Epic Entrepreneurs

Craftsmanship to Entrepreneurship: Houston Trim's Journey and Insights

• Bill Gilliland

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Imagine transforming your passion for craftsmanship into a thriving business. That's exactly what Houston Trim did, and today, he's sharing his inspiring journey from the workshop to founding Innovex Renovations in Asheville. We promise you'll glean priceless insights as Houston recounts his transition from working with his father in the trades to mastering the nuances of running a business. He candidly reveals how his move to Asheville, spurred by his wife’s career, became a turning point that tested his resilience and business acumen.

Houston's story is a testament to the power of delegation and the importance of work-life balance. Overwhelmed by long hours and family commitments, he faced the critical need to adapt when a chance encounter with a business coach changed his perspective. Discover how embracing the 80-20 rule and trusting others not only improved his business operations but also enhanced his personal well-being. Through mentorship and learning from experienced professionals, Houston highlights the necessity of recognizing one's limits and finding strength in teamwork.

We also dive into the essence of business growth and leadership through the lens of the BE EPIC framework: Bring the Energy, Education, Planning, Inspiration, and Commitment. Houston illustrates these pillars with personal anecdotes and practical strategies that have driven his company’s success. We explore the significance of embracing change, making tough decisions, and adapting to new circumstances—essential moves for any entrepreneur balancing personal and professional responsibilities. Join us for this enriching conversation that not only celebrates entrepreneurial spirit but also equips aspiring business owners with valuable lessons for growth and transformation.

Thanks for Listening. You may contact me at https://billgilliland.actioncoach.com/

All the best!
Bill

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All the best!

Bill

Bill Gilliland:

Hey there, welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I'm here with Houston Trim. Hi, Houston, how are you doing today? Doing great, and yourself Excellent, excellent, excellent. So let's jump right in. Tell us a little bit about your business and how and why you got into business sort of the origin story here into business sort of the origin story here.

Houston Trim:

Uh, so my company in of x renovations um, stemmed from a lifelong, uh 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, and but 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 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.

Bill Gilliland:

Got it. So was your dad. Did he have a renovation company too, or was it a different kind of trade?

Houston Trim:

He did. He started out actually. He left a career, 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 and 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.

Bill Gilliland:

I did, yeah, yeah, I got it, so you learned from the ground up. That's cool. So what prompted the move to ashville like? What was that about?

Houston Trim:

uh, so my wife? Uh, we were dating at the time but she had just finished PA school down in Charlotte and landed a job with Mission Hospital, got it, so it was set she was moving.

Bill Gilliland:

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 that's, that's awesome, so Great. So I guess the question is and what are the things? Is I mean what? 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 that you've had to overcome, and maybe what are some of the learnings that you had along the way.

Houston Trim:

So for me, as I started in renovations with my dad, I learned how to do the work right, learned how to make things nice, really to build something out of nothing to, you know, 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 to overcome is that once I started, my dad went back to work. My 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%. And so we went down that road for a long time and luckily we were able to stay afloat and do things long through the recession of 2008. But later on down the road, lacking the business side was really the pickle, and so I ended up stopping working with my dad, going back into heavy construction. Going back into heavy construction.

Houston Trim:

But then fast forward to 2014, late 2014,. My wife and I moved to Asheville. She 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 and that guy taught me how and why you have profit and overhead. You know what? What are the rules?

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, what are?

Houston Trim:

the rules to make money yeah, yeah, yeah yeah and so where I would feel I remember trying to tack on 10 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, and 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 when something does come up like, oh yeah, well, I bought all my flooring. How do you do that? Because those are products that are still managed by the company, and so my biggest hurdle was understanding that you know not the estimating.

Houston Trim:

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. You 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.

Bill Gilliland:

Right, yeah, yeah, all right. So you found a mentor, and then what? You decided to pull the plug and get started.

Houston Trim:

Yep. So I said to my wife. I said when I moved to Asheville 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, I had expanded their bit.

Houston Trim:

After he taught me these things in the first few weeks of working for him, he 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. So in turn, I had started looking like okay, 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.

Bill Gilliland:

Right, 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.

Houston Trim:

Yeah, and there's. You know, when I started doing this like when I was early, I mean when I started within the late nineties, early two thousands, we don't have the resources Then 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.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, yeah, I mean. And the truth is, just adding on 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.

Houston Trim:

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, exactly, I mean that's the current argument, you know, with this insurance work right now. You know we're dealing with Hurricane Helene at the moment.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah.

Houston Trim:

And so you know it makes it a little bit tougher.

Bill Gilliland:

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

Houston Trim:

So right, the internet has definitely changed it it's unbelievable.

Bill Gilliland:

Let well, let's okay. So what have been your like big lessons, like what's been a big lesson or two for you?

Houston Trim:

uh, for me, and operating a company has been, uh, letting go of control, um, you know, learning to delegate to others, um, and also trusting in others. You know that that there are people out there that can take things off your plate as a business owner.

Bill Gilliland:

So is that just something you got organically, or, you know, just figured it out or what happened?

Houston Trim:

No, I ended up sitting down at the builder international builder show a couple of years ago and I remember thinking can't get away from the work machine I had created. I 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 Builders 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. Um, 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.

Houston Trim:

And uh, 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. At 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 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.

Houston Trim:

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 session. 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. But 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.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it was a great decision to give it a shot, to know that you needed to do something different.

Houston Trim:

Right.

Bill Gilliland:

That's right. So essentially through that process you learn that you can't so essentially, through that process, you learn that you can't.

Houston Trim:

You got to trust somebody.

