Welcome to the The VICI Code, where we unlock real stories of small business owners who've battled chaos, crushed doubt, and conquered their challenges. Faith, family, and finances. No fluff, just raw, honest conversations that decode the path to victory, one story at a time. All right, thank you and welcome again for joining us today as we explore strategy, systems, and soul, where we walk you through the power of perspective, how simplifying complexity leads to exponential growth. But first, as you guys know, I am an AG1 ambassador, and I want to tell you how you can try AG1 for free. AG-1 has been a staple in my daily routine for several years. Every morning I wake up and I take my AG-1. One scoop is packed with 75 high-quality ingredients, which combines multivitamin, probiotic, and a blend of superfoods. AG-1 has been clinically shown to improve gut health and close common nutrient gaps. As a longtime customer, they've offered me a special deal for you if you're interested in trying AG-1 yourself. You can use my ambassador code found in the show notes. With your first order, you receive one free year supply of D3K2 drops, which you need here in upstate New York or anywhere in the Northeast. You need your D3K2. 10 free AG1 next-gen travel packs and a free 30-day supply of omega-3 pills. This is $130 value free when you use my ambassador code. Now, as we shift gears back to today's guest, who believes clarity is the ultimate catalyst for action. Stephen Ward is a seasoned entrepreneur, fractional integrator, and business strategist with over 15 years of experience scaling operations and simplifying complexity for growth-minded founders. As the former COO of a company that grew from 500K to 8 million annually, he honed deep expertise in leadership, EOS implementation, system building, and tactical empathy, which we'll get into later. He and his wife are also the founders of Haven by Design Stays, a short and midterm rental company built on 11 years of hosting experience. Now, I don't normally do this, but because I had to look it up, I want to define integrator, okay? So for our audience, since I didn't even know, an integrator is a second in command to the visionary in a company that uses an entrepreneurial operating system, otherwise known as EOS. This role is responsible for turning the visionary's big picture ideas into actionable strategies, managing daily operations, and ensuring the leadership team is aligned and accountable for results. In other words, Stephen turns ideas into action, simplifies the complicated, and creates clarity that sticks through systems and tactical empathy. Boy, I could use a Stephen. Now, Stephen and I know each other because, once again, we met in Dan Martell's elite group. But we got to know each other a lot better, because we've had the opportunity to learn more through participating in this fitness accountability group with another few elite gentlemen. And Paul, from last week, was also in this group as well. Stephen's journey marked by both corporate scaling success and the candid admission of some past failures. built five companies, sold one, lost one to COVID, one even flopped, and he closed one, provides a perfect transparent foundation for the VICI Code. His dual focus on integrator systems and high-touch hospitality with his wife offers a rich perspective on purpose-driven business. Stephen, that was a mouthful. Welcome to the show. Yeah, Looking forward to this for a while. Did I nail the integrator piece? I would say so. The best thing that you said was takes the vision Yeah, that was my understanding and very excited to hear more about your background. So I love starting at the beginning. What was your previous life? Operational and financial breakthroughs, right? You took a company as a COO from 500K to 8 million annually. What was the single biggest operational challenge? You know, that moment where the company hit a wall that you, that forced you to implement a So it's really a very textbook tale. If you've read the book tractionary, follow up on any of the EOS process. Uh, we didn't, we weren't doing EOS when I started. So I came out of college, I was doing private investigation. We didn't want to do that. I was doing just odd jobs and I just knew I wanted to grow businesses. That was it. So my dad introduced us as a corporate coach and he introduced, myself to the owner of Labor Consultants International and there was just him and one other lady in the company that was it. He'd been open for like nine years and he had big vision, right? And so I came in with the hopes of growing it. Well, we grew a little bit in the first couple of years. We didn't have processes for marketing. The internal process literally was file folders that we wrote on the inside of and dated, put in other people's office. If you had a phone call that you didn't have the folder in front of you to get up, go get the folder and bring it back. So all that stuff was happening plus everything else you could possibly imagine. My dad was going through some of this EOS stuff and traction stuff, and I jumped on board with him and I said, this is the stuff. We've got to introduce this. We introduced it to the company. And there's more stories to tell about that. But I would say the absolute turning point of that company was when I discovered I've always been an integrator and I fit into that system. And the