Use Virtual Estimates to Grow Your Home Service Business with James Hatfield | Ep 107

Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Phil Risher. And on today's episode, we're diving into how to use virtual estimates to grow your home service business with James Hatfield. Thanks so much for joining us today, James.

Phil, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, I know we're talking pre show and it's just like we're so excited to talk. So. James is the chief revenue officer at Live Switch, which is a global technology company that serves trades and other businesses. As an industry thought leader and expert in sales leadership and business innovation, he has extensive experience working with entrepreneurs, small businesses and Fortune 500 enterprises. James is also an entrepreneur who founded a painting and power washing company. So with that, James, I usually like to start out people, especially if they're from the trades or home service space. Could you share like maybe two, three minutes of like what you were doing before this, kind of how you came up with this and what your businesses look like?

Oh yeah. So I come from a household where my father built the house we lived in, right. So we're good with our hands. He never threw a basketball with me or football, although I love sports. But we would be fixing engines, working on the house. I knew like I would be working with my hands, you know, come time to, you know, get out in the real world, so to speak. So came out with a painting company initially ran that had multiple crews. Ended up also creating a power washing company on back of that. We just, it was an easy adjacent business to start as well because we've got to prep the house anyways, so might as well have that. And some of my guys like playing with water guns more than they like playing with paint sprayers. I got into that and you know, I had an issue though. I was an accidental business owner. Like I imagine many people listening, some not so much. Some people go in, become an accidental home service technician because they've got the business background. I did not. So I would go to my bookkeeper and they would speak English to me and I, I would not understand a word coming out of their mouth. I was like, this is not good for me. I knew I had to do something about this. So I went and got my business degree at that time. And as I was running my companies, going and learning accounting specifically, I just knew that's where I wanted to become stronger. I met my current business partner who owned a landscaping company. He was finishing his MBA at Duke University and he created a system, well before AI, where you could take an income statement and balance sheet and run it through the system. And it would tell you in plain language how you're doing. I'm like, you are solving the problem. Why I'm going, I love this. And he's like, well, do you think you can sell it? I'm like, I don't know. I can sell painting and power washing deals. The day is long. I don't know a thing about technology, but I was willing to try it. And we took that company from nothing, an incubator to Inc. 500 for three years. We're one of the fastest growing companies in the country for three years. And then we sold it and now it's a multi billion dollar company. And that kind of worked out. Yeah.

My gosh, that's crazy. I did not know that. That's awesome.

Yeah, it was crazy.

So you started in painting and power washing and then you ended up getting into a tech space and then selling this company. How did the, how did live switch come about?

Well, after we exited the last financial technology company, we got into philanthropy. So inmates to entrepreneurs, we go into the jails. We teach men and women how to run their businesses. We love entrepreneurs. We love small businesses. That's where we came from. And so that actually even turned into an ABC television show called Free Enterprise. If you want to check it out, get a box of tissues though. It is heartwarming. But we decided, hey, we're too young to hang our boots up. Let's build another large billion dollar company. But instead of starting from scratch, let's buy one or a company and then come and add value. So we found a company out of Vancouver, purchased that company five years ago and it's all having to do with live video. We did the super bowl the last three years. We go to an MLB ballpark and scan a QR code and they put you on the jumbotron. That's our stuff. We do all kinds of different things with video and we just, we knew that video would be our so hard to do. And it was harder than we ever expected. Back to. Our engineers are speaking English to us and we're like, what have we done? This is so hard. And while we were doing that, because we're only one of a few companies in the country that deal with live video, we got a knock on the door from the chief of police in Washington D.C. to reinvent the nation's 911 phone call of all things, right? But the idea is all the citizens are carrying around three to five cameras in their pocket. How can we tap into that camera quickly but we had to do it in a way that a citizen has no time to download an app. They're compromised. So it has to be so dang simple because they're not thinking straight. But then we are able to get in. So we've found a way to get in through an SMS text message where someone can tap on the text, then we can stream the camera right to the police car and they can see what they're driving into. And we had a logical question, well, who else can use no app? You see what I see? And I was like, this reminds me of the Nextel walkie talkie from back in the day. But with our eyes, it's so cool. I used to love my Nextels running my home service business. I have no idea what happened to those things anyways, but we landed back into home services three years ago and this platform I know we'll talk about it has just taken off like a weed in the last. We're growing like gangbusters investors again. So I feel back home again with my home service folks and I'm excited to be talking more about just how things are getting disrupted.

