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
224
Oct. 6, 2026
Ep 224 - "I Am the Voice, with Jared Thayer"
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 raisi
223
Sept. 29, 2026
Ep 223 - "Always On, Never Satisfied"
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
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
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