Head Heart & Boots

Nick D’Urbano is back on the show, Chief Revenue Officer of Distance and co-founder of Porter, runporter.com, and this conversation gets honest fast. Nick’s blunt framing early on stuck with us: if your conversion rate is sitting at 50 percent instead of 70, that gap isn’t bad luck or bad leads, it’s a skill gap, and it’s fixable. We dig into what almost 2,000 field recordings have taught Floodlight about why training doesn’t survive the field, the simple behavior shift that stops a homeowner from walking a technician straight into an inspection before trust is built, and why guessing at what’s happening in your sales conversations is the same as coaching a football team by only looking at the final score. Nick also breaks down why most organizations are severely undertrained, how AI makes building playlists and coaching protocols possible in minutes instead of days, and the real cost of flying blind as you expand to multiple locations. This one ties directly back to our conversation with Clinton Tierney about practice versus game day, so if you caught that episode, this is the technology that closes the gap.

Enjoy the show - Brandon & Chris

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

Why You Should Listen:

• [2:18] The origin story of Porter: why Distance acquired a company to solve a visibility problem nobody in the trades was solving
• [5:33] What Porter actually does: recording field conversations and making them coachable
• [7:50] The 20 percent skill gap: why a 50 percent conversion rate means your team is losing winnable deals
• [10:35] 2,000 conversations later: the behavior pattern that was quietly killing inspections before they even started
• [23:08] The Clinton Tierney connection: training to execution should be a 10 to 1 ratio, and most businesses are nowhere close
• [46:02] Why owners get adoption paralysis even after seeing the proof, and how to actually commit
• [59:36] Nick on fatherhood, jiu jitsu, and the small daily adjustments that add up

Connect with Nick D'Urbano:

https://runporter.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickdurbano/

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: https://www.floodlightgrp.com/

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.

If you’ve ever wondered what makes a great consultant actually great, spend an hour with Clinton Tierney. Clinton has been in restoration for 21 years, worked literally every role in the industry from technician to VP of sales, and has been part of the Floodlight team for a year and a half now, bringing the same intensity to our clients that he brought to two companies he helped grow to 50 and 60 million dollars. In this episode we find out why. Clinton coaches his kids’ travel baseball and softball teams on top of a full consulting schedule, and what started as a question about why he commits that kind of time turned into one of the clearest leadership breakdowns we’ve ever recorded. He walks us through the coach who shaped him as a catcher, why practice should be relentless and games should be fun, and the uncomfortable gap between how athletes train and how most trades businesses prepare their field teams. Then we get into standards: the uniform story that changed his sales results, and the real conversation he had with an owner about something as simple as wearing shorts that ended up shifting an entire company’s culture. This is the same mindset Clinton brings to every client he works with at Floodlight, and if you want a taste of what it’s like to have him in your corner, this episode is it.

Enjoy the show - Brandon and Chris

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

Why You Should Listen:

• [~2:00] 21 years in restoration and every role in between: why Clinton’s experience makes him one of our sharpest consultants
• [~4:00] The coach who shaped Clinton as a catcher, and why being hard on someone can be the biggest vote of confidence
• [~16:00] The practice to game ratio: what sports teaches about training that most trades businesses never apply
• [~24:00] 2,000 field recordings later: what Floodlight found when they actually listened to how technicians talk to homeowners
• [~38:00] The uniform story: how dressing up changed Clinton’s sales results and shifted an entire team’s culture
• [~46:00] The shorts conversation: Clinton calls out an owner, and the standard that changed because of it
• [~53:00] What makes Clinton a great battle buddy for owners: knowing how big to be, how loud to be, and when
  
  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! https://www.floodlightgrp.com/
  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.

Chris's friend Jared Thayer joined us this week, and this conversation covers more ground than almost any episode we've recorded. Jared is the owner of Thayer Design Build, a remodeling company he started in 2014, and his story starts with a hard childhood, a mom who disappeared into addiction, and a grandmother who became one of the aces in his deck of cards. From there he built a construction company from scratch, grew it to a ten person team, went through a divorce last year, and is now raising three boys as a single dad with a level of intentionality most of us talk about but never actually practice. We get into pricing and why undercharging is the silent killer of contractors everywhere, health as the foundation for everything else, faith, mountaineering, and the Tony Robbins incantation that Jared led a group of us through in the woods outside Sisters two years ago. He brought that same energy to close out this episode, right before our internet connection gave out mid recording. Some things you can't plan for. This one earns its runtime.

Enjoy the show - Brandon

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.

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.