Yeah, very cool. Okay. That's a roundabout way. I did not know that whole story. And I'm like, it's amazing that you scaled technology, got into something else and then you got back into the thing that first started it with the technology piece with video and it all kind of plays together. It's really awesome. So could you take a second? Like for people that are traditionally going out and doing estimates live Switch solves a problem for them, which is you can do live estimates via video. From my understanding. Is that the premise of what the product is or could you give them.

A high level overview? It's evolved from there, but it started and continues to do virtual estimating. That is where we landed from the 911 phone call to how are we going to help the trades? Right. Like we disrupted the financial side first, now we're disrupting. Well, it's not just your virtual estimating, but also just connecting with your team. Back to the idea of the next tell walkie talkies where I could talk to my teams and my crews and I knew what was going on even if I was on different job sites or doing something on the business. It's the same kind of thing internally as well, from senior techs talking to junior techs or the owner or salespeople talking. But we do land first in virtual estimating. So speed to lead is what has historically been called. Everyone talks about speed to Lead picking that phone up quickly, going out to see the customer, you know, getting face to face. So I have talked a lot more about race to the face because I don't know many people who sell four or five figure jobs in home services that don't have to have some kind of face to face connection.

Right.

People and homeowners getting ready to spend that kind of money want to buy trust. You know, they're looking at your Google reviews, they're meeting you, they're sizing you up, they're making sure the price isn't crazy. Although some people are willing to pay more if they trust that the person's gonna get the job done. Because there's scammers out there, there's people that don't deliver on what they say. But now the idea is as Google has really advanced at these LLMs and AI have really advanced, it is surfacing up the best businesses in your area. So consumers are a lot more educated now. And so it's all a race to the face. If you ever lost a deal saying, hey, I'm headed over, I'm going to come give you your estimate. And the person's like, don't bother, I already found somebody. You only lost because of speed. You didn't lose because of any other reason. They just wanted the problem solved. If someone has a pipe leaking or their hot air has gone down in the winter or fill in the blank, they want that fixed immediately. Thank you Amazon Prime. We all want it done now. And so we're seeing these virtual estimating, helping people get their eyes on the project immediately so they can bid it and a lot of times win it or decide you're worth driving out. Because sometimes these people don't know how much it's going to cost. They're like, oh, I'm just going to get my friends and a couple pizzas and we'll do it ourselves of course. And then you can call me back later when you do it yourself. Didn't work out.

Exactly. So can you, can you walk through like the use case? Because I can imagine there's several different ones. But let's just take a phone call. For example. Someone calls in and they need some. Let's do H Vac, like hey, I'm going to do a dispatch fee or you know, how much does something cost or something like that. What is the actual like scripting look like to get to the point of this?

