From Vision to Victory: Building Contractor Freedom with Integrity featuring Jason Humrichous

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Contractor Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Jason Phillips. This show exists to help small business owners like you escape the tyranny of Contractor Freedom and enter the bliss of Contractor Freedom so you can have the Time, Money, and Freedom to Live Your Life With Purpose Beyond Your Business.

As a certified human behavior consultant in DISC personality styles and motivators, I'll be sharing with you skills for life, love, leadership, and business. I'll also be connecting you with experts that can help you scale your business and your life. So if you want to build the business and life of your dreams, then you are in the right place.

Let's go.

Jason Phillips: Hello, contractors. I'm so glad you're with us today. I have someone very special here with me in my office studio today with you, and I can't wait for you to meet him. We've got some great stuff we're going to talk about. I want to introduce you to, right now, Jason Humrichous from the great [00:01:00] state of...

Indiana. 

 Hey Jason, welcome. 

Jason Humrichous: Thanks. Thanks for inviting me to Dallas. 

Jason Phillips: I'm honored that you're here. I'm glad you made the trek. 

Jason Humrichous: Yeah, no, great flight and easy, 

Jason Phillips: man you guys, I love following you on social media and all the great stuff, all the great stuff that you're doing both at work and outside of work.

Jason Humrichous: Yeah. 

Jason Phillips: Man tell everybody a little bit about, who's Jason. Okay. You're you're not me. And tell us a little about yourself. 

We'll make that confusing. Try not to. So yeah my wife and I, we have six kids. High school all the way through college. We just had two graduate from college this year, and so that's a pretty big deal.

And one's going to continue to go on to school and then one's going to be starting her career as in the ministry in essence with Youth for Christ, so pretty excited about that. Started painting in middle school studied for the ministry. Actually worked at a couple different churches in the late 1990s, early 2000s.

Didn't know what to do after I resigned as a children's [00:02:00] pastor at a church. Ended up starting, going back into painting. I'm like if I don't know, I don't know what to do, Lord. And I begin to pray, what do you want me to do? And ended up starting a painting company. Just pulling out signs that from the high school days and started getting business.

And, did that for a while and then went to work for a contractor in the custom home business in Indianapolis area. In 2009, ended up leaving that company and starting Heritage Custom Painting. The mother company is Heritage Homes and Restorations, but Heritage Custom Painting is what we're doing business as.

In 2009, just continued to just work through the economy the best I could. Was on the job site, but then grew through in 2012, pulled myself off the job site. And in 2018, I began to see that I... wasn't able to do what I wanted to do, and I was understanding that I was the bottleneck, I was the problem in our company, and I had to fix that bottleneck.

And so in 2019 a [00:03:00] friend of mine, Jason Finney, another Jason, we'll just add that to the confusion Jason Finney and I, we connected at a local paint store and became good friends. And in May 1st of 2019, we sat down at a local pizza joint called Pizza King, and I have a joke that we say, All good decisions happen at Pizza King.

Pizza Kings are all through Indianapolis or Indiana area, but anyhow, we sat down and we began to figure out, I like what you do, and he likes what I do, and how can we serve together. And in 2019, May 1st, we joined our forces and continued to just grow Heritage Custom Painting. 

So that's pretty awesome.

I'm just thinking, imagine that the owner is the bottleneck in the company. And in reality, in every company, the owner is the bottleneck. 

Jason Humrichous: You're not lying. 

Jason Phillips: That's a hard pill to swallow. 

Jason Humrichous: It was. And 

one of our core values is humility. And I had to just come to the realization that my dreams were [00:04:00] super big.

But I knew that I couldn't do that by myself, and I, there's a scripture reference that references that two are better than one, and I'd already experienced that in my relationship with my wife. She serves us as our CFO in our company but as my wife, she's also serving me by saying. Chase your dreams, go after it.

She understands that I'm the gas, she's the brakes in our relationship. And so she's saying, whoa, slow down, you're scaring me as your entrepreneurial person, and I'm like, let's go. And take risk in that, but she also gives me freedom to just, she knows that I'm trusting the Lord.

For Wisdom Daily, listening to his spirit to say, do that. Stop. Don't do that. Do this, whatever. And so it's just daily listening to the Lord, what do you want us to do? How do you want us to be responsible for the resources that you've given us to that you've given us? And so it's I think about that, okay, I still have my health today.

How should I be responsible with that? And I can tell you you, you grow and you learn, [00:05:00] right? You get better. 

Jason Phillips: 100%. Wow. So give give us an idea. You don't have to go into any detail about maybe the size and makeup of your company and the type of staff structure you have, obviously you and Jason and your wife.

Jason Humrichous: Yeah. Yep. I would currently I'm the CEO in essence, and I'm still running the day to day operations. I'd love to work out of that role. But I do love it. I genuinely love it. And Jason Finney has a full time role as a firefighter. And so he's in and out. With his schedule, which when he's at the firehouse, he's very active, still at times he has space to be able to be engaged in building processes and systems and stuff like that.

He's been very active during that time and then when he's with us, and then we have Jennifer, who, my wife, who does the CFO stuff and payroll and all that jazz. Jason's wife, Kim, does our social media. She Does a phenomenal job with that. When I, when we merged, she took that over and she's made it consistent, right?