Houston Trim:

Yeah, yeah, If we're trying to grow 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 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? What was a measurable outcome of that task that you delegated? And he would say a task done, 80% is 100% success because 80% of it got done by someone else other than yourself.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, it's 80-20 rule. Yep, got it. Yeah, that's right. So, yeah, I've always said that. Like, when do you turn something over to somebody? Well, when they can do it 80 percent as well as you, can, you probably give it to them, and then, and then they'll they'll surpass you sooner or later. They'll end up doing it better than you at some point, because you're you're I mean as the owner of a business you're here, here, here, here, all over the place. So that's right. So you learned quickly.

Bill Gilliland:

Well, first of all, I think one of the things, 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 don't ask other people for help, except I say that in you know, band and sports and, uh, lab, that's about it. Everything else is everything else, is all individual work and so. So, yeah, but what you've done well is you've, you've searched, you've you've said well, hang on, something's got to change here.

Houston Trim:

I need to go talk to somebody yeah yeah, and I mean, and those things don't come without hardship I mean you know you talk about that generally yeah, they don't, you know, no one tells you.

Houston Trim:

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 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. And then you go home and you realize the work isn't done and 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.

Houston Trim:

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.

Houston Trim:

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, and 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 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 in 22, uh, in 2022, um purchase or 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.

Houston Trim:

But yeah 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.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, so yeah, at some point, yeah, I, you know, I see it all the time. Like you know people, some people, generally what it comes down to is there's two things. There's sales and operations, and at some point you know the general thing, you know a person starts a business and they're kind of good at both. Right, and you know, or they have to be to make it work, and then they're more adept at sales or they're more adept at operations. And then so you either hire or you have a partner or something to do both. And I'm not saying, you know, finance and admin is another thing that you got to have, but that's usually outsourced or whatever. And then at some point you got to give it all up. If you actually want to run the business. I always say you got to give up control to get control. Yes, so it's a kind of a cool lesson that uh that, that that you learn.

Bill Gilliland:

Here's a question for you, though 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, like, how to like, did they got to do something different?

Houston Trim:

yeah, oh yeah I.

Houston Trim:

I think that if I think that's one of the hardships that you have to experience, um, in order to see where exactly things could be, you know, um, and if that, with that being said, I mean I gave up the 80 hour working in the field pulling drywall, mud framing, and now I sit, you know 30, some hours behind a computer and I tell, tell my guys all the time like I love to do the work. Right, that's, it's my absolute favorite thing is to do the work. But 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.

Bill Gilliland:

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 a. No, I'm serious, I've got a roofer client, you know. He went from. You know, when we first started working together he was eight employees and now he's 75 or so, you know. So I mean he doesn't need to show up Like he's got a GM, I mean it's –'s we've you know. And and, by the way, he was a guy I worked with too. He came off the roof and that 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 the route. He doesn't want to do it every day now, but he he likes to roof. You know he probably is going to it every day now, but he likes to roof.

Bill Gilliland:

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.

Bill Gilliland:

But 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.

Houston Trim:

Yeah.

Bill Gilliland:

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 BE, epic 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 like energy and what role it plays in building a business.

Houston Trim:

Yeah, 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.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, that's so true. It's so true. You mean Red Bull and Mountain Dew doesn't do it. You know those crews. I see the crews all the time they stop in they get a red bull or something. It's seven in the morning. I'm like what in the world? Uh, yeah, it's awesome now. Uh, so the e's education. So what role does education play?

Houston Trim:

uh, for us, education is huge. Um, it's one of the things that our team leaders have the ability to pull pull the guys to the side if, 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 manufacturers, 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.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, 100%. You got to be learning all the time Planning. I mean I know this is big for you, so planning, what's your thoughts on planning?

Houston Trim:

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 am. 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.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, no, I like it. I like it. What about inspiration? The I's inspiration.

Houston Trim:

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. 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, but, 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?

Bill Gilliland:

You know, Right, yeah, yeah, no, I love it. Yeah. One of my mentors says be an inspiration. He says don't go look for inspiration, just be an inspiration.

Houston Trim:

Be the inspiration.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, yeah, I love that. That's what you just said too. So, which is great, c stands for commitment, and obviously you're you gotta be committed to. I mean, obviously you're committed to. If you were working 80 hours a week, so, um, you gotta be committed in a different way now. So thoughts on commitment.

Houston Trim:

Yeah, commitment um 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've got enough work to get us through Um. 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?

Bill Gilliland:

Right, yeah, yeah, it really is a top down right. You got to lead from the front.

Houston Trim:

Yeah, I mean absolutely, yeah.

Bill Gilliland:

Well, let me ask you one more question, and the question is and I, you can use a timeframe you want, but I'll give you one and you can change it if you want. But the question is what do you wish you? What do you know now that you wish you had known before you went into business?

Houston Trim:

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. Percent of them all said learn how to delegate, not do it yourself, and to make sure that your family is of high priority.

Bill Gilliland:

well, you've done that. It just took you a little while to get there. Yep, yeah, yeah, I mean, you know it's, everything comes in its own time, right? I mean, it's it, yeah, it, it. Well, you're obviously meant to be doing this and you're obviously smart and you, you're, you're, you've taken the lessons. Well, and congratulations on your success thus far and 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. There's a pretty long runway ahead of you, I think, for sure. Yeah, that's exciting.

Houston Trim:

So any last thoughts or anything else that you just 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 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 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.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, 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 yeah, and you know there's, there's, there's a price to pay for all of that.

Houston Trim:

So yes, they're certainly, yeah, yeah certainly so cool.

Bill Gilliland:

Well, look, thanks for thanks for this. This has been awesome. I really appreciate you being with us.

Houston Trim:

Yeah, it's good to see you.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, it's good seeing you yeah, I appreciate it and until next time, all the best.