Travis Smith made a name for himself in HVAC, plumbing and electrical work, taking over and modernizing his father’s business in San Diego before launching his own in Portland, Oregon. When a buddy suggested they “get into roofing,” Smith was game.
Even though it was a completely new industry for him, Smith was confident that ServiceTitan’s technology could revolutionize roofing as it had HVAC.
In fact, Smith said roofing reminded him of the HVAC industry from 2016-2018, so he was familiar with what needed to be done.
Coincidentally, ServiceTitan was launching software for roofers just as Smith was considering a jump to that industry. It gave him confidence to go forward.
“It was a way that we could grow together, we could learn it together, and I knew how to use ServiceTitan,” Smith said. “And I figured, at the very least, I'm going to know how to make ServiceTitan work for roofing, and if I can, I can give some feedback to it. ”
He and co-owner Grayson Carey spent about two months building out ServiceTitan for their new company, Blue Moon Roofing.
“Now that we’re competing in that market in roofing, it's phenomenal to see how far behind so many roofers are,” Smith said. “And when we show up with these wrapped trucks with tech-arrival tracking, being able to present on an iPad, all of those pictures of the roof, already imported into ServiceTitan. It’s phenomenal to have that ready to go.”
Baby steps into technology
Smith was born into the trade industry. A page in his baby book shows that at six months and five days old, “Travis went to go help daddy do trim outs at the heating and air conditioning company.”
At that time, Smith’s father ran a heating and air conditioning business in San Diego, California, with as many as four owners at any time and 12 employees. Much of the work was on new construction, which brought in about $2 million in revenues.
The operation was strictly old school.
“We had a calendar book and you'd write down the four appointments that each service technician would go on that day,” Smith recalls.
He carried two of those books, one for each of the service technicians he managed. The appointments, and assigned technicians, were also written on a white board in the office.
The company’s first software included an electronic dispatch board, which Smith had to fight his business partners to implement.
“But I had majority ownership, so I took the whiteboard, put all the information into the software,and threw that thing away one night,” he said.
It was a major change, Smith said, when they replaced the basic digital board with a ServiceTitan moving dispatch board that included notifications with images inside, customer reviews, marketing, phone calls and heat maps of customers.
“The wealth of data at your fingertips drastically changes what you can do in a business and how efficient you can really become,“ he said.
He was always looking at ways to improve the business or increase it, by adding high-efficiency equipment, selling more products or providing services to clients. By 2022, he had grown the business to three locations, with over 100 employees.He sold it to private investors, which allowed his father to retire.
A few business partners approached him about launching a new HVAC company, outside of San Diego where Smith was restricted by a no-compete contract.
Okay, he said, let's see if this playbook works again.
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‘The glue for the business’
The playbook includes the right marketing people, the right financial people, the right training, and ServiceTitan. It had to be ServiceTitan.
Over the years, Smith had looked at other software created to manage the contracting industry. None had ever matched ServiceTitan’s all-in-one package that allows users to review real time data, schedule service calls and reminders, track service technicians and much more from office and home computers as well as mobile phones and tablets.
Marketing and reputation software enables companies to track service reviews as well as geo-track communities to reach new customers.
“You can constantly see where everything's coming in from, attribution rates back to your email marketing and reputation management,“ Smith said.
“It really has to be tied all together, and that's what ServiceTitan is, it's the glue for the business.”
For newcomers to the business, Smith recommends a leap of faith.
“Sometimes you'll need to make changes that are going to feel a little awkward, they're going to feel a little different,” he said. “But …changes are successes just outside of your comfort zone. So if it feels a little uncomfortable, it means you're probably in the right spot. ”