Consistency is the, is really a huge win. And [00:06:00] 'cause and I love, I'm so thankful for that and she does a really good job with that. In admin, in our admin space, we have a content manager. Caleb Clark does an incredible job. He does SEO and just does a great job with that. We have him and our office admin.

We have three people, Christy York and Emily King. Support on the call intakes. And do a great job with that. And then Emily's also our full time color consultant. I love color. You love color, as we can all see. And as we know, if Jason Phillips, Jason Phillips loves color. But and I listened to your, you and your wife talk the other day about how she's so colorful, and I think that's awesome.

But I love to talk color. If somebody wants to just come in pink gray, that's fine. But I want to add color, right? And and I, the struggle, and I think Nick Slavik talks about this, the hardest thing for a client to do is pick color. And we've identified that years ago. And so for a long time I've been saying, Hey, we're going to do complimentary color consulting.

And so [00:07:00] we do that. Now we have a full time in house person who does. They meet with every client if they need help. And in the field, in the room, whatever, in the outside. And then we also offer a virtual rendering. So Kim Finney helps do exterior virtual rendering of the house, which is phenomenal.

service and just helps people see that. So that's a little bit about our admin staff. I think I got everybody there. And then we have a project consultant who's the salesperson. We like to use the word consultant because it's generally what we're doing. Yeah. We're helping people figure out the problem and then we have project man.

So they do the sales process and then they hand that off to Emily who does the color process and then hand that to a project. Manager who manages our teams and currently we have a mix between W2 Painters and Subcontractors. So what people would know is a hybrid company and so we have about 19 to 20 crews in all.

Jason Phillips: Nice, that's quite an operation you guys have [00:08:00] there. Yeah, God's blessed us. 100 percent. Yep. Wow. Your clients are... Homeowners? 

Jason Humrichous: So we do, probably 85% of our clients are residential repainting homeowners. And then we have about 15% commercial repainting. We do have a small percentage of the builders that we're still working with in a certain size of commercial project.

So we don't want to engage all of our resources on just any commercial new construction project just because we just have found that. That's a market that is they're looking many times for the lowest bid and we're just not going to be the lowest bid, unfortunately, fortunately, unfortunately for whoever Right

so let's dive into this for a moment. Jason, I get I get a lot of contractors that ask me about partnership. And you've done it without, you've done it with. Yep. Could maybe share, how do you guys break down? Who does what and maybe what was life. You said a little about it, but what was [00:09:00] life like before versus what life is life in business then and now.

As a person of faith I love the passage. It talks about two are better than one because that is a hundred percent true, and I have it on a verse card over top of my door as I walk into my office and my son gave me this verse card thing and I've. Put it up there and I'm like, two are better than one.

And I've experienced that with my wife and us going at it when I was the lone ranger. And I hated that term. I don't want to be a lone ranger, me personally. There's times when you have to step up and make a decision and do that, and I can make a decision, that's fine. But I want, I love being yoked.

With people of like mindedness, and for me, like faith, and pulling that yoke together, and getting after it, because you just make so much more, you can till so much more ground, and do so much better. So Jason Finney and I are yoked, genuinely yoked, and people jokingly, not jokingly, say that it's a marriage.

And it really [00:10:00] is our partnership but the beautiful thing about Jason Finney and myself is we became friends in 2016, roughly. And then, and we would compete against each other, we'd sit down, have lunch, we'd pray together. And so our hearts connected, and our friendship connected before we ever became business partners.

And I think God graced us with that, foresight to be able to say, this is, this will work. And so when it came to the table, it was a fast decision. It was, it not even. And part of it was this. So we'll dive into this. Jason Finney is an integrator, and I didn't know what that meant until another really good friend of mine who happens to live in Indianapolis and.

He's a business partner and he owns a painting company. His name is Todd Gates, owns Vision Painting, and him and his partner. So Todd says to me, Jason, you gotta read help me with the book again. Rocket Fuel. Rocket Fuel. I was, yeah, so you gotta read Rocket Fuel. Right away, read it. Both Jason Finney and I read [00:11:00] it, and we discovered that Jason Finney is an integrator.

I'm a visionary. Also talked about in Traction, the book Traction, which I just read again. But, jason had to be a visionary at a certain level, but he's a natural integrator. And I had to, and so there are things, the processes and stuff that I am, working on that I love. But so we work together that way.

But I wouldn't say that we have it completely ironed out. I would say, Jason's like I said, at the firehouse Grissom Air Force Base. And he serves there as a fire, full time firefighter. And so when he gets on. Retires from there in about two and a half years. He'll be on with us full time.

And so then it'll be more of a thing where I think we'll have to really identify in the next two years. We'll probably have to hammer out like who's doing what and who's focusing. Because honestly, we're both jealous for space and we're both good leaders. And I want to have my hand in marketing. As he does as well.

And so we go to, sometimes we just go to the meetings together and it's a blast, [00:12:00] and I want to have my hand in sometimes hiring somebody. And I can tell you, some people would be like, you got to let that go. Now I want to talk about that. I love this because, and I just brought up a topic, you got to let go to grow.

