Ep 023: Xcelerate CEO & Author of Unqualified Success Rachel Stewart

Ep 023: Xcelerate CEO & Author of Unqualified Success Rachel Stewart

In this episode, we are joined by Rachel Stewart CEO of Xcelerate Restoration Software and Author of the book Unqualified Success.  We discuss the birth of the software, her journey from the Restoration Industry Bookkeeping world to Software to Author, and all of the lessons learned along the way.

What We Talk About

  • Who is Rachel and Xcelerate 
  • Where to Invest Your Money to Grow
  • KPIs to Pay Attention To
  • AOB vs Cash Clients
  • Birth of Xcelerate
  • How Does Xcelerate Work
  • Explaining the Importance of Tracking the Little Things
  • Unqualified Success Book Beginnings
  • Imposter Syndrome and Fear of Change 
  • Shout out to CompanyCam
  • Process For Writing the Book
  • The Book Promotion Process
  • Rico's Amazon Bestseller Hack
  • Next Steps for Rico
  • Next Steps for Rachel
  • The Crossroads to Come 
  • Book Recommendations
  • Podcasts
  • How to Reach Rachel


Biggest Takeaways

  1. The Five Top KPIs to Pay Attention To
  2. Everyone Has A Level of Imposter Syndrome, Do It Anyways
  3. Small Improvements In Multiple Areas Equals Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars in Additional Revenue

Find our Guest

Guest Book Recommendations

The secret to achieving the life you always wanted is found in this book. No matter who you are or what your circumstances are Unqualified Success will give you practical and real tools that can be implemented today to achieve your goals. BE AN UNQUALIFIED SUCCESS The difference between those who achieve massive success and those who only wish they could is not qualification. Instead, everything you need to live the life of your dreams already exists inside of you and can be harnessed and developed through practice. THE CATALYST TO ACT This book teaches the principles and gives you real-life tools to put your own power into action. In doing so, you will have the skills to accomplish anything you want in your life. No matter if you are wanting to take the next massive leap in your career or need the courage to act towards the dream you have been waiting to pursue, this book will help you get there. “As a business leader, the principles in Unqualified Success resulted in tens of millions in growth, positioned me as a leader in my industry, gave me the courage to launch a technology company, write a book, and more importantly, have fun and confidence doing it.” "Rachel Stewart has absolutely nailed the #1 foible in mind management—how we undermine and discredit ourselves—and teaches specifically what to do about it! So genuine, so accurate, so doable! This is the best, most well-written book on personal success thus far in the 21st century. 100% Unqualified Endorsement." Dr. Dennis R Deaton, author The Book on Mind Managementwww.unqualifiedtools.com

Have you ever had a new idea or a goal that excites you... but not enough time to execute it? What about a goal you really want to accomplish...but can't because instead of taking action, you procrastinate? Do you feel like the only way things are going to get done is if you do them? But what if it wasn't that way? What if you had a team of people around you that helped you accomplish your goals (while you helped them accomplish theirs)? When we want something done, we've been trained to ask ourselves: "How can I do this?" Well, there is a better question to ask. One that unlocks a whole new world of ease and accomplishment. Expert coach Dan Sullivan knows the question we should ask instead: "Who can do this for me?" This may seem simple. And it is. But don't let the lack of complexity fool you. By mastering this question, you will quickly learn how billionaires and successful entrepreneurs like Dan build incredible businesses and personal freedom.

"For the last two years, I've interviewed more than 200 world-class performers for my podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show. The guests range from super celebs (Jamie Foxx, Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc.) and athletes (icons of powerlifting, gymnastics, surfing, etc.) to legendary Special Operations commanders and black-market biochemists. For most of my guests, it’s the first time they’ve agreed to a two-to-three-hour interview. This unusual depth has helped make The Tim Ferriss Show the first business/interview podcast to pass 100 million downloads."This book contains the distilled tools, tactics, and 'inside baseball' you won't find anywhere else. It also includes new tips from past guests, and life lessons from new 'guests' you haven't met. 

It’s been over a decade since Verne Harnish’s best-selling book Mastering the Rockefeller Habits was first released. Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0) is the first major revision of this business classic which details practical tools and techniques for building an industry-dominating business. This book is written so everyone — from frontline employees to senior executives — can get aligned in contributing to the growth of a firm. Scaling Up focuses on the four major decision areas every company must get right: People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash. The book includes a series of new one-page tools including the updated One-Page Strategic Plan and the Rockefeller Habits ChecklistTM, which more than 40,000 firms around the globe have used to scale their companies successfully — many to $10 million, $100 million, and $1 billion and beyond – while enjoying the climb!

Change is so rapid today that leaders must do much more than stay the course to be successful. If they aren’t nimble and ready to adapt, they won’t survive. The key is to learn how to leadershift.



In Leadershift, John C. Maxwell helps leaders gain the ability and willingness to make leadership changes that will positively enhance their organizational and personal growth. He does this by sharing the eleven shifts he made over the course of his long and successful leadership career. Each shift changed his trajectory and set him up for new and exciting achievements, ultimately strengthening and sustaining his leadership abilities and making him the admired leadership expert he is today.

