Simple KPIs, Clearer Accountability

Kyle Hunt: What if your website sent you 19 real remodeling opportunities every single month? That's exactly what's happening for this month's sponsored remodeler story, Alex Weeks, owner of Northbuilt Construction in Denver, Colorado. He's been working with CGM since 2024 and says this in his review. Ultimately, the lead flow that we've seen come our way is a huge testament to the SEO efforts. You guys, CGM. What if your website sent you 19 real remodeling opportunities every single month? That's exactly what's happening for this month's sponsored remodeler story, Alex Weeks, owner of Northbuilt Construction in Denver, Colorado. He's been working with CGM since 2024 and says this in his review. Ultimately, the lead flow that we've seen come our way is a huge testament to the SEO efforts. You guys, CGM. just have everything from a foundational perspective in place properly. In fact, Alex's website now generates an average of 19.1 remodeling leads per month, and 76 % of those leads are marked as high quality opportunities by Alex and his team. If you're curious about these results, want more proof, or want to hear some more stories from remodelers like yourself, head on over to ContractorGrowthNetwork.com. just have everything from a foundational perspective in place properly. In fact, Alex's website now generates an average of 19.1 remodeling leads per month, and 76 % of those leads are marked as high quality opportunities by Alex and his team. If you're curious about these results, want more proof, or want to hear some more stories from remodelers like yourself, head on over to ContractorGrowthNetwork.com. Folks, welcome to the Remodelers on the Rise Show. Not episode 100, not episode 200, not episode 300. It is episode number 376. I asked my producer slash team member, Kassi Kassi, what number is this? Because we don't necessarily put it in the title. ⁓ And she did a little dig in and she goes, wow. slash results where CGN is always publishing case studies with real statistics of their clients websites. That's contractorgrowthnetwork.com slash results. slash results where CGN is always publishing case studies with real statistics of their clients websites. That's contractorgrowthnetwork.com slash results. We actually have three or four already in the hopper that's going to be going in the coming weeks. So we determined that this is going to be number 376. I have two time, two time. There's one other of that 376 episodes that Sean Billings with Credible Construction, owner and founder of Credible Construction has been on before. This is number two for him. And when I mentioned this is episode 376, Sean, what did you say? as the kids are saying what?

Shawn Billings: Six seven backwards.

Kyle Hunt: Six seven backwards, but here in March 2026, Sean, you have not gotten the memo. Turns out the board of teenagers. Yes, there is an actual board of teenagers. They congregated in January and the leaders of the teenagers said we're done. We're done with the six seven thing. Grandma was doing it at Christmas. Aunt was doing it at Thanksgiving. The fact that they're joking about it. We've got to be done and we've got to move on to something new. Have you found out what they're moved on to yet?

Shawn Billings: I haven't, I think it's a smart move though.

Kyle Hunt: I'm seeing this thing where they're doing this thing with their index finger and thumb. I've been seeing teenagers do that lately. I don't really know what it means.

Shawn Billings: Okay. I haven't seen that. I've seen a lot of this, which is like a heart, like instead of this thing, you get in a little heart going on.

Kyle Hunt: Yeah, because their old heart, you had to use both hands to make a heart. Ooh, if you're watching the video recording that, even threw a heart. But the problem for the teenagers and Sean, what Sean did was he crossed his thumb and his index finger on one hand into what kind of sort of looks like a heart. I'm guessing the teenagers decided that because if you are able to do that with one hand, you can still be scrolling and doom scrolling with the other.

Shawn Billings: Right, or you can throw up two hearts instead of one. guess an easy way.

Kyle Hunt: Double the love, double the love. ⁓ Excellent, excellent. So now you know some of the backstory, folks. ⁓ Episode 376, also reminds us that, it reminds me anyway when I think about that, I was like, holy cow, that's a lot of episodes. And it reminds us of this truth of life and business, which is, it's the consistency of sometimes boring, ⁓ week in, week out consistency. that produces results. It's that way with our health. It's that way with exercise. It's that way with what we eat. And frankly, it's that way with so much of the business side of things. Sean, the reason that you are in business and building a nice business and have been building a steady business and a profitable business, the reason that you have good retention of your team members, it's not some magic bullet. It's a combination of consistency in doing the little things. So. Let that be a reminder. All of a sudden you look up and you've been consistent. You're like 376 episodes. What in the world could we possibly still have to say? Yet here we are. Sean, could you introduce yourself before I dig into the topic we're gonna dig into today? Or you can riff off anything I've said so far.

Shawn Billings: Yeah, absolutely. No, you've done a wonderful job. ⁓ So again, I'm Sean Billings with Credible Construction. I started my business in 2006 and we are in the seacoast region of New Hampshire and we do kitchen and bath remodeling with a focus on a stress-free process for the customer ⁓ and being able to get in and out of people's homes as quickly as possible so that everyone's happy in the end.

Kyle Hunt: Hmm. How's the stress free process for the business owner going?

Shawn Billings: ⁓ that's not ever. I don't know if that's a thing. ⁓ But hopefully one day it be.

