Travis Smith made a name for himself in HVAC, plumbing and electrical work, taking over and modernizing his father’s business in Portland, Ore., before launching his own. 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 in Portland, 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 trades. A page in his baby book shows that at six months and five days old, “Travis went to help daddy do trim outs at the heating and air conditioning company.”
Smith eventually joined his father’s heating and air conditioning business in Portland. Much of the work was new construction, which brought in about $2 million a year 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 again, Smith said, when they swapped that basic digital board for ServiceTitan—and got access to everything else the cloud-based software brings to a contracting business, too.
“The wealth of data at your fingertips (with ServiceTitan) 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 before selling to private equity.
Then a few business partners approached him about launching a new HVAC company, Comfort Bros in San Diego.
OK, he said, let's see if this playbook works again.
It did. That business is at 35 employees, doing $8 million in revenue, and has added plumbing and electrical divisions in Year 3.
‘The glue for the business’
The playbook for any contracting business, Smith said. includes the right marketing people, the right financial people, the right training, and ServiceTitan. It had to be ServiceTitan.
Over the years, Smith has looked at other software created to manage contracting businesses. . None have 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.”
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ServiceTitan translates to roofing
When approached about Blue Moon Roofing, Smith said, he knew ServiceTitan was the answer for that business, too.
The Blue Moon Roofing Partners looked at a few software solutions that were “OK for the roofing industry” but would require other tech to round them out.
ServiceTitan, however, put everything in one place.
“Looking at ServiceTitan I said, ‘Yeah, that's the answer to all my roofing problems.’” he said. “From what I know of roofing, ServiceTitan's going to knock it out of the park.”