owner was always a visionary. And the two of us together, we That's amazing. We have what we consider an integrator here. Her name's Abby. We praise her all the time. She's more of a project manager at this time because she went back to school, but I'm the visionary. I'm the guy. I have too many ideas and it's always good to have that integrator to kind of help pump the brakes a little bit and make sure that there's some clarity so I can appreciate the role that you've had. What was the EOS driven breakthrough that unlocked the exponential financial So I'll keep it simple as I can. The trick was identifying the big hairy audacious goal. Now I've since updated how I approach that. I think 10X is easier than 2X and science of scaling is a much more potent version of that. But at that time, it's all we had. So we set some insane goal to us, it was like 460 clients or something like that in the next three years. And so then we had to integrate all of the tools of EOS. Level 10 meetings, start on time, end on time, same agenda. You're there to solve issues. We had quarterlies every single quarter, large 90-day action items and rocks. And the whole team by then, I had hired my then-fiancee, who turned into my wife. We hired her twin sister. And by then, we had a group of people that were bought in. And so that then allowed us to put the EOS system in place with that big vision in mind, with the cadence of the 90 days and the weekly meetings, which allowed us to set up, serve up issues, and just obliterate them, literally eliminate them from the company, make them go away forever and continue moving forward. So I was integral to the driving of this system. Terry, the owner, his brain is everywhere and he wants to go big. Half of an integrator's job is to say no nine times out of 10 and say yes one time out of 10. And that worked really well. And so we were all very, very committed to that EOS process, which allowed us to then accelerate at a pace that I was not even certain was possible. And it became standard operating in the company. We were at like 500K at that time. And over the next, what was it? 14, 13, 14 years, we ramped to say a million a year. And that 430 client thing just got blown out of the water. And then we got very big and there's more lessons learned along the lines, along the way. But, um, boy, that, that big hairy goal with the commitment to the discipline of those level 10 meetings So it looks like instead of focusing on more sales, you guys focused on the building blocks. You guys focused on the systems. So you're a firm believer in the power of systems. And so am I. For a founder who is operating in chaos right now, what is the first system they should implement to start reclaiming their Oh gosh, this answer changes over the years. I'm a big believer in Dan Martell's method of an executive assistant. So that's been a huge implementation, but I did it simultaneous with the level 10 meeting. So a level 10 meeting is designed to have to go for the same time every week, start on time and end on time. And the entire purpose of the meeting is to flesh out as many issues as possible, opportunities, problems, whatever. flesh them out, serve them up on the platter by priority, one, two, three, prioritize the most important ones, and then spend time IDSing those, which we've identified, discussed, and solved. So if you can identify the root cause of the issue, like not the symptoms, the root cause, spend majority of your time doing that, discuss solutions, and then decide on a solution, assign it to a person with an end date. And we all hold each other accountable to those end dates. You kill that virus or that issue or whatever that was. And I think that starts bringing chaos into order. Because what happens is we have all these problems that are coming all the time. They're flying at us. How do you categorize? Where do you put them? So you throw them on this issues list. They come up during the week, throw them on the issues list. They come up during the meeting and you're trying to solve one issue and you divert. Grab that one, isolate it, throw it on the issues list. If you're solving those via priority, then what's most important, you might get to one, you might get to five, it doesn't matter because you're solving the most important issues. I think the combination of taking the chaos and getting it on somewhere that has a home, that you know you're going to address it, and then dealing with the most important as you can with that weekly cadence of basically destroying whatever that issue was. I believe that really brings order. And then you need time to deal with those issues. And that's why I like the executive assistant, because you get rid of all that administrative junk. It's Yeah, that's a powerful stack. And the one thing I liked about Six Sigma was the relentless root cause analysis. That's what I took from my corporate life that I've brought into every other role that I've had as a leader back into the public accounting world. So any person who works for me, who may not have had this style of leadership realizes really quickly that I don't care whose fault it is. I want to know how it happened, why it happened, and how can we prevent it from happening going forward. So that root cause analysis is a big part of that conversation. And pretty soon, you know, you see You can see the shift in energy from people who