Kyle Hunt: ⁓ Yeah, I mean, we all, think we all have, we all have some type of stress that we're going to carry. We even at the end of our level 10 meetings, we do a, what's your work stress level, one to 10, 10 being the highest, one being the lowest, and what's your personal stress level. We added that into kind of our weekly meeting at Ramallah's on the rise, because it makes me stop and think about it for myself. And it's also helpful even on my my managing of my team and leading my team to kind of see where they're at. And it's interesting when you do a week in and week out, you can kind of see the trends in one way or another. And I think we've determined that we're never going to say one or two. Sometimes we're never even gonna say three. Like there's this natural stress level, but I will also inject this. ⁓ In our nervous system, we've got our ventral part of our nervous system. It's cool, calm, collected, content, kind of calm. We've got our fight or flight, which is one we're kind of worked up and anxious and stressed, et cetera. And then we have our dorsal, which is kind of shut down mode. And I learned this actually at the Remodel Your Marriage, Life and Business Conference. We had a guest speaker in named Dr. Joshua Straub and he was teaching on it. And during the part that he got to the fight or flight, my wife took her little pointy elbow and elbowed me. And she's like, that's you. You live in that fight or flight, dude. And for whatever reason, it hit me, I mean, she literally hit me, but it hit me in a different way of going, hmm, I do tend to live in that. And in the weeks that have followed, I've been much more aware of when I'm kind of making a mountain out of a molehill, when I am ⁓ increasing the stress level, when it really doesn't need to. So while we're always gonna have some level of stress, I do think that we, ⁓

Shawn Billings: Right.

Kyle Hunt: are able to be more aware of it and can work towards containing it. ⁓

Shawn Billings: Right. And would we be business owners if we didn't have a tendency to move in that direction? I feel like I'd go work for somebody else if I just wanted to stay in a comfortable mode. Right?

Kyle Hunt: That is true. That is true. So ⁓ what Sean and I were going to dig into, he had responded to our, ⁓ posts that we made in remodelers community. If you go to remodelerscommunity.com, you can find it, our Facebook group where we just said, Hey, we'd love to do kind of some coaching call style podcasts. And the topic we have today is related to kind of digging into how do we build a little bit more accountability into our leadership and into our team. you know, how do we get some KPIs in there so that your team that you have, you're not necessarily going, hey, what's the status of this? Hey, how is this going? We have some rhythm and routine to accountability and KPIs, and we're gonna kind of dive into that. Before I do that, maybe share a little bit about your team members. ⁓ We had done some work together a few years back and I'm going, wow. Look at these names that I see on your org chart. There's a lot of similar names or the same people. So, to give a little preview of your org chart and who you have and what they do.

Shawn Billings: Yeah, absolutely. ⁓ So we have Jen who is our HR specialist, also office manager. ⁓ She's kind of my gatekeeper of time. You know, she protects me first and make sure that I have time to do what I need. ⁓ That's our main goal. ⁓ And then we have Nick, who is our project manager, running the projects, doing the scheduling. ⁓ He's been with me. I think Jen's been with me for five years and Nick's been with me off and on 10 years, but on for six. ⁓ And we have our new project coordinator, Andrea. She's been with us for two months. ⁓ She's a perfect fit to the system. She's really just, you know, in the first three months, she's not supposed to know anything yet, but she's already picking up on stuff and trying to help us build a system of

Kyle Hunt: It's exciting.

Shawn Billings: of tracking when and how we talk to customers and where we're supposed to. And ⁓ then we have Scott, who is our lead carpenter. He's been with me the longest. think we're going on 10 or 11 years now. ⁓ And then ⁓ we have a younger guy, Mitchell, who is training to be a lead carpenter. ⁓ And we have him out on some jobs on his own. And he's been with us for a couple of years now. ⁓ Great guy, shows up every day. works hard and then we have a part-time firefighter, Jonathan, as well. And one more person, not in our team, in our office every day, but a very important part of our team is Christine from Tradition Accounting, who is our accountant and the person that basically watches everything on the backside, makes sure nothing slips through. Yeah.

Kyle Hunt: Excellent. Okay, Go ahead, please. All the bookkeeping, all the financial reporting. Good. That hire of Andrea as a project coordinator, ⁓ that's got to be pretty exciting of going, okay, if we are able to get ⁓ design decisions done, make sure all the selections are done better, enhance the client experience, that's going to help with that goal of stress-free. But I'm imagining that she's going to enable you guys to do more and more of the planning and details upfront.

Shawn Billings: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hunt: before kind of the project gets going. Is that a big part of her role or is it also even during the project?

Shawn Billings: ⁓ no, it's going to be before during the project pretty much once, once it's handed off and started by the project manager, she's going to do some check-in with the customer. So part of her job is customer success manager, basically where just we tell the customer we're to do X, Y, Z. And she makes sure we're following through and just check in, make sure the customer is still happy. but all the upfront work. That's going to be her main goal from our first site visit right through, you know, do you have the estimate in hand? What are the decisions and pushing and forcing timelines to happen where that's kind of one of our biggest ⁓ bottlenecks right now is projects just sit in project development because customers don't make decisions and I don't have time to follow up. Someone else doesn't have time.

Kyle Hunt: Mm-hmm. Yes, we'll blame the client a little bit, but I'm going to blame them 30 % and I'm going to blame us 70 % of, how could we be managing the design development process better? Even what you just said there, I don't have the time to kind of follow up. In walks Andrea where all of a sudden the problem that we've had of, clients are dragging their feet on this. We lead them through that a little bit stronger. Hopefully that bottleneck kind of evaporates.

