Head Heart & Boots

Some guests walk in with a good story. JR Litehiser walked in with one of the most unbelievable stories we've ever heard on this show, and he made us laugh through the entire thing. JR is the owner of Pacific Northwest Epoxy Coatings and Supplies, PNW ECS, but before that he was a high school teacher, a police officer, and a decorative concrete contractor. In 2008, right as he was launching a materials distribution business, a chemical explosion left him with burns over 80 percent of his body. Eight weeks in a coma, eight months in the hospital, over 40 reconstructive surgeries, and he lost his right hand. He built the company anyway, from a hospital bed, with a laptop and a phone. First year, 60 grand in sales. Today PNW ECS runs two locations, more than a dozen employees, and is closing in on 6.5 million a year. We get into all of it: the accident itself, the group meeting that reframed his whole perspective, hiring family versus hiring strangers, the founder's syndrome of learning to let go, and the leadership style he now calls momentum buildup, his words, not ours. Fair warning, he's got a mouth on him and it is glorious. This conversation earns every bit of its runtime. Enjoy the show- Chris & Brandon   Why You Should Listen: [2:12] The accident: a freak explosion, 80 percent burns, and the checklist he only half remembered [8:06] The group meeting that changed everything: sitting in a room with people who had it worse [19:23] The Ritz Carlton story that reframes what customer service actually means [24:02] Hiring family: the built-in trust, the blurred lines, and what he'd do differently [29:17] Founder's syndrome: the leadership retreat where his whole team told him his job no longer exists [45:32] The leadership style that built the business and nearly cost him everything else [55:54] The vision for PNW 4.0: a multi-jurisdictional brand, and the one thing standing in his own way About the Show Head, Heart, & Boots is for the men and women who build things for a living. Restoration, roofing, HVAC, plumbing, landscaping, and every blue collar trade in between. Hosts Brandon Reece and Chris Nordyke built and scaled real companies in the restoration industry, and they have carried those hard-won lessons into every blue collar trade they work with today. Every week they dig into the head (strategy), the heart (culture and people), and the boots (execution) of running a business worth owning. This show is the front door to Floodlight Consulting Group, where Brandon, Chris, and the team help trades businesses find the money already sitting inside them and build companies worth far more than the day they started. Same people, same mission, whether you are listening or working with us directly. Ready to see what that looks like in your business?  Start Here! Owning a business in the trades can be the loneliest job there is. Head, Heart, & Boots exists to change that, because the best leaders don't go it alone, and neither should you.

This month's money talk with Jim Emerich turned into one of the most useful conversations we've had on the show, so let's get right into it. Jim breaks down what he calls the four levels of business relationships: direct, individual, ecosystem, and structural. The higher you climb, the less you're grinding one-off sales and the more you're building an asset that owns a customer relationship for years. We get into service agreements as the on-ramp for trades businesses, whether that's HVAC, pest control, landscaping, or the fixed contract cleaning program Brandon and I built in restoration that turned into a one-to-one revenue engine for large loss work. Jim also unpacks quality of earnings and why buyers care so much about revenue predictability, plus a story about a $30 million HVAC company where 30 percent of their revenue on the cash flow forecast never moves, ever. If you're a business owner in the trades thinking about enterprise value, recurring revenue, or how to build something more sellable than a book of one-off jobs, this is your episode. Enjoy the show -chris Restoration, roofing, HVAC, plumbing, landscaping. If you build it, fix it, or maintain it, this show is for you. Why You Should Listen: [2:25] Why Jim's content has shifted toward the trades at large, and the pattern he's seeing in restoration right now [7:14] The four levels of business relationships: direct, individual, ecosystem, and structural, and why the top level is the pathway to real scale [16:57] Quality of earnings explained like you're 14: what buyers actually validate before they write a check [31:35] Service agreements 101: HVAC, pest control, landscaping, and the "if you have eyes, plagiarize" playbook [41:51] The fixed contract cleaning story: turning two big annual cleanings into monthly recurring revenue, and why it became our tip of the spear for large loss work [50:45] The 13-week cash flow forecast and the HVAC client with 30 percent of revenue that never moves About the Show Head, Heart, & Boots is for the men and women who build things for a living. Restoration, roofing, HVAC, plumbing, landscaping, and every blue collar trade in between. Hosts Brandon Reece and Chris Nordyke built and scaled real companies in the restoration industry, and they have carried those hard-won lessons into every blue collar trade they work with today. Every week they dig into the head (strategy), the heart (culture and people), and the boots (execution) of running a business worth owning. This show is the front door to Floodlight Consulting Group, where Brandon, Chris, and the team help trades businesses find the money already sitting inside them and build companies worth far more than the day they started. Same people, same mission, whether you are listening or working with us directly. Ready to see what that looks like in your business?  Start Here! Owning a business in the trades can be the loneliest job there is. Head, Heart, & Boots exists to change that, because the best leaders don't go it alone, and neither should you.

