During the pandemic, Mitch Boerner approached his brother with an ambitious idea.
At the time, his brother Jacko was running a one-man plumbing business in Melbourne. Boerner, who had no trades background, had recently seen videos online of plumbing shops in the U.K. and the U.S. that had revenues beyond $100 million.
“Have you ever thought about building up a bigger company?" Boerner asked Jacko after explaining the videos.
“No way,” Jacko replied.
Scaling a large company seemed difficult, Jacko explained. Plus, the concept of a plumbing business making millions of dollars in revenue in Australia was unheard of.
Boerner persisted, and after some convincing, they partnered in 2021 to start Legendary Plumbers, a residential and commercial plumbing company.
“We set a goal that we wanted to make $10 million in revenue in 10 years,” Boerner said.
Jacko would handle the plumbing. Boerner’s job was everything else. But he didn’t know how to run a trades business. So in that first year, Boerner studied the videos and insights of successful shops in the U.S.—tradies like Ken Goodrich at Goettl, Ismael Valdez at NexGen and Ellen Rohr at Zoom Drain Franchise.
He found they all had one thing in common—a topic they talked about regularly: ServiceTitan.
A source for tradies
Boerner learned that ServiceTitan was a software built for the trades that could streamline everything from dispatching to scheduling to marketing to memberships. It seemed perfect—except that it wasn’t available in Australia yet.
Instead, Boerner tried two local software brands “that had major gaps,” he said—such as no way to track marketing spend and zero customer communication.
Simultaneously, he relied on ServiceTitan as a source of information.
“Literally, half of what I learned (on how to run a trades business came from) ServiceTitan videos—watching and listening to interviews and plucking like, ‘Oh, so what's a CSR? What's a dispatcher?’ And then trying to pull it all together to learn what all these parts were.”
Boerner learned about fixed-pricing and pricebooks via ServiceTitan’s videos and blog posts. He even mimicked how to properly dispatch—but since his software at the time had a limited dispatching function, he relied on pen and paper.
Most critically, Boerner learned how to calculate his profit and loss numbers via ServiceTitan.
“I watched a video about numbers, and then I went back and did our numbers and I was like, ‘Oh no, we're barely making any money,’” Boerner said. “(After that video), I think we doubled our price, and then six months later, we doubled it again.
“ServiceTitan's videos taught me a lot about running this business.”
In their first year, Legendary did around $300,000 in revenue. The second year, they did around $1.2 million. The third, around $2.7 million.
And finally, after absorbing all of the ServiceTitan content he could, “from Blue Collar Nerd videos to all the tips and tricks,” Boerner said, ServiceTitan became available in Australia, and Legendary Plumbers started using the software in July 2024.
3x average ticket increase
Right away, Boerner saw big changes.
“I think our average ticket has probably gone up from $800 to about $2,500,” he said.
One reason is ServiceTitan’s good, better, best feature, which allows Legendary’s technicians to easily build professional looking proposals—synced to their pricebook—and present them to the customer.
“Good, better, best has taken our average ticket through the roof,” Boerner said.
He also loves ServiceTitan’s marketing features via Marketing Pro.
“I love the fact that my marketing is tracked. With the click of a button, I can see how our SEO is doing, how our Google ad spend is doing. That is by far my favourite feature…If you can’t track your dollars, then you’re in big trouble.”
Boerner noted that Legendary is “much more efficient” on ServiceTitan, from dispatchers being able to track technicians, to the ease of the call-booking process. He feels that ServiceTitan has made his business, now up to 17 employees, look more professional.
Like when a call comes in, Legendary’s CSRs have the customer history at their fingertips.
“That little stuff, we just could not do that before ServiceTitan. We couldn't even get the (customer’s) name right, let alone see on the main screen that we put a hot water unit in there three weeks ago.”
ServiceTitan even allowed Boerner to do something his technicians wanted all along.
“The guys are now on commission. (ServiceTitan) unlocked the door that they wanted to unlock. Before I was like, ‘I can't pay you commission because I can't calculate it.’ ServiceTitan has allowed us to calculate (it).”
The #1 newsletter for the trades.
‘On the right horse’
Whenever a fellow tradie asks Boerner if they should switch to ServiceTitan, he always replies with the same question:
“Are you trying to grow your business?”
“(Because) there's no other platform that's growing like ServiceTitan and adding value back into the platform,” he said. “We were with the biggest software company in (Australia) and there were no updates. Things were not getting fixed, things were not changing.”
Boerner is passionate about seeing an improvement in the home services market in Australia—he wants more, and bigger, companies.
He’s seen how the ServiceTitan community exploded in the U.S., and hopes for the same thing in Australia. Via the software, he’s already networked with other ServiceTitan users in the country, some of whom have yearly revenues that he and Jacko once thought were impossible.
In fact, because of ServiceTitan, the brothers are no longer trying to hit their original $10 million in 10 years goal.
“The goal is now $20 million in 10 years,” Boerner said. “(Because) we know we're on the right horse with ServiceTitan. We've got that power to go forward and keep moving.”