Shawn Billings: Yes. Yeah. And she's already started doing that, which you've, we've set dates of like, Hey, we want decisions by this date. they customers going to do it all the time? No. But we also now have a repercussion like, Hey, we're going to move somebody who did make decisions up now. ⁓

Kyle Hunt: Good. That's huge. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're elegant. not being we're not going to be pushy in that, but we're elegantly going to lead them. And for everybody listening to this, we we need to be a little bit less kid gloves when it comes to walking our clients through design and project development. Lead it, lead it. They are happy to follow it. Get very clear with the selections. Get very clear with with goals related to the deadlines for it. Be realistic with it. but also keep that end in mind of, if we're going to start this project on this date, working back from there, we wanna have everything finalized by this date so that we have time to order it, which means that our task, kind of our first couple of dominoes who wanna knock over and get figured out is this and this. Do you think we could complete that by fill in the blank? So little of that is going on and that can make a big difference. Before we dive into kind of the KPIs and moving towards that, which for those listening, stands for Key Performance Indicators. We'll talk about that a little bit more. I want to ask, is your weekly cadence at Credible Construction when it comes to your team meetings? What do you already have in place for your team meetings?

Shawn Billings: ⁓ Weekly, we meet once with everybody in the office and those meetings are to, they're more structured in more of a. where we're building some systems. So everyone has a system they're working on. So each week we meet and discuss where are you in that process? For instance, Andrea is just working on when are the customer touches or what are the customer touches and then when are they happening in the process? And it's just an outline. Then we'll dig in deeper. ⁓ Jen is working on a ⁓ project closeout form where we're tracking certain things at the closeout, but she's responsible for making sure it's getting done and that it's working properly. And we've had to make revisions because the field guys want their own sheet. So she's working on that. That's our weekly meeting. ⁓

Kyle Hunt: Almost like ⁓ everybody's got, if they use EOS term, like a quarterly rock, if you will, or like this is the main on the business thing, the main system improvement thing. And let's meet weekly to check in if we're on pace for it, if anybody's stuck on it to make sure it's moving forward. Okay, cool. Cool.

Shawn Billings: Correct. ⁓ And then every other week we do a full team meeting and that's to, you know, it's got a different purpose every week. I would say the meeting thing is one thing that we haven't, we haven't fully, like there isn't daily huddles. isn't, you know, if you're talking the lean systems and having a daily huddle every morning, we need to be better about doing that stuff. ⁓ and pushing that issue.

Kyle Hunt: And then what about on your production side with Nick? Do you guys have any kind of production specific meeting?

Shawn Billings: Not really, no. ⁓

Kyle Hunt: Okay. Why not? Like tell me like legit why not?

Shawn Billings: I don't know if I have the answer to that question. think it's everything is moving quickly. I think that's part of what Andrea coming in to fix is going to solve because they do talk about it. like today we had a handoff meeting that we had to move tomorrow, but with the lead carpenter and Nick and it's to discuss the project that we're starting next week. So we're starting that process of,

Kyle Hunt: Mm-hmm.

Shawn Billings: making sure that we're doing these handoff meetings. just haven't in the past. Mainly because of not having that project coordinator to make sure we're staying on track and doing what we're supposed to do.

Kyle Hunt: Yeah, yeah. And as you were going through your org chart, I jumped at that one. I'm like, oh, that's an exciting position. There's so many things that you've been wanting to do, be more proactive with, better follow-up, better client experience, that all of a sudden I can see that coming off your shoulders. And with that position rocking, it makes Nick's job in the production side easier. just, there's so much good ripple effect there. Yeah.

Shawn Billings: A hundred percent. And it's the first real hire that I mean, in our, we're terrible at hiring people, right? I don't know how to do it. I've never done it before, but I came up with a system in chat GBG and we, I ran, you know, a couple of interviews through it and I said, tell me how I'm doing. And it said, you're talking too much. You're terrible. ⁓ this is how we need to structure it. And Andrea was our final interview. And I mean, Not only did she kill it, but like we did our first real good interview and she's our first hire that I would say strategically made the most sense that we did it legit the right way.

Kyle Hunt: Yeah. Yeah. I have a pet peeve lately and I just jump on it every time I hear it. You said, we're terrible at hiring. anytime I hear like an absolute like that, especially in a negative way, I'm like, all right, mean, maybe that's true. At the same time, we have notoriously been bad at hiring. We've been lackadaisical. We've been shoot from the hip. I'm walking into it, I'm not 5P, proper preparation prevents poor performance. ⁓ even got a mug that says it, folks, look at that. And I'm going into it haphazardly and the results show. And you know what, we're getting better at it. I'm actually using like a chat GPT, thinking through it, learning some new strategies. ⁓ that's a great question. ⁓ I need to shut up and get them talking more. I need to ask more follow-up questions. So it's something you struggle with and we're getting better at it. You also said you haven't really hired people. In the past, I think one of the amazing things that you have is the long, now you may have just had relationships and these naturally happen, but you have team members that have been with you for years and years. So do not under credit yourself with your ability to lead them, to provide them good employment and a enjoyable place to work. There's a reason that you've got some nice longevity here. All right, good. All right. The negative, I just jump all over that absolute, especially the absolute negative. No, no, no, no, that's not how we're rolling.

Shawn Billings: Anyway, Yeah, we were terrible at it. We are now better than average. ⁓

Kyle Hunt: That's what we're talking about. Yes, reframe it a little bit. That's fine. One of the things you wrote was most accountability still happens through conversations rather than visible scorecards. And you mentioned like that's kind of got us here and we're doing okay, but it's probably going forward as we continue to grow, capping growth a little bit. Even the idea of you have a whole nother person in Andrea that has her fingers in the pot now. which means, okay, I had a conversation with Andrea and she relayed that the conversation her and Nick had, but then Jen also wanted to mention this, like you add another person to it and communication that is only accountability that's only happening through conversations and you proactively asking questions gets exhausting and it breaks down quite quickly when you are carrying the weight of any and all checking in accountability, it turns into easily micromanaging. ⁓ and just isn't good overall. So let's focus in specifically on Nick as a project manager. And I just want to think through what would be a little bit of a couple things on a scorecard or what would be a couple key performance indicators, KPIs, that would work in his role. And when we think of KPI, we think, OK, if we're doing these handful of things, the end result that we're going for is going to be achieved. We can control these KPIs and if we pick the right ones and we're achieving them consistently, the end result we're going for will happen. For example, in the production side, the end result of a stress-free remodel for the client that is delivered ⁓ on time and on budget will happen if we do the following. What comes to your mind of a couple things that might be good candidates for a KPI? for Nick as the project manager.

