Master ServiceTitan Construction Workflows: Lessons From the Front Lines | Podcast Ep. 81

I believe ServiceTitan is an onion, right? So we'll slowly peel back the layers as we get there. I can peel back layer at a time. I don't have to. You never have to. It gives you that option to be able to look all the way down to the core.

Welcome to Mastering ServiceTitan, where you get expert advice from power users. Today I'm joined by James Byer, the owner of Byer Plumbing, and we are talking about all the lessons he learned implementing the new construction workflows in ServiceTitan. And so James, welcome back to the show.

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, you came on the first time to talk about Pricebook and it was an amazing episode and I'm excited to have you back to talk about a, a huge topic. For people who haven't heard that first episode, can you give a quick intro of who you are and the background of, of Beyer Plumbing?

I'm the president of Beyer Plumbing. Uh, we are operating out of San Antonio. We have 3 offices around South Texas from San Marcos to San Antonio, so we cover a large swath. Most of our business is actually commercial construction. So 75% of our, our business is actually commercial, 25% being, uh, residential service. When we first jumped into ServiceTitan, everything has been residential service related up until this point. So now we are able to have 100% of our company, uh, within the program and in the software. So we are pumped to have that.

Can you talk a little bit about how you were set up before having the two different systems running? For both.

We jumped into ServiceTitan probably in 2019, I believe it is when we jumped in with our service department. At that time, there was nothing quite there yet for commercial construction, even commercial service. So we were able to be on the front lines of that as we developed, you know, helped, helped ServiceTitan, ServiceTitan engineers develop the commercial service side of things. And then we got to a point where we were, um, Now we get to help with the commercial, the construction side of things. But having two systems was always hard, um, for us. You know, we have, we have, you know, ServiceTitan on one side and then we were using our accounting software, their project construction project module to track all of our job costing, schedule values, doing the AIA application for payments, all that stuff. And so we always knew that it would be great to incorporate into one spot where we would have all of our timekeeping in one area and being able to track, track those things. So having two systems is, is difficult in that sense. This year we were able to bring them all in together. So, um, pretty pumped about that. And I'm excited to share that all with y'all.

I was saying before we started recording that it's like you went off on a journey and went through all the crazy change and all the new stuff, came back with all the battle scars, and then you're here to share all the lessons. So I'm really excited to dive in. What was missing in ServiceTitan before that? Didn't allow you to have it all in ServiceTitan?

It was just the, the ability to do any kind of project tracking from seeing a budget versus actual in the financials, or even being able to cut a project PO, um, you know, not necessarily always seeing things at an appointment level. So ServiceTitan was always built at an appointment level and then over the years has evolved now into now we can have projects and project levels and, you know, all these different types of things that are even bigger. So being able to see that growth within the software helped us make the decision of, okay, now we're ready to jump in. We sat down with lots of engineers over the past few years. They were very curious of how we operate as a company, what we do as a construction company, and then how we could implement that into ServiceTitan. And so slowly over time, things have started just kind of falling into place. in that sense. And so now, um, ServiceTitan has that ability to be full on in tracking construction projects.

And it sounds like you've been the front runner before helping to develop commercial service side, and now you're the front runner again, one of the first customers to really help develop the construction side. Can you tell that story of like how that all started and what the journey's been like leading up to this point?

One of the greatest things about ServiceTitan is that when you go to events, go to Pantheon, whatever it is. Everyone is so open. You can network with everybody. So I think just being able to network and talk to the people, I think it was just stemming from being in Torch and then going into Torch Plus of talking to them and just being like, hey, you know, we're on the right path with a lot of these things, but hey, what about construction? And I think at the time it was not, they weren't like, we weren't thinking about construction in it. And so I was like, hey, by the way, you know, 75% of my company is in construction. Like if we can do something along those lines, it would be helpful for us. And so I think that sent off a lot of, uh, little light bulbs. And so just making those connections at those events with ServiceTitan, and then slowly over time, we were able to network and make contacts and just kind of start talking about having those conversations of, you know, what does it mean to have construction and ServiceTitan? What, how would we, what would we want? What are we looking for? Everyone has been so welcoming in that sense of what can they do to help us? And so that's been fun. To watch it develop is, you know, ServiceTitan always has this idea of always putting the contractor and the customer first and totally appreciate that. And this is one of those instances that it, they do what they say because they've helped develop this program just as specifically helping construction. So I think that's kind of where it started. It started a few years ago and it's kind of dragged on, you know, and, and now we've kind of gotten to the point where it fit perfectly for us at the right time. Okay.

