Use Live Video for Business

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James Hatfield – LiveSwitch

 

 

Podcast Overview:

00:00 Video Tech Revolutionizes Window Cleaning
03:42 Tech-Driven Business Success Story
07:39 Community Giving and Building
13:08 Global WebRTC Innovator Acquisition
14:54 Situational Awareness Tech Expansion
17:11 Global Live Video Infrastructure Leader
23:07 Seamless Video Recording Anywhere
25:25 Enhanced Call Center Connectivity Solution
29:37 Hypergrowth Challenges and Opportunities
30:26 Risky Marketing Investment Concerns
34:59 Effortless Communication Solution
40:06 AI Enhances Speed and Communication
42:03 Team Pushback on Video Calls
44:52 Enhancing Career Pathways
49:43 Rekindling Success: A 20-Year Partnership
53:03 From Adversity to Entrepreneurial Success

Podcast Transcription:

James Hatfield [00:00:00]:
It’s not like a FaceTime call. This is actually the reverse of a FaceTime call, meaning if I’m the homeowner and I receive the text now I’m going to see myself large and the salesperson small. So I get to see and the salesperson will have a virtual background. It’s all tuned up to do a virtual estimate. And so now the customer can walk through the home and me or if I’m the salesperson in the call center, hey, I’ll record everything. The entire video is recorded. I can take remote photos and tap into your camera, take high res photos, take notes, share my screen if I need to walk you through document, hold up your ID if I need a picture of id. And now people are selling home services from the comfort of their call center, comfort of their truck.

James Hatfield [00:00:42]:
And it’s all about speed. To lead.

James Kademan [00:00:50]:
You have found authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found in the podcast link found@drawincustomers.com we are locally underwritten by the bank of Sun Prairie Calls on call Extraordinary Answering service as well as the Bold Business book. And today we are welcoming slash, preparing to learn from James Hetfield of Live Switch. We’re going to talk about essentially mobile video for for service businesses. Is that right, James?

James Hatfield [00:01:22]:
That’s right. I’ll take you on adventure from me being on a ladder through technology and nonprofits.

James Kademan [00:01:27]:
Nice. I’m excited because when your crew reached out to me, we actually could have used a service like this during pandemic times. Way back in those days, right. For a hot minute I was working with a guy that was putting together remote window replacement company for your house and getting people to understand how to count their windows. People aren’t window experts. This would have really helped so that they could just take a walk with video and the agents on our end could see what they were looking at. So why don’t we start with what is the foundation? Tell us what is Live Switch?

James Hatfield [00:02:03]:
That’s exactly what you’re talking about. Except for now, people are, you know, Covid ushered in the age of video. But now our home service businesses like window washers are using this every day. Because the way window washers are doing it is they’re looking at at a satellite photo and then they’re walking a Google street doing their best to count the windows because it’s a struggle. Or they have to send someone out hourly in their truck to go walk around and count Windows and that’s expensive. Well, now you can just send a text to the homeowner, they can tap on it, video pops up and they can just walk around and they don’t even have to count, just walk around the house nice and slow for us. Great. And you can do this guided or you can do it with nobody on the other end.

James Hatfield [00:02:45]:
So now you’re getting, with no apps, you’re able to see what they see and do your remote and virtual estimations along amongst other things. We’ll talk about.

James Kademan [00:02:55]:
Let’s start this chronologically just because I have a lot of questions for you from the technical aspect to see, figure out how the little magic works in this thing, but also how do you get involved in something like this?

James Hatfield [00:03:05]:
Well, for me personally, I used to run painting and power washing companies over two decades ago, had multiple crews. I knew what it’s like to run crews to take care of homes head to toe. And I had a bit of a problem when I was running my service business. When I went to the bookkeeper and they would speak English to me, I would nod my head and I’m like, I don’t know what they’re saying. Us business owner or home service owners, we find ourselves have to be business owners and we have to run everything right. We gotta hire, fire, promote, do all the books, do everything. And it can be overwhelming for owners. So I decided to, hey, I think I better go back and put myself through State School.

James Hatfield [00:03:42]:
And 20 years ago was actually affordable, not affordable anymore. But while I was learning that on running my businesses, I met another guy who was running landscaping companies and doing the same thing at a sister university. And he created this technology where you could take your income statement and balance sheet and put it into the system and it would tell you in layman’s terms how you’re doing. So before the age of AI 20 years ago, no one talked about LLMs. We said, hey, if we can use this technology that will explain to a business owner what an income statement, balance sheet, how we’re doing. I wonder if other people would buy this. So I said, well hey, I’ll come off the ladder for a little bit and see if I can sell it. And what happened is we went from an incubator of a company to Inc 500 for three years, meaning we’re one of the fastest growing companies in the country for three years.