Shawn Billings: Definitely scheduling. How to do it, that's kind of the question. How to daily or weekly or monthly even just make sure everything is updated on it, ⁓ that it's clear to everyone who's using it, this is what I'm doing this day or where I'm going, and that trades have been secured.

Kyle Hunt: Mm-hmm.

Shawn Billings: you know, in the proper amount of time. that's one big KPI. need to make sure that we've set the job up. So, you know, we didn't ask the plumber yesterday to come today because he's going to say he's busy. Did we do it in enough time? And we had them lined up properly on the right day. So everything could flow. That's a big one. Another big one is, ⁓ you know, we have

Kyle Hunt: Yes.

Shawn Billings: In-house guys. So did they clock in properly each day? Did they clock into the correct item on job costs properly at the end of the job? ⁓

Kyle Hunt: Mm-hmm. Okay, so pause there. So going back to the scheduling one, what I have found related to a project manager and their KPIs, scheduling absolutely is one of the KPIs. What happens so often, you just talked about it of, okay, we got a plumber, all of a sudden now we need him there tomorrow. We had a change in the schedule, I need to alert so-and-so so that they know we're gonna want them to start a day or two later. I've got in-house team members and if I'm not paying attention to the schedule, I'm scrambling last minute. What I'm hearing there is chaos, confusion, stress, last minute things, et cetera. Fact, you set a schedule, you get it in place by the time you send it or hit print on it or say, all right, I got the schedule done. Guess what? It has already almost changed on you. And that's just the reality of it. Now, some people look at it go, well, that's why I don't even like scheduling.

Shawn Billings: 100%.

Kyle Hunt: It's just a constant thing we've got to evaluate. We've always got to be adjusting it. Correct. And you know what excellent project managers for remodellers do? They update a schedule on their open projects every single stinking day or worst case, every other day, because they know that their schedule, their two week look ahead impacts their trade partners, impacts their in-house team members and moving that around, impacts material needs.

Shawn Billings: Thank

Kyle Hunt: impacts the client experience. If we're not paying attention to our schedule, and we're not staying on top of it, and we go, plumber, I need you there tomorrow. Well, I can't be there tomorrow. Now that project is stuck here on Tuesday until Friday. This project just went three more days. Operation stress free remodel just got a little kinky in it. it's got, I shouldn't use that word. That was a weird word to use. Just got a little kink in it. Just got a little, it just screwed it up a little bit. It just got messed up. ⁓ You know, and all of sudden now we're adding more to it. They've got to eat out for another three days on that kitchen. All of that happens. So schedule is huge. What would a KPI that sounded like? ⁓ And let's say Nick had to report it on, ⁓ let's say Tuesday morning at 9 a.m. Every Tuesday morning at 9 a.m. Nick updates his KPI that says ⁓ each job two week look ahead completed and yes, no on each of the active jobs. If you had on Tuesday morning at nine o'clock, two week look ahead completed for each of the jobs, yes or no, that's his only two answers, yes or no, that is a KPI that if he says no on those, we know the result of that. If he says yes on those, then you from a leadership standpoint go, this is sweet. Because you've also defined what complete two week look ahead looks like. It means we have adjusted for the coming two weeks. It means we have notified our any trades of any tweaks there. We have considered any material or rental needs we have, and we have considered what that looks like for our in-house team. That yes is loaded with work involved for your PM. That would go a huge long ways, right?

Shawn Billings: Yep. It would, and it would force him to think about it before Tuesday comes to make sure he got it done.

Kyle Hunt: That's a big one. Yes, and there is no Sean saying, hey, have you done the two week look ahead for blah, blah, blah. That's done. There's no none of that. It is at nine o'clock on Tuesday. He updates in a note to you or wherever you keep your KPI. Yes, no on that. And you can go in and review it ahead of your three o'clock weekly project manager meeting, let's say on Tuesdays. So it could look something just as simple as that.

Shawn Billings: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hunt: I also kind of threw Tuesday out for a reason, ⁓ doing this on Monday. Monday is just the hustle and bustle. I've also seen people do their production meeting on Thursdays and maybe their KPI reporting could be on a Thursday. The thing I hear a lot of remodellers talk about there is Thursday's nice ⁓ because it gives us Friday to kind of get organized and make sure we're hitting the ground running on Monday. So you can kind of experiment with that a little bit. But that would be a big schedule. What do you like about that scheduling when I threw up?

Shawn Billings: Mm-hmm. love it. I think just forcing something to be happening to where, like you said, I don't have to check in. I know come Friday, I'm not going to get a call from Scott saying, Hey, what's the schedule look like? Because, you know, I'm, I've would have talked to Nick on Thursday, let's say. And because he said yes to it, can confidently go Nick.

Kyle Hunt: Mm-hmm.

Shawn Billings: updated the schedule two weeks ahead, you're all set.

Kyle Hunt: Yes. ⁓ The other thing, would you be doing that in job trend? Use use job? Okay, yeah.

Shawn Billings: That yeah, we use job trend. That's the tricky part though. I mean, right now I'm just trying to build everything. Let's build it, get it in hand first, and then let's figure out how we could do it on job trend once we get the system figured out.

