Craftsmanship to Entrepreneurship: Houston Trim's Journey and Insights

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it.

0:36hey there welcome to this week's episode of epic entrepreneurs i'm here with houston trim hi houston how you doing today doing great yourself excellent excellent excellent so let's jump right in tell us a little bit about your business and how and why and you got into business What's sort of the origin story here? So my company, Inovex Renovations, stemmed from a lifelong just ability to work in the trades of my dad, help operate his company. When I met my wife, we moved us and our five kids to Asheville. And so we she had asked me when we moved to Asheville what I want to do. And I said, I want to go back into the renovation business.

1:22But this time I wanted to do it my way. And so my son and my wife helped come up with INNOVEX, which stands for Innovation and Excellence. And our goal was to change the way people live in their homes. And so by providing quality in-house renovations, we were able to keep the details at the forefront for everyone's renovation projects and to just make things better. Got it. So was your dad, did he have a renovation company too, or was it a different kind of trade? he did he started out actually he he left a career he he moved utility buildings for a local contractor and one day he's like i'm tired of working 18 hours a day not seeing my family and another contractor friend of his said hey i'll teach you how to do what i do and so it was born that my dad you know became his own contractor and started working on houses And I think that was when I was about 12 or 13 years old.

2:35And so watched him learn up until I was 18. He was doing all the projects himself. And I had been working with him since I was 13. Yeah. So you picked up a hammer pretty early in life. I did. Yeah. Yeah. I got it. So you learned from the ground up. That's cool. So what prompted the move to Asheville? Like, what was that about? uh so my wife uh we were dating at the time but she had just finished uh pa school down in charlotte and landed a job with uh mission hospital got it so it was set she was moving so yeah if you wanted to stay hang out with her you probably needed to come along that's right yeah yeah yeah and your deal is and you can do i mean you know you can do remodeling or reconstruction anywhere So that's awesome.

3:24So great. So I guess the question is, and what are the things is, I mean, what are some of the challenges that you've had to overcome? And maybe what are some of the learnings that you had along the way? So for me, as I started in renovations with my dad, I learned how to do the work, right? I learned how to make things nice, really to build something out of nothing, to change everything about something. So with the hammer, tools, everything, I was well equipped, learned the skills and was able to do everything. But the biggest challenge that I had overcome is that once I started, my dad went back to work.

4:10my dad when I was roughly 21 he was tired of running a company said here you run the company but I had zero business background I didn't know what profit overhead anything like that was and so people would say just add 10 percent and so we we went down that road for a long time and you know luckily you know we were able to to stay afloat and do things long through the through the recession of 2008. But later on down the road, the lack in the business side was really the pickle. And so I ended up, you know, stopping work with my dad, going back into heavy construction. But then fast forward to 2014, late 2014, my wife and I moved to Asheville.

5:06She says, what do you want to do? I said, start a renovation company. So when we got here, I knew I was missing some steps before I started a company. And so where you get those steps, a guy had taught me a long time ago, if you want to learn something, you find somebody that does that and you go there and ask if you can learn. And he would say, you go there and offer to work for free to gain the knowledge, which is far more valuable than the money up front. And so talking to a guy in Asheville, friend of mine, knew a contractor that knew a company that needed an estimator. And so I went into estimating for a commercial company.

5:49And that guy taught me how and why you have profit and overhead. You know, what are the rules? Yeah, what are the rules to make money? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so where I would feel I remember trying to tack on 10 percent to a project and feeling like my heartstrings were like being pulled, like you can't do that to somebody. Right. Like the reality is just this is how many two by fours. This is how much this and how much labor. And so, you know, once we sat down, I mean, he walked me through projects that we did start to finish. He walked me through projects that clients bought the materials for.

6:30And he really stepped up to show me exactly why a company has to know their overhead in order to work through their profit. But also, how do you navigate that in when something does come up like, oh, yeah, well, I bought all my flooring. You know, how do you do that? Right. Because those are products that are still managed by the company. And so my biggest hurdle was understanding that, you know, not the estimating, I had that down pat. Like I knew how to calculate. I had been doing it for so long, but, you know, that overhead and profit is how the company can operate. It's how fuel gets put in the truck, insurance gets paid.

7:14You know, all these different aspects of the project where in the past, if we miscut a two by four, I ate it. It was like, oh, my mistake. Right. yeah yeah all right so so you found a mentor and then what you decide to pull the plug and and and get started yep so i i said to my wife i said when i moved to ashville there's no way you can just walk into a new town and start a company you have to know people you've got to get to know people and so thankfully through that estimation job i was also one of their project managers so I met a lot of commercial contractors in the area. And when I decided to leave the company a year later, you know, I had expanded their bit after he taught me these things in the first few weeks of working for him.