Yeah, I have tons of good examples even around H Vac because my local one had an H Vac problem three Weeks ago. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But here's how it goes, right? Someone calls in, having an issue with my H Vac system. Hey, can you come on over then? Can you describe what's going on? And of course, trying to get a homeowner describe, well, the brown thing and the black thing. And there's things. Forget it. Like, I got to come over. So we book a time and we go. But now what'll happen is you'll say to the customer, hey, do you mind if I just send you a text and you show me? Because if I can see what's going on, I can determine a few things. And so you just send a text message. It's very simple. If you know how to send a text message, you can use our stuff. This is not complicated. The customer on the other end just taps the text and you instantly video connect. And this is for the customer. It's the reverse of a FaceTime call. They will see you or your salesperson really small with a virtual background up. I have some folks that literally live in their trucks doing virtual estimates in their truck or on job site or back in the office. The customer sees himself large. So some of us have a problem. I have these big thick glasses. Now that I'm in technology, they just give them to you because I'm a big nerd. Don't worry, Phil, I'll give you my lunch money later. But now they can just see. They see themselves large. They hit a flip camera button and they start to show you the salesperson or the business owner what's going on. And on your end, as the salesperson or business owner, you can laser guide people around. There's live laser guide. No, go this way, go that way. We record the entire session. You can take remote photos, you can share a screen if you need to walk through a bid or your services. And all of it gets recorded. If they need to share it with insurance, share it with a spouse, share it with you, share it with your team so they know what they're driving into and it gets them. And then you can run an AI report on it. So my H Vac technician, we ran an AI report on a 30 second video and our AI diagnosed the H Vac system. And he was shocked. So I'll tell you about it. It was crazy. So my wife saw the H Vac system full of water. Of course she calls and the person drives over. And as they're coming down, I'm like, hey, hey, you don't know this. I run A large tech company. I want to send you a text. And you walk in and act like an ignorant customer who doesn't know anything about H Vac and just describe what you see. So he's like, well, there's water in the water pan, there's condensation and it's dripping. 30 seconds. We run it, we create an AI prompt that says, diagnose my H vac system. And it produces a two pager and it says, hey. The most likely cause is that you have algae in your drain line. So you need to loosen up the drain line. And so he goes over, loosens up the drain line, Algae's flying everywhere. And his jaw and my jaw are on the floor. And he looks at me and he goes, can I buy stock in your company?

Exactly.

It was flowing, but he could have done all of that sitting back in the office. He didn't have to even come over. And then he would have come over and said, hey, or said, hey, I know there's. I know how to fix this. Yeah, right. Me as a customer, I don't get to see that output.

Okay. The workflow that you just gave is relevant in any industry that you're in, and it allows you to capture the information and then the AI, the AI roll up. The other thing that I think it does is it can also do measurements of some sort. Is that right?

Yeah, yeah. You can ask the AI to do measurements. So like I just did one with a flooring company the other day and a painting company. And you can just talk to the customer as well, because the AI is watching the video and the photos and what you're saying. So if you want to, hey, what size of your ceilings? I don't know, they're like 9, 10ft. And then through verbal and through the videos, it can approximate and give you square footage and then put a bid together for you.

Yeah, that's crazy. So I mentioned before we were recording, I spoke at this breakthrough academy, BTA academy, and we were talking about taking your call recordings and your live on the job estimates and turning them into blog posts, social media content, and having that footage. And this is the thing that everyone struggles with, is how do I get before and after pictures and how do I get the actual words that my experts are saying, whether it's your CSRs or your salespeople. And this is how you can do it.

Oh, yeah, this is exactly how you do it. And you can do all kinds of stuff. Like you said, put it on social, put it on. Well, now ChatGPT and Gemini and Google and all the rest are crawling your website looking for real photos, real videos. And they'll elevate you even to higher organic search because you have it. But you can do all kinds of stuff with it. I can run a prompt as me as a salesperson and say analyze me as a salesperson. I'm selling painting jobs, tell me what I'm doing well, what I need to improve on. And AI has no emotions. It'll rip you to shreds. But it is great because it'll give you examples on how to do it better, how to close better, how to discover better. Literally. You can have it translate things into Spanish. Either way, you can have it produce your CRM entries because no, I have never met a home service person who likes entering anything that CRM or producing proposals, contracts and these things take time. So have AI do it and it'll remember the stuff too. It's crazy.

Yeah. So if I'm hearing what you're saying is when you get a call that comes inbound instantly when someone asks about price or more information, just default in your script. Like hey, do you mind if I send you a quick link? You can just show me what's going on. Yes, build that into your script, send them the link, they open it up, your CSR can see things, it records it and then you have some ammo for your salesperson. And even if it's you and it's a one man show, like you can at least instead of saying, hey, can you send me a text with pictures? And this is not my main number, but this is my cell number and the whole rig remote, it alleviates that. What about like when someone fills out a form on your website, Is there any way for them to like maybe submit a video or anything like that or what does that look like?