have been in toxic leadership situations where they're always worried about maybe blaming somebody else or not taking blame. And you see that shift over to them being comfortable like, oh yeah, they own it. They become a lot more owning of the problem because they know that someone's not coming after them, you know, to, to, Hey, look what you did. It's like, well, I don't care that you made a mistake. I make a mistake. We all make mistakes, but why was that mistake made? What can we do to prevent that mistake going forward? Right. So I It allowed us to have meetings that weren't endless conversations in circles that make everybody feel good, but nothing actually ever happens. That doesn't serve a high performer any day of the week. When a high performer can show up to a level 10 and know you're going to deal with stuff, and we're all going to hold these things away from our chest, they're just the issue to solve. We don't care who's responsible for it. We just want to know how to fix it. It accelerates the high performer's attitude towards the meeting as well, which is exactly Now I want to get into the power of perspective and failure. You are incredible candid about your entrepreneurial journey. You know, you built five businesses. One was sold, you lost one to COVID, one even flopped, and then you closed one to focus more on a better business, which is not a bad idea. What is the most profound financial or leadership breakthrough you Ah, it's, it's actually the most profound thing that I gained was mindset deal. And that didn't come clear until this year. So we had a gym in Spokane, Washington, um, Washington. I live in Idaho and Washington rules were very different during COVID. And so we took it over at the end of 2018. It was losing money. Less than number one. I didn't know how to read the financials properly. The guy that presented it to us, either we missed something. I don't know. Maybe it wasn't being honest. Either way we missed $2,500 from the hole. Spent the next year getting ourselves back up. Snuff COVID hits. Washington closes everything down and we're like five to seven months. No income still paying all the rents. And I remember during that time, the stress of that whole thing, and it came to the point where we were like, to get out of it was going to cost us $70,000. But the lesson that I'm driving towards here is that we could have kept it. And I didn't have the belief in myself, maybe I didn't have the skills available at the time, to implement that we could have kept that gym, we could have turned it around. And the lesson learned was at that time, I thought there was no other way except to sell it. And ultimately, that may have been the thing, but we didn't even give it a go, you know? And so this sort of panic and run that I had to learn about myself. And then what this year has done for me to show me, like the results are in the consistency of the compounds, regardless how things are going. It's like. Patient with the outcomes and just intensely impatient with, with what your action is going to be and then make it. So it's inevitable. We didn't do that. We just said, this is terrifying. Everything shut down and we bailed. We lost 70 grand. It was, it was brutal. It took us a year to recover from it. But it's something that I would love to put out there. I know there's guys and gals out there like me that have done it, and they let that become part of their identity, and they go, I can't figure it out. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to get this done. And that's such a lie. That was a stepping stone for me to allow me to stand where I stand today, that allowed me to seek out what I've sought and learn Yeah. That's, that's exactly, you know, what I was, that I've gained from, you know, failure and some of my own businesses. And I've been a lot more, you know, in touch with my faith, uh, over the years. And now I'm in, now I embrace these challenges. I, to me, it's like, you know, it's, it is, it's all perspective, right? You know, challenges are no matter how good you're doing challenges, aren't going to go away. they're gonna keep showing up. And God puts these challenges in front of us because there's something to be learned from that. And I've shifted my mindset to dreading these challenges and oh, woe is me to, okay, this is gonna be a little turbulent, but have the strength to overcome this challenge and have the wisdom to discern what it is I need to learn from this, because I couldn't do what I'm doing today without my past failures, without those lessons. My failures and those lessons have enabled me to be a better coach and a better accountant for my clients, and quite honestly, a better father and husband. So yeah, definitely embracing those challenges. And I hate using the word failure. I like to use the word lesson, but whatever. You just got to really have a better mindset, stronger mindset with that. So yeah, that's really good advice, Steve. We either win or we learn, right? That's it. Unfortunately, 100%. You fall down, pick yourself up, just fall forward, right? Now, as a seasoned integrator, how do you coach founders to manage the financial risk of scaling aggressively while Boy, now if I had the answer to that, I'd give it to you. The financial stability in the midst of growing is something that I still feel like, as an entrepreneur, I'm learning. But as an