So James, let's get into some of the workflows here, um, the new features within ServiceTitan to help with construction. You sent me an in your notes the work breakdown structure. I know it's been 2 years in the making, you working alongside ServiceTitan engineers, and shout out to Jade's team as well. But what is the work breakdown structure?

Work breakdown structure is how we do cost codes and cost types. So cost code and cost types is pretty, pretty fluent across the accounting, accounting world, but basically it's giving us a way to put every single item or material or a labor hour to a certain bucket. And so you've created all these different buckets. And so for us, we always start at the phase, then it goes into a cost code, and then it goes into a cost type. For in the plumbing world, I'm going to talk in plumbing sense, and then because it's just easier for me to do that, and then you can, you can take it how you want. But in the phase world, so it's the top level, right? We're at the top level phase, meaning what's happening in the job. So for us, it's our rough-in phase, it's our top-out phase, which is when we're putting in things above the slab. It is when we're installing all of our fixtures and equipment. Maybe it could be a change order, or it could be a change of, you know, change of scope, whatever it may be. So it's a top-level, top-level item. Then the next level down below, that's going to be our cost, our cost codes. It could be we're working on water lines, vent lines, compressed air, gas, med gas, whatever it is. That is what's going to— that what is the cost code. And then the cost type is what it actually is. So the cost type being labor, material, subcontractors, permit fees, whatever it is. So those are the actual items. It helps you take this large project with all these things and put them in buckets. And so why are we doing this? Why do we, why do we have this structure in place? And that's so that way we can accurately see job costing. We can accurately see how the job is doing. I would assume that most people that listen to this want to make a profit. And so you want to know if you're, if you're in this, in a large contract for a, a commercial job or whatever kind of job, it always goes back to job costing. How did our margins turn out? How did we do all that on it? And what this does is it gives us the ability to do it not only at the job, like the full project level, you can see the margins, but you can now see it at every single stage of the job from different phases to different things. So then it just opens new doors with the ability to say, hey, This certain person is fantastic at doing a rough-in, but this person needs to work on rough-ins because their labor is even— they go over in labor. So now you're able to track it at a technician level. You're able to track it at a project manager level. I'm getting excited just thinking about it because there's just so many— it opens the door to so many things that it helps do that. So that's the work breakdown structure. It's so complicated, I guess, but it's like, it's the way that your jobs are organized. And so I think for many contractors is, you know, how do you want to say, what do you want to see as an owner, as a president, or even as a construction manager or whatever it may be? What do you want to see when you are looking at your financials or when you're looking at how a project is doing? It is completely custom to 100% of how you run the business. So my cost code, cost types, and phases is going to be completely different to the person next door or even, you know, somebody else in the plumbing industry. So I think that's what makes it so unique and great is that it's 100% you, like it's on the contractor. What are you looking for? What are you searching for? And what are you hoping to get out of this type of reporting?

Before the work breakdown structure and service time in your old accounting system, did you have cost codes and cost types built out through there? Or how did you do the job costing?

So we, we did have that. Built into our old system. However, the reporting out of that was less than ideal. And this is one of the reasons why we worked so hard with ServiceTitan is that we could never get accurate information, accurate costing, accurate job costing from our other accounting software is that we never knew perfectly how a job was going. And it was always one of those things where we could see it at the end of the month, like when the months are closed or whatever it may be. Now with ServiceTitan, you are getting that live information. It is live. So like, you know exactly how that job is at the end of that day because you are now able to put every single labor hour or material cost, whatever it is, into all these different buckets where now you're seeing accurate information from day one, every single hour of the day. And so that is unlike anything I don't think anybody has right now is that You were able to see it in such a transparent way that it's going to be huge for our industry.