Kyle Hunt: Okay. Okay. The other thing you could enhance that, again, you want to keep it simple, I would encourage you just keep it as stupid, simple as possible. The other thing you could tweak to the two week look ahead is if I have these five open jobs and I know nothing about any these jobs and I get from Nick that KPI update and it says Jones, yes, Smith, no, and again, not kind of sorta, it's either yes or no. ⁓ You could also say on the Smith job, yes, you could put in parentheses, plus two days, which means I've updated the schedule, a couple of things happened, we've added two days to the overall project schedule. That's another little tweak that could be interesting, but you gotta define exactly what is two week look ahead complete, yes, look like. It means I've reviewed that and we went over it like this and this and this has happened as a result of that. What this also does is I'm guessing if you're not having these KPIs or you're not having these meetings, Nick is probably out in the field running and gunning. a little bit more than you'd like him to be. You'd love him to be in the office a little bit more, true or false. Yeah, and if I have a KPI that I need to go through, I need to update that, it also starts to move him towards a little bit more focus on, all right, I've got to have some office time to sit down and prep for this. That would be a huge step in the right direction. Yeah.

Shawn Billings: true. 100%. Currently, we love putting out fires. So we want to get rid of that. We do. We do. But he doesn't need to be full time.

Kyle Hunt: ⁓ well, you do have a part-time firefighter on your team. Yeah. Right. don't don't know when he comes to work for us, he should get a break from the firefighting. But, that's that's and if I were in your shoes, I would absolutely be doing a Thursday afternoon, ⁓ maybe one hour, but maybe 45 minute production meeting. I would have a very clear agenda. I've already got the KPIs.

Shawn Billings: Right. He should. Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hunt: ⁓ I would ask for like a one or two sentence update of anything in particular on the existing projects. and it would just, that, that little catch all meeting would allow us to, Hey, I saw on your KPI that we had to know on this. Tell me more about that. ⁓ yeah, I just haven't had a chance to do that one. That's on my list today. I should have it done by this afternoon. Cool. Let me know that because I'm a little concerned that that might juken jive, you know, this other project, but I would, I would highly suggest also just starting a little 45 minute weekly meeting.

Shawn Billings: Thank

Kyle Hunt: That'll batch a lot of those questions and offer, give you the ability to do some accountability. What would be one ⁓ other production manager KPI that comes to your mind?

Shawn Billings: So before that, can I ask a clarifying question on the schedule? ⁓ When you say two week look ahead, let's say that's two projects right now, if I look into the next two weeks, is that also considering like a two week look ahead for projects that are starting a month out, but have you built a two week, at least starting schedule of what that project's gonna look like? Does it consider?

Kyle Hunt: Yes, please. Hmm.

Shawn Billings: Future jobs or are we just talking straight two weeks on?

Kyle Hunt: But let's, it could look a few different ways. What I would say is because scheduling is so in flux on any active project or project that's gonna be starting up soon, soonish, we should have a quite a detailed two weeks where it's really broken into detail. I think sometimes where we get overwhelmed on the scheduling, is when we try to make week three or four or five of a project super granular and detailed.

Shawn Billings: Right. think weeks to me, three weeks for it's more this. There's a lot of trades that want a three week notice, a four week notice. They're booked out tile guy. Right. So those are the ones that you focus on three, four weeks out. Have they been notified? Can we still hit that date, you know, realistically or if we have to shift it fine, as long as they're on the schedule.

Kyle Hunt: Fair. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Shawn Billings: They can move a couple days most likely. That's fine. We'll figure that out when we get there. Just focus on the things that you know you have to walk in far.

Kyle Hunt: Yes. The big, the big ones that if I don't get them on the schedule, then crap, we might be put out another month because they're going to get other things in place. I would say like, like think about in your guys's case already, like we're not managing the schedule as actively and consistently as we want. If we said we want three week look ahead, it just adds more detail and thinking through. think the two week look ahead gives good clarity. for a lot of it and yes, to your point, if there's any super key trades or details, then we do need to be aware of that. Okay, I got my two week look out on the Smith project. ⁓ Anything else kind of the following week or the following week? No, we're doing that in house. We should be good there. As a project manager, I should be thinking about it and to your point, me as your project manager, I know some of our trade partners that it's vitally important that I communicate further in advance.

Shawn Billings: Yeah.

Kyle Hunt: Yeah, absolutely. What would be one other PM one?

Shawn Billings: ⁓ time clock and daily log tracking. one thing we noticed a little while ago, which I did change. So I do have a KPI we could use to track where in job tread, we made a daily log custom field where I have things that I want the project manager to do every single daily log. Those are all noted in there. I know he's done when that list disappears.

Kyle Hunt: Mm-hmm.

Shawn Billings: And then he's checked the rest of the daily log because a lot of times I was finding he gets so much information throughout the day that the guys in the field don't think are important, but it can be as simple as the customer texted and asked a question or said something, you know, about their schedule and life. And the guy in the field doesn't think it's important to put it in the daily log for whatever reason. Well, the PM knows all this stuff. I know because I'm watch it happen, right? And that stuff wouldn't get logged in the daily logs. So now it's his job to go into the daily logs and make sure. So that is one KPI where I could just say same thing, yes or no, have you completed all the daily logs? And that's easy to go in and see, did he get rid of the list?

Kyle Hunt: Yeah. And that KP, yeah, it could get rid of them or even on like the weekly report of it, you know, ⁓ six out of seven or, four out of five days, we, we accomplished the daily logs. Three out of five days, we accomplished the daily logs. be like, right. We're you're not getting fired if you don't hit your KPIs perfectly, but I want you to honestly answer, you know, did you get the two week look ahead on these yes or no, not maybes. And when you say yes.

