When Jay and Amanda Mahaffey purchased Tuck & Howell Plumbing, Heating and Air from his uncle in 2023, the 55-year-old South Carolina family business was struggling to survive while operating with a negative 11% net income.
“They were stuck back in the 1980s,” Amanda says of Tuck & Howell before the purchase. “They were on pen and paper, there was no calendar, and we had hubcaps falling off some of the vehicles.”
In two short years, the Mahaffeys overhauled the business from mainly commercial to mainly residential, added plumbing services, implemented ServiceTitan software, and grew sales revenue from $4 million to $11 million.
They also followed the lead of other “thriving” businesses in the trades, according to ServiceTitan’s 2025 Residential Trades Report, with three main goals to:
Modernize the homeowner experience
Invest in additional technology
Purchase more tools and trucks
“You have to stay in tune with the times, or you’re going to be left behind,” Amanda says. “That’s exactly what happened to Tuck & Howell.”
“It was crippling,” Jay says, “because you had all these other companies with deep pockets doing the opposite of what we were doing. Some good old fresh thinking, some good old hard work, and some good old technology changed all that around.”
The Mahaffeys joined ServiceTitan's Angie Snow in a recent webinar to explain how they turned the company around and recap the major takeaways from ServiceTitan’s 2025 Residential Trades Report. Use these eye-opening insights to understand the challenges your business must overcome and find new opportunities.
Rebranding a legacy business
The first step in turning the company around required finding ways to boost cash flow, so the Mahaffeys prioritized their business plan goals to align with increasing the most cash flow on the front end, Jay says.
“That’s how we got the company up and running on its own, without having to put money into the business. And we were successful with that,” Jay says. “In two months, we had a really quick turnaround with cash flow, and then we actually had some money to market with.
“There was a lot of low-hanging fruit and a lot of untapped potential,” he adds. “Essentially, every [job] we were going on was 25- and 30-year-old [HVAC] units because they did not have the manpower to go replace the equipment. They were fixing everything.
“So, we slowed down, we hired more technicians, started giving four and five options in every door, and really started to go for the proverbial jugular from a sales perspective. And that really paid dividends for cash flow.”
Next, Tuck & Howell implemented ServiceTitan, added plumbing services, revamped its website, and rebranded itself in the community.
“Within eight months we went live in ServiceTitan, which was the game changer because we were able to start collecting data and making data-driven decisions. That’s how we've been able to get to where we are,” Amanda says.
ServiceTitan’s 2025 Residential Trades Report
In ServiceTitan’s 2025 Residential Trades Report, a third-party survey of more than 1,000 residential contractors across multiple trades, including ServiceTitan users and non-users alike, reveals some interesting trends, challenges, and opportunities for the year ahead.
This year, Snow says, the survey tried to ascertain whether the type of software contractors use to run their businesses made a difference in finding more success.
“I wanted to see if it does make a difference to have the data at your fingertips, to have the tools and all the things that ServiceTitan can do,” Snow says.
The survey data shows:
19% of all respondents say their business was thriving in 2024
63% of all respondents say their business was surviving in 2024
18% of all respondents say their business was struggling in 2024
In comparison, ServiceTitan users in the same survey reported:
20% were thriving in 2024
80% were surviving in 2024
None were struggling in 2024
The survey results only reinforced the Mahaffeys’ belief that their strategy to follow the thriving business model really does work.
“I thought it was interesting that it shows the people that are not using data-driven CRMs primarily identify themselves as surviving or struggling,” Amanda says.
“I don't find that a coincidence,” Jay says. “It aligns with everything that everyone trumps data up to be. This is a true model of what that is.”
Digging a little deeper, the survey also looked at which trades specifically identified themselves as thriving, struggling, or surviving.
The highest percentage of thriving companies included roofing, pool and spa, and water treatment.
Roofing also showed up in the highest percentage for surviving companies, along with electrical and plumbing.
The highest percentage of struggling companies included HVAC, general remodeling, and painting.
When the Mahaffeys bought Tuck & Howell in January 2023, the company only provided HVAC services. By August 2023, they added a full-service plumbing division.
“We’ve been thriving in plumbing,” Amanda says. “From Quarter 1 2024 to Quarter 1 2025, we’ve had a 157% increase for our plumbing department.”
And Tuck & Howell’s existing customers account for only 13% of that total increase.
“That’s our goal for 2025, to do cross-selling. But currently we’ve only been doing marketing, and I think our brand awareness has been huge for us,” she adds.
On the HVAC side of the business, the increase for the same Q1-to-Q1 was 16%.
“That average ticket is a lot higher,” Jay says for HVAC. “So, I think what may be happening, we may be seeing some of these tariffs and price increases affecting that economic outlook a little bit. Everything’s expensive right now, so some people may be holding off on a large purchase until they have to.”
As part of their rebranding efforts, the Mahaffeys also started engaging more on social media and trying to beef up their reviews with the help of Kee Hart Marketing.
“We have a little over a thousand reviews now,” Jay says. “We had like 40 when we walked in the door. We actually had been in business more years than we had reviews.”
>>Listen to the Toolbox for the Trades podcast to learn more about Tuck & Howell’s transformative rebranding.