James Hatfield [00:04:31]:
And. And it became a multi billion dollar company, still exists today with a B B. Yes, billion. Worked out pretty well. Really well. And so we ended up selling that business to KKR had a great exit and got into nonprofits. I launched nonprofits. My partner did as well.

James Hatfield [00:04:50]:
One of them is called Inmates to Entrepreneurs. We take incarcerated men and women, thousands and thousands of them, and put them through our program and that ended up becoming an ABC TV show called Free Enterprise. And that’s won a bunch of awards. Yep. And we decided, hey, we’re a little too young to hang up our boots and call it a day. Let’s see if we can build another billion dollar company. And so we instead of starting from scratch this time, we bought a company. So it’s a 16 year old company.

James Hatfield [00:05:14]:
We jumped in and now we’re building that. We’ve owned that now for the last five years. And I can tell you about that journey and how that connects us today. And back to Liveswitch. But that’s kind of our adventure from being on ladders to go into financial technology to nonprofits. And now we’re back into video technology.

James Kademan [00:05:30]:
Well, you introduce a few more questions now with the answer to that question. So tell me because a lot of, I guess I’ve interviewed a few people that are in the exit business exiting realm as far as helping people do that, brokers and valuation people and all that jazz. So how do you value a business that’s doing revenue in the billions?

James Hatfield [00:05:53]:
Well, for a tech company, that’s looked at different than a services company. Right. Service companies, when you’re ready to exit, you’ll probably see a 2 1/2, 3 multiple on your EBITDA or seller’s discretionary income if they’re lower than 5 million. But when you get to the billion dollar mark and your Software and your SaaS model and you’re getting recurring revenue, the market values recurring revenue much higher. Because as a home service, you got to keep knocking on doors. Right. Or you got to keep going after business. And we’ll talk about how, how to help your home service business become a little bit more recurring revenue as well.

James Hatfield [00:06:23]:
But for us in the software side, the market values SaaS and recurring revenue much higher. Many multiples more. So you’re able to get much more on your EBITDA when you’re going to exit that. But you know, you want to make sure with any exit, you get your books cleaned, you get your house in order, you get as lean and mean as you can and trim up and then they’ll end up coming in and large company like kkr, they’ll come in and they’ll just reorient the business even after the purchase. So it’s a little bit different when you get to that level compared to if you’re selling something in the millions. But, you know, it’s all kind of still walks along the same path.

James Kademan [00:06:58]:
All right, and did they just give you a bag of money or was this a buyout over time?

James Hatfield [00:07:02]:
They give you a bag of money. KKR has a lot of money.

James Kademan [00:07:07]:
All right, very cool.

James Hatfield [00:07:08]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:07:09]:
And did you reach out to them or did they reach out to you?

James Hatfield [00:07:13]:
They, it’s a little bit of both, but usually they reach out to us. A lot of times when you’re doing well in the market, you don’t really have to reach out. People start knocking on your door because they know you have something of value. So it’s more turning people away when you hit certain points in your journey.

James Kademan [00:07:29]:
Gotcha, Gotcha. Interesting. And tell me, how did you end up going into the nonprofit world instead of just starting another business or just hanging out on a beach somewhere?

James Hatfield [00:07:39]:
Yeah, we’re builders, you know, and we like to give back. You know, when you start to have the means and you’re able, you don’t have to have a lot of means. I think a lot of people think you need all this money before you start giving back. I would challenge that thinking. I don’t think you need actually that much. I think you just need a heart to give and find your little niches. Whether it’s local, like I do a lot of local community things around here, where I live in Asheville, and then national, you know, such as inmates to entrepreneurs. And there’s a big need there and you can fill that need if you’re willing to be bold and give.

James Hatfield [00:08:09]:
You always get way more back. But you know, at the same time it’s different than for profit. So now we’re an unapologetically for profit business that we like to grow and we love to grow fast. We love hyper scaling businesses.

James Kademan [00:08:24]:
So when you had your. The original power washing painting businesses business or businesses businesses businesses. I imagine those are at a different scale just reasonably what they can be compared to a software as a service model.

James Hatfield [00:08:39]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:08:39]:
Has that been a challenge or limitation or is that the reason that you got out of it originally?