Yes, we have forms and QR codes. You can put a form on your website. Whether someone's on their computer or on their phone, they can put in the lead, right? And then you ask them to hey, hit this button and record the job. So now they can record what you need to have done and then you can run the AI prompt on it. And then when you call them back, you'll get pinged and, and you'll say, I've looked at the issue, actually, I already know what's going on. Here's how much it's going to cost. Let's just schedule and I'll drive out. Let's get this thing fixed because that's all customers want, right? Like how much is it are you trustworthy and when can you be here to fix it? So we have that on the website. A form fill they can, you can use. And then we also have QR codes for leave behinds. And there's a race to claim your property. So if you're an H Vac, you're putting it on the unit. If you're in plumbing, you're putting it on the water heater. If you're an electrician, you're putting on the breaker box. Because what happens inevitably if something breaks around the home, we as homeowners love to go look at it. Just like if we're on the highway and we're driving and there's a wreck on the other side, we like to stop and look at it. It makes me crazy. I'm like, guys, keep driving. But we do this in the home too. Like if the H Vac unit's not working, we walk ourselves down there to look at it. Like we're going to fix it. We're not going to fix it. We don't even know what we're looking at. But now they'll see your QR code with your phone number and they can just scan the QR code and take a video of what's going on. And this is wonderful for recurring revenue, repeat business. Or maybe a new tenant or new resident moves in and they're like, oh, I guess this is my H Vac guy. Yes, it is. They're trying to box Google out. I don't want someone Googling H vac near me. I want them scanning my code and calling me and giving me the first chance to fix that unit or replace that unit. So you want to claim your properties.

Yeah, for sure. Having equipment stickers is so important. And even if you don't serve any equipment, like have it on their refrigerator with a magnet or something to disclaim your property. I completely agree. I'm curious just listening to this, I'm thinking about like my home service business. Like I have four CSRs and I'm wondering like, do you have any stats on, by doing this we elevated our close rate by this amount or something like that, where you have an instance of that experience. Because I feel like people listening to this, like, okay, the tech stack is cool, but like, what does the actual number say?

Yep, the numbers are different for different industries. Right. I mean, I've got some folks in electrical that only do remote estimates. I got others that use this as a one, two punch, making sure someone's worthy of the drive out. Right. If they can smaller job, they can close it there. But if it's kind of like, hey, we need to install a new H vac unit, you're probably driving out for that. But we have an on site documentation tool as well. We can talk about that. But the stats behind it. And I have some of my home service owners that are just crazy about their data and they want to see is it worth it. And I had a guy, well, multiple people should tell me, James, that the data is actually not. May not be what you think it is. So when they're like when we go on site, we're currently closing around 60%. When we use virtual estimating in your stuff, we're closing at 63%. So it's really neck and neck. It's about the same. There's a little bit of elevation because of the speed, also the serviceable area. There's sometimes some of our technicians are like, I'm not driving out for sales call or an hour and a half drive there and back again. But if I can get a certain size business and I can win it virtually, I'll do it. But the whole idea here is the bottom line savings comes in from, well, not just your time savings, which is probably one of the number one things, but then also just wear and tear on your vehicles, sitting an hourly rate employee in one of your trucks, burning up your gas, they're back again. So being able to win those virtually is huge. But the data is showing it's, it's neck and neck. And what I believe it to be, based on what I'm seeing from the data, is that it's the race to the face right now that I can see the job, you can connect with me. I'm still having that kind of experience. And one of our customers are saying that they'll show me videos and I have some people that'll post it. And their customers are like, wow, this, I've never done this before. This is. Why isn't everybody doing this? It's so it must be saving you tons of time. And it's true. And the customers like it because it's immediate.

Exactly. I would, I would say I see a huge lift in your call booking rate. If you have an issue with booking, this would instantly allow like you to differentiate yourself and get people to be like, yeah, let me book at least an on site conversation. Whereas then when you get on site it's, there's a salesmanship side to it. But you're aim, you're armed with a couple more things I would imagine that people that have an issue with booking rate. This is going to be something that's like, you got to do this for sure.

Absolutely. Booking rate. Any of the callback rate, like when you're getting a call back from job, like especially if it's like fixing a nest thermostat or something, you could just walk somebody through. It's those kind of things. But also your follow up after if you don't close the person, maybe you are going on site as well and then you didn't close it there. You can call them back and say, hey, I've got your estimate for you. Let me. And you can share the screen. You can, you know, again, getting that face has a higher. The face has a higher close rate than an email, than chatting on a keyboard, then calling on the phone anytime. You can put that face there. The close rates also are exponentially. It's not even close.

