a lot of remodelers struggle in that area. You just unpacked a few of them. I wouldn't mind spending a little bit more time. Tell us a few more of the scorecard items if you if you would that's been helpful for you guys. Victor: Yeah, so in our production department, we have grippage and slippage. so every project gets analyzed against its budget and its on-track or off-track percentage. And so we track Kyle: Yes. Victor: how far on or off budget we're building projects. And that helps us one understand if our project managers are doing a good job of keeping projects on budget, but also if our estimating department needs to make adjustments to how they estimate projects. for marketing, we Kyle: What what percent what percent are you aiming for as far as up and down there? What's your what's your delta you're aiming Victor: Two percent. Kyle: for? Okay. Victor: Two percent. and then for market it's okay. Kyle: I apologize, Victor. So so if you have a project that's got 9% grippage, how do you feel about that? Victor: I feel pretty good, but sometimes I feel like maybe we're overcharging the client. Kyle: Mm. Victor: However, you know, it's a it's a law of averages. You might be 6% over budget on another project. so what we really try to do is we wanna be consistent. I wanna see every project come within a couple percentage points of of budget. Kyle: Yeah. Victor: and Kyle: What what I like, what I about what you said several things. One is, two percent. I knew you're gonna have for some reason I had a feeling that you're gonna have answer to that. And I think as a remodeling business owner, everybody listening to this, the idea of having a goal related to slippage and grippage is amazing. And if you're tracking that, if you're tracking specific grippage and slippage on specific projects, you are on your way. You are on your way because you're gonna get you're gonna become a better estimator as a result of that, to your point. You're gonna be a better project manager. You're gonna realize things in design development that you need to flush out better because that came back and bit bite us because we didn't pick and finalize that tile. Measure that, measure that. And I liked your thought of, well, I like that nine percent. At the same time, we shouldn't go nine percent, sweet, excellent. Well, why? Tell me why. because in a competitive environment, yes, it might be our pricing. We might be fluffing up those hours a little bit more and we need to adjust that. Maybe we just kick butt and take names and everything went smoothly. Mosletov, amazing, wonderful. so I love that one. okay, go go to a couple the other scorecards items. Victor: Yeah, marketing, we track website visitors. We found that website visitors and conversion on our website, conversion percentage on our website for every visitor, is like the the biggest two levers we pull. So if we're not getting enough website visitors, we need to figure out how to get more to our site. That might be meta ads, it might be Google PPC, you know, something of that nature. we track number of marketing qualified leads, number of sales qualified leads. And average cost per lead. And that just helps us with assembling our budget, helps us understand are we targeting the right audience? If we have a good MQL percentage but a low SQL percentage, we probably need to adjust some of our messaging or figure out why we're getting a lot of leads that don't align with our company. In sales and design, we track different timelines, average time for assembling a budget and getting it out to a client. So we Kyle: Awesome. Victor: have a timeline that we strive for and then we track against that and we know if if we're doing a good job or not and if if our time Kyle: What's your what is your goal? What is your goal with that one? Victor: five days is our our goal for assembling a budget. now we we have a bit of a different design process, I think, than a lot of people. We use a two-phase design process and we're not writing any estimates before we sign a phase one design contract. Similar to probably like Brian Sebring or AJ Ballantyne's companies. And we also track time for site measure to drafting our conceptual drawings timeline, because th those early points in our design process are kind of what determines if this is gonna go through design in the amount of time we want or if it's gonna drag out. Kyle: Hmm. So you you you look at that and say, man, there's a correlation. it's not all about speed in the design development process. Yet it's not not about it. You know, Victor: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Kyle: when when somebody reaches out, if we can wow them a little bit with that initial budget scope, you know, ballpark range, whatever you whatever we want to call that, if we can get back to them with the initial design concepts pretty quick, I guarantee they would love it better seven days later than they would 14 days later. It keeps that energy up. Couple things that I want to emphasize for the people listening. Our buddy, our buddy Victor here, he just mentioned AJ Ballantyne and Brian Brian Sebring. And I'm guessing you've talked to both of them. They're both very f yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Awesome. Victor: Yeah, yeah. I know AJ pretty well and I've met Brian at the Rise conference last year, so Kyle: You know, and and I I would encourage peop people, like if you're listening to this and you don't have money to join a coaching group or whatnot, be a student, be a student of the industry. There's so many super helpful people. There's so many great podcast recordings. There's people that are happy to to to give you know some time and some direction. People love, I don't know anybody in my kind of community and world that go, no, you ask me a