Operations systems for home services contractors

Built to make your team stronger. Not smaller.

TextThread is the operator brain underneath your shop — catches the calls you miss, drafts your quotes, runs your follow-up, briefs you at 6:30 AM, wraps you at 6 PM. SMS-first — most of your team never logs in. Dashboards where text isn't the right tool. Built by a ten-year home-services operator. Audit-first.

Book a 30-minute call Or call (443) 491-9049

The problem

You're not losing leads because your marketing is bad.

You're losing them because by the time you finish a job, eat lunch standing up, return three calls, and send a quote, it's 8 PM. The next day someone else got to them first.

The job is decided at the dial tone.

78%

of inbound roofing leads go to whichever shop answered first. By the time you call back, the deal is already gone.

5 min

puts you 21× more likely to win it. The industry average response is 47 hours.

27%

of home-services calls go unanswered. Over 80% of those callers never leave a voicemail — they dial your competitor instead.

What that costs a $3M roofing operation.

3missed calls per week
×78%go to whoever answered first
×28%close rate
×$15,000average roof
=$510,000per year, lost

That's not a marketing number. That's a phone-answering number. Some other shop is winning that revenue from you every Tuesday.

What catching every call wins back.

A voice agent answers overflow and after-hours calls — gets the story, books the appointment, texts your team. For anything that slips past, an auto-response inside 15 seconds — opened by 98% of recipients, replied to by 30% — pulls the job back. Roughly 13 of those jobs a year. ~$195,000 in year one. Without you picking up the phone.

And that's the floor. Catching the call is the table-stakes layer of what TextThread does. The rest of the system is what happens after the lead is in the door — the quote draft, the follow-up sequence, the briefing at 6:30 AM, the reroute at 8 PM. The phone answering is the part you stop thinking about.

Sources: 411 Locals / AIRA small-business call study, 2024; Invoca Home Services Call Analytics Report, 2024 (27% home-services miss rate); Lead Response Management Study (Dr. James Oldroyd, MIT / InsideSales.com — 5-minute rule, 21× qualification rate, 78% first-responder rate); ServiceTitan call booking benchmarks; JLC Cost vs. Value Report 2025; SMS engagement benchmarks (Falkon SMS, Sender, MessageDesk 2025–2026).

The interface

6:30 AM. The day already moved.

One text. By the time you pour coffee, your business has rerouted around an overnight emergency — and it's asking before it commits.

This is the morning brief your team wakes up to — and what the owner can ask it, any time.

Or ask it yourself —

What this actually is

An operations system. Not software, not a tool.

TextThread is an operations system for home services contractors. It handles the admin layer that buries great teams in work nobody hired them to do. The engine inside is Cortex: pre-seeded with the operator wisdom of top home services contractors, then trained on your specific shop. By day 91 it knows your business better than anyone on your team.

01

It runs your back office.

The calls, the quotes, the follow-up, the day brief, the evening wrap. The work that buries good office managers — handled around the clock. Not by replacing her. By taking the work off her plate.

02

It runs through text.

Most of your team never logs in — no app, no learning curve. The roles that need a screen get a clean dashboard, built around what they actually do.

03

It gets sharper every month.

Day one: the playbooks of top contractors. Day ninety-one: your patterns, your customers, your carriers, your crews — and the patterns nobody on your team has time to find.

Cortex is the brain. TextThread is what it runs through. The audit is how we figure out what to build first.

See what gets built → Or book a 30-minute call →

What you can turn on

You don’t buy all of it.

TextThread comes in layers. The audit decides which ones your shop actually needs — most start at the floor and add from there.

LAYER 01

The Floor

The operational baseline. Missed-call text-back inside 15 seconds, follow-up sequences, appointment confirmations, review requests, your CRM updating itself, and the 6:30 AM brief and 6 PM wrap. A voice agent answers overflow and after-hours calls where it fits your shop. This is the part you stop thinking about.

LAYER 02

The Cortex Brain

The learning operator brain, tuned per role. Day one it runs on the playbooks of top contractors. By day 91 it knows your patterns, your customers, your carriers, your crews — and finds the ones nobody on your team has time to look for.