James Hatfield [00:08:44]:
I was never looking to get out of it. You know, I come from nothing. My father let me build his own home. My grandfather had done. His dad died young and had to drop out of school and take care of the family at a tire store. So I didn’t come from much. My grandfather wanted me to be a painter and so that’s what I became A painter. I learned how to do it, apprentice myself and then, you know, took the business on my own and started making ends meet and making other people’s ends meet, paying other people’s salaries, you know.

James Hatfield [00:09:08]:
So I always thought I’d be there. Like I said, my problem was I had. I couldn’t understand my books. So I went back to school and from there that connected me to other people with the same. Same problem and that produced a technology that my partner built. And then I’m able to take my skills from my business and apply them to this business. So a lot of transferable skills out there. But of course I had to learn to different things.

James Hatfield [00:09:31]:
But I could scale way faster in software than I could in home services. It wasn’t even. It’s apples and oranges when you get to that level.

James Kademan [00:09:38]:
No, it’s interesting. Even when you look at something like the S&P 500 and the businesses that are really, you know, dare I say, propping it up kind of thing, they’re the software, the technology ones because you look at some of the other companies and the other companies have a way smaller scale that they can reasonably achieve. Where something that’s software based or something like that, there is a limitation, but that is way higher. And the revenue versus profit way different game. Just completely different game.

James Hatfield [00:10:09]:
Totally. It’s apples and oranges, you know. Now I sell username and password. Pretty nice.

James Kademan [00:10:14]:
Yeah. Oh, that’s best. Selling the username and password. That’s awesome.

James Hatfield [00:10:18]:
Yeah, you’ll buy, buy a nice product and sell the same product over and over again. Know nothing against home service, but I love home service business. You know, I could have done that my career, you know, I love it. It’s just different.

James Kademan [00:10:30]:
If everybody gets in the software game then eventually the people that paint and plumbers and all that jazz are going to be the ones making all the money.

James Hatfield [00:10:37]:
Oh yeah. I. Main street businesses are a wonderful place to. To buy, grow, build and expand. You know, if you wanted to scale. If I was going to scale a home service business, I would buy similar companies around the country working with a broker and then modernize it. I talked to because we have thousands and thousands of users on live switch. Majority of them are home service companies.

James Hatfield [00:10:58]:
I get a front row seat to all of that. And so I find some of those folks that are running their business in a very modern way and they. I have one guy who’s buying a 30 year old electric company and modernizing it and videoing the whole thing to show people what it’s like Because a lot of home service folks sometimes lag behind when it comes to some of the technology. So you just got to show it to them.

James Kademan [00:11:18]:
I can tell you, I mean, a thousand times over, you’re right. We, I have a call answering service. We answer phones for a fair number of people in the service business or service industry. I say a fair number of businesses. But quite a few of those businesses are one or two person shows where it’s them, their van, maybe a couple of trucks, and even something as simple as some form of a digital calendar instead of just using their notebook or the back of their hand. That’s a big step for them. That it’s, it’s crazy, it’s insane to me how difficult it is to get people to move. Even a shift that you can show them.

James Kademan [00:11:59]:
This is going to make life so much easier. You’re going to be more reliable, blah, blah, blah, blah. Kind of telling them, you know, this technology has come around. It’s not technology for technology’s sake. This is actually useful technology because someday you’re gonna leave that notebook at a customer’s house, you’re gonna have no idea where it went.

James Hatfield [00:12:17]:
It’s quite the liability.

James Kademan [00:12:19]:
Yeah, no, but. So I get where you’re coming from there. Completely understand.

James Hatfield [00:12:24]:
Oh, yeah. Talk to those folks every single day. You know, the adoption curve is real. The good news about people that are slow to change is when they do change, they’re slow to change again. It tends to stick, you know, so there’s a, there’s a pro and con of everything. When you’re a fast changer and you’re always changing, changing, changing. You can have change fatigue with your team as well. If they can keep up, great.

James Hatfield [00:12:42]:
You’re going to run laps around people. But also you can run so fast where you lose people in the rear view that couldn’t keep up. So it’s a certain type of pace for certain type of growth. But it’s a full spectrum, isn’t it?

James Kademan [00:12:55]:
Very true, very true. Let’s shift gears into liveswitch. So liveswitch is a platform. Tell me how you built Live Switch. I mean like the coding and all that kind of stuff.

James Hatfield [00:13:08]:
Yeah, I can tell you from the beginning. So we looked around the world for a company to acquire rather than start from scratch again like we did the other company found a company out of Vancouver, British Columbia. The founders are with us still and they had a bunch of computer scientists and what they are doing is a. The nerdy Talk is called WebRTC. Web real time Communication and so large companies would come and approach them and they would do all kinds of unique things. Like if you remember during COVID when the NBA was in a bubble, or WWE wrestling where the wrestlers had TV screens throughout their arena, our company powered that. Even today. We did the super bowl this year.