Yeah, definitely. What I would say is we have some clients that they send out formal estimates and it's like even just recording a loom video and then going through your estimate is good. But I think this is my recommendation. If you get one objection, then don't just try to fight that via email or even call, like hop on a call with them like this and like walk through the thing and like it's different and you can close it. They can hear how you're saying things. Not just like a random email FAQ back.

That's right when you're saying, hey, let me walk you through the bid. I want to show you what we've done. I can't even walk. And then you can walk them over. Like, see, here's what we're going to do. Like here's how we're going to replace your sod or here's how we're going to paint the walls. Let's go ahead and send over and sign the contract and let's pick that time for my team to come out and handle it. I mean, you got it, Phil. I mean this is, this is how you do it.

Yeah, it's so good. So you mentioned about on site, when I was at a home service business, we had a Canva checklist that we had with like a dry erase and like the guys had to check it off on the back of their truck and then take a picture of it and say like, yeah, we did this stuff. What is that? Obviously this was probably like six or seven years ago, but what does it look like for your business? Like with on site? Like how do people roll this out with A video side of things.

Yeah. So when you're going on site, you're literally just taking the phone out of your pocket and you just hit the record button and it's tuned up for site on site documentation. You have a play and a pause button. Like if you're going to walk up the stairs or walk up a ladder, you don't want to see all that, but you can hit record and you can record a 10 second video, a 30 minute video, a three hour video, and you can take photos while you're recording. And nothing is stored on your device. Nothing is ever stored on an employee device or a customer device. We want everything going in the cloud. Anything stored on device is a liability to your business. But there's so many things you can do now. You have the most powerful tools in your pocket. You know, with the, with the cameras you now you can document your process, you can do before and afters customer testimonials if there's a new unit or new thing you're working on. Also if you're putting drywall back up or filling up a hole after you dug something like a trench, you know, you'll have that documentation. So if you go back a year later or you're handing it to a different technician, you know, do follow up work, they can see that work. You're documenting everything. And if you ever want to exit and sell your business, by having all of this documented, you're raising the value of your business. You're adding a YouTube library of your stuff to your business and you can mark things as training so when a new staff member comes on board, they can see how your team does it. Gold standard, right? And then you can ex, you can extract things from those videos or what made that good? What. So the race now. And I'm telling you, like telling people that you use AI in your business is going to be equivalent to telling people you use electricity in your business. Be like, of course AI is going to be just everyone. If you're not using it, you'll look like a caveman, right? But the other race that'll happen after that is the race to document everything. All of that data is so darn important. And you're going to wish you had been documenting for the last three, five years of your stuff because now you'll have records of everything. And it can cover your butt too. Have you ever had someone call and say, your guys damaged my wall or your guys bumped my gutters and you're like, well, I did a virtual estimate with you and we weren't even on your property and the marking were already on the walls and your gutters were already bashed up. I mean, I hate that for you. I can recommend somebody, but that's not on us.

Yeah, so this is actually what I was just speaking about with, with that, with those people was if you don't have the documentation, well, there's going to be a world where there's AI avatars and training and things and every single person is going to wish that they had this documentation that's happening now that you can do so that they can train these avatars and train this process in their business and it's going to be the next wave of things. I do want to ask you this because as you're talking about this, I know for a fact people that are listening are asking this question is how do I not have another technology tool that's just sitting out here and how can I connect this with my CRM to like get this information into my CRM on a client file?