Jason Phillips: That's right. 

Jason Humrichous: And I learned that. And I began to watch myself in about 2012 say, I got to get off the job site. in order to grow. And I realized that I remember getting off the job site, starting doing sales. I'm doing management. And I remember sitting in the living room one day thinking to myself, What the heck am I doing?

Like I'm twiddling my thumbs. I'm watching TV at 10 a. m. I got an estimate at 11. I gotta be on the job site at noon. But why am I watching TV? I gotta have anything else to do. I was bored and I and but I'd let go of being on the job site. And you talk about contractor freedom, there was a little bit of freedom that began to happen in that, and a sense of that.

And the, it's I reference letting go like pulling teeth. It's ah, really hard. And yeah, let go to grow. [00:13:00] And I let go of being on the job site, happened to be the guy who was the best painter. And then and then I had to let go of project management. And that was hard. 

Jason Phillips: You know what, when I, chatting with you guys a couple times together, you and Jason, it was pretty obvious that you guys have completely different personalities.

And I could, I can see how you guys can be, or are, a dynamic duo bringing different things to the table in who you are. But at the same time... I know that different personalities often can rub each other wrong. I'm not trying to necessarily dig into that. Yeah. But how do you deal with things like maybe his pace might be different than yours? 

Jason Humrichous: Yeah, fortunately at this point, he's, he still looks at me and says, many times, first of all, we have complete trust in each other. 

Jason Phillips: Wow. 

Jason Humrichous: And I have failed and he has failed. And we've both looked at each other and said, I failed at that, or he's [00:14:00] looked at me and said, I failed at that.

And we're just like, we're okay. Let's get up and go. And and the beautiful thing about that is, it's almost like when you fall out on the basketball court or on the playground and somebody hands you your hand and you pick them up and you go. And so there again, two are better than one.

And so you're doing it together and it's and that's what makes it really fun right now That's it's really fun. Just to be able to do that with somebody else and not feel like I'm the lone ranger 

Jason Phillips: exactly and you mentioned trust and Trust is it's the foundation. It's I say trust is the currency of business And I've had a team before in my former years where we had low trust on the team and now having guys gals That we have two way trust.

It is, it's empowering and and it's Hey, they may have made a mistake, but I know they've proven their hearts in the right place. And guess what? We're going to, I'm going to pick them up or they're going to pick me up and we're going to move [00:15:00] forward. 

Jason Humrichous: Yeah. 

Jason Phillips: I love that. 

Jason Humrichous: Yeah, we haven't necessarily fully defined our roles completely other than we know who each other is.

And I, and he, and. The day to day has to fall on me for the most part because he's just not there most of the time for now But when he gets there and we'll work through that in the next couple years and I'm excited for that And I'm a little bit ahead of him age wise, you don't see yourself retiring As an as a true entrepreneur though.

I see myself diversifying and maybe choosing to work myself out of a job, if that makes sense. Sometimes I do things because I want to. Not because I have to, but because I want to. Yesterday I spent time with our techs. At a sprayer training, and I wanted to be there.

I want to be rubbing shoulders with those guys. The next time I, and then Jason Finney might be doing something that looks more appealing because you're working with your sales people and training that. That's great. He's good at that and I trust him to lead that. But there's not any one person in the company [00:16:00] Teamily has a better role because of something that they do necessarily.

Does that make sense? 

Jason Phillips: Yes, absolutely. 

Jason Humrichous: Our technicians are required, are lean on our project managers lean on our project consultants, salespeople, right? Our salespeople have to have a good call come in and and so this, the CSR or the office admin need that support.

So everybody's leaning on it's a team. 

Jason Phillips: So as a company, obviously, you've, it sounds like you've got an incredible team. Let's talk about systems for a moment. What's a system at your company that you're like, man this particular process is dialed in. It's repeatable. It's accountable.

All of those things. 

Jason Humrichous: Oh, wow, man. You're, I would say we're most of our systems. You didn't prep me on that question. So I would say that our systems are 65%. Just to be quite honest. 

Jason Phillips: I don't think there's anybody that's 100%. 

Jason Humrichous: And nor should we. Systems are constantly evolving in that. I'm gonna plug this book real quick.

Not because I got asked to, but... This book has come up for air. I just started, [00:17:00] and it's... It's rocking my world, and it's so good. And I could step away, guys talk about Can you step away from your company for two weeks and the systems run your company? Yeah, I could do that, but I don't want to yet.

I'm here, but The goal in building systems is for it to be enjoyable for everybody. We talk about contractor freedom. Systems will help you with contractor freedom. But it can also help relieve your staff and save your staff hours and days within a week. They can be more productive.

They can not only just enjoy their life, but they can. And so I say we're 65%. I think our pre positioning process is really good. And so the processes of sending and getting. And a project consultant to the job site and getting information to them is really good.

Jason Phillips: Between booking the appointment and the actual appointment time. 

Jason Humrichous: Yeah, and I would say, again, you can build systems. A lot of that is in your software, is what you're, using. And that was one of the big things that Chase and Finn [00:18:00]...