Gavin Doran is a numbers guy. But for years, he had to calculate everything himself.
That’s because Turbo Plumbing Solutions had no software — just a notepad and pen. This, in itself, created problems.
"There was no accountability for jobs," said Teilia Cornwall, Doran's partner and the company's administrator. "If anyone called him back, there were no photos.”
“There was no tracking,” Doran said. “There was nothing.”
If Doran got to the end of a week and manually calculated that he hadn't earned enough daily and weekly revenue, the fix was simple.
"Maybe I need to charge a bit more on the next couple of jobs,” he’d tell himself.
Most months, Turbo brought in around $30,000. By 2023, the Moreton Bay, Queensland business was doing about $300,000 in yearly revenue. Then Doran started researching the American home services market, listening to podcasts by tradies like Tommy Mello and Tom Howard.
What he learned made him move.
“They were talking about how good (ServiceTitan) is, how beneficial it is to their business and how their day-to-day operations are running,” Doran said. “And I'm sitting there thinking, ‘If (these) American (methods) are coming to Australia's home service space, I need to be part of that, too.’”
With three technicians and a CSR, Turbo went live on ServiceTitan in September 2024.
Now, Turbo does more than $200,000 in revenue. Not in a year. In a month.
A New Playbook
Before ServiceTitan, Doran would only provide one, hand-written option to the customer.
"(It was essentially,) ‘You want it or you don't,’" he said.
He didn’t present good, better, best options. He didn’t follow-up with the customer. He had no system for winning repeat customers.
"I either got calls for work or I didn't," Doran said.
ServiceTitan changed all of that.
Good, better, best: Doran now presents multiple options on a computer tablet for each job, giving customers a choice rather than a price to accept or reject.
Memberships: Turbo now runs a membership program — $99 a year, nearly 300 members — generating recurring revenue and a ready-made base of customers to market to. "They're free leads," Cornwall said.
Customer communication: When a technician shows up, customers already have a photo of the tradie and know exactly who's coming. After the job closes, automated messages go out — a thank you immediately, then drip campaigns in the months ahead.
"It's all the touch points with the customers that we can provide, which provides the value," Cornwall said. "That never happened before."
ServiceTitan also gave Doran the structure to price jobs accurately, building out his pricebook to hit his target margins on every job.
All of the above shows up in one number: Average ticket. Doran used to average $500 per job. Now Turbo does $1,900 — and Doran’s own average runs closer to $2,400.
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By the Numbers
For Doran, the best part of ServiceTitan might be the simplest: he can finally see his numbers without calculating them himself.
Take billable efficiency. Before ServiceTitan, Doran tracked it manually, counting billable hours against his workday and estimating from there. "I didn't know it was a thing," he said. Now it's one of the first metrics he pulls up each morning.
The same goes for technician performance. Turbo now has five tradies, and Doran reviews scorecards with each one, removing any subjectivity from the conversation. “You can hold them accountable,” he said.
The results are showing up on the revenue line. Turbo recently posted a record month: $220,000.
Meanwhile, Cornwall keeps a close eye on Turbo’s TitanAdvisor (TAD) score. TAD is reflective of how many features a shop uses, and points them toward features they haven't tapped into yet. Turbo’s score is currently 179. "That's my favourite feature,” Cornwall said. “It's just feedback on how we're using (ServiceTitan) as a whole."
When Doran started in early 2024, he gave himself a five-year goal: $5 million. Two years in, Turbo has already crossed $2 million.
It feels like he’s ahead of his timeline.
"I think I can definitely do ($5 million) in a bit over 12 months," he said.