When General Stanley McChrystal took command of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in 2004, he quickly realized that conventional military tactics were failing. Al Qaeda in Iraq was a decentralized network that could move quickly, strike ruthlessly, then seemingly vanish into the local population. The allied forces had a huge advantage in numbers, equipment, and training—but none of that seemed to matter. To defeat Al Qaeda, they would have to combine the power of the world’s mightiest military with the agility of the world’s most fearsome terrorist network. They would have to become a "team of teams"—faster, flatter, and more flexible than ever.

In his classic book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni laid out a groundbreaking approach for tackling the perilous group behaviors that destroy teamwork. Here he turns his focus to the individual, revealing the three indispensable virtues of an ideal team player.


In The Ideal Team Player, Lencioni tells the story of Jeff Shanley, a leader desperate to save his uncle’s company by restoring its cultural commitment to teamwork. Jeff must crack the code on the virtues that real team players possess, and then build a culture of hiring and development around those virtues. Beyond the fable, Lencioni presents a practical framework and actionable tools for identifying, hiring, and developing ideal team players. Whether you’re a leader trying to create a culture around teamwork, a staffing professional looking to hire real team players, or a team player wanting to improve yourself, this book will prove to be as useful as it is compelling.

In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni once again offers a leadership fable that is as captivating and instructive as his first two best-selling books, The Five Temptations of a CEO and The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive. This time, he turns his keen intellect and storytelling power to the fascinating, complex world of teams.

Kathryn Petersen, Decision Tech's CEO, faces the ultimate leadership crisis: Uniting a team in such disarray that it threatens to bring down the entire company. Will she succeed? Will she be fired? Will the company fail? Lencioni's utterly gripping tale serves as a timeless reminder that leadership requires as much courage as it does insight.

Throughout the story, Lencioni reveals the five dysfunctions which go to the very heart of why teams even the best ones-often struggle. He outlines a powerful model and actionable steps that can be used to overcome these common hurdles and build a cohesive, effective team. Just as with his other books, Lencioni has written a compelling fable with a powerful yet deceptively simple message for all those who strive to be exceptional team leaders.

The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things. Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we’re too distracted by shiny mobile devices to notice. Information technology has improved rapidly, but there is no reason why progress should be limited to computers or Silicon Valley. Progress can be achieved in any industry or area of business. It comes from the most important skill that every leader must master: learning to think for yourself. Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. Tomorrow’s champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today’s marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique.

Fishkin pulls back the curtain on tech startup mythology, exposing the ups and downs of startup life that most CEOs would rather keep secret. For instance: A minimally viable product can be destructive if you launch at the wrong moment. Growth hacking may be the buzzword du jour, but initiatives can fizzle quickly. Revenue and growth won't protect you from layoffs. And venture capital always comes with strings attached. Fishkin's hard-won lessons are applicable to any kind of business environment. Up or down the chain of command, at both early stage startups and mature companies, whether your trajectory is riding high or down in the dumps: this book can help solve your problems, and make you feel less alone for having them.

What You Do Is Who You Are explains how to make your culture purposeful by spotlighting four models of leadership and culture-building—the leader of the only successful slave revolt, Haiti’s Toussaint Louverture; the Samurai, who ruled Japan for seven hundred years and shaped modern Japanese culture; Genghis Khan, who built the world’s largest empire; and Shaka Senghor, a man convicted of murder who ran the most formidable prison gang in the yard and ultimately transformed prison culture. Horowitz connects these leadership examples to modern case-studies, including how Louverture’s cultural techniques were applied (or should have been) by Reed Hastings at Netflix, Travis Kalanick at Uber, and Hillary Clinton, and how Genghis Khan’s vision of cultural inclusiveness has parallels in the work of Don Thompson, the first African-American CEO of McDonalds, and of Maggie Wilderotter, the CEO who led Frontier Communications. Horowitz then offers guidance to help any company understand its own strategy and build a successful culture.

After a stint policing the rough streets of Kansas City, Missouri, Chris Voss joined the FBI, where his career as a hostage negotiator brought him face-to-face with a range of criminals, including bank robbers and terrorists. Reaching the pinnacle of his profession, he became the FBI’s lead international kidnapping negotiator. Never Split the Difference takes you inside the world of high-stakes negotiations and into Voss’s head, revealing the skills that helped him and his colleagues succeed where it mattered most: saving lives. In this practical guide, he shares the nine effective principles—counterintuitive tactics and strategies—you too can use to become more persuasive in both your professional and personal life.

Life is a series of negotiations you should be prepared for: buying a car, negotiating a salary, buying a home, renegotiating rent, deliberating with your partner. Taking emotional intelligence and intuition to the next level, Never Split the Difference gives you the competitive edge in any discussion.

Previous Episode:

RD 022: Organization and Workflow with Company Cam & Luke Hansen

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Next Episode:

RD 024: Leader Launchpad w/ Howard Shore



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About Your Host

Rico Garcia is a husband and father to two young boys and the host of Restoration Domination as well as the founder of EcoTek Pro and owner of a private marketing firm for contractors, Alpha Media Agency.

About the Show

The Restoration Domination Podcast with your host Rico Garcia. A show sharing information, tactics, business strategies, experiences, for the Restoration industry. Solo shows and interviews with some of the top industry leaders to help your business move up to the next level.

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