8:01He also taught me that there were software out there that helped calculate materials and things like that. So we grew him to a point where their company was too big. They didn't want to be that big. And so in turn, I had started looking like, OK, I want to get into residential. And I've run across somebody I knew at the gym. They're working with another contractor and they felt like they were getting shafted. And so they asked me to take a look at the project. And September 2016, I quit my job as an estimator and within one week signed a contract. to do a duplex renovation that would pay my salary that I was making in four months instead of a year.

8:45Right. Since you knew your numbers. Since you knew your numbers at this point, because you knew how to calculate them. Well, I mean, you got to learn, right? I mean, I remember, you know, I remember early in my days when somebody just sat me down and showed me how to do, it was actually the same kind of thing, a takeoff to figure out, like, how much do we really need to charge for this thing. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And there's, you know, when I started doing this, like when I was early, I mean, when I started with the late nineties, early two thousands, we don't have the resources.

9:19Then you couldn't just jump on Google and see if you were messing up. You know, you, you, you either, you either realize that you didn't have any money in your wallet. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and, And the truth is just to add an own 10 % in construction is not going to get it done. Right. Yeah, it's not going to work. I mean, you're going to be hand of – it's just not – yeah, it's going to be tough. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's the current argument with this insurance work right now. We're dealing with Hurricane Helene at the moment. Yeah, yeah. And so it makes it a little bit tougher. Yeah, the insurance companies are trying to do their job.

9:59They want to pay as little as they can. But, you know, when the owners are caught in the middle, you're negotiating on their behalf, trying to tell them, hey, look, this is what it costs to do this job. And so, yeah, so there's a mismatch between what's going on. So I remember back in the day, we had a house in Hurricane Hugo and the insurance companies there were just writing blank checks. It was a different time. They just came around and said, OK, how much is it? And they gave us the money. and it wasn't, it was, you know, there was no argument. So now they're like, it's a totally different environment.

10:36So. Right. The internet has definitely changed it. It's unbelievable. Well, let's, okay. So what have been your like big lessons? Like what's been a big lesson or two for you? For me in operating a company has been letting go of control. You know, learning to delegate things. to others and also trusting in others, you know, that there are people out there that can take things off your plate as a business owner. So is that just something you got organically or, you know, just figured it out or what happened? No, I ended up sitting down at the international builder show a couple of years ago. And I remember thinking, can't get away from the work machine I had created.

11:28I was working 60, 70, 80 hours a week, you know, constantly all year with five kids. It was a little bit difficult. They were growing up without us. And finally, I remember going to the builder show. It was February. I'd had employees that had been with me for years. You know, they were like, you're taking on too much. You're doing too much. It's hard to keep up. And so that was in like November. Fast forward to February, I was just beat. I wasn't real sure what to do. And a guy that I knew that operated a company that mimicked what I wanted my company to look like, I reached out to him. And we sat down at the builder show.

12:15At this time, I didn't know that he was a business coach. All I knew is that his company reflected what I wanted my company to look like. Sure. and he said you know are you how much do you want to change right like if we're sitting here today and we just want to nonchalantly talk about change that's fine but he said if you really want to change you'll put money where your mouth is he said you know if you want to move forward i'll work with you for three months we'll do week to week one-on-one sessions we'll set hard goals and we will achieve those goals if we stay on it. And I remember handing him my credit card thinking, I don't even know what I'm doing.

13:02But the one thing that I knew is that continuing to work 80 hours a week continually was just going to shut down my business because eventually I was going to burn out. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it was a great decision to give it a shot, to know that you needed to do something different. Right. that's right so he's so so essentially through that process you learn that you can't you got to trust somebody yeah yeah if we're trying to grow um which is you know ultimately what i learned coming into the asheville market we are a small area you know it seems like it's a huge city but the core structure of the people doing the work is very small and so it what we were finding is more and more people need help as people are moving here and there just wasn't enough contract to do the work and i was taking on the work i'd work day and night weekends try to help as many people as i could but what i was doing is i was leaving my family in the dust and so you know how do you help more people right like there's only one of me and one of you we have to trust in others and so the business coach then helped me and put practices in place for me to delegate tasks and then measure, you know, what was a measurable outcome of that task that you delegated?

14:27And he would say, a task done 80 % is 100 % success because you did, because 80 % of it got done by someone else other than yourself. Yeah, it's 80-20 rule. Yep, got it. Yeah, that's right. Right. So, yeah, I've always said that, like, when do you turn something over to somebody? Well, when they can do it 80 % as well as you can, you probably give it to them. And then they'll surpass you sooner or later. They'll end up doing it better than you at some point because you're, I mean, as the owner of a business, you're here, here, here, here, all over the place. That's right. So you learned pretty, so you learned quickly.