Shawn Billings: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hunt: that better carry some stinking weight. Like you, can confidently know that you have communicated with any trades, et cetera. And similar on the daily logs, if yes, you'll be able to see them checked off, which is good on a day-to-day basis. And then maybe there's a weekly like little summary of going, ⁓ we got our daily logs on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday? Did not do it on Thursday and Friday last week. Okay, cool. Let's track that. ⁓ Over on the project coordinator side with Andrea being a little bit more of that planning of things. One KPI that could be pretty cool is ⁓ ready for production, ready to go, whatever that looks like. Job is fully prepped and ready based on what fully prepped and ready looks like ⁓ three weeks before the start of the project. That forces us to know when the start of the project is, that forces us to know what fully prepped means. That could be an interesting KPI for her.

Shawn Billings: Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. She is starting to track now the major milestones and where we are, how long it's taken. I just built a custom ⁓ template for our view in job tread to where we can see the customer name, the, call it life cycle. How long has it been a job or our first site visit, whatever we we determined is important. What was the last

Kyle Hunt: Okay. Love it.

Shawn Billings: customer contact and then how many days since that last customer contact and then just what job status is that in? So that's something that we can all view now. Everyone can see where these projects that we're working on are. There's no great way in job tread, at least that I've figured out yet to kind of track how long it's been in each step unless I make this comprehensive thing, but at least.

Kyle Hunt: Nice. But what you just described is a great step in the right direction. Yeah. The other thing you might consider as we think about KPIs for kind of each area is, man, we need them. Like even going back to the ones we were sharing for Nick, I've got to have him buy in on this. I've got to have him agree that this is helpful. This is pushing him towards the actions that he's been wanting to take. And he also needs to see like, man, if I can knock these out, it makes my life better, it reduces the firefighting and frankly, I'm more valuable to Sean when I'm doing this. So getting the team involved on whatever KPI that you end up with for them is really important. Okay.

Shawn Billings: Yeah. I agree. I saw the daily log one that we put in. I saw a change where he really, he stepped it up and put a lot of information in there. And, you know, we just need to force the way of tracking, you know, how many did you do? Did you do them all? And, you know, was it necessary? And what did you get out of it? You know,

Kyle Hunt: Good. I to, want to touch on, I want to touch on two more, one being kind of Jen on the office admin side and then, um, one being a little bit more you on the, maybe the sales estimating type side of things. And then I just want to see, all right, Kyle, those were some good ideas. All right. I'm in the right direction, hopefully. Um, and then just kind of see what. Look, maybe a little devil's advocate on a little bit of how will this work? Um, just kind of dig into it a bit more. What would be one for office slash admin work?

Shawn Billings: Yeah. ⁓ mean, honestly right now it's the job closeout tracking form. ⁓ and did she get them completed on time and how many were completed on time, how many weren't and what was the bottleneck?

Kyle Hunt: when you think of Jen's duties. Okay. I like that. So that, that could absolutely be kind of a, for the previous week or whatever the reporting is, if that was completed. ⁓ if she's got a little bit of marketing side of things, like a KPI could be, ⁓ you know, two Google reviews per month could be something that you could easily track. Again, that's a behavior that can slip under the radar. ⁓ you know, that could be related to kind of the office admin side.

Shawn Billings: Yeah. Yeah, and another one. She does our intake calls, so that's definitely one that we're going to be tracking. How many intake calls have you done? What categories do they fall into? ⁓ I rebuilding that process because I want to filter out more of the correct client for us before it gets to me. ⁓ But I but I want her to do it in a light way that's.

Kyle Hunt: Okay.

Shawn Billings: So we can track that anyway, as far as what type of customers are calling, whether it's our ideal, perfect fit customer that understands our process and wants it versus the one that's just looking for estimates from four different contractors. And, you know, we don't want to waste our time pricing out against other people.

Kyle Hunt: Okay, do you think tracking how many of those calls and which ones were an ideal fit versus not, do you think that's a KPI or is that just more of a report to be able to look at?

Shawn Billings: I mean, that's a report to look at, but I think at the end of the day, forcing her to, um, how many went successful maybe in the process and how many did she do? You know, that, you know, she put in the correct category. Like I only want up to five of the big project vetting calls a month, let's say. Did she stick within that five or did she give me more? Did she give me different?

Kyle Hunt: Okay. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. And even some of our KPIs that we're doing at Remodeler on the Rise every week is to look at number of new leads over, new qualified leads over the past week. So some of it is just, we're kind of reporting on a few metrics, know, podcast downloads over the last week, new subscribers to remodelerscommunity.com over the last, but it helps kind of give us a little bit of a, right, are we on pace for that? You know, is there anything we need to do to kind of...

Shawn Billings: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hunt: ramp up the number of leads, anything we can do to ramp up this or that. So I like that of tracking kind of the qualified conversations that she's had. I also heard you saying, just maybe you misspoke. You said, I am currently revamping that early part of the process. And I'm wondering, is Jen also participating in that or are you taking that whole load on your shoulders?

Shawn Billings: Mm-hmm. So I started it. I have an outline. I have a direction. Our next step is to train on it together and do some phone calls and get her feedback. I did the part of starting it because I have a structure that I want to follow. ⁓ The Sandler way of selling. I don't know what that is. ⁓ It's a specific way. So I wanted to at least start the conversation with this is, this is the direction that we should take it. Let's see how that works. Let's train on it. I think training is a big thing we haven't necessarily done with anything we've done and implemented. So I want to train on it. And I want both of us to get good at it and know the process so that someone else comes in, we can teach them as well.