Well, the good news is we're under the hood of your CRM. So we're under the hood of Jobber, we're under hood of Service Titan, we're under hood of House Call Pro. You name it, we're already there. So you don't even have to even go into Live Switch. You can start these calls, request recordings right through your CRM and it will bring back those photos and those videos and automatically put in that documentation. Our next step we're working on is to bring all the AI outputs as well. Like we're working with a moving CRM, we're pretty big in the moving industry and it will bring the entire inventory into the CRM and populate it. So these are the kind of things like we're already there, right? And if you're, if you don't use a CRM, I know plenty of folks working on Google Sheets or Excel, that's fine. We have in your Google Chrome browser and Live Switch launcher and it will look for phone numbers on any page you're looking at. So if you're looking at an email or you're looking at your Google spreadsheet, it'll put little Ls, little live switch Ls next to those phone numbers and you just tap it and you can start a live call or request a video right there. We, we love one click solutions. So all of our AI, one click. All of our connect, one click. Just like I love starting my truck with one push now instead of one key turn. But you know My power washing equipment. I love one pull. You know, we like software that's easy to use and we always call it like AI for the rest of us.

Yeah, okay, so I love to hear that. So it sounds like someone calls in and then you start this conversation with them and then it's can pull the phone number from Live Switch that you started it with and with your Jobber and like connect it for you and then put the information into that account based off of a phone number that's connected.

That's right. So as an example, let's say you have a Jobber quote. You know, on your website, you have the quoting, you get the lead, it populates Jobber and you're ready to call the person. You just bring the person up in Jobber. There's the live switch button. You just hit call and oh yeah, you're going cool.

And so, and Service Titan is probably similar situation.

They're all similar situations. The only thing that differentiating right now is how much AI we're pulling back in and we're working on, on all of that piece with each of the platforms because all the platforms are a little bit different.

So yeah, like Jobber has AI quoting now that they're rolling out, where maybe there's a way to funnel that in and then you kind of like boom, boom, boom and bada bing, bada.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, we're just one of a few companies in the world that are dealing with live video, right? So this is why these companies are like, ooh, you know, we, we want, you know, Jobber live, but we're not going to build it because it's too dang hard to build. So we just partner with them. Right. And it's also good news for you as a owner because let's say you want to switch your CRM, right? Maybe you're not happy. Maybe you're going to migrate over to a Jobber. Well, now you've got all your Live switch data. It can go with you wherever you want. And so it doesn't kind of lock you in. We don't like locking people in. Even if you were to decide like after using liveswitch for a while that it wasn't for you, you could still get all of your data. We don't like locking in stuff.

Yeah. So good. I love it. I think if you're listening to this, you should like, you should at least give this a try. I am curious, like, what are some of the hesitation that people give? Is it like, I don't want to be on camera or is it like this is too much technology or what is like the. It sounds sense to me, but like, what if. What do you hear?

Yeah, the biggest ones. I don't want to be on camera. Right. It's. That's the new part thing. I'm telling people and I get it, I get it. But you can't afford not to be on camera. Yeah, you just can't afford it. Like saying, I'm not going on site anymore. Like, I'm not going to show up in person anymore. It's fine. Like you, you need to have your face shown. Like if you're in sales and you don't want to connect with the human, like, what is the difference between knocking on a door and, you know, video? Well, it's a lot more convenient for video. And what will end up happening is your team will go from. And I've heard it over and over the years, going from James. We used to do virtual estimates whenever we had to. Now we only go on site when we have to. It totally flips and people's titles change to virtual estimators and you can even have people half a world away. I've got folks, I got a guy who runs an eight figure business in moving in Seattle. He has 35 salespeople in South Africa and a sales manager in Poland. And he is kicking the tail. I would hate to compete with that guy. They're kicking so much butt because he's watching like he has stats four times a day that come out that hold his team accountable to how fast they're getting back to people. And they're doing so much of this through virtual.

Yeah. So good. I love that. I, as you're saying that, I'm thinking like my CSRs, I, it might be a stretch to be like, you got to be on video guys because like they're just so used to answering phones, you know. But if you get a virtual estimator, which people that are listening to this show, we've been talking about this shifting from CSRs to inside sales reps and giving them some opportunity to like get make money off these things, not just the order taker. And I think that's the shift that's coming in home service, in my opinion. It's got to shift to that.

That's right. And even the money you're saving from not driving out, you could load that back into the hourly rate and say, hey, if you want to be virtual, you actually get paid a little bit more.

Yeah. So good. So good. I love that.