James Hatfield [00:13:43]:
And last year we go to an MLB ballpark and scan a QR code and they put you on the Jumbotron. We power that. And how we got back into home services is we. I myself, personally, I was actually running our product team. I was a product officer before. I like, I like to make myself redundant, give my position away so we can grow in scale.

James Kademan [00:14:00]:
But.

James Hatfield [00:14:00]:
But as I was a product officer at that time, I got to work with the chief of police in Washington D.C. to reinvent the nation’s 911 phone call. Because now everybody has three or four cameras in their pocket. So we want to be able to utilize that and also produce a point of redundancy. So when you call 911, you’re using telephony. The worst part of our phones is the phone. Ironically, it’s because it’s on an ancient technology called telephony. You can remember the people plugging in, you know, people that connect.

James Hatfield [00:14:26]:
Let me connect you. You know, there’s. It’s modernized a little bit, but not really okay. So what we came up with and what I woke up one morning at three in the morning, like, I think I got it. So we’re able to send. While you’re on call with 911, you’re able to receive an SMS text. You can tap on the text and with no app, you know, you will connect right into your cameras. And so we can stream that camera footage right to the police car, fire truck or emergency medical.

James Hatfield [00:14:54]:
It’s called situational awareness. So they know what they’re driving into. And so as we started to do that and we do a lot of work with the government, we were thinking, well, who else would be able to use this? No app. Quick to connect. And well, back to our roots of home services. I ended up connecting with a gentleman who is a big thought leader in the moving industry, like moving boxes, of all things. And so he’s taking a look at our technology that we invented for 911 and he says, you’re sitting on a pot of gold. I’m like, what do you mean? He’s like, you should know this, being a home service guy, what we’re going to use it for is the most expensive thing I do as a business owner is I’ll put One of my guys, hourly wage in one of my vehicles, wear and tear on the vehicle and gas and the hopes that we win the business, right? So the lead comes in, I send my guy out.

James Hatfield [00:15:40]:
We don’t win everything. And sometimes people find out how much it is to move and they’re like, I’m just going to get all my friends in two pizza boxes, right? So he’s like, I’m going to use this for my initial discovery. When that lead comes in, whether it’s to your call center or whether it’s to you sitting in the truck, if you’re a mom and pop now you can send the text and this is going to be all tuned up for third party assistance. It’s not like a FaceTime call. This is actually the reverse of a FaceTime call. Meaning if I’m the homeowner and I receive the text now I’m going to see myself large and the salesperson small. So I get to see. And the salesperson will have a virtual background.

James Hatfield [00:16:14]:
It’s all tuned up to do a virtual estimate. And so now the customer can walk through the home and me or if I’m the salesperson in the call center, hey, I’ll record everything. The entire video is recorded. I can take remote photos and tap into your camera, take high res photos, take notes, share my screen if I need to walk you through document, hold up your ID if I need a picture of id. And now people are selling home services from the comfort of their call center, comfort of their truck. And it’s all about speed. Delete.

James Kademan [00:16:45]:
Very cool, very cool. So the. Tell me about the servers and all that jazz because when you go from a phone call, well I guess from a bandwidth point of view, we got text on the bottom and then voice, hear audio, now video talking a decent sized amount of bandwidth and a decent size amount of storage or at least relatively speaking. So was that a hurdle that you had to get over or that was already solved with Live Switch originally for.

James Hatfield [00:17:11]:
Us because we’re one of only like four or five companies in the world that handle live video. And we do it at huge scale, like the Super Bowl. We scale is not a problem for us. It might be a problem for other smaller technical firms, but for us scale for us is not a problem. We, we can scale and I mean we can put our stuff on a local server, we can put stuff on, you know, aws, Oracle, Google, we can put our stuff anywhere. But our Coca Cola recipe is our media server. Think of the modernization of back in the day with Telephony, where they’re plugging in the different pieces to connect. Now we can do that in the cloud.

James Hatfield [00:17:47]:
And not only can I send audio, I can send video and data. Right. So. And I can do it at point speed, incredible speed. Like for WWE wrestling, when the wrestlers did a body slam and all of the people on the TVs erupted, there was no delay. You don’t want to have body slam, three second delay. But we’re able to do it from point to point anywhere on the globe. Because now people have some of their call centers overseas, like in South Africa or in Indonesia, and we need to be able.