integrator, we had sorted out. So when I'm talking to founders or business people around me, a lot of my focus tends to be on the mindset required to set a goal that's big enough, to inspire action today, we said, we said a lot of arbitrary numbers 10 years from now, I'm going to make this five years from now to make that why this round number. And so challenging owners to really challenge themselves to set forth a new path of thinking via an impossible goal. As far as the financial part goes, Honestly, that was handled a lot by the controller and Terry, the visionary, he had a lot of financial stuff. So when we were growing, I was aware of the numbers. But the ultimate hack is just to have a business that has a great margin, right? And allow yourself to get to the point where you can hire as you go. We were smart about it. We forecasted our numbers. Those were all part of the quarterly numbers. So it's all forecasting with good data. You're sitting in the quarterly meetings and you're setting up, what are the three or five things that must happen this month? We're like, hey, we're going to go by this month, this much for sure. So we're going to probably need this amount of people. It's going to cost us much for training time. It's going to cost us much to get them on board and this much in salary. And how many can we hire to fit this need? And so we were very prudent and practical. Terry was very monetary minded. And so that's something I never had to worry about. Now I'm in a position where I need guidance from those that are my betters because I've learned all the tricks to scaling, I've got my mindset dialed in, and I could grow like crazy. But what's smart? What's wise? And so we continue applying the level 10 meetings and the quarterlies here in our own business. And applying what we can as we're moving forward while I intensely seek out some of those answers. So in general, I'm a little more conservative. I don't like to get too far over my skis, but I want to grow in momentum. And just by sticking with the level tens in a startup, there's so much muck to sort out. You know, we've only been open since June, May. We went pro in May. So we've been doing it for 10 years and we went pro in May. And I'd say falling back on the systems until my skills and knowledge come up to a place is also what I would advise because a lot of new people, new founders need to focus so much on their mindset and their goal setting that maybe phase two from there is going to be the finances. So for better or for worse, I don't have the perfect answer to your question, but that's the Yeah, and you're a lot like me. I'm sort of a rigid structure guy. Sometimes my family hates it, but it works in the office. So my question to you is, as entrepreneurs, we all have to have some level of creativity, especially early on when guerrilla marketing and bootstrapping stuff. How do you reconcile the rigid structure of EOS with the need Yeah, the beauty of the structure is it provides all the blooming the visionary needs for creativity. And what's so bonkers about visionary is they hate words like budget, they hate words like structure, because they think it constricts them. And what what had happened, like my wife is a full on visionary through and through. Okay, so we have a beautiful partnership. By me providing the structure for her to fall back on, her brain's allowed to run as wild as it possibly needs to. She gets to be as creative as she possibly wants to be. Because we know we have something to fall on that we're not going to crumble it because of her vision. And so I love the creativity in it. Like when you're IDSing issues, you have to get creative. You must tap into somebody's mind that's going to creatively bring up a solution to a situation. Just because the structure puts us in a room where we're dealing with issues in a very and structured way doesn't mean the solutions don't call So the structure creates more opportunity for creativity for Yeah, and the creative ones actually get to see their creativity come to life because what happens in a normal business without the structure is you're really, really creative and it's all, it's raw, raw and it's great and we're having this meeting and it was so great and nobody owns it and nobody moves it through to completion and nothing gets done on it and that creative solution goes to die in the dustbin of creative solutions No execution, no implementation. Heard. Solid copy. This next segment's about purpose, heart, and legacy. In this question, I want to talk about tactical empathy and hospitality. Your approach includes tactical empathy. What does that mean to you and how does it separate your strategic advice from Tactical empathy, I mean, this is all a Chris Voss thing, right? This has never split the difference. This is a book I studied for many years, and it tremendously changed how I approach business, and interviews, and hiring, and quarterlies, and everything. So tactical empathy, really, the ultimate goal of tactical empathy is by the time I'm done sitting and talking with you, you're gonna look at me and you're gonna say, you get me completely. You totally understand every point I'm making. You understand every emotion that is attached to those points. And we've just built trust because of it. And so strategically for us right now, we're deploying tactical empathy across like customer service. We