question specifically about my process. I'm not interested in giving it to you. People are very generous. And when you're brave enough to reach out to them, to be a student of them, to watch it, to ask smart questions, that's what speeds up our learning so much. So People, don't be don't be shy. Maybe there's a couple people that might even look up Victor and say, Victor, could I just hop on a zoom for thirty minutes with you to sh and you can unpack this thing I heard on the podcast? That'd be cool, wouldn't Victor: Yeah. Kyle: it? Victor: I'm always down for that and I've I've done that in the past. Always always Kyle: Yeah. I love I love the scorecard. It's very specific. It is measuring the things that if we're doing well with these metrics, good things are going to happen. Again, people, there is gold in the last seven minutes of our conversation. Do not underestimate the power of very clear scorecards that we track, hold accountable, measure against, allow our team to understand the score. It's hard to get them started. Start with something and start tracking it. You're going to tweak it, but start tracking. There is huge gold there. Victor: I would say a good example of that. I hear a lot of remodelers say, I can never get my carpenters to do a daily log. Put it on a scorecard. they'll they'll start doing it. If they see it every week and one carpenter is doing a great job and none of the others are, they're gonna want to do a good job and they're gonna know what good looks like. Kyle: Yes, or you can do what my wife recommends. For some my wife is a wonderful mother, Victor. but Victor: believe that. Kyle: yes, you believe that. I've got four we got four lovely kids. Her go-to line every time the and it came up last night. We were with one of my Annie Annie who's in eighth grade, and her friend was in the car, and her friend was telling us something that this kid at school was saying, and we were not pleased about it. And my Victor: Mm-hmm. Kyle: wife's go to answer is punch him in the face. Punch him in the face. So you can either go Victor's route of creating a scorecard and measuring it, or go the Sarah Hunt route of just punch him in the face. Do your daily logs. Victor: Punch him in the face. Kyle: Either or people, either or. Okay. I just came up last night. I thought it was funny. I yes, yes. Victor: They'll both lead to results. One might not lead to the result you want. Kyle: One might result in you putting your hands behind your back and going on a little trip in a car. Who knows? Who knows? Or getting punched back by a tough carpenter. all right, cool. Let's let's keep on cruising around. I don't want to spend too much time on the process part, but if you were to go to the third part and just give us give us your couple sentences on the importance of that, you would say what? Victor: Make sure you're documenting the 20%, that is 80% of your results. Do not get so complicated with your process that you write out a detailed SOP for everything down to the type of cabinet screw you are going to use. the goal of process for me is to keep creative people creative. So take out this any steps that are mundane that, you know. Eat up bandwidth, figure out how to document those and make them repeatable so that creative people can stay in their creative lane. Kyle: Hmm, don't get too too granular. And that's an easy mistake to make. And one of my favorite quotes, and it's attributed to Mark Twain, but who I I looked at it once and I'm like, maybe that wasn't Mark. There's a little little debate. But he goes, in this letter he wrote, he said, My letter would have been shorter, but I didn't have enough time. I love that quote. And that's that's Victor: Yeah. Yeah. Kyle: kind of what you said there of like, look, your process might start out actually quite quite large, and practice how to whittle that down, whittle that down, whittle that down. And also as you create a process and you get it out in the wild, judge if it's actually working. Be okay with breaking it and simplifying it. What's your favorite part of your process that you guys do have documented? What's been the most helpful? Victor: I would say our sales and design process. Yeah. It's been a pursuit of excellence for like five years. And we finally just landed on, I think what's gonna be, I always say this, what's gonna be our final process for a long time. but as you said, we we break it all the time and we're constantly tweaking it. Kyle: Good. Cool. Traction. The traction part. talk to talk to us about the level ten meetings and also I'd be curious, cord of the rocks or another element of that. But those two I find that are most kind of applicable to to people. Victor: Yeah, so the goal of the level 10 meeting is to be able to run effective meetings. I'm sure we've all heard that meeting could have been an email. I don't ever Kyle: Mm-hmm. Victor: want a meeting in my company to feel mundane or or it sh should have been an email. level 10 meetings gives you a time to check in, break bread with your team, build, you know, build your team relationship. focus on, you know, are is your scorecard on track or is it off track? And Check in on rock completion percentage. And then really you spend a bulk of your time focusing on issues. The reality is every every company has issues or opportunities. They can also be, more positive things. And as a team, when we get to sit down and get out of the day-to-day of the business for a while and spend our time focusing on, hey, these things are, you know, like every job, we're missing this material. How do we solve that for the greater good? It just creates this machine and this operation where you're able to really dig in and spend time fixing your biggest problems so that work gets a little bit easier every single day. Kyle: