Empower Your Trade Business
Head Heart & Boots
If you build it, fix it, or maintain it, the Head Heart & Boots podcast is for you. Restoration, roofing, HVAC, plumbing, landscaping, and every blue-collar trade in between. If you own a service business and you have ever felt the weight of leading it, this show is for you.
Hosts Brandon Reece and ...
Recent Episodes
222
Sept. 22, 2026
Ep 222 - "Show Up, Work Hard, Don't Be an Ass: JR Litehiser's Story"
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.
221
Sept. 15, 2026
Ep 221 - "Building Recurring Revenue and Enterprise Value, with Jim Emerich"
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
220
Sept. 8, 2026
Ep 220 - "Building Wolf, with Freddie Bosquez"
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
219
Sept. 1, 2026
Ep 219 - "The Gateway Drug of Discipline"
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 realiz
218
Aug. 25, 2026
Ep 218 - "It Gets Better, Not Easier"
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 w
217
Aug. 4, 2026
Ep 217 - "Why More Revenue Won't Fix Your Cash Flow, With Jim Emerich"
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 wi
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