have short term rentals, we have midterm rentals. Things happen all the time. And when we approach it with some of the tools that tactical empathy employs, like I love the accusation on it. Hey, you're going to think I'm an idiot for bringing this up. I'm so sorry to disturb you. You're probably going to think that I don't know what I'm doing, but dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. What you've just done is you're taking a potential argumentative adversarial defensive situation You've fallen on your own sword, you've brought daylight to the mold, and all of a sudden you've created an ally. I mean, we just did this. We were signing some leases in Spokane. My wife and I were going back and forth with this amazing leasing agent, and she sent us over a lease and it didn't have all the terms we'd agreed to. And my wife's like, oh gosh, it's not in here. What have we done? And I'm like, okay, just let's craft a message to her. Hey, leasing agent, I feel like a dingbat. I read the lease. I feel like I'm missing something. Can you help clarify? I feel so silly asking you. Ally, instantly, she comes back, evaluates the entire thing. She's like, no, you're totally right. Let's take care of this. And those few tools, I mean, if you do nothing else in your career, deploying tactical empathy tools that are provided, it's going to change everything. As humans on a basal level, we just want to be heard and understood. And everybody is that way. You deploy tools to do that. And Yeah. I, I feel like it's in line with like that, that, you know, extreme ownership that Jacko talks about where it's just like, get out ahead of it. You know, no ego, like, listen, I might not, maybe I'm crazy. I'm missing something here. Right. Or, Hey, listen, things didn't go well, you know, for a project doesn't go well or a client's unhappy, you know, it's always on me to take full responsibility in my office for my team, what could I have done better, right? And always approaching that disarms the argument, you know, everyone else is at ease and we can really get to the crux of what actually happened. It kind of goes back to that relentless ruse cause of like, let's not focus on who's wrong or right. Let's just be humans about this and admit like where we could have done better and let's do better. Right? So I like, I like that tactical empathy. I got to do a little bit more research on that. Cause this is the first time I've heard of it, but I feel like I use that strategy without even knowing. And it works, it works really well. And it's in once, once you realize like that, becomes an effective way to deal with people. It just becomes more authentic and genuine over time. And the results are there. So it's like, it just becomes second nature. So I really like that Yeah. And, you know, I had a question, you already answered it about like, how do you implement it with, you know, short-term rental. So I appreciate you having the foresight to answer that question. What was the biggest challenge in scaling a business built on Oh, what's crazy is the biggest challenge is just believing we can do it. Okay, so that was that was step one, right? And then we went from three units to we're gonna grab 19 in the next two weeks, we're signed for all three to like 17 in the last five and a half months. And the challenge for a personalized experience, because we know that all we have to do is compete with the top 5% of the market. I don't care about the 95% of Airbnbs that are out there, short-term rentals, mid-term rentals. I don't care. I'm just going to do with the top 5%. And that comes with providing an experience where when they walk into our units, they say, oh my gosh, I never want to leave. That comes with the communications as well, but how does that, how does that hit right and so now we got, we got auto messages that are going out, our EA handle certain certain situations there's AI being trained on how we're handling those situations so she has augmentation and responding to multiple messages throughout the day. And I was just listening to something this morning that was talking about how Chick-fil-A, their throughput is the experience of the person where McDonald's throughput is the sale. And I think we've adopted a very human approach as well. It's like, we're travelers, how do we want to be treated? When something goes wrong, what do we expect? And then you couch all those in some of these tools. Let's say, for example, you have a very irate customer. And they say the thing, and you literally just repeat exactly back what they said. Okay, so you're experiencing this, and then you can empathize, or you can just say, it sounds like that's very frustrating. How would you suggest we solve this? And you sort of recruit that person to your cause. And so what we're finding is, when you have a space that people are obsessed with, all of a sudden, that eliminates a lot of the friction. And then we're trying to scale it in a way that allows us to do it four units at a time, five units at a time, which we're dialing in. And then you have the customer service side. That is part of the experience that you're talking about that. I need people to walk away going. I felt like that was a friend that just took care of me and molding all of those together within the short timeframe that we've done. It is only because of all the years of experience and