First live in-studio guest in the new space, and it had to be Freddie Bosquez. Freddie worked for me back in the ServPro days, starting around 2013, and watching who he's become since then is one of the privileges of my career. This conversation goes everywhere. A lower middle class kid who wouldn't ask his parents for sports money, so he sold his PlayStation for a pawnshop bass and started a punk band. A recession layoff and a Craigslist ad that led him to walk into a restoration shop looking for work. And then the part most people never hear about this industry: years of trauma scene cleanup, the weight our techs carry into homes on the worst day of a family's life, and how Freddie used work as the mask while alcohol did the quiet damage underneath. He talks about getting honest, what fatherhood cost him and gave him, and how he and his wife built Wolf, now in year 6, into a business worth fighting for, including the year of layoffs that nearly broke them right before everything paid off. Fair warning: the trauma scene portion of this conversation is heavy, and we don't dance around it. It's also some of the most important ground we've ever covered about what the people in this industry actually experience. Enjoy the show - Brandon Why You Should Listen: [2:30] Childhood Freddie: the middle child who filtered his own wants before his parents ever had to say no [6:42] A recession layoff, a Craigslist ad, and the walk-in interview that started a restoration career [9:53] "We're locked in until everybody says yes": the morning huddle every restoration shop should steal [16:16] The mask was work: after-hours calls, trauma scenes, and the drinking he wasn't ready to name [17:55] What a trauma instructor taught him about going home and talking about it [52:47] The catalysts: a daughter, a lost relationship with his son, and retiring old Freddie [56:13] Building Wolf with his wife: feeling alone in the business, the worst year, and the payoff About the Show Head, Heart, & Boots is for the men and women who build things for a living. Restoration, roofing, HVAC, plumbing, landscaping, and every blue collar trade in between. Hosts Brandon Reece and Chris Nordyke built and scaled real companies in the restoration industry, and they have carried those hard-won lessons into every blue collar trade they work with today. Every week they dig into the head (strategy), the heart (culture and people), and the boots (execution) of running a business worth owning. This show is the front door to Floodlight Consulting Group, where Brandon, Chris, and the team help trades businesses find the money already sitting inside them and build companies worth far more than the day they started. Same people, same mission, whether you are listening or working with us directly. Ready to see what that looks like in your business?  Start Here! Owning a business in the trades can be the loneliest job there is. Head, Heart, & Boots exists to change that, because the best leaders don't go it alone, and neither should you.

