Some of the most experienced commercial contractors at Pantheon 2025 sat down for a talk on how they achieve success during “Scaling for Success: Insights from Leading Commercial Contractors.”
This session, moderated by Charlie Warren, VP of Commercial & Construction at ServiceTitan, included three business owners with more than 50 years of combined experience in the industry: Butch King, VP of Service at The Brandt Companies/Southland Industries, Dominic Magnolia, Executive Vice President at Magnolia Companies, and Kirsta Holliman, CFO at Interstate AC Service.
The conversation began with a quick recap from Warren on what ServiceTitan’s capabilities for commercial contractors entail, along with a brief tease at some of the latest innovations being announced later at Pantheon 2025. The entire conversation, however, revolved around the idea of “Scaling for Success” on three levels. Those levels being, “internal success with your people,” “external with your customers,” and “success against the competitions.”
Scale Starts with People
The conversation opened on an important subject: the people you work with.
For Holliman, success with people begins long before the trucks roll out. “We have Interstate University,” she said, outlining a level-based technician development path that partners with high schools and trade programs. “Get to know your technicians. Let them know you care about them… [You’ll] be surprised how much that [pays] you back.”
Magnolia and King’s playbooks mirror that investment with King mentioning, “We’re in the middle of building a 14,000 square foot training facility for hands‑on” and Magnolia stating they had their own “Magnolia University” dedicated to finding the future of the trades.
“The technicians are hearing from other technicians” said Butch King
Key internal moves the panel highlighted:
Invest in technicians with programs, clear paths to success, and opportunities.
Appoint people to be technical trainers and peer champions.
Find managers and leaders from within your organization that foster growth.
Win With Customers by Eliminating Friction
Hands shot up when Charlie Warren asked who uses a customer portal. Then he asked who likes the process.
Silence.
This highlighted one of the major issues that businesses experience, but the experts had solutions. King explained that their business also has difficulties, but are starting to figure it out.
Holliman talked about the ease of ServiceTitan’s solutions around portals and billing. “We went from three people doing it now to one.”
Magnolia mentioned that their big push was asking “How do we automate input into third party portals?” A task that ServiceTitan is already hard at work solving, and according to Warren, is the center point of new solutions coming soon!
Key solutions the panel mentioned:
Using software that can allow them to manage multiple customer portals and service agreements.
Finding integrations that can help them automate mundane tasks.
Finding ways to incentivize their teams to care about customer experience.
Compete by Choosing Your Partners—and Your Focus
Warren ended the session by asking the speakers to answer two questions: what are you doing well against competitors, and what could you be doing better?
Krista Holliman said the thing they do best is that they provide the best service and ServiceTitan allows them to deliver. The thing they could be doing better is making sure they get their name out there.
Butch King’s best advice was to focus on the culture of the company. One of the things they struggle against is private equity taking some of their people —however, as he points out, a few of the people who recently left have already come back.
Dominic Magnolia ended the chat by talking more about partnering with private equity and the most important thing to keep in mind, “Number one - look for the people who care most about your company.”
