I walked into this recording annoyed about studio cables, and somehow it turned into one of the most honest conversations Brandon and I have had on this show.

We talk about the pressure in modern business culture to be always on and always awesome, and why the gurus only ever talk about their struggles in the past tense. Brandon brought in Arthur Brooks' framework of the three macronutrients of happiness: enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. We use it to take a hard look at grind culture, the myth that more revenue leads to more happiness, and what we've seen after years of working with owners in the trades. Some of them hit every financial goal and still don't know what to do with themselves when they get home. Whether you run a restoration company, a roofing crew, or any trades business, if you've ever wondered why the win doesn't feel the way you thought it would, this one is for you.

Restoration, roofing, HVAC, plumbing, landscaping. If you build it, fix it, or maintain it, this show is for you.

Hope you enjoy the show -Chris

Why You Should Listen:

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.

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:

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:

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:

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.

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:

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.

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?"

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.

We say it all the time on this show: sales first. But sales without financial controls is a mess waiting to happen, and that's exactly why we're launching our monthly money talk with Jim Emerich, founder of Backbone Fractional CFO Consultants.

Jim brought a story about a multigenerational contractor that doubled from 5 to 10 million and started losing money. Margins squeezed, line of credit maxed, wrong desk at the bank. The lesson for every business owner in the trades: scaling the top line without watching your pricing, cost structure, and cash flow is how good companies go under. We dig into the 13-week cash flow forecast, collecting receivables faster, and why the "real money is in commercial" mindset nearly bankrupts contractors who don't plan for those payment terms. This is practical financial management for blue-collar businesses, and it's a conversation I think every owner needs to hear.

Restoration, roofing, HVAC, plumbing, landscaping. If you build it, fix it, or maintain it, this show is for you.

Hope you enjoy,

Brandon and Chris

Why You Should Listen

Need a fractional CFO partner? Find Jim and his team at BackboneCFO.com.

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 Chris and me going somewhere we've honestly been afraid to go on this show.

Chris opens up about something deeply personal: his experience with a legal, facilitated psilocybin ceremony here in Oregon, and what it surfaced about rest, presence, and the gaps between who he says he is and how he actually shows up. This is not a party story. This is a guy with a deep faith background doing serious, intentional work on himself, and what came out of it applies to every business owner listening. From there we get into the idea that gave this episode its name: alignment is leverage. When your priorities, decisions, and behavior all line up, you walk into every negotiation, partnership, and hard conversation holding all the cards. We talk about the integrity gaps nobody else can see, why quitting the things that quietly own you builds real confidence, and what I've learned watching my own son become a more aligned man over the last 18 months.

Fair warning: this one gets raw. Keep an open mind and listen for the principle. It might be the most honest conversation we've ever put out.

Enjoy the show - Brandon

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.

Why You Should Listen

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.

What if the biggest thing holding your business back isn't strategy, talent, or money... but the timeline you've accepted? 

In this episode, Brandon and I unpack one of the most impactful business books we've read recently, The Science of Scaling by Dr. Benjamin Hardy. We explore how using time as a tool forces better thinking, exposes bottlenecks, and helps leaders stop chasing incremental growth in favor of transformational change.

We also discuss simplifying your business, identifying the few levers that truly matter, and why the companies that scale the fastest often do less, not more. If you're building a restoration, construction, or home service business, this conversation will challenge the way you think about growth forever.

Enjoy the show - Chris

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.

Some guests just drop bombs for an hour straight, and Griffin Brand is one of them.

Griffin is a former 75th Ranger Regiment special operator who, at 26, found himself as the lone military advisor to the U.S. ambassador in Kabul, wrangling 20 different three-letter agencies into one room. Now he's in private equity with High Ground, working deals across the restoration industry. If you caught last week's episode with Griffin and his co-author Dan Casey on their book Bring Your Own Pencil, this is the deep dive into the man behind it.

This conversation is loaded for anyone leading a business in the trades: restoration, roofing, HVAC, you name it. We get into General McChrystal's "fast and flat" philosophy and how to break down the silos killing your company's speed. Extreme ownership, owning the inputs so the outcomes take care of themselves, why veterans are the best hires in blue collar, and a story Griffin had never told before about an insider attack at the embassy and what it taught him about empathy and leadership. Trust me, you'll want a notebook.

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.

Why You Should Listen:

Grab Bring Your Own Pencil on Amazon, Audible, or bringyourownpencil.com.

Only 30% of businesses listed for sale actually find a buyer? Even more striking, just 10% of those sell for the price their owners anticipated or higher, meaning only 3% of all business owners achieve their desired sale price. By focusing on understanding and enhancing your enterprise value, you can significantly boost your chances of joining that successful 3%.

Start Assessment Know Your Enterprise Value. See Your Potential Gaps.

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This isn’t a paid plug. It’s real talk from the front lines. If you’ve ever thought, “How do I get a VP-level sales leader or even a sales team without hiring full-time?” Floodlight has the answer.