AI & automation for the trades
You know you're behind budget. Nobody can tell you exactly why.
We put an accurate number on your month, automate the reporting that shows exactly where it's going, then fix what it finds — the pricebook, the estimates nobody chased, the work your office is still doing by hand. Then we teach your team to run all of it without us.
The problem
You already know where it's leaking.
You've got CSRs on the phones and a CRM you pay real money for. None of this is a technology problem — it's four gaps sitting in the space between the systems you already own.
THE BOOKING RATE
Every call gets answered. A good share still don't turn into a job on the board — and most shops can't tell you which ones, or why, or which CSR needs help with what.
THE PRICEBOOK
Your tech is standing in the kitchen and can't give a number, because the pricebook won't let him. He says he'll send it over. Somebody else gets there first.
THE UNSOLD ESTIMATE
They're sitting in ServiceTitan right now, aging quietly. Nobody is chasing them, because chasing them has never actually been anybody's job.
THE OVERFLOW
Peak season. Every CSR on a line, hold times climbing, callers dropping off. Those calls don't show up in any report anyone opens on Monday.
Reporting & the numbers
Most owners find out they missed budget three weeks after they missed it.
By the time the P&L lands, the month is over and so is your chance to do anything about it. You don't need more data — your CRM is drowning in data. You need a number to hit, and a report that tells you this week which part of the business is short and what to do about it.
Plan
$220,000
Actual
$178,400
Gap
−$41,600
BEHIND PLANWhere the gap came from
No monthly budget?
That's where we start. Revenue and margin by department, and what each tech has to produce for the plan to hold. An accurate number, not an aspirational one — a budget nobody believes is worse than none.
No KPIs?
We set the handful that actually move the month and automate the tracking: booking rate, average ticket, close rate, revenue per tech, margin by department, unsold estimate value.
No idea who needs help?
The same numbers, per person. You find out who's carrying the month and who's quietly slipping — while there's still month left to do something about it.
Still building it by hand?
Right now somebody pulls these numbers out of two or three systems and pastes them into a spreadsheet. That job disappears. The report assembles itself and arrives the same way every time, with nobody left to forget it.
That's the compass. No guessing, no "I think we had a slow month" — a report that points straight at the thing costing you, in time to fix it.
The part that isn't AI at all
Half the time, the problem is your pricebook.
A tech who can't put a number in front of the customer while he's still standing there is a tech who loses the job to whoever shows up next. It doesn't matter how good your marketing is or how sharp your CSRs are — that one was won or lost at the kitchen table.
Building flat-rate pricebooks is work I've done for years, long before any of it had AI in the name. Properly structured tasks, good-better-best options a homeowner can actually choose between, and margins that hold up when your best tech is having a slow week.
Sometimes the audit turns up a shop that doesn't need a single automation. It needs its pricebook rebuilt. I'll tell you that.
At the kitchen table
Three options on the tablet before he leaves the driveway — priced so the middle one is the easy yes. Example figures; yours come off your own costs and the margin you need to hold.
Teaching your team
Everyone's told you AI matters. Nobody's shown you what it does on a Tuesday.
This is not a webinar, and it is not a course about prompts. We sit down with your CSRs, your dispatcher and whoever runs your office, and we use these tools on the work they were already going to do that afternoon — the awkward customer email, the job notes that need turning into something readable, the review that needs answering, the spreadsheet nobody wants to build.
They finish with three or four things they will actually use on Monday, written in their own words and saved where they'll find them again. Not a binder that goes in a drawer.
The measure isn't whether the session went well. It's whether they're still doing it a month later without anyone asking. That's the only version that's worth your money.
Here is why I would push you on this even if you bought nothing else from me. The gap between a shop that uses these tools and a shop that doesn't is never going to show up on your P&L as a line called AI. It shows up as five office staff handling the volume that used to need seven. It shows up as a competitor two towns over who gets a quote out while your customer is still waiting. That gap compounds quietly, and it is cheapest to close now, while it is still a training problem and not a hiring problem.
What offices actually use it for
Their work, their systems, their words. Not examples from a slide deck.
Who we sit with
Different job, different thing worth learning.
One generic class for the whole company is how this gets wasted. The dispatcher and the service manager do not have the same problem.