failure and, you know, falling forward. So, uh, it's been pretty cool. Um, I heard you mention what I call validation, where you you get out ahead and you repeat what that person's concern is and you get out ahead of it and you state it. And I find that to be highly effective in dealing with difficult situations because oftentimes people just want to feel like they're understood and heard. And validation is such a powerful tool to say out loud, hey, listen, you know, if this is how I was treated, I'd be unhappy too. However, like that wasn't the intent. Let's talk about what really happened. So I think validating someone's feelings is really important. It helps you move past the emotional thing and really work on how to move forward. So I liked your approach on that. That's really, really effective. I've seen in my own life. There's a great little tool in there that, you know, to adopt and like there, there are like four or five books that are everything to me. Like I don't read a hundred books. I find the five and I start to perfect those. And so like if you go to at scale dot with dot Steven and follow me and just message me books, whoever's listening, I'll just send you the five. You can probably find them, but they're the most impactful for me in the tactical empathy side of things. If you do, it seems like it sounds like it feels like, as opposed to you're grumpy, you're angry. When you go, it seems like you're frustrated. They can go, I'm not frustrated. You go, great. It just seems that way. And it opens, it keeps everything so open in the conversation. When you like, oh my gosh, with my wife, you're like, you know her so well. So you're like, you're grumpy. Oh yeah, that's a good start. It's better to see, like, it seems like you're off today. It just, it blossoms a conversation because it protects that person's sense of self and okayness. And at the same time, it invites conversation while also being, like you said, heard. So that it seems like it sounds like it feels like that was the first tool I adopted and highly Yeah, that's great. No, even if it's true, no one likes to feel like they're being called out. So it's easier just to say, Hey, look, this is my, this has been, this is my experience. This is what I'm seeing. I'm not accusing you, but you know, it just seems like that. Let's, let's, let's unpack that a little bit. So yeah, really good strategy. Um, What's the single most important system you and your wife have implemented in your STR business? I love this question. That protects your family time and Okay, this came from Buy Back Your Time, so get ready to get all Dan Martell. The single most effective path that we took was a time and energy audit, identifying which were high and low dollar and high and low energy, filtering those into the drip matrix, things that light us up and bring us money, that light us up and advance us. And then those parts that don't light us up to bring us money, don't light us up and don't advance us. When I got to slot those things in and I started adopting the mantra from Dan, build a life you don't need a vacation from, it just became the gold standard for our lives. And so leaving corporate and being home allowed me to sort of rocket fuel into that. Now, the trick to that was an EA. because Nicole and I have built a few businesses. We built a Coeur d'Alene photo bus, which is a 1979 Volkswagen bus. We turned it into a photo booth. We reconditioned a couple of old 1959 trailers. We built that thing up and we ended up selling that business because what we always do as a couple, is we get immersed in the admin, in the daily grind. Our kids are dragged all over the earth. They do not get to spend time with us. They need to be quiet. They need to stay over there. And it's not investing in the family at all, even though we're building something. We lie to ourselves. They get to watch us build. Now, when we put the EA in place and took all the admin away, it gave us space to breathe and either invest in our family intentionally or invest in the business intentionally with what we do best. So I Yeah, I. I've been talking about it and I've been trying to find a better way to sell some of my clients on that. And I'm working on that because it is such a game changer for just being an entrepreneur, being a business owner and being happy. As soon as you have that EA take the emails off your plate, the scheduling, the calendar off your plate, the phone calls off your plate, It's a game changer. And, uh, I think that is a single. most impactful thing you can do right now, right? Cause they're affordable and you can replace, you can pay for them by doing things that make more money, having more So, um, It sounds expensive too, but there's math that you can use to find out what you can afford. And people always get hung up and they're like, well, I can only afford $9 an hour. I'm like, that's 40 hours a week. What about 20 hours a week? That's $18 an hour. What about 10 hours a week? So you can compound that. Like, there's really no excuse to some of this stuff. Just think about it creatively. And once you get an EA, you're never going back. Like, I get it when Dan talks about he'll do anything to keep Ann around. Like, it's his wife, and then it's Ann. And it's the same Amen to that. So you said you guys walk through the time audit and the drip matrix. I have to imagine you guys had If you had