Kyle Hunt: Okay. Excellent. So I like what I'm hearing there. I'm just encouraging like the more collaboration and get kind of goes back to please do not put any KPIs in front of anybody and say, this is what we're doing. Right. It's more like every each, each person is agreeing. Like, no, that makes sense. That's going to help me. I needed that accountability. I need, you know, like, it's going to be a challenge for me, but no, that's good. That's the type of thing I need. If they are participating in it and brainstorming it and you're explaining why we're doing it.

Shawn Billings: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hunt: then we're going to have more success with it. And that goes for any process that we're working on. The more we can get anybody listening to this, the more you can get your team to collaborate on it, the better. So I like that kind of a point qualified initial calls. You can start tracking a little bit of your close rate from that initial phone call to sign design development agreement. You could start tracking the number of days between this more on the sales and estimating side, the number of days between, you know, your appointment and signed contract or sign design and development agreement and sign contract, know, start measuring that. That could be a cool KPI to start paying attention to.

Shawn Billings: Yeah, another one I thought of too was how long is it taking from their initial contact to us reaching out to them and making sure we're doing it within 24 hours, say.

Kyle Hunt: Yes. Yep. Yep. So that could be a great KPI of all right out of the out of the six leads that we got last week. How many of those six did we so we got the report of how many qualified how many of those did we call back within 24 hours. And frankly I would love to see five of six on there. Great. That means you're actually paying attention to that. And if I said tell me about that one we didn't there's going to be a reason behind it. What gets measured gets improved.

Shawn Billings: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kyle Hunt: The big thing is every idea we've talked about here, I think you're in alignment with, your team will probably be in alignment with. And everything we've mentioned is kind of a good start. Like a couple per area is plenty. Integrating a little bit more consistency with a meeting cadence, especially on the project management side, I think is going to go a long way. KPI plus a weekly production meeting. Ooh baby. I feel like that's totally different than what... you've been doing and will have a great result. will, it will go from, love the way you said it. Like so much of this is me verbally asking and then verbally answering. And it's gotten you to where you are, but it's already been clunky. It already wastes your time, frankly, it wastes other people's time. And you have a whole nother person involved now that's interacting with clients. We cannot do this verbally. We've got to have some good tracking. So like you were mentioning, like here's the latest and greatest. Here's the last time I contacted them. Here's this. Everybody on the team needs to be able to go in and review it. That's good. What else is coming to your mind on this topic, sir?

Shawn Billings: 100%. as far as KPIs and tracking those, ⁓ I also think it's very important for Nick, the project manager to be making some KPIs and tracking the field workers. ⁓ yeah, Scott's been a lead carpenter with me for 10 years. Doesn't mean that he doesn't have things that he needs to work on.

Kyle Hunt: Mm-hmm. ⁓ please, he's Mary Poppins. He's practically perfect in every way.

Shawn Billings: I mean, he is pretty perfect, but he's also an older guy who doesn't like technology and buying in. So, you know.

Kyle Hunt: Hang on. Be careful. Be careful throwing out that older guy thing. For some reason earlier today, I'm 40. I'm 43. Are you in your, are in your old man club in the forties? Attaboy. Attaboy. And something hit me earlier today. I think I was thinking of somebody that I know that's 50 and it doesn't hit me very often. I don't feel old at 43, but I was like, I'm not that far off from 50. And that it got my attention. was like, holy crap.

Shawn Billings: Yeah, 45.

Kyle Hunt: I'm going to be 50 someday, Lord willing. And that's not that far off. That for some reason struck me this morning. It kind of charred me.

Shawn Billings: Mm-hmm. You're only as old as you feel, right? So, if you're 40, you're be 40 for a while. Hopefully.

Kyle Hunt: Mmm, yes, amen, man. Yeah. I was, I was talking to a guy and running my mouth, ⁓ last week with, was actually another guy named Kyle. He's a remodeler and he's like, I said, how are you? He goes 42. said, I'm 43. I'm, know, I've got you. I'm no old man over here. And I said, how's your body feel? He's like, ⁓ not great. said, come on, man. I've to do some crunches. You to do some pushups. Got to do that. And he goes, Kyle, you've been sitting with that little headset and your delicate fingers typing for the last 20 years of coaching.

Shawn Billings: it Mm.

Kyle Hunt: I installed hardwood flooring for 10 years. I did this, did, I said, ⁓ I apologize. Your body has been through a lot more than mine, so.

Shawn Billings: It has, it doesn't mean you don't need to take care of it because I did construction for, don't know how many years in the last few years, I've been sitting at the desk doing estimating and trying to run the business. And my body is like, Hey, you need to do something.

Kyle Hunt: Absolutely. Yes. And you have been, I remember, where was it? Maybe it was at Job Track Connect last year, the previous year or something. You were being pretty consistent with your workout routine.

Shawn Billings: I was for a while and then I, yeah, know, do it 100%. Yeah, gotta do it. But yeah, you know, working with the lead carpenters and tracking KPIs for them. ⁓ Mitchell, who wants to be a lead carpenter? You know, you've, yes, we're putting you on jobs all by yourself, but.

Kyle Hunt: It's gotten a loose. Let this moment remind you to lock back in. Okay.