Yeah, that point about seeing it real time seems like a big deal because I can't imagine just like, fingers crossed at the end of every month, hopefully we've made money. Yeah. So is it just that the old system didn't have enough buckets and it just wasn't set up for construction? Like, why was it so hard to have reporting there? Because it seems like all the costs would be in there. It's just you just can't separate it out or what's going on?

I think that the system that we were using is a very complicated project system. I'm not really sure who or how uses it the best ability. It's very well known, so they are very popular. Like it took forever to even get any kind of report that you'd have to manipulate. Then you would have to ask them for help. It was too much. And so I think having ServiceTitan now jump into this world really helps us. Plus, it was always going to be a disconnect based on time because our timekeeping was never in that one. So by being able to also have timekeeping is huge because now we can see labor hours with material costing and everything else. It's going to change the game for us because now we're able to see things in real time. We can adjust as the project is going, whatever it may be, and just fix our problems as they, as they come up.

So Yeah, it's amazing. And I can sense your frustration. You're like, it was such a task to do.

I'm trying to be nice. I'm being nice.

For the, uh, work breakdown structure. So it sounds like one of the first steps, get your cost codes, your cost types in there, and the different phases labeled. Is that right? Yep.

Since we've gone into this and we've gone live, we've had numerous meetings about cost codes, cost types, phases, and we've even shifted. So like how we want it to be done. So we, we came into it with a certain way, but we've already kind of shifted what we think, what we, what works now in real time. And so it gave us that ability to just instantly change how we would shift and see things. What makes it so great and a task is that it's all depending on you. So it's like, what do you want to see? So there's so many options. And so it's so broad that it's up to you. As a company to create what you are looking for. What are you going to be looking for in your reporting? What exactly do you want to track down? You don't have to be as detailed as I am. I mean, I'm very detailed. We're very detailed about every single part or piece and material that gets put. It's all going to buckets now. So you don't have to be that intense. It could be super easy. You might just want to see labor, material, and be fine with it, which is great. That's what works for you. But what works for us is to be so detail-oriented and know exactly what things are and how we're doing on every single phase of the job is super important for us. And so that way we can adjust as we're bidding other work. We can adjust and say, okay, well, we're so efficient at this phase, but when we get to this phase, we're a little less efficient. Let's put some extra care in that, or labor or materials, whatever it may be. So what do you want to see as a contractor? What do you want to see as an owner or a president or department manager. It's, that's what makes it so great.

As you say this, in my head I'm going, no wonder we wanted to work with you specifically to build out these workflows, because you can stress test it. You want to see it at the most detailed level. I'm fascinated by how you started with the different phases, cost codes, types, and then what made you shift to where you're at now. Can you share an example of like how you set it up initially and then what lessons you learned to make you shift it a little bit?

So when we originally started out, we kind of just brought in what we had in our old system. So that was how we had cost codes. Our cost code for us was actually a phase. And so like we were using rough-in as the cost code and then the cost type would be a labor or material. Where we were having issues is when we have very complicated construction jobs. They're not easy. I mean, we range from, you know, a $50,000 finish out in our contract world up to $3 million, you know, complete remodel, new construction. So there's a lot of different variables for us. And so we thought we had it figured out, like, coming in that way. And so, but we were having issues is when we had multiple things happening in one phase. And so, like, in our rough-in phase, when we're underground, we may have grease waste and we may have sanitary sewer and we may have other, you know, things under the slab. Where everything was getting put into that one place, but it wasn't— we weren't able to track down, you know, what each thing goes to. And so what's really important also is this is what makes it so great is that when you go to bill at the— during your month, having everything so detailed out helps you bill completely accurate. If you're so broad, there's always a chance that you're overbilling or underbilling. With this cost code system and how we're tracking it now, we should be able to be billing 100%, like we're getting 100%. Yeah, but, you know, we're getting very accurate at billing at least. And so we're coming into it, you know, if we're in an underground phase, if we're in a rough-in phase and we're working on a sanitary and we're also working on grease and putting in grease interceptors and whatever it may be in the ground, we didn't have that connection. Like we didn't have a way to say we just want to bill for one of those. As we jumped in in January and we started implementing and started working in it real time, we started seeing that more like, okay, well now we can kind of, we probably should change this. So we've actually moved everything into a phase. So our phases now equal phase of the project. And then the cost code was what it is. And then the cost type is the type of costing. So that shift really helped. And we even have it, it's still written all over our whiteboard. One day we just sat there and we went through the whole, the whole spiel, like, okay, let's all sit here and figure this out. Together. And so we sat there and we, it's still all over our whiteboard in our boardroom of, you know, what we're going to do. And it made it so easy, like came back to my desk and just fixed it, you know, like it was the easiest thing. And then just going back and implementing those back into the project has made it really simple.