done it separately, I would imagine your drip matrix and what makes you sparkle or whatever, it was different. Did you guys have, did you guys approach it separately and then compare notes? How did you guys walk through I definitely let out on it. I did the journaling and the tracking and the dropping into the drip matrix. And then I think a skill of an integrator is I can take it to the visionary and go, Hey, Here's what I have distilled out of this. What lights you up? And then we have a conversation about it. And she can pinpoint and identify. And then it becomes my goal to free up time for her to sit in that level of genius. So again, that's an integrator's role. But ultimately, like Jocko talks about too, there are no bad teams, there's only bad leaders. Gosh, that one punched me in the throat when I first heard it. And it wasn't very long ago that I read that book. But ultimately, my wife and I are in this together, but I'm responsible for this business. I think she thinks the same way that we're in together, but she's responsible for the business. And there's tremendous power in that. So when it came to doing all of the drip matrix and everything, I was able to walk her into sort of slotting in that stuff without the grind of the paperwork. Plus, I'm pretty aware of her schedule and everything she's doing. Oh man, when that lady sits in her genius, she could grow us to 50, just like that. She's phenomenal. That's the whole point, right? When something makes you shine, when you're doing what you love, you just start glowing and you're just on a totally different level. Uh, that, that's a, that's a great approach. And I, I gave Paul a hard time on the last episode about working with his, with his spouse and the challenges with that. So I am curious, you know, I want to get into faith, fitness, and clarity. You're obsessed with creating clarity. What systems or principles do you rely on personally to maintain clarity in your faith and fitness, the areas that really fuel your leadership? Oh man, you know, it's not something that everybody has access to, but my grandpa on my dad's side decided he was going to live his life for God. And so that entire family, uncles down, have that going. My grandpa on the other side made that same decision. And so I'm living in the legacy that allows me to reach out to my dad for both of those things pretty much all the time. And he'll give me perspective. He and I have a relationship where He can call and he'll start telling me something and I can say, I don't like this line of thought. It's not interesting to me. And he goes, great, where do we go to next? Like we're that open and transparent with each other. So it's kind of like a, not a great answer for everybody, but if you do have your dad around and you can, and you can reach out, it's an amazing spot because he gives me so much. As far as systems for the family, you know, it's like, I've just baked them in. It's almost like you can't even describe it anymore. Cause you just get up, you do the thing, you work out, you move along. Um, so that's a big thing. And then, and then homeschool, which allows us to have, have touch points with our girls for lessons throughout the day. Um, whatever that may be faith-based or, or talking to them about the country or politics or whatever else just allows us to, to be into those high level touch points with them. Um, so that's been something that is not perfect yet. We're, we're implementing time blocking, um, which is helping a ton. Uh, I'm no, I'm no expert at it, but. The more we time block, the better things get, more gets done, actually, the better quality of life we have with family time. So I would say time blocking is definitely part of the system. And then having a year on everything so that I don't have to think about it and we can put all the energy back into the family, back into the fitness. Man, I'm a huge believer that fitness is the primary driver. If you're somebody who's sitting on the couch and don't know how to start business, you don't know how to communicate, like You go in the gym and you battle with yourself. You teach yourself that you can do it over and over and over and over. And you get those results and you start to buy it. You start to build this muscle of belief in yourself, plus real muscles. It starts to translate everywhere. You know it. I know it. All the guys in the Power 10 group, we all know it. We live by it. And that's why I always start with people. that are struggling in general across the entire board. It's like you have to at least start with fitness because you don't need a bunch of knowledge to get in there and kick your own button and prove to yourself you're Yeah, it requires literally no skill. It's just you, mano y mano, respect yourself enough to take care of your body, your temple that God gave you, right? And consistency always wins. Consistency and discipline always wins. You can either consistently sit on your ass and consistently get worse, or you consistently get up and challenge yourself and get better. It does not require any special skill Uh, Um, you're, you're building muscle either way, either building the muscle that you can sit on the couch, even after you feel like garbage, you know, you should get up and you have this really strong muscle that says you're fine. Sit down. You have to change that muscle. That's. Workout is a sneaky