LAYER 03

The Marquee Builds

The four most contractors don’t believe exist until they see them. Pick what fits your trade.

01

Handwritten thank-you letters

Real pen on cardstock, mailed within three days. Review rates triple, referrals double.

02

Storm-triggered outreach

A storm hits your zip, every past customer in the area gets a text Monday morning. The phone rings all week.

03

Inspection report generator

Photos in, a clean homeowner-ready PDF out with EagleView measurements pulled in. Two hours of office work becomes five minutes.

04

Insurance policy walkthrough

Drop in a 70-page policy, get back a one-page breakdown of what’s covered, what’s excluded, and the language to quote when the adjuster pushes back.

AgentMarshal — the foundation.

Underneath every install: the governance and audit layer that keeps Cortex in its lane. More on that just below.

All of it builds on your existing accounts — your Twilio, your CRM, your tools. If you cancel, the automations keep running on your stack. Only the Cortex brain goes dark.

What's underneath

Enterprise-grade safety, without the enterprise IT team.

Every Cortex install ships on AgentMarshal — the governance layer Fortune 500s pay seven figures to build. SMBs almost never get anything like it. You do.

01

Phishing & BEC protection on every email

Fake invoices and vendor impersonation get flagged before your team sees them.

02

Cortex stays in its lane

Hard limits on what it can touch, what needs your sign-off. It can’t drain your account, burn your list, or text customers at 3 AM. By design.

03

Full forensic audit

Every decision is logged with the reason it was made. If anything goes wrong, you see exactly what, when, and why.

This is what enterprise security teams build for billion-dollar companies. We ship it as the substrate under your install — because shipping AI to small businesses without it is reckless.

AgentMarshal is the open-source governance layer underneath every Cortex install. Learn more →

Seat by seat

A Tuesday in your shop. Before and after.

Three roles, three versions of the same Tuesday — the owner, the office manager, the crew lead. The same call answered, the same job tracked, the same quote drafted. What changes is who has to do it, and how late they’re up doing it.

Owner

A Tuesday before Cortex

  • 6:47 AM — wake up to 12 missed texts and an unread quote from yesterday. No idea which leads slipped overnight.
  • 11:30 AM — get pulled out of the kitchen-table appointment to handle a billing question. Quote walks out the door.
  • 6:15 PM — drive home with the day’s loose ends rolling in your head. Forget to call Mrs. Patel back about her supplement.
  • 9:40 PM — open the laptop after dinner to write quotes for tomorrow. Wife asks why you’re still on the phone.

A Tuesday after Cortex

  • 6:30 AM — open one text. Day briefed, overnight handled, one decision to confirm.
  • 11:30 AM — appointment runs uninterrupted. Cortex texts the billing answer to the customer from your number.
  • 6:00 PM — wrap text lands. Three quotes signed today, two follow-ups fired, one job needs your sign-off in the morning.
  • 9:40 PM — phone is in the drawer.

Office Manager

A Tuesday before Cortex

  • 7:55 AM — beat the owner to the office to pull yesterday’s voicemails. Three of them. Two are leads, one is a callback you’ll forget about by lunch.
  • 10:15 AM — chase a sales rep for the inspection photos so you can close the file. He’s on a roof and won’t answer.
  • 2:00 PM — start drafting the week’s review request emails. By Thursday you’ll still be on it.
  • 4:30 PM — try to figure out which of the 14 missed calls from the morning actually got returned. No way to tell.

A Tuesday after Cortex

  • 7:55 AM — open the brief. Every overnight lead is already in the CRM, every callback already scheduled, every review request already sent.
  • 10:15 AM — Cortex pulls the inspection photos off the rep’s phone the moment he uploads them. File closes itself.
  • 2:00 PM — work on the supplements queue. Cortex sent the week’s review requests at the 2-day mark on autopilot.
  • 4:30 PM — every call from the day is logged, tagged, and answered. You leave at 5.