Hmm, love it. Love it. and look up look up if you're kind of curious, what's that what's that level 10 look like? That's one. Google that, you'll see a very clear outline. We've tweaked ours a little bit, like we do a little bit of personal and business stress level at the end. We have a little section of pertinent information. make sure we start out with with kind of a business and personal highs, you know, highs from the last week or so. But to your point, after we check in on the scorecard. and review some action steps. The bulk is the IDS section, which we'll talk about here in a second. Victor: And Kyle, I think you just said something that's important is that it's okay to make this system your own. You know, a lot of us will take the book EOS and read it and implement everything as designed. you know, our level 10 meetings are different for every department. Our production departments Kyle: Mm-hmm. Victor: tailored to them, our sales and design departments tailored to them, and our cross departments tailored to to how we need to operate in in that area. I don't think EOS is a perfect fits every business model and it's okay to make some tweaks to it and make it your Kyle: Yeah. Victor: own. Kyle: There was something, it was probably three or four months ago, and a part of the meeting was just feeling super routine and mundane. we were just cruising through it. And we're t we talked about it. I'm like, let's let's move this section just down to the bottom just to kind of just kind of throw off the the you know, the the flow of the meeting a little bit. And it's been a put it's been a positive change. So be be willing to be that's that's leadership. Like pay attention to how the meeting's going and if it's feeling mundane or if it's feeling a little bit routine. Spice it up a little bit, move things around. You know what? This isn't helping us. Let's just not let's just take that out. We can't take that out, your high your high compliance disc C person says. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. good. And then how have quarterly rocks been influential for for you? they've been a big part of our our last number of years. Victor: I I would say this is the first year I've started to see a true benefit of ROCS. in the beginning, we we tried too many ROCs at one time and we would never get them done. but rocks have allowed us to, you know, take those big issues that are big projects. For example, we just revamped our sales and design process and we're just now coming out of the tail end of that. But that created a lot of projects. Our CRM and our Monday.com workflow had to change and someone had to be responsible for building that. and so We're able to create that big goal that needs to get done in a quarter and stimulate progress towards that goal by regularly checking in on it, making sure it's getting done. and then when you look back at the end of the year, you're like, Yeah, we got all these things Kyle: Mm-hmm. Victor: done. We're we've laid the next brick on our foundation for our our plan for next year. Kyle: Yeah. And that's I one I learned this years and years ago. I was I was a outsourced marketing director for this this company for a number of years. And it was interesting as they grew, and we're talking like Inc. five thousand list and growing on that. It was so interesting that as their as we did the strategic plan for the year, the number of goals actually shrunk down. More focus on fewer things. And you know, to for each person to have a quarterly rock, and if it doesn't end up taking the full quarter, so be it. They can pick another one. But for us, what we noticed was we were really good at having an annual planning day and meeting and it felt so good after that. And it was a couple years straight where just business started happening and work got busy. And we just as the year went on, the strategic plan just went off to the side. Quarterly rocks for us have been the antidote to making sure we take the annual plan of where we're trying to take it for the year. And break it into smaller chunks. It's helped us tremendously in making progress. So if you're listening to this and you're like, we talk about an annual plan and then we just get busy. Stop it. Stop it. Leaders, leaders, listen. Leaders, don't let that happen, slash acknowledge the problem with it, slash look into perhaps the simple format of quarterly rocks and level 10 meetings. It could really transfer absolutely it it's not, it's not overly stating, it was transformational. For a mallers on the rise for sure. Victor: And and going back to our earlier discussion of one percent ever better every day or being disciplined, this is one of those Kyle: Yes. Victor: things that if you do it well in your business, it will create true transformation. Kyle: I like that. I'll also add this. I think and Cassie's she's producing this, so she's listening, but she we can't see her. She probably she could nod her head and not. We'll see. but there's sometimes I'm I have to remind myself as the owner of the company that even though I've got a lot of things I'm juggling and and aren't we all, that sometimes I approach the level 10 meeting kind of sort of prepared and kind of going through motions-ish. And Yesterday in particular, I I was like, no, no, no. Level 10 meeting, let's bring it. we made sure there was really good issues already like thought through and on the table. I came prepared to talk about those. And don't forget, as a leader of your business, the energy that you bring to these meetings and the and the and the feisty and the bite and the challenging and the praise and all of that, that really matters. So it's one thing to have the format of it, but as the leader, jolt them a little bit. I've got a little sign my sister got me years