So, wow.

That was the big shift for us.

Okay. If we were a fly on the wall in those meetings, what are the conversations like and what did you guys determine were the phases? Because it sounds like before some of the cost codes were actually phases when they weren't. Like, how did you all figure that out in those meetings?

It was going back to, like, again, it's so broad that what do we want to see? Like, what are we wanting to track? And so for us, we came in as phases was always a way for us. The original thought would be it would be multiple buildings or maybe different floors. And so we're, that's how we kind of phased it. So if we're doing a multi-floor for doing a 10-story renovation, each phase would be labor. Each phase would have been level 1, level 2, level 3. It wasn't working the way that we thought. And so we went back to the original idea. Okay, phase. It would make more sense if phase equals phase, right? A phase of the job. So we changed our mentality a little bit. And then what ServiceTitan had added in there is that every single phase of the job, can be project specific. And so it does not have to be in my universal settings at all. Like I can have my universal ones, but if it's specific to that particular project, it can be a project specific phase. And so that's what also makes it even great is that it doesn't have to affect everyone in the system anymore. Now every project is unique. Like I don't have to have some kind of out of the box experience. Everything is different for every single project. It can be out of the box because you can set it up that way, but also for these complicated projects where you have— maybe you're working on 5 different buildings in one site and one contract, or maybe it's just one building. And so it, it just makes it so much easier. So now we can be project specific, we can be, you know, universal out of the box, so everything kind of matches up. And so I think that's what makes it has made it so great as well is that it's so customizable to even a project or location level.

So the project-specific phase, is that kind of like a custom field or something? Like, how should people think about when to use a project-specific phase versus your top-line universal ones that you set up initially?

I guess it would be similar to a custom field in that sense, but it lives within the work breakdown structure. Again, it goes back to what do you want to see on your financials? Like, how do you want to see it? How do you want to drill into this. So take for example, maybe I have a— let's just do a multi-building one. So I, I have a contract that has 3 different buildings. They're probably going to be being built at the same exact time. So I'm going to have my project-specific phase will be Building 1 rough-in, Building 1 top-out, Building 1 trim-out, whatever it is, Building 2 rough-in. So that, that gives us those bigger buckets to now start placing things into. It's similar to a custom field, but it's going to live within your job costing and financial world as well as your project planning and all that as we get into that. Gotcha.

I know you're a numbers guy. What are the reports that you're excited to and like really eager to see now that you were never able to see before?

