Explore every episode of the podcast What We Built-The Excel Story

Running a company with your sisters sounds straightforward until you're actually doing it. In this episode Victor talks candidly about the reality of three siblings sharing ownership and responsibility of a sixty year old family business — how they divide decisions, where the friction comes from, why the business has a habit of showing up at family dinners uninvited, and what their father saw in all three of them when he left the company in their hands. Honest, warm, and occasionally funny!

Every business that survives sixty years has had moments where it almost didn't. In this episode Victor gets honest about the hard times — the economic cycles that battered the cabinet industry, the periods where the numbers didn't work, and what it actually felt like to carry the weight of a family business through uncertainty. What he learned about his father in those years. And what the hard times taught him about what Excel Industries is really made of.

The story of Excel Industries begins not with a business plan or a grand vision — but with a father, a shop, and a fifteen year old kid showing up on Saturday mornings not knowing he was being shaped for life. In our first episode, Victor Lizzi introduces himself, tells the story of his father founding Excel Industries in Kamloops BC, and reflects on what those early mornings in the shop passed down without a single word being spoken about legacy or business. A quiet, honest beginning to a sixty year story."