Biggest risks to meeting 2025 goals
In the 2023 Residential Trades Report, the survey showed the biggest concerns for the trades were:
Economic recession
Labor shortage
Access to working capital
For 2025, the survey showed the biggest concerns as:
Labor/overhead costs
Labor shortage
Increase in material prices
“We definitely have seen cost increases and material price increases,” Jay says. “The economic uncertainty is definitely a concern in every consumer's eyes.”
In fact, Tuck & Howell recently faced a 10% price increase from a manufacturer whose brand the company had carried for 56 years. Instead of passing the cost increase over to customers, the Mahaffeys switched manufacturers.
“It's a real thing when you have to change manufacturers,” Jay says, and it adds to your workload because you have to change your pricebook, register new units, set up the warranty process, and train your techs on the new equipment.
“It's something that we don't enjoy doing all the time,” he adds.
“It's one of the hard decisions we had to make, though,” Amanda says.
Ultimately, it’s about selling your company brand to customers and standing by the products you install. That’s how legacy businesses learn to thrive.
“Our brand does a lot for us,” Jay says, including helping with the recruiting process. “Take a look at your identity. How you look as a company is how potential employees will look at working for you.”
At Tuck & Howell, potential customers and employees see not only a high level of technical excellence, but also teams working together and having fun.
“We like to have fun. We have cats in the office. We buy lunch occasionally for people. We take them go-kart racing,” Jay says. “Have fun with your team. Pay it forward, give it back. But also, invest in them. Invest in them as an employee, but also as a person.”
Rebranding the company through social media, advertising, and getting out in the Greenville, S.C., community more often also paid huge dividends.
“I think that has been one of our biggest ways to overcome the labor shortage,” Amanda says.
That rebranding also included leasing a new fleet of Tuck & Howell wrapped vehicles and buying new uniforms for field employees.
“It has a lot to do with how they feel about the company they work for,” Jay says of the investments Tuck & Howell made for employees. “And then ask yourself, ‘Do we have a real labor shortage or is it we're not managing our company the right way?’”
2025 Top Business Goals
In addition to cross-selling its trade services, Tuck & Howell’s top business goals for 2025 include:
Following Al Levi’s advice in the book The 7-Power Contractor to create a scalable company with organizational charts, standard operating procedures, and efficient workflows.
Adding automation to improve operations.
Training staff, including how to utilize the full functionality of ServiceTitan.
“We're really going to train our team to make sure they're utilizing ServiceTitan and being able to pull the metrics that they're looking for without waiting on me to pull that information,” Amanda says. “So, Al Levi's concept, automation, and training.”
In comparison, Snow says contractors in the 2025 Residential Trades Report stated their top business goals as:
Grow revenue
Retain existing customers
Acquire new customers and improve cash flow
“When we talk about retaining existing customers, I've always had this motto, ‘Love the one you're with.’ Because those are the customers that helped build your company in the first place. Those are the ones who are going to be easier to get the future business with, anyway,” Jay says. “So, focus on that low-hanging fruit, then acquire new customers, and of course improve cash flow.”
The residential trades survey also found that more “thriving” businesses offered multiple options on at least half of their jobs, whereas “struggling” businesses presented three estimates on less than 10% of jobs.
“The thriving customers are the ones asking and offering multiple options. And ServiceTitan makes it easy with the estimates and the pre-built proposal templates and estimate templates,” Snow says.
And Jay points out the quote Snow added to the slide: “We give options, not ultimatums,” which he thinks needs to be a non-negotiable practice for the entire trades industry.
“Only give options on jobs you want to sell,” he says. “The rest of them, just give ultimatums and see what happens. I guarantee you probably won't sell most of those. Educate your customer and give them options.”
The survey also asked, “What is the most common way that customers make their initial contact with your business?” The results were:
64% phone calls
10% home service apps
10% online booking forms
9% other
7% text messages
If phone calls are your main points of contact, you could be missing out on nearly 40% of customers who choose to communicate in a different way, Snow says.
“The main takeaway is, make sure you have multiple ways for your customers to reach you,” she says.
For generating inbound leads, Tuck & Howell relies mostly on phone calls and online booking forms on their website. For generating outbound leads, however, text messaging is the clear winner. The company is also interested in adding ServiceTitan’s Contact Center Pro features when they become available this fall.
“It's going to pull everything into a big omnichannel command center right at your fingertips,” Snow says. “There are so many places where these contacts are coming in. To pull them all into one screen and make it very easy to see them and be more responsive, I think it's going to be a game changer for everyone who's using it.”
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>>Learn more about Contact Center Pro by watching this on-demand webinar.
Following up on unsold estimates is also a strategy that businesses can deploy to increase cash flow and earn new business. The survey found that by following up:
39% of thriving businesses gained new revenue
42% of surviving businesses gained new revenue
23% of struggling businesses gained new revenue
To establish a good process for following up and generating the most revenue, Tuck & Howell hired someone to fill that specific role and added text messaging to communicate with customers.
“Imagine if we were able to pick up an additional 15% of revenue by following up on unsold estimates,” Amanda says.
“This was an eye-opener for us,” Jay agrees.
To bring things back full circle, Snow shared the top business goals of thriving companies, all of which align with what Tuck & Howell has been able to accomplish in the past two years:
Modernize the homeowner experience
Invest in additional technology
Purchase more tools and trucks
“I think it speaks volumes,” Amanda says of the top three goals. “This is the exact example of how we became thriving.”