Crew Lead

A Tuesday before Cortex

  • 6:30 AM — show up at the shop, dig through the dispatch board to find today’s job address.
  • 8:45 AM — get to the house. Customer asks what time the install starts. You realize the office never confirmed.
  • 12:30 PM — punch-out photos: you take them, then forget to send them until 9 PM when you’re at home.
  • 4:00 PM — wrap up. Drive past the supply house. Wonder if you grabbed tomorrow’s caulk. Probably not.

A Tuesday after Cortex

  • 6:30 AM — your text thread has the address, the job notes, the customer’s name, and what’s loaded on the truck.
  • 8:45 AM — customer already got the “we’re 10 minutes out” text from your number.
  • 12:30 PM — snap the photos. They drop into the job file automatically. You’re done at done.
  • 4:00 PM — Cortex texts the tomorrow load-out list before you leave the site.

Same team. Doing the work you hired them for. The admin layer underneath them, finally handled.

I’m not here to gut the soul of your company. I’m here to make it stronger and do more.

What we actually do

Three steps, one system, your life back.

Phase 01

Audit.

Two days, mostly remote. We map your operation — roles, tools, handoffs, the work that’s burying your team. You get a written report and a build scope. The audit deliverable is yours regardless of what you do next.

Audit fee credits 100% toward your build invoice within 60 days.

Phase 02

Build.

One to two weeks. We configure Cortex profiles for every role on your team and wire them to the tools you already use. Mostly remote — intake calls with you and each team member, deep data ingest from your CRM and accounting.

Phase 03

Cortex.

The platform goes live. First 90 days are complimentary. Daily briefs, automated follow-up, decision support — primarily through SMS. The few roles that need a screen get one, built around what they actually do. Day 91, retainer billing begins.

Who this is for

Honestly — this isn't for everyone.

This works for you if…

  • You’re in roofing — or another home services trade (plumbing, HVAC, electrical, GC)
  • You have 1 to 50+ employees
  • You use a CRM like Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan, Jobber, AccuLynx, or at minimum QuickBooks
  • You’re the decision-maker, or comfortable bringing your partner into the call
  • You want your team’s output to scale — not your team to shrink. Cortex amplifies the people you already hired.
  • You have at least 12 months of clean data in your CRM and accounting

This isn’t a fit if…

  • You’re looking for marketing, leads, or SEO — I don’t do any of that
  • You’re pre-revenue — call me when you’re drowning in calls
  • You’re using AI to cut your team — Cortex isn’t built for that

Pricing

What this costs.

Three pieces — audit, build, retainer. The audit decides the rest. We don’t hide the numbers, but we won’t pretend every shop is the same either.

1. The audit

Starts at $1,500, scoped to your shop.

Audit fee credits 100% toward your build invoice within 60 days.

2. The build

Builds start at $5,000, scoped to the roles and layers your shop turns on.

3. The retainer

$750–$2,500+/month, depending on what runs live. First 90 days complimentary. Cancel anytime — 15-day notice.

Your exact number comes out of the audit — priced to your shop, not pulled off a menu.

Book a 30-minute call

30 minutes. No commitment. We figure out what your shop needs and walk through what your install would look like. If it’s not a fit, you’ll know inside 15.

About

Who you’re hiring.

I spent 10 years in sales — 5 of those in home services and construction. Sitting across the kitchen table from homeowners, watching contractors lose deals because they couldn’t respond fast enough, quote clearly enough, or follow up consistently.

Last year I started building operations systems to fix those problems. Now I do it full-time.

Every AI company I’ve watched build for home services has come at this with the same pitch: cut your team, save your money. That’s not what I built.

I spent ten years sitting at kitchen tables watching contractors lose deals — and watching their best people quit because the work that built the business stopped using their judgment. The admin layer ate them alive. I built Cortex to take that layer off.

Your team stays. Your business gets stronger. That’s the lane I’m in.

Anyone telling you AI in your business means firing people is selling you the wrong thing.

— Conner

FAQ

Questions people ask.

Next step

30-minute call. No pitch deck. Just a conversation.

Pick a time below. I'll tell you within 15 minutes whether this is a fit for your business — and if it isn't, I'll tell you who to call instead. Or just call (443) 491-9049.

Calendar not showing on your phone? Open the booking page directly →

Don't want to pick a time?