Growing the business
Reporting tells you what's wrong. Somebody still has to fix it.
This is the part most owners actually need and almost nobody sells them properly. It is not a motivational call and it is not a webinar series. It is a standing appointment where we open the same numbers every month and decide what changes.
What it ends up being about
Almost none of it is a software problem.
Once the reporting is honest, what it turns up usually is not technical at all. It is how you are priced. It is how the departments are split, so that the profitable one is quietly funding the one nobody wants to talk about. It is a pay plan that rewards something other than what you want.
Those are the conversations that move gross profit, and they are the ones a dashboard cannot have with you. I have sat on the operations side of this work for years — building the pricebooks, watching where the margin actually goes — which is the only reason I am any use in that conversation.
Typical ground we cover
Monthly, with 30 days' notice like everything else. If a month goes by where I wasn't worth it, you should leave.
What gets built
If a person is retyping something your computer already knows, you're paying for it twice.
Taking those jobs off your people is most of the work, and it is not one clever robot. It is the steady removal of the small manual things your office does by hand over and over — the copying between systems, the chasing, the retyping, the reminder somebody has to remember to send — until the people you pay are spending their day on the work that actually needs a person.
Every one of these sits on top of the CRM you already run. Nothing here asks you to move platforms or retrain a team that finally learned the last one.
Budget & KPI build
An accurate monthly number by department, and the handful of KPIs that tell you whether you'll hit it — set up once, tracked automatically from then on.
Weekly scoreboard
Where you are against plan, what moved, who's up, who's slipping, and the one or two things worth fixing. On your phone, not buried in a dashboard nobody opens.
Unsold estimate follow-up
Pulled straight from your CRM and chased automatically — spaced out, polite, persistent — until the customer says yes or says no. Most shops are sitting on months of these.
Overflow & after-hours capture
When every CSR is on a line, or it's nine at night, the caller still gets a response and a slot instead of a hold tone. Real emergencies still reach a person.
Pricebook rebuild
Flat-rate structure, good-better-best options, margins that hold. Loaded into ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro or whatever you already run.
Call review & CSR coaching
Every call reviewed instead of the four your manager has time for. You find out which calls didn't book and what was actually said on them.
Job notes to write-up
The tech talks through the job on the drive back. The write-up is drafted before he's off the highway, ready to check and send.
Review requests
Sent at the one moment the customer is happiest — the job just finished and it works. That timing is most of the battle.
Maintenance agreements & renewals
Renewals chased on their own instead of when somebody happens to notice. Memberships are the most predictable revenue in your business and the easiest to quietly lose.
Paperwork between systems
Warranty claims, purchase orders, timesheets, supplier invoices — the jobs where a person reads one screen and types what it says into another. Nobody enjoys them and nobody should be doing them.
Receivables that chase themselves
The polite reminder, then the firmer one, going out on schedule instead of whenever somebody works up to making the call. Most shops are owed more than they think and find out late.
Job costing kept current
Labor, materials and truck time landing against the job as it happens, so gross profit by department is a number you can trust. Everything else on this page depends on that one being right.
That list isn't finished and it isn't supposed to be. Anything your office does the same way every time is a candidate, and we keep going as long as there's something manual left worth removing. The goal isn't a shop that runs itself — it's a shop where the work that needs judgment gets your people, and everything else just runs, whether anyone remembers it or not.
How we work
Four steps, in this order, every time.
You don't start by buying anything. You start by finding out whether there's enough here to be worth the trouble — and you find that out before you commit.
The first call
No charge. We go through your booking rate, your unsold estimates, your pricebook and where the hours actually go. You leave with the obvious leaks written down and a rough number against each one. There's no pitch at the end — if there isn't enough here to pay for itself, I'll tell you on the call and we'll shake hands.
The build
We build and deploy against the CRM you already run. You don't configure anything, pick tools, or learn a platform.
The handover
We sit with your CSRs, your dispatcher and whoever runs the office until they can work it without calling us. If your team can't run it alone, we haven't finished.
Keeping it running
Seasons change, things break, you think of something new. Some shops want us on call for that. Plenty don't need us after the handover, and that's a fine outcome. If you do take it, you can end it any time with thirty days' notice — no annual contract.
Straight answers
We're not right for every shop.