15:12Well, first of all, I think one of the big lessons that I hear from you is don't try to do this stuff by yourself. Find people who've done it or find mentors. Find people who can help. Do ask questions. I have to say this all the time. In school, we're taught to do our own work, and that really doesn't translate well to business. Do you know what I mean? I mean, it's like, you know, don't ask other people for help, you know, except, you know, I say that in, you know, band and sports and lab, that's about it. Everything else is all individual work. And so, yeah, but what you've done well is you've searched.

16:01You've said, well, hang on, something's got to change here. I need to go talk to somebody. Yeah. And those things don't come without hardship. I mean, you know, you talk about generally. Yeah, they don't. You know, no one tells you they say, go run a business. Oh, you're great at that. Go run a business. What they don't see is that, yeah, you're you're a good carpenter. You're a good finish guy. You can do tile. You can do anything. Right. You can paint cars. So you go out and start this shop and you're like, you know what I can do is I can work. So I put in 12 hours in the day. Right. Yep. And then you go home and you realize the work getting done.

16:39And now you have all the work to do that you should have been doing during the day to keep the business running. Now you have to do it at night. And so you're home after 12 hours. Your family thinks they're going to see it. You got to sit down and then you got to work more. And you continue this path of just working yourself to death. Until you either one, you succeed or two, you say, you know what, I'm done with this, you know, and and as many people have told me. you know there's there's good craftsmen there's good business owners there's not a lot of good craftsmen that come become good business owners without finding a team that can support them and so for me you know i mean i watched my kids my kids have grown up i mean thankfully i've been able to be at most things but i definitely after the pandemic i definitely missed a lot because we had increased our workload and it changed the way the environment was.

17:38And so there'd be times I would barely see my wife, you know, and she'd be like, am I going to get to see you this weekend? And I'm like, I've got to sit down and get this estimate done and I've got to get this done. And so ultimately I ended up in 2022,

17:56purchase or subscribing to a project management software that would allow me to build estimates save them and then recall them to create an estimate for another job. Basically, you know, kind of getting some of that autonomy to make it a little better. But, but you know, that created another hardship because of my background in estimating. I was really good at estimating so I could estimate a lot, but then ultimately I had more work than I still can do. Yeah. So yeah, at some point, Yeah. I see it all the time. Generally, what it comes down to is there's two things. There's sales and operations.

18:45At some point, a person starts a business and they're kind of good at both, or they have to be to make it work. Then they're more adept at sales or they're more adept at operations. and then say you either hire or you have a partner or something to do both. And I'm not saying finance and admin is another thing that you've got to have, but that's usually outsourced or whatever. And then at some point you've got to give it all up if you actually want to run the business. I always say you've got to give up control to get control. Yes. So it's kind of a cool lesson that you learn. Here's a question for you, though.

19:26So do you reckon, and I don't know if it's true, do you reckon, I hope some people learn from your stuff, but most of the people I know, they almost have to go through that 80-hour thing to figure out how to, like, did they got to do something different? Oh, yeah. I think that's one of the hardships that you have to experience in order to see where exactly things could be. And with that being said, I mean, I gave up the 80-hour working in the field, pulling drywall mud framing, and now I sit 30-some hours behind a computer. And I tell my guys all the time, like, I love to do the work, right? It's my absolute favorite thing is to do the work.

20:16But if I've got a team of seven guys that also want to do the work, someone has to step away and put themselves in front of a computer or at least a notepad in an office to focus. Yeah, I mean, at some point you'll be able to give that up too. I mean, you know, that's, I mean, you could probably do it now would be my guess if you've already gotten that far or somewhere close. You may not want to. I mean, I've got, no, I'm serious. I've got a roofer client. You know, he went from, you know, when we first started working together, there was eight employees, and now he's 75 or so. You know, so, I mean, he doesn't need to show up.

20:59Like, he's got a GM. I mean, it's, we've, you know, and by the way, he was a guy I worked with too. He came off the roof, and we made him a great salesperson. He ran sales. Now he's running the whole company. So it's, you know, but, you know, every once in a while, he'll go help a crew because he likes to roof. He doesn't want to do it every day now, but he likes to roof. You know, he probably is going to choose a nicer day. He's probably not, you know, roofing is like one of those things. You know what I mean? I mean, it's usually cold or hot. It's never usually a nice, you know, he'll probably pick a nice day and go do it.

21:34But, you know, every once in a while, he'll show up on a job site and, you know, help them or at least talk to them or at least hang out with the crew, you know. and see what's going on because he's like you. He likes the work. The work's fun. Yeah. So, yeah, so the deal. Well, let me – I can do a little bit of a round robin. You know, we have this tagline that says BEPIC, and it's an acronym. So let me get your thoughts on the five pieces of BEPIC. So the B, we say, is bring the energy. What's your thoughts on just sort of quick thoughts on energy and what role it plays in building a business?

