AI VALUE CREATION · PRIVATE EQUITY & THE TRADES

AI that shows up in the P&L.

The Barth Company puts AI to work inside private equity backed services businesses and local shops. Not decks. Deployments. The playbook was built inside a national home services platform with more than 30 brands, and it works the same for a portfolio as it does for a three-truck shop.

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01 · THE METHOD

Explore, exploit, repeat.

PROVE

Weeks, not quarters. A proof of concept with a kill switch. Most ideas die here, cheaply, which is the point.

PILOT

One brand, one branch, real operations. It ends with a number, not a readout. The number decides.

SCALE

What pays goes everywhere. Vendor terms, rollout playbook, reporting the sponsor can read. What doesn't pay gets a funeral, not a phase two.

02 · WHERE THE MONEY IS

Six places AI pays. Nowhere else.

Value creation roadmap

Where AI moves EBITDA in your hold period, sequenced against the plan. For deal teams and operating partners, before or after close.

Revenue capture

Missed calls, after-hours voicemail, quotes that never got a follow-up. AI answers, books, and follows up so revenue you already earned actually lands.

III

Field productivity

More billable hours per technician. Job summaries, quoting support, and dispatch help that give hours back to the people who bill them.

Back office at platform scale

One back office for many brands. Invoice processing and reporting that roll a portfolio into one view without flattening the brands.

Vendor calls, made

I buy AI at portfolio scale as my day job. I will tell you what to buy, what to build, and what to walk past. A decision, not a matrix.

Exit readiness

Buyers now diligence the AI story. Clean data, real usage numbers, and deployments that survive a management presentation.

03 · ENGAGEMENTS

Five ways in.

THE FRONT DOOR · ONE SLOT A MONTH

Office Hours

$1,000 · 90 minutes

Bring the numbers and the problem. Leave with a decision: what to run, what to skip, and what it should cost. No proposal, no retainer, no deck. If it turns into an engagement, the fee credits toward it. If the honest answer is "don't spend money on this," you just saved a quarter. I take one of these per month.

Claim the slot →

FIXED FEE · TWO WEEKS

Opportunity Scan

I walk the P&L, rank where AI pays, and hand you a sequenced plan plus a kill list of ideas not worth running.

30 TO 60 DAYS

Pilot Sprint

One brand or branch, real operations. It ends with a number. The number decides what happens next.

PORTFOLIO WIDE

Rollout

What paid goes everywhere. Vendor terms, playbook, reporting the sponsor can read, and the change management the brands actually need.

THE DEEP END · ONE COMPANY AT A TIME

Fractional AI Officer

Monthly retainer

I own your AI roadmap, run the pilots against real operations, and sit in the monthly operating review with the sponsor's scoreboard in view. One company holds this seat at a time, by design. When it's filled, it's filled; ask about the next opening.

Ask about the seat →

04 · PROOF

Built where the work is real.

This playbook runs today inside a private equity backed national home services platform. More than 30 brands, hundreds of technicians, thousands of calls a day.

After-hours calls that used to reach voicemail now book jobs.

Quote follow-up that used to depend on memory now runs every time.

Back-office hours came back to the month-end close.

"If it doesn't move EBITDA, it doesn't ship."

05 · THE KILL LIST

Already dead. Don't fund it twice.

Everyone sells you what works. This is the running list of AI ideas that did not survive contact with real operations, updated as new ones earn their spot. If one of these is on your board deck, the first conversation will be short and it will save you money.

The website chatbot

KILLED AT PROOF OF CONCEPT · 2025

A customer with water on the floor wants a human on the phone, not a typing indicator. The bot deflected the calls the business wanted most. The money went to answering the phone instead.

Standalone call-analytics dashboards

KILLED AT PILOT · 2025

Beautiful charts about calls nobody re-listened to. No behavior changed, so no line item moved. Analytics only pays when it's wired into a follow-up action the same day.

Lead scoring on thin data

KILLED BEFORE PILOT · 2026

The model needs years of history most local brands don't have. It ranked leads confidently and wrongly, which is worse than not ranking them at all. Revisit at platform scale, not per shop.

06 · MAIN STREET

You don't need a sponsor to run this playbook.

The same AI that answers calls for a national platform will answer them for a three-truck shop. Fixed fee, a few weeks, no retainer. We pick the two or three deployments that pay fastest, usually the phone, the quote follow-up, and the office admin, and we get them running.

THE MISSED CALL CALCULATOR

Calls per day40

Share that reaches voicemail25%

Average ticket$450

Booking rate when answered70%

WALKING OUT THE DOOR EVERY YEAR

That's one location, six days a week. Running a portfolio? Multiply by your brand count. Answering-machine fixes are usually live within two weeks.

Get it back →

THE MAIN STREET PACKAGE

Missed-call answering · Quote follow-up · Review responses · Office admin

One fixed price. If I don't think it will pay for itself, I'll tell you before you spend a dollar.

07 · THE REPORT

The State of AI in the Trades.

The first annual report on what actually got deployed across home services: what paid, what stalled, and which vendor categories grew up. Written by someone who runs this for a living, not an analyst who has never seen a dispatch board. The first edition lands January 2027.

NO SPAM. THE REPORT AND NOTHING ELSE, UNLESS YOU ASK.

08 · THE FIRM

The Barth Company LLC is the consulting practice of Paul Barth. One operator, no bench, no juniors. The person who scopes the work does the work, and his day job is running AI value creation inside a PE-backed platform, so the advice was tested on someone else's dime before it reaches yours.

THE PRINCIPAL

Paul Barth. Twenty years of technology, teams, and budgets.

Vice president of digital acceleration for a national home services platform. Cross Plains, Wisconsin. The full track record is on his personal site.

paulmbarth.com →