Dude. No guest this week, and I came in hot on a topic that's been rearranging my brain all summer: discipline. Here's the setup. This is my fourth year chasing elk with my bow, and for the first time my son is in the hobby with me. Between him and my buddy Olin, my prep this season looks completely different. Lift, run, shoot, every week, Cam Hanes style, with the three of us trading range photos and treadmill pics to keep each other honest. And somewhere in all those arrows downrange I realized my whole definition of discipline is shifting. I used to check the box no matter what. Do hard stuff, don't be a wuss. That version got me here, and I'm grateful for it. But at midlife the spirit of the thing is changing. Now it's about knowing exactly what I want to feel, in my guts, and putting in the work that earns it. Chris and I take that straight into business: the client conversations that repeat for years because someone won't execute, the courage to turn away good work to grab hold of the better thing, and the 500 grand in income we said no to so I could work on Floodlight instead of in it. If you've been circling the same problem in your company for months, this episode is the kick you've been avoiding. Restoration, roofing, HVAC, plumbing, landscaping. If you build it, fix it, or maintain it, this show is for you. -Brandon Why You Should Listen: [3:33] Lift, run, shoot: my elk season prep, and the positive peer pressure making me do it on the days I don't want to [4:35] Check-the-box discipline vs the spirit of discipline, and why the difference matters at midlife [12:37] The consultant's truth: why owners talk about the same problem for years without fixing it [13:56] Chris on courage: turning down good things, short-term pain, and the client who asked if he should shut off his ads [16:30] The $500K no: what it actually cost us for me to work on the business instead of in it [18:10] From Dr. Angry to more tools in the kit: the discipline of changing how you lead people      About the Show Head, Heart, & Boots is for the men and women who build things for a living. Restoration, roofing, HVAC, plumbing, landscaping, and every blue collar trade in between. Hosts Brandon Reece and Chris Nordyke built and scaled real companies in the restoration industry, and they have carried those hard-won lessons into every blue collar trade they work with today. Every week they dig into the head (strategy), the heart (culture and people), and the boots (execution) of running a business worth owning. This show is the front door to Floodlight Consulting Group, where Brandon, Chris, and the team help trades businesses find the money already sitting inside them and build companies worth far more than the day they started. Same people, same mission, whether you are listening or working with us directly. Ready to see what that looks like in your business?  Start Here! Owning a business in the trades can be the loneliest job there is. Head, Heart, & Boots exists to change that, because the best leaders don't go it alone, and neither should you.

Dude. No guest this week. Just a conversation Chris and I probably should have recorded years ago. We spend our days coaching business owners: diagnosing problems, building frameworks, holding people accountable. This episode is about the one area of life where neither of us gets to be the coach. Marriage. Chris and Kara are 25 years in. Janna and I hit 30 in December. And between his Alaska trip and a come-to-Jesus conversation on my own back porch, we got more honest than we ever have about what long-term marriage looks like behind the Instagram photos. The truth we kept circling: it gets better, but it never gets easier. We talk about why the couples doing the most work still hit mines, how ego hijacks hard conversations, why coaching hundreds of business owners doesn't automatically make you a better husband, and the one question from Jim Dethmer that can change your next fight: not "is this true," but "how is this true?" If you're pouring everything into the business while your marriage runs on leftovers, this one's for you. Also: the studio reboot is done, we're going video-first, and the YouTube channel is catching up fast. Come watch us over there. Restoration, roofing, HVAC, plumbing, landscaping. If you build it, fix it, or maintain it, this show is for you. Why You Should Listen: [3:38] Why business owners' marriages are often the first thing to suffer, and why nobody talks about it. [7:15] The Alaska trip: 10 days, one glacier, and the vacation friction every couple knows but never posts [11:37] It gets better, not easier: the truth about deep connection after 25 years [13:47] 30 years in December, and the back porch conversation that caught me off guard [25:49] When the business coach gets coached at home: ego, objection handling, and learning to listen [34:05] Jim Dethmer's question that disarms your ego mid-argument: "How is this true?" About the Show Head, Heart, & Boots is for the men and women who build things for a living. Restoration, roofing, HVAC, plumbing, landscaping, and every blue collar trade in between. Hosts Brandon Reece and Chris Nordyke built and scaled real companies in the restoration industry, and they have carried those hard-won lessons into every blue collar trade they work with today. Every week they dig into the head (strategy), the heart (culture and people), and the boots (execution) of running a business worth owning. This show is the front door to Floodlight Consulting Group, where Brandon, Chris, and the team help trades businesses find the money already sitting inside them and build companies worth far more than the day they started. Same people, same mission, whether you are listening or working with us directly. Ready to see what that looks like in your business?  Start Here! Owning a business in the trades can be the loneliest job there is. Head, Heart, & Boots exists to change that, because the best leaders don't go it alone, and neither should you.