I was telling somebody today, I was there asking about this and I was like, it gives me, it gives me time to nerd out because I'm so excited about this. As you can tell, I'm very passionate about it. Like, I'm very excited about how— what this meant for us. The reporting side of things, like, I think I'm excited to just drill down and figure out one at the major level. Like, I want to see all of my projects in one place with all the labor. Like, I want to know how my labor is doing. And what that does is that helps my field superintendents. They know exactly because they're in charge of scheduling. They're in charge of making sure that we're doing jobs efficiently so they can immediately at a job level of all of our active jobs being able to see that. That's huge. And then even going down from that, we've been able to create a new report, like a custom report with, you know, using the WIP in the background to be able to see every single month when we're working on our monthly billings, I can pull this report and it's going to show me all of my active costs for the month. It's going to show me my active, my labor work for that month. Month, and then it's going to show me how much I've billed for that month. So we look at that. That report is like the most important thing in our world right now. Every single month, you know, we have to bill a lot of our jobs by the 20th of the month. So when we're sitting down and we're working on how we're going to— what we're invoicing out or what we're doing on our pay apps, that's like the thing that you look at. You're going to look at how much cost we've actually had in this job for that month, and then what we're forecasting for that. So it's, it's looked at at the beginning of the month, it's looked at in the middle of the month, and then at the end of the month. When we're actually closing everything out, we can go back and say, okay, you know, how do we actually do? Because you can now see how you actually did every single month to month on that project. And so that's, that's been huge for us. And so being able to look at the WIP all the way down to, we were able to build a Schedule of Values one. So that way we can pull every single line item in a report for all of our active jobs. So that way we can see everything that has to be billed out per project manager or, you know, department. And what makes it so rich and so exciting is that you can change this however you want it to look every single time you open it up. This is the coolest thing is because I can, I can sort it by business unit. In our world, business unit is our departments. We have 4 different construction departments. And so being able to see how each one is performing is huge for us. I can do it by project manager. So I just drag that little guy up to the purple line. It sorts it now by project manager. So the reporting inside ServiceTitan has created this whole world that is so detailed now. It's kind of scary because now you have so much information on every single thing live as it happens. And the goal is to, you know, we're going to be more profitable, we're going to be more efficient, and we're going to do all these things. That's done. By being able to see accurate information in the reporting of ServiceTitan. So kudos to that whole reporting team 'cause they've done a fantastic job.

That is amazing. Are there any specific, like when you're pulling reports and custom reports, what are you looking for? Is it some, like an area that's not doing well that you need to tackle next or what are the opportunities there?

Being a president of a company or being a, you know, a manager, of your department, you always know that there's going to be something that you can, that can be fixed in every single month and, you know, month or day, whatever it may be. And so having those reports gives us the ability to look at a project level or project manager level. And you said maybe it's just, maybe it's one project manager, maybe that's how they're bidding the work, maybe it's how they're, they're doing it, or maybe I can even look at it by superintendent, who, which superintendent is in charge of these jobs when we're going over them. There's so many different ways that you can sort the material, add in your own custom fields. Like, that's what we've done. We've added a custom field for material vendors. So certain materials start going up through the roof or certain projects are performing a little bit differently. Then we can also look at, hey, is it maybe the material vendor that is maybe that's causing this? Why is this cost so much higher on every single project we do with that material? So there's so many different things that you can do. I've told everyone as we, as we jumped into the ServiceTitan, we jumped in, you know, headfirst. It was a huge change for us in that I've told them it's an onion. I believe ServiceTitan is an onion. We'll slowly peel back the layers as we get there, but there's so many layers and there's so many things that we can track that we can get involved in that are so fantastic to how you can operate your business that we're, we're just starting to peel back some of the layers. There's just so many things that it— I'm excited to, to do that. And the way that it's set up is for you to be able to do that. Like, I don't have to— I can peel back layer at a time. I don't have to. You never have to. But it gives you that option to be able to look all the way down to the core. And so I think that is valuable beyond anything to being able to track down some item and figure out and maybe fix that problem. So For me, creating reports, it could be whatever I'm focusing on that day. It could be labor, it could be material costing, it could go back to the technicians. Like maybe the certain technicians aren't good at certain phases and that maybe that we can do a little training on that, which is huge. Having this ability now for, for all this construction side is going to be a game changer for our company for sure.

I am self-admittedly not a numbers guy, but hearing you say that a report could be like just so elegant that way to where you can find out and figure out exactly what your biggest opportunities are. Going with that onion analogy with the layers here, we've talked about, you know, the what and the why, but I do want to hear a little bit more about the how and like some of the pain that came with implementing this new, new change. We had to delay the podcast a couple of times because you were like, oh man, we are in it right now. Like, let's push this off a little bit more. So tell me a little bit about the different battle scars and other lessons, you know, for people hearing this and like, wow, I want to implement. What are some of those hard-learned lessons that you can, you can save people from?

