When Colby Davis joined the Big Hitters podcast with host Andrew, it was his first time on a podcast. He had been too head-down building companies to sit for one. What came out is one of the clearest breakdowns you will hear of how a home service acquisition strategy works when the owner funds every deal himself and refuses to bloat the overhead.
Colby founded Davis Painting at 20 and now runs a portfolio of home-service brands under the holding company Indy Capital. He is worth listening to because he is running a private roll-up with his own money, so every home service acquisition has to pencil out on fundamentals rather than cheap outside capital.
In This Article
- The home-service empire Colby has built
- Build the road before you need it
- How Colby structures a home service acquisition
- Funded without private equity
- The private roll-up reshaping home services
- AI that actually moves the numbers
- Why he wants small operators to get rich
The Home-Service Empire Colby Has Built
Colby did not start with a holding company. He started with one painting crew and built outward, brand by brand. Davis Painting came first, launched when he was 20. From there he added Suds Power Washing, folding in an acquisition and a rebrand, then Light Your Night, a seasonal holiday-lighting company. Late last year he launched Honest Roofing and has already closed three acquisitions under it, with a target of two million dollars in its first year.
All of it now sits under Indy Capital, the holding company Colby rolled out to run mergers, acquisitions, and the scaling of each brand. That structure is the point: every home service acquisition lands inside a system that is already built to absorb it.
Build the Road Before You Need It
Colby spent three years building infrastructure most owners bolt on only after they are already drowning. He runs a 16,000 square foot headquarters that is deliberately larger than he needs, backed by documented operations, standardized sales training, and tight SOPs. He keeps everyone in a defined lane, and he projects where the company needs to be six months out so nothing catches the team flat-footed.
“You have to build the road in order to get to the destination first.”
Colby Davis, Founder of Davis Painting and Indy Capital
Because the road is already built, adding a company through a home service acquisition is a copy-and-paste motion. Systems for operations, sales training, admin, and project management drop straight into an acquired brand instead of being reinvented every time.
How Colby Structures a Home Service Acquisition
Most of Colby’s targets are owner-operators under two million dollars in revenue who are deeply attached to a business they may have run for thirty or forty years. He offers three structures. The first is a full buyout, which he rarely likes, because he inherits a customer base without the owner’s pricing knowledge and can lose half those clients when prices do not line up. The one he prefers keeps the owner on as a general manager of their own location with a salary plus a real share of the upside.
“We make them a general manager of their location, and we give them a big piece of the upside.”
Colby Davis
That upside is real equity, not a slogan. Colby has twelve equity holders inside Davis Painting and four more inside Honest Roofing, so operators own a piece of what they build. To make the model work, he brought on a COO, Anthony, who came from a family office with roughly two billion dollars under management, along with a CMO, Brandon, and a layer of general managers and operations managers. That team runs the day-to-day and frees Colby to focus on the next home service acquisition and the strategic hires behind it.
12 equity holders inside Davis Painting and 4 inside Honest Roofing — operators who own a piece of what they build.
Funded Without Private Equity
Colby moves deliberately because he funds the roll-up himself. He took pay cuts and pushed profits back into the business rather than raising a fund. The trade-off is smaller, slower deals, but he answers to no board seats and no outside investors, so no home service acquisition gets forced. He is open to the right partner down the road, on his terms.
“It is all from me. I don’t have any PE money.”
Colby Davis
The Private Roll-Up Reshaping Home Services
Colby is part of a wider shift. More owners are joining private roll-ups instead of selling to traditional private equity, because a good roll-up brings better vendor pricing and constant training. He points to Kevin Fiskor of Fiskor Heating and Air in Arizona, who joined a private roll-up and grew from two million to twenty-five million dollars in two years. That is the kind of jump standardized systems and buying power can unlock for a strong operator.
$2M → $25M in two years — the growth one operator saw after joining a private home-service roll-up.
AI That Actually Moves the Numbers
Colby treats AI as a tool, not a buzzword, and he is specific about where it earns its keep. His sales team runs Rilla on every call, which has lifted close rates by about twenty percent, and a sales manager coaches reps against those transcripts and the company benchmarks. On the back end, a single client approval fires roughly ten automated actions, and marketing runs on HubSpot triggers that send a mailer, a text, an email, and a ringless voicemail while moving the contact through the pipeline automatically.
An internal knowledge base answers the repetitive questions that used to pull managers off their work. The goal behind all of it is efficiency: grow the top and bottom line without adding headcount, which is exactly what keeps a home service acquisition profitable after the deal closes.
+20% close rate from AI-assisted sales coaching, with EBITDA up 30% this year while overhead stays flat.
Why He Wants Small Operators to Get Rich
Colby carries a chip on his shoulder from a middle-school teacher who told him he would never be successful. He channels it into a mission: find one and two million dollar operators drowning in the day-to-day, bring them under his platform, and help them build real wealth. He talks about wanting the people in his organizations to buy the dream car and take the dream vacation, and he frames the whole thing with an idea he credits to Tommy Mello, that a leader’s vision has to be big enough to inspire everyone underneath it.
“My goal is to have everybody that’s a part of my organizations become very wealthy.”
Colby Davis
What Operators Can Take From His Playbook
Colby’s approach to a home service acquisition is a template any operator can study: build the operational road first, treat each home service acquisition as a system to plug in, target sound owner-operators, keep them in the seat with equity, fund it with discipline, and let AI trim the busywork. Standardized systems and shared upside turn a single trade brand into a platform other operators want to join. See how the same operator thinks about organic growth in how Colby Davis scales home-service businesses, follow him at Indy Capital, and learn the content-and-systems playbook at the BlitzMetrics Academy.