Shawn Billings: Are you consistently following the scope of work and getting it done? Are you looking at all the, you know, is your punch list at the end under 10 items, under five items? Are you hitting, you know,

Kyle Hunt: Good. Are you doing your daily log? ⁓ Giving him some insight into are you hitting the quoted hours versus the actual hours or even reporting on that? How are we doing on that? Those are great KPIs for him. Think about him for example, right now if I said, Mitchell, how do you kind of keep score on how you're doing? Like how has Sean empowered you to kind of like know if you're doing great or not? He would probably verbally kind of say, well,

Shawn Billings: Mm-hmm. Right.

Kyle Hunt: You know, we've talked a lot about this and this is important. It'd even better if he's like, look, if I'm keeping the project on schedule and kind of reporting that back to Nick, then that's good. If I'm, you know, within 5 % or so of the quoted hours, that's a huge one. If I get done with the project and I've got just a list of, of, you know, five punch list items, that means I've been keeping track of things along the way. Like show them how to keep score more often is a huge advantage of these KPIs.

Shawn Billings: Thank ⁓ huh. Yeah. And that's what, I have Nick working on that for Mitchell currently, right. And coming up with a list. that's one thing I've delegated. And then we can talk about what that list looks like and make sure it's measurable, ⁓ in terms of him being a lead carpenter and why, but you're right. Mitchell's focused on the things that I've talked about a lot, which are get us, Google reviews. He's done a great job getting Google reviews.

Kyle Hunt: Yep, it's good.

Shawn Billings: That gets him a little bonus, but does it make him a lead carpenter? No, it doesn't. ⁓ It gets him a bonus. Also doing daily logs. That's one where, yes, he does a great job with daily logs. He does them every day. He does them timely. Should we be reporting back that, you did all your daily logs before 6 p.m. every night, all week, or maybe there was one that you didn't? Okay, we can be better, but.

Kyle Hunt: Mm-hmm. Yep. like that. Now, Sean, we embarked on this topic today, this podcast number 306776, whatever we decided earlier, ⁓ and said, all right, I want, we want to kind of flush out for you a little bit more clarity around KPIs. Have we achieved that, sir? Yes. Yes. My work here is done. And I'm looking at the clock going, Hey, you got places to be.

Shawn Billings: We have. We definitely do.

Kyle Hunt: I got places to be. You just said we achieved success there. If people wanted to check out your website and kind of see what you're up to, what's your website?

Shawn Billings: It's crediblekb.com. So credible, C-R-E-D-I-B-L-E. K is in kitchen, B is in bath.com.

Kyle Hunt: ⁓ And what would you say is your biggest takeaway from what we covered today?

Shawn Billings: That KPIs can feel overwhelming when you don't know where to start, but coming up with one or two easy, simple ideas of tracking something and doing that to measure is not difficult, but start somewhere. That's the biggest lesson because it felt overwhelming originally.

Kyle Hunt: Yeah. Yeah. And just, and we start and we can, it's one of those of like, let's get it out there and then we can tweak and move it around as we go. ⁓ I think also the, the, ⁓ so that's great takeaway. And I'm very happy with that. My takeaway is somewhat what we're talking about with KPIs is like, what are the 20 % of things that lead to 80 % of the results we're looking for? Cause we could have 87 KPIs, but like one of those KPIs is barely important. So like, when we think of the PM, it's like, man, if we can,

Shawn Billings: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hunt: The schedule, if we can do a solid two week look ahead, which means this and this and this is happening, that's a huge needle mover when it comes to the project manager. That's definitely one of the 20 % that moves it to 80%. So that's big. The other thing I would encourage you, because you've listened to trainings of mine over time and ⁓ I think I just kind of naturally do it in my coaching, but even people that are listening to this, ⁓ I kind of naturally at the end of this said, what's your big takeaway from today? And when I said it, and you shared it, was excellent, it was great. And I thought to myself, I wonder if the people that are leading meetings with their teams, their weekly meeting, their production meeting, are ending some of their meetings by going, hey, let's go around the horn to wrap up today. What's your big takeaway from what we've covered today? Like if you're hearing, if you're listening to me, if you're listening to other podcasts, you're hearing a colleague of yours talk, if you read something in Ramallah's community or Job Treads Board or whatever, swipe that idea and try it out. So I wanted to share that because I thought to myself, I wonder if Sean's going to ask what's your takeaway at his first project management meeting he's going to have coming up.

Shawn Billings: You know, I probably wouldn't have, however, they, you know, those last two points that you made 80, you know, the 20 % lead 80 % and then, you know, making sure that the person understood like that Sandler way of, you know, selling to a customer. They talk about that a lot too in there. And it's, it's true that ending with the customer, making sure they've understood what the next steps are.

Kyle Hunt: Yes.

Shawn Billings: the team understanding what the next steps are, especially for customer. the next 50 all decision makers aren't there, they're going to be selling what you've told them, your team. If they're going to be selling what you've told them to customers or to other people, did they actually understand it and can they repeat it back? I think that's a great lesson.

Kyle Hunt: Bingo. That's, that's going to be super powerful for you because you're sold on the Sandler approach to sales of, the upfront contract explaining here's what's going to happen today. Of, know, can you kind of, kind of share with me what you heard as far as next steps go. You're, you're super convinced that that's very valuable in the sales process. And you just made the connection of, ⁓ the same principles that I use in that is excellent for my, my team meetings and leading my team well and making sure that they.

Shawn Billings: Hmm. Yeah.

Kyle Hunt: are hearing what I want them to hear. So love that. Excellent. Sean, it was a pleasure. Thank you for the, the one, but the two time for Myler's On The Rise podcast guest. We'll have you back before number 600, I bet. All right.

Shawn Billings: Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you for having me on and hopefully third time's a good charm. We'll do it again. Thanks, man.

Kyle Hunt: See you.