gateway to success because it's not about the physical fitness that comes, although that is tremendous. It is about the muscle built in the morning when you say, I don't want to do this. And you strengthen that muscle a little bit more by rolling out of bed and put your shoes on. It's the secret sauce. I don't know how many levels below I am from David, but it's true, right? Like the more you do the tough things, it's always still gonna be tough, but it does get easier. And it's your instincts to do something kick in a lot easier the more you do them. So yeah, you're right. You're either building the muscle to continue to do less. And quite honestly, I always tell people, you know, a good physique and looking good is, you know, only one aspect of, you know, working out and taking care of yourself and eating right. For me, it's always been the mental acuity. It's always been the mental toughness and the emotional reward of feeling better. You just feel better by working out and eating right. So we could go on this forever. I swear to God, we could talk about this for the next two hours, but I wanna move on to this last one right here. What is one final piece of tough, actionable advice? Actually, no, I want to skip that one. I want to know this one first, actually. What's the most powerful routine you advise busy executives to Protect the pillars. If I'm going executive route, I believe that's the quarterly meetings. with an annual cadence. So every quarter you get together, every year you do something a little bit bigger. And the reason I say that is because if you're talking pillars, pillars, to me, I come into mind of core values, core purpose. Why does this business exist? What are we here for? What is the way, how do we do things here? And quarterlies allow for a revisit and a thorough beating up of those things. in a way that you have to then say, are we living this? Are we not living this? Is this real? Is this not real? And so for an executive, I'd love to give you something daily, but just to address the specific pillars, to revisit every 90 days allows you to stay agile as a company and honest with yourself as a company. And I think leaders really need that to protect. Unfortunately, visionaries get very bored with the routine of quarterlies. Do it anyway. You still train your legs and your back and your shoulders, your arms every week. It could be boring. You do it anyway. And I, and I, and I would encourage those visionary types to feel restricted by routine to buckle down for that one routine, at least, at least show up. and make sure your business is thrumming along in the cultural values that Yeah. That's such good advice. Don't forget why you started it. Right. Don't forget why we're here. That's such good advice. Um, we're, we're wrapping things up here now. I just want to recap, uh, some key takeaways, you know, the critical role of integrator mindset, you know, Steven said it really well, you know, it's, it's about moving things along. It's about keeping things in order. It's about, you know, If you have some structure, you don't have to lose the creativity. As a matter of fact, it creates more opportunity, more room for creativity when you have that integrator mindset. And then the courage to learn from failure. I think Courage is such an underrated concept to just go do it and fail and fail often. I know when I was in my entrepreneurship classes at SU, that was the tagline is fail early, fail often. Have the courage to do it. Have the courage to look like an idiot in front of everybody. Because if you do it over and over, you learn from it and you help, you know, be where you need to be later in life. It is a marathon. It is not a sprint. And then the power of blending strategy with heart, tactical empathy to achieve sustainable purpose of growth. It's really about how you deal with people and respecting people and just understanding human nature a little bit better. And that can go a really long way in building the culture and the fabric of who your company is and having it to have more sustainable growth there. Steve, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate your time. I do want to remind our listeners that you are available to follow on Instagram. It's scale.with.steven. That's gonna be in the show notes as well. And then also, if you're interested in the mid and short term rentals, havenbydesignstage.com, that's also gonna be in there. Steve, is there anything else that we Just a parting story a little bit. Picture two ladders up against the wall. One with janky, unstraightened rungs that go all the way to the top and one with perfectly aligned parallel rungs that only go too high. The purpose of the story is to get over the wall. It might not look perfect and you're not gonna come up with the perfect preemptive strategy. Get it started, build the ladder all janky, okay? Don't try to do it perfect. Please just take action. Whichever way, what's calling you, just take the action, let it be I love it. Just go, just leap. That's awesome, Steve. Thank you so much for having you. Everyone, thank you for listening to The Veitchy Code. Join us next time as we continue to explore the journey of purpose-driven leaders. Until then, out. Thanks for tuning in to The Veitchy Code, where the underdogs rise and the numbers finally make sense. If today's story hit home, share it. And remember, faith fuels