22:13Yeah, it's a very important role. You are the fuel that your team needs in order to really start their day, to think about their weeks ahead. And so if you come in and you don't have that energy, you just shut down your entire team for a week. Yeah, that's so true. It's so true. You mean Red Bull and Mountain Dew doesn't do it? You know, I see the crews all the time. They stop in, they get a Red Bull or something. It's 7 in the morning. I'm like, what in the world? Yeah, it's awesome. Now, so the E is education. So what role does education play? For us, education is huge. It's one of the things that our team leaders have the ability to pull the guys to the side.

23:03if at any point they feel that the knowledge isn't there to complete a task or on something new, the first thing I want them to do is think about, is everybody educated to do this project? We brought in manufacturer's reps for multiple different products to be taught directly from the manufacturer. And so without that education, all the way up to my part, traveling next week for some more education, I mean, if we don't use that as a basis in this industry, we're just going to create a team that will potentially fail in the future. Yeah, 100%. You got to be learning all the time. Planning. I mean, I know this is big for you, so planning.

23:45What's your thoughts on planning? Yeah, planning is the number one thing. We do an honesty meeting here at our shop every week. and recently it was on lack of plan, lack of scheduling. And so that really comes back to me delegating those tasks to the team leaders. So that way they plan, but it's given them the space to plan instead of saying, why aren't you at the job at 8 a.m.? You know, they need to maybe get to the job and sit down an hour and actually schedule out and plan their weeks ahead. So that way they, that way everybody is, is in that realm of knowing. Yeah. Yeah. No, I like it. I like it.

24:27What about inspiration? The eyes, inspiration. So inspiration, you know, I try to give, you know, we've got several young guys on the team that are learning and, and just try to, you know, teach them, Hey, there was a day when I didn't know what I was looking at either. You know, mind you, I was 13 and you're 25, either way there was a day right and now you're looking at me operate a company with multiple crews running 10 jobs at a time you know yeah let me what do i need to do to inspire you you know right yeah yeah no i love it yeah one of my mentors says be an inspiration he says don't you know what don't go look for inspiration just be an inspiration i mean the inspiration yeah yeah Yeah, I love that.

25:13That's what you just said, too. So it's great. C stands for commitment. And obviously, you got to be committed to. I mean, obviously, you're committed to if you were working 80 hours a week. So you got to be committed in a different way now. So thoughts on commitment? Yeah, commitment is huge. You know, if we're not committed to our company and we have employees, then we're going to let them down. Maybe not today. You know, maybe we got enough work to get us through. But eventually, there's going to be a letdown. And if they see a lack of commitment from the owner of the company, how much will they be committed to seeing it into the future?

25:51Right. Yeah. Yeah. It really is a top down, right? You got to lead from the front. Yeah. I mean, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me ask you one more question. And the question is, and you can use a time frame you want, but I'll give you one and you can change it if you want. But the question is, what do you know now that you wish you had known before you went into business? I wish I had listened to the people that worked within the fields that I had spoken to about what I was going to do. 95 % of them all said, learn how to delegate, not do it yourself, and to make sure that your family is of high priority.

26:51Well, you've done that. It just took you a little while to get there. Yep. I mean, everything comes in its own time, right? I mean, it's, yeah, it, it, uh, well, you're obviously meant to be doing this and you're obviously smart and you've, you're, you're, you've taken the lessons well and congratulations on your success thus far. And, uh, thank you. Yeah. I think there's, there's a pretty, pretty long runway ahead of you, I think. So for sure. Yeah. That's, that's, that's exciting. So any last thoughts or anything else that you just got, you got to tell somebody? the biggest thing that I think I would say is don't be afraid of change because if you're going to grow and scale a company it's going to require a lot of difficult decisions that will change you the way you think and the way that a business operates and I think yeah I think if if you're afraid of change you just won't you just won't grow you'll just sit there and work 80 hours a week.

28:01Yeah. And there, you know, there are people who probably are probably okay with that, but you know that they don't, they probably also don't have five kids. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, there's, there's, there's a price to pay for all of that. So yes, they're certainly, yeah. So cool. Well, look, thanks for, thanks for this. This has been awesome. I really appreciate you being with us. Yeah. It's good to see you. Yeah. It's good seeing you. I appreciate it. And until next time, all the best. Hey, thanks for listening to the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast. Here's three things that you can do.

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29:27That's my personal email that I read. No one else reads it first. It's not screened. It's my real email. Just send it to me. I can't wait to talk to you. Hey, and until then, all the best.