ago. It's a little comic by gay name Hugh McLeod. He but makes these business comics and it says constructive irritant. And I I've got Victor: Ha ha. Kyle: it I've got it actually I've got it down in my lair. It's not in my office anymore. But be a little constructive irritant. Obviously make sure your team knows that you appreciate them more than anything. but be the one challenging them a little bit. That that matters in these meetings. Victor: Conflict is healthy. Kyle: Yes, yes. Lean into healthy confrontation. Yes, I like that. and then I think what we're gonna do, Victor, I'm I'm wanting to go through five and six. We've got kind Victor: Mm-hmm. Kyle: of the issues and the people, but I'm also kind of aware the time. I think I think your your time slot, my time slot. We got a few minutes here. I'm wondering if we should go through issues or people or if there's another thing coming to your mind, another thing that you think would be helpful to the people listening, anything. Coming to your mind for that? Victor: Think we should maybe go through breaking down EOS into something that we can manage and implement into our business. going back, Kyle: Take it o take it away. Victor: going back to my earlier point when I first started, I I read the book Traction and I, you know, got a room of people together and we went through and kind of did like an implementer session. the, you know, the first two focus days that you do, and we assembled a a vision traction organizer and and that was super helpful. but then we assembled scorecards and we had department level L10 meetings and things like that. And the the truth was our team just wasn't big enough for that. And to this day, our team still isn't big enough to do true department level meetings at at every level. and so I think what's most important when you start on the EOS journey is really truly honing in on that vision component, getting your core values figured out and and following them. your core values are your culture. And for me, I found that also gave a good decision filter for my team. You know, for example, one of our core values today is build it right. And they understand that if something's not right, we're ripping it out and redoing it. Kyle: Mm-hmm. Victor: and so they're able to approach decisions that way. and then when it comes to scorecards, you're not going to have good data if you've never tracked data before. You're going to make an unrealistic scorecard or a scorecard that doesn't work at all. So what's most important is just you have to start somewhere and you have to start. So making sure that you go through and implement a scorecard. But for L10 meetings, maybe you don't need department level L10 meetings. Maybe you need a meeting that is a quick check-in across all departments. If you're a team of four people and some are in production and some are in sales. As the owner, you're likely doing a lot of things in your day-to-day of your business still. And so you just need a quick way that you can check in with everyone, answer any questions that are holding them up and get them continued out into the world of work that you're doing. yeah. Kyle: Good. Yeah, what I'm hearing there is just hold hold hold all this with a little bit of open hand, flexibility, all of that. you're just Victor: Yeah. Yeah. Kyle: about to say another nugget of brilliance. Victor: Be okay with changing everything that you do with the OS. It's it's going Kyle: Yes. Victor: to take multiple iterations. Kyle: good. Very good. Victor, you're you're you're very peaceful. You're very peaceful. Has anybody ever told you that? Victor: I am. I'm a s I'm a stoic guy. Kyle: Stoic a stoic guy. has that is there pros and cons to that? Victor: I think so. to your point of like the energy that you bring to an L10 meeting, you know, bringing that kind of energy for me for you know public speaking or doing anything where I really want to like influence people, I I definitely don't have much of the eye on the disc side of the profile. and you took it all. so yeah, I would say that. Kyle: I stole I stole it all. I stole it all, sorry. I'm I'm pretty high on that eye part. I just want people to like me, Victor. I just want people to like me. Victor: I would say there's definitely some struggles in that in that area, of of just trying to be a good leader. Kyle: Hmm. Some growth area too, right? Of just, and I just said you're a man of peace because just it you're it sometimes I notice this when I'm doing an interview and I'm like, Kyle, you maybe you should bring it down a notch and match the energy level of your guest, and maybe that would be nice. but yeah, it interesting, like that self-awareness of because that calmness has so many pros in, especially in running a remodeling company. Your team appreciates the steady hand that you have, your team appreciates that. They know what they're going to get consistently. There's not this, I decided this, I decided that. There's so many pros. Plus, that's just naturally how you're wired. That's how you are wired. to your point on the on the, I I mentioned pros or cons. You focused on the con. I just added the pros to it. But the con of, in all of us, I think there's, I have growth to do in, hey, shut up and let other people lead. let let your team really own things. You don't have to add your two cents. there's all all these areas that if we're really paying attention to our leadership, there's areas that we need to grow a little bit in of showing, like you just said, maybe showing a little bit more emotion, showing a little bit more energy. the good news is that we don't have to change who we are, but we can add a little bit to areas that would be that would be helpful in our leadership. So keep on keep on being yourself because more than anything else, the