ServiceTitan is an ever-evolving piece of software. So like just throwing everything into it, we knew going into that we were going to have some kind of like push, you know, if we were going to push it to the limit, which is what we did. We, we brought in, I think, probably close to, I want to say, 3,000 line items. Like those were schedule of value line items that needed to be brought in to, we, I think we activated 60 or 60 or 70 active jobs to, had to create these projects, put these line items in those projects with the cost codes, cost types. For us, for that transition, it was a, it was a learning curve. We thought it was just going to be easy, you know, oh, it was going to be easy. No, it was not easy. Making sure that everything lined up, having to do all the extra little work on the end. Our development team really stuck with us and they helped us and really helped us through that whole transition. But I think we may have started a little too late and we tried to get it as fast as possible. We wanted to be in there January 1st, completely in, and we ended up having to postpone that a couple of weeks just because we weren't completely caught up with everything. So that took a little bit of time and effort. But, you know, we got in there and then once everything was in it, we realized there was a couple bugs. And so we found, we found so many different bugs of just random things that people haven't pushed it to the limit yet. And at the same time, at— we, we decided January 1st that we were implementing the new field app, and we were also changing our timekeeping. So we went from legacy timekeeping to flexible timekeeping. Or yeah, flexible timekeeping. So we changed 3 giant like systems in ServiceTitan at the exact same time. We turned all those on at the same time and there was, we found so many problems. And, you know, you have half of our company in ServiceTitan already, which is our service side. They were already used to the program, but they had to get used to now the new field, the field app. And then we changed that on them. And then you have another half of our folks that have never seen ServiceTitan before that were like, what is happening? What is all this? And so many adjustments, so many different things. We're still, you know, learning things. We still have, we definitely have an active list with our implementation team of things that still are a little bit broken that we are just continuing to fix. Biggest thing I think for us was realizing that taxing was going to be a problem. In the state of Texas, we have very different tax laws than many different places, especially for commercial, how we track taxes back to a location. And that's a learning part for us and for ServiceTitan is when you do a construction job, how does that taxing work? And so that's been a little bit of a hiccup, but we've, you know, we helped figure out workarounds for right now as we develop new systems. And so I think it all just, it stems to how to create new workflows. We still are having meetings about, okay, well, now that everyone is in ServiceTitan, what is our new workflow? What does this look like? It's been great to see our whole company collaborate and come together. I mean, just talking about cost codes or cost types or, you know, a workflow of how we get from construction to service or whatever it may be. Now that we're all integrated in one place, what does that mean and how can we do it efficiently? So that's been very good for us.

James, if you can go back to maybe December and tell your former James some advice leading into this change, what advice would you have given yourself?

Double-check everything. Make sure your work breakdown structure is what you think it is. I would say take your time. We were trying to push it to the limit a little bit. We pushed ourselves and we pushed our implementation team because, you know, that's just what we like to do is just go fast. I think it's important for anybody that's wanting to do this and wanting to switch into completing the construction side. It's how you build it out. And so I, again, I preach on the start with your work breakdown structure, you know, make sure that it works for you. What are you looking to drill back on? If you have messy cost codes, cost type, if you have a messy structure, that's going to be implemented across the board and then it's going to be harder for you to break down anything in the future. You have to really have that forward thinking of what am I going to look for, you know, next year or the year after that, like once this is fully integrated, like what are we going to start looking for and searching for. I think that is very important. So I think for myself, it was slow down, make sure that you, you have everything correct before you jump straight into it. Also, don't do it around the holidays. That was just completely dumb. Like, of course we're trying to do this in December where it's half of the month is everyone's on holidays. So I mean, that made it a little bit more difficult, but we were able to get it in. To ServiceTitan just in time for us to bill our January projects. You know, January billings came out of ServiceTitan for the first time. Also have a lot of grace because that took a lot longer than we thought the first time go around. So there was a couple issues that we had, but again, I think it was just perfect timing. Just be calm and just, you know, be steady with it and just know that there are going to be hiccups along the way, but the team is there to help you fix them as they come up. And I think that's important for anyone to notice is that ServiceTitan has a great support system, whether, you know, it's all over the world. So somebody will be working on your stuff no matter where you, you know, you'll be sleeping and they'll be working on it. I think that's important for everyone to realize is that there's so much support out there for you.

That is crazy. You moved timekeeping. You got the new Field Mobile app, you shifted to the construction, uh, side all during the holidays.

Yeah, all during the holidays.

Has your team forgiven you? And if so, what's next?