This works if
- +You have CSRs on the phones and a CRM you're already paying for.
- +You couldn't tell me this month's booking rate without going and looking it up.
- +You have no monthly budget, or you have one nobody actually believes.
- +Your techs sometimes leave a house without giving the customer a number.
- +Somebody in your office would actually use these tools if shown how.
- +You'd rather plug the leak than buy more leads to pour into it.
Look elsewhere if
- –You want somebody to run your ads and your social media. That's not this.
- –You're hoping to cut CSR headcount. You shouldn't, and I won't help you try.
- –You want the cheapest quote. I won't be it.
- –Your numbers are already tight. Some shops are, and I'll tell you so.
How this works
If I can't build something where we both win, I don't want the job.
Most consulting is priced so the consultant wins whether or not you do. Hourly billing pays for time, not for anything changing. A retainer renews whether or not last month was better than the one before it.
I'd rather do it the other way round. Four things, and every one of them costs me something:
The handover is built the same way — deliberately, so that you stop needing me.
It also goes further than software, which is why the coaching exists at all — fixing the reporting and then ignoring what it says would be a waste of both our time.
The version of this that's worth doing is a long relationship with a business that keeps getting bigger. That doesn't happen if I sell you something you didn't need.
Who you'd be working with
Trades Smart is new. Here's the honest version.
There's no wall of client logos on this page because there isn't one yet. I'd rather say that plainly than pad the page out with stock photos and invented numbers, which is what you'd normally get here.
What isn't new is the trade. I've spent years building flat-rate pricebooks — structuring tasks, setting options, getting margins to hold — for companies running the same software you run. That work has nothing to do with AI. It's the reason I know where your money is going before I've automated anything.
So the first call is where you find out whether I know what I'm talking about. No charge, and you keep whatever we turn up whether or not you ever hire me. If I go through your numbers and don't find enough worth fixing to pay for itself, I'll tell you, and we'll shake hands.
— Jake Blair, Trades Smart
Questions we get
The ones worth answering.
Are you trying to replace my CSRs?
No, and I'd argue against it if you asked. Your CSRs handle the calls that need a person. This takes the overflow, the after-hours and the follow-up nobody has time for — and gives your manager a way to actually coach the calls that didn't book.
We already have dashboards in our CRM.
Dashboards show you numbers. They don't tell you what to do about them, and most were never set against a budget in the first place — so they're measuring you against nothing. The work is deciding what the number should be, then reporting the gap and its cause.
Our data is a mess.
It usually is, and pretending otherwise would waste your money. Cleaning up what the CRM records — so the numbers coming out of it can be trusted — is part of the job, not a prerequisite you have to sort out before calling.
We already run ServiceTitan / Housecall Pro / Jobber.
Good — keep it. Everything here sits on top of what you have. Ripping out software your team finally learned is almost always worse than the problem it was meant to solve.
Our pricebook is a mess. Is that in scope?
Very much so, and it's often the first thing worth fixing. Flat-rate structure, good-better-best options, margins that hold, loaded into the system you already use. Sometimes that alone moves the numbers more than any automation would.
What if it isn't working?
Give me thirty days' notice and we stop. No annual contract, no reason required, no exit fee. The notice period exists so your team gets a proper handover rather than being left mid-air — not to hold you in. If I'm not earning the money, you shouldn't be paying it.
Can you just teach us to do this ourselves?
Yes, and for some shops that's the whole engagement. We'll train your office on the tools, using your own work, and leave you to it. It's cheaper than having us build things, and if your team is willing it often gets you most of the way.
I'm not technical.
You don't need to be — that's the entire job. If your office can't run it without us after the handover, then we haven't finished the handover.
Is this a long implementation?
No. The first call costs nothing, and we build against the CRM you already have instead of standing up a new platform — so there's nothing to migrate and nobody to retrain. You'll get a date for your specific build once I've seen your setup. I'd rather commit to a date I can hold than quote you an average.
Where are you based?
San Antonio, Texas. The work is remote, so we take on shops anywhere in the country.
Next step
Find out what's leaking.
One call. No pitch and no slides — we'll talk through your booking rate, what's sitting unsold in your CRM, and whether your pricebook is helping or hurting. Then I'll tell you whether there's anything here worth doing.