authenticity of being who you are really wins the day when it comes to leadership. Victor: thousand percent. That is the true statement of being a good leader is is really not making a system that you have to step so far outside your comfort zone that you can't show up the way you're supposed to. Leadership and Kyle: Yeah. I'm l Victor: management works for whoever you are as a person. Kyle: Yeah. I I'm recording this and I've been thinking about a couple of conversations I recently had. Two remodelers who reached out in the last three weeks. they went to remodelersontherize.com and they filled out the contact us form. And by golly, they were chatting with me in the in the following week or two, just talking about their business and a little bit about what we offer. And both of them talked about the podcast. It was the first podcasting's kind of interesting because you don't get that immediate feedback that, like, I've made this post and there's a bunch of responses. And both of them, on this are on the smaller side. One of them's around $500,000 in revenue. I think the other is a little bit more than that. But both of them are like, I'm just swinging the hammer. I'm trying to build some team members. I'm trying to get this going. I got an office manager finally. I've got an out I'm trying to get into the design build. And I've just had this in my them in my mind a little bit as we're going through it. And that's why I was emphasizing the scorecard earlier. Folks, it takes time to build this, but what you just heard in a lot of different small ways. Are things that you can absolutely take a step forward in? Whatever jumped out at you, who's listening to this that really resonated, maybe it was core values. Let's start at the very beginning. Let's get our core values. Who are we and what we're about? maybe it is the scorecard, maybe it is process, it could be any of those things. Just start somewhere. And you start stacking disciplined wins each day, each day, each day. Even what Victor said, 1% better, 1% better. Keep trying to improve every day. It's going to add up, but you got to fight for it because there's an onslaught of challenges and issues coming at you, and that material is late and that trade partner got sick and they can't come. There's there's an onslaught of stuff coming at you. You got to keep piercing through it and finding ways to continue to improve. And that that came to mind, and just the way that you laid out so many little things just really resonated. If you If people wanted to check out your website or reach out to you, where do they go? And then you're getting the final words, sir. You can summarize if you heard nothing else in this podcast, here's what we want to emphasize or another random nugget that you want to share. Victor: Yeah. website is www.vlbuilders.com. you can find me on Instagram at Victor Lebeg, L-E-B-E-G-U-E, or shoot me an email, Victor at Kyle: UE at the UE at the end, people. The UE at the end is the UE at the end is silent. But you need to type it in on Insta. By the way, also, the Victor: Yeah. Kyle: hips the hip kids say insta, not Instagram. Hip hip kids Victor: Insta. Yeah. Kyle: like me, 43 year old me, we say insta. Victor: Well apparently thirty two year old I is not hip. Kyle: Hm. Victor: Or shoot me an email, victor at vlbuilders.com. I'm always happy to jump on a phone call, a Zoom meet, or anything to provide some help to someone who wants to learn more. when it comes to EOS, as Kyle said, you have to start somewhere. So just pick an area and start and get better at it every single day. Kyle: Love it. Thank you, sir. That was great. Appreciate it. go have for you and for those listening, go kick some butt. Go kick some butt this afternoon. the word timid has been in my mind a lot lately, Victor. Victor: Mm. Kyle: Of sometimes I'll start the day and I'm like, hmm, there's a distraction. 20 minutes later, d that's just timid. That's passive. And I've been really playing with that word a lot of like stop being timid. Like go after the day. If it's work time, work. If it's work time, work. Because there's a difference between working and being locked in. So I'll leave that with you. I'll remind me and I'll let the millions of people listening to this. You didn't even there's millions of people listening to this. You would have been nervous listening to this. Kick butt this afternoon. Don't be all timid. You got to make that call. Eat the stinking frog. Make the call. You need to go get this thing done. You've been putting it off. Stop it. You want to eat that burger instead of that little healthier option? Put the burger down and eat it. It's going to make you feel better this afternoon. Get on the floor and do 10 push-ups. If you need to be on your knees to do them, fine. Move your body. Do stuff. Don't be timid about it. Go get what you want. Go get the change that you want. All right, I'm gonna stop yelling, Victor. See y'all later. Victor: Bye. Kyle Hunt: Thanks for tuning into the Remodelers on the Rise show. Whether you're listening or watching, I appreciate you being here. If this was helpful, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the next one. We're putting out new episodes every single week focused on helping you build a better remodeling business with real stories, practical ideas, and things you can actually take and use. If you're on YouTube, hit that like button and turn on notifications so you know when new episodes drop. If you're listening on a podcast app, a five-star review goes a long way and helps more remodelers find the show. We've got great links below or in the show notes where you can connect with us, check out our remodelers community and learn more about our coaching and resources. Appreciate you very much. See you on the next episode.