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Most contractors compete on price and craftsmanship. Colby Davis competes on systems. In this Local Service Spotlight interview with Dennis Yu, the founder of Davis Painting lays out the exact approach he uses for scaling home service businesses into a multi-brand platform, and every point traces back to a habit most owners never build.
Colby started Davis Painting at 20 with a single truck and a desk in his mom’s house. Today he runs a group of home service businesses and the holding company Indy Capital. He is worth listening to because he has done the unglamorous work most owners skip: turning how the company runs into a documented system that a new crew, a new market, or a freshly acquired company can plug straight into.
In This Article
- From one truck to a multi-brand platform
- Scale by systems, not by hours
- Customer experience beats a perfect paint job
- One acquisition can add growth overnight
- Share the upside, build a team of leaders
From One Truck to a Multi-Brand Platform
Every home-service empire looks smaller at the start than people assume. Colby ran the first jobs himself for years before Davis Painting became a real company. That grind shaped how he coaches other owners: start now, and build the machine as you go. From that single painting brand he grew into a portfolio that now includes power washing, seasonal lighting, and roofing, all organized under Indy Capital.
“I started with one truck and a desk in my mom’s house.”
Colby Davis, Founder of Davis Painting
The lesson he draws from that start is not nostalgia, it is proof that the size of the launch does not decide the size of the outcome. What decides it is whether the owner builds something repeatable before the growth arrives.
Scale by Systems, Not by Hours
The turning point for Colby was treating growth as a system rather than a grind. Instead of working more hours, he documented how every part of the business runs so it could be repeated without him. Sales, operations, admin, and project management each have a defined process, which is what lets him drop a new crew or a new location into the machine without breaking what already works.
“You don’t scale by working harder. You scale by building something you can copy and paste.”
Colby Davis
That copy-and-paste discipline is the quiet engine under every one of his home service businesses. It is also what makes the rest of his playbook, from customer experience to acquisitions, possible in the first place.
Customer Experience Beats a Perfect Paint Job
Colby compares a home-service visit to a Michelin-star restaurant. Diners do not remember every ingredient, they remember how the night felt. Customers judge a paint job the same way, so he trains his teams to win on the whole experience around the work, not only the finish on the wall. Clear communication, a clean job site, and a smooth close protect the reviews, referrals, and repeat business that keep home service businesses growing long after the crew drives away.
It is a subtle shift in priorities, and it is one most contractors miss because they assume the technical result speaks for itself. Colby’s teams are taught that the experience is the product.
One Acquisition Can Add Growth Overnight
Organic growth is how most home service businesses start, but winning customers one job at a time is slow. Buying a company that already has customers, crews, and cash flow is fast. Colby uses acquisitions as a deliberate growth lever, then drops his documented systems into each new brand so the combined operation runs to a single standard instead of two competing ones.
“One acquisition can grow your business by 50% almost overnight.”
Colby Davis
~50% growth from a single acquisition when systems and pricing are standardized right after the deal.
Share the Upside, Build a Team of Leaders
Colby is blunt about the mistake he sees other founders make: keeping every reward for themselves. He does the opposite, handing managers and acquired owners real ownership so they win when the company wins. That structure is rare among home service businesses, and it keeps strong operators in their lanes and personally invested in the outcome, which is why his brands run like a team of leaders rather than a payroll of employees.
“There are so many greedy entrepreneurs out there.”
Colby Davis
Shared equity is not charity in his model, it is strategy. Owners who hold a piece of the upside protect it, and that alignment is what lets Colby keep acquiring without watching quality slip.
The Playbook Other Home Service Businesses Can Copy
Put the pieces together and Colby’s approach to scaling home service businesses is refreshingly unglamorous: document the work, win on experience, treat acquisitions as a growth engine, and give operators a real stake in the outcome. None of it depends on a hot market or cheap capital, and that is exactly why the model travels from painting to power washing to roofing. Owners who want to grow without burning out can borrow the sequence, then see the acquisition side up close in Colby Davis’s home-service acquisition playbook and learn the same content-and-systems approach at the BlitzMetrics Academy.