And if you can't find someone stateside, I'm telling you, you got people overseas that'll work any hours you want. I'm all for keeping jobs in the US don't hear me wrong. Right. But if you can't find the help, expand your radius. And if you still want to keep it onshore and maybe you're in the high rent district like you're in Atlanta, get someone out in the suburbs doing your virtuals and pay them less. Like you're, you're so set up now as a business owner. I mean, I remember knocking on doors. I mean, my goodness, who knocks on doors anymore?

Yeah.

But some people do. And I don't mind that for selling.

Yeah. I think the hardest thing is that the technology for a lot of people is not there. And you just think, oh, I'm going to hire someone, they're going to work from home, like, how am I going to know what they're doing and that kind of stuff. And like, this is the other side of it, which is like you can access people anywhere in the world, whether that's us or other places, to utilize them to have good skills by using technology. And it's going to help you grow your business.

And everything's recorded so you can watch it. Now. You're getting eyes on all of your business. You're getting eyes on site, you're getting eyes remote, you're getting eyes on everything. That's why the race to document everything is so big for a business owner. And what will end up happening is some of your employees that are kind of standoffish at first, like, oh, the big brother effect. Wait until the bank error is in their favor and it covers their butt from those dented gutters that they didn't do or protects from a customer who is trying to pull the wool over them. You know what I mean? Like, this is where they're like, oh, thank goodness, this is how we do it. And it'll elevate. And the fact is, if you've got team members that don't want to kind of move with you and your business, you know, be patient with them at first. But if they're just not going to move, you might be the thing that tells you, I need a new, you know, a new person to replace them.

Yeah, for sure. One other question for you as we're talking through this. Is there any, like, coaching element to live switch? Like maybe like a summary of like, hey, here's one of the common objections we've been hearing. And this. And like, kind of like Summarizing all the data in the company that you're gathering.

So since everything's recorded, you can just run prompts on for internal use. Right. So you can run a prompt on how are we doing in the diagnosis, how are we doing in discovery, how are we doing in sales? Give me tips and you can even. Eventually what we're going to have is you're going to be able to take a length of data, let's say a month's worth of data or two months worth of data, and then show me how my team member has improved over the last two months and where else we can go. It's asking. It's bonkers.

Yeah. Because like imagine you're going into a one to one with a team member and it's like, let me just pull up their live switch. What are the common objections they had so I can coach them on it. How did they perform? Give me a summary of this. And then it's like very quick feedback instead of watching all these things.

Yeah. Think of it like I always like, oh, Iron Man's my favorite superhero. Right. You still need the guy in the suit, but now we've got Jarvis around you. That's the co pilot. So even when you're on property or wherever, record everything because then you can run an AI report like help me diagnosis issue and you're still the expert. Right. But this is just that copilot just like, oh yeah, I got to remember to do that because it'll go deep. It'll tell you codes you need to worry about, safety equipment, you need to have remediation problems. Like if you're moving, it can take an entire moving inventory. So if I got to move the stuff out of a room to do the work and then move it back in, it'll take inventory of everything. So just let it be your, your sidekick with everywhere you go. And again, when it saves your behind or saves you 30 minutes of documentation, that's when you start falling in love.

Yeah. So good. Well, thanks man. I appreciate you coming on the show. Where should people go? I'll obviously put links down below and stuff. But like where should people go? Do you do free trial? Do you let them try this out or what does that look like?

Oh yeah, free trials are actually free for us. So you don't have to put your credit card. You can just go get a free trial. You can reach out to me specifically if you'd like. On LinkedIn, look up James Hatfield at live switch. L I V E S W I T C H or just go to our website liveswitch.com if you want to check it out we've got everything there pricing is front and center free trials right there if you want to talk to any of our team including myself we'll walk you through and let you put your hands on it and try it and I mean we have two month money back guarantees there's no long term commits like we want you to really like it and use it otherwise we don't really want you to have death buy subscription we'll just give you.

Your money back yeah so good. I mean even if you close one more deal out of this and like speed up your process and not go out on the job site like who doesn't want that?

Come on just think about me at your gas tank or think about me at 7 o' clock at night when you're driving across town.

Exactly. All right man well I appreciate you and look forward to continue the conversation.

Thanks Phil.

Yeah man thanks.