Yeah. Um, well, we'll see. But no, I think they are, they, they all see it. We all still have, you know, we still have our issues here and there, like just learning a whole different world. Like the construction guys are learning that they have to dispatch and arrive and they have to take a meal break and then get back into the job. And so like, it just little things here and there, but I'm not sure what we're going to implement next, honestly, because we, we've, we really pushed the limit for this one. I think we're going to keep calm for this year at least. But we have, I'm sure there's going to be quite a few new surprises along the way this year that will be implemented. But yeah, they forgive me, I'm sure, but I'm sure it took a little time.

How did you help with the change management, like communicating what's in it for them? Like, this is a big change and a lot of it. Do you have any parting thoughts on that culture side of change?

The buy-in. I think that, yeah, the buy-in was huge. It's so important that, you know, having those conversations with all the technicians and all of our, you know, our plumbers and our apprentices and even the office staff, like, why are we doing this? You know, why are we changing our system? Why do we need to do this? And again, it's more about for us, it's more about for the project managers, it's more about, you know, how we can improve as a company, how we can help you grow as a plumber. All these things for service tightness, it was all adding up to be able to track those things, something that we haven't been able to see before. What I'm really excited about is being able to implement a SPIFF program for our construction side. Now that we have all these, this, this data coming in, this, we can track efficiencies, we can do all these things. We can now create a program, a SPIFF program where the service side has only been able to take advantage of. Now the construction guys can now take that advantage because now we're able to track certain things. So the buy-in was it's going to make us more efficient. It's going to make us even better than who we are right now. And it's going to create a reputation around town. It's going to give us a way to look at how we build ourselves, how we build ourselves up and our teammates. And so I think that's really important. And having that buy-in has been good and less pushback. They trust us and they know that it's there for a purpose and we're doing it. We're not just doing it, you know, during the holidays just to mess with them, you know, but they understand the importance of it.

And they must have been really excited about that SPIFF because now they can see exactly where their improvement areas are. And as they improve, they can share in some of that success and some of that improvement. So wow, what a beautiful way to, to, to structure everything. Any last parting thoughts or, or words of wisdom? You shared so much today, but any, any closing thoughts today?

We've helped develop this with ServiceTitan for the past few years. There's so many exciting things coming still that I, I've been able to, I've had the privilege to be able to talk about this topic for 2 years at Pantheon. And so the past 2 years has been fun to see behind the scenes of what's coming and what's available. There's a huge shift that's going to happen with construction projects that's coming in the future that's going to be so even more valuable for us. And I'm so excited about it, like being able to do project planning, even to do all the way down to tasking. And there's a lot. So if you, if you want to sneak peek, you can go watch our, our projects video from last Pantheon. You can always kind of go back and see those things. Just a quick plug. There's some exciting stuff coming and it's gonna be fantastic for us and for everyone in the construction industry. Wow.

So cool. We're, we're gonna link that talk, your Pantheon talk in the episode description. So if you guys wanna check that out, please do. And we're all, I'm sure, really excited to follow your continued success and journey. And I'm sure more will come at Pantheon this year. So thank you so much, James, for coming on the show, sharing all your battle scars, the stories, the lessons, what you're one of the guinea pigs and, and there's a lot of pros, some cons, but It sounds like you get to implement some of like the most innovative latest tech and now you get to share your story with us. So thank you so much.

Yes. Very pumped. Very pumped about it. So if you would ask me a month ago, probably not as pumped, but this, I'm, I'm good now.

And that's the process. I think that's just how, that's just how growth is, right? Like there's that quote, like growth only happens outside the comfort zone. Like within it, there is no growth. And so this story today is just like a perfect example of that.

The biggest parting thing is I firmly believe in ServiceTitan because it has evolved so much over the past few years from just being residential service focused on the trades to being more than residential, like in residential to commercial, and now it's evolving more into construction. So this evolution of ServiceTitan is going to be big for our industry as a whole, for all the trades and for the future of growth of the company. So I'm I'm very excited. I'm very, very honored to be a part of it with them. But service and construction, it's going to be big. So I'm excited for them.

We'll keep an eye out. Thank you so much. Yeah.

Thanks, Josh.