James Hatfield [00:18:13]:
And they will do remote estimations.

James Kademan [00:18:16]:
Oh, interesting. You know, it’s so funny we talk about this because I want to say recently, fairly recently, I was digging into the statistics of YouTube, the amount of videos that are uploaded and on a daily basis and the math of the size, the. I don’t know what’s above a terabyte, Gigabyte, whatever. Yeah, it just, it’s almost unfathomable, at least when you look at it from memory from 10 years ago. But now I suppose they fit in the closet. Whatever. It’s surreal. And then I think when I get a video sent to me by my editor and I click on that thing on my local computer, I get a little spinny circle for a couple seconds and then it plays.

James Kademan [00:18:59]:
But I go to YouTube or any, it seems like almost any online player to watch my own podcast that’s somewhere in a server hundreds, if not thousands of miles away. And it plays in an instant. And I keep thinking, man, I feel like we got to get this technology in my. The box that I have locally here. It’s so interesting that it’s fast, even though it’s farther away.

James Hatfield [00:19:22]:
Yep. The power of data centers, global data centers. You can do incredible things.

James Kademan [00:19:27]:
Really crazy. Really crazy. So tell me, you bought into this thing, into Live Switch?

James Hatfield [00:19:33]:
Yep.

James Kademan [00:19:34]:
How did you figure out what you were going to pay to get in there?

James Hatfield [00:19:38]:
Same type of thing, you know, as we value the business, you know, you’re looking at different multiples. Looking at ebitda, we purchased a company. It was predominantly a professional services company. So people would come and they, a majority of the staff as well were project managers, coders. And when you do professional services, it’s very akin to, to home services and multiples, like two, two and a half multiples if you’re lucky. But that’s why we bought it, so we could come in and turn it into a SaaS model. Recurring revenue. They didn’t have any recurring revenue, and we reconstructed it.

James Hatfield [00:20:10]:
So we wanted to find a company that we could come in and apply our learnings from the last SaaS company and put into this. And so that’s why I started as the product officer first to rebuild out the product and then remodel it. I’m the chief revenue officer. And then hand all that off. And then we scale. And so we’ve been scaling very quickly with this new model, and clearly the value of the company follows right behind it. Quickly.

James Kademan [00:20:32]:
Nice. So when you, I guess before you bought liveswitch, before you found Live Switch, were you looking for specifically a video platform or you’re looking for something more broad?

James Hatfield [00:20:42]:
Nope, we were looking for something that we could sell. Username and passwords.

James Kademan [00:20:45]:
Okay, gotcha.

James Hatfield [00:20:47]:
That was a broad swath of different kinds of companies you could think of, like CRM companies. This one just happened to fit a unique variable that there weren’t too many companies like it. And then we thought we could turn it into a username and password SAS company, and we were right.

James Kademan [00:21:01]:
All right, very cool. And how long ago was this?

James Hatfield [00:21:04]:
Five years ago.

James Kademan [00:21:05]:
Oh, so it’s been a little while. Okay. Made over the hurdle.

James Hatfield [00:21:07]:
Yep. Yep.

James Kademan [00:21:08]:
What were some of the challenges that you ran into that you didn’t necessarily anticipate once you bought Live Switch and started changing it over to the SaaS model?

James Hatfield [00:21:18]:
What we didn’t fully appreciate was how complicated live video was. WebRTC is phenomenally impossible. Like, when I sat with our engineers again, they would be speaking English to me. I’d be nodding my head. I’m like, I don’t understand a word they’re saying, but I know they’re speaking English. It took me two years to figure out exactly what we had, but once we did, we recognized how special it was. And then again, through meeting with the chief of police of dc, we start connecting dots. So those first years of finding where are we going to find our recurring revenue? Where are we going to find our username and password product? That was difficult and left battle scars and all kinds of stuff.

James Hatfield [00:21:59]:
Creating a product that you can scale globally is. Is very challenging. You know, we almost, at some points didn’t. Didn’t make it or didn’t think we were going to make it because we couldn’t figure out. Figure it out. But we follow the bouncing ball, and our key is always listening to our customers. The customers have the answers to the test. We can understand the customer experience, find the pain that we’re going to solve, solve it in a way that’s, you know, affordable, effective and fast.

James Hatfield [00:22:24]:
We can do it. And so I’m glad we did. A little over two years ago we figured we found that out and we also found out that all of these platforms, Name them Salesforce, HubSpot, SimPro, Service Titan, Jobber, they didn’t have live video. So we turned everything we had into an open API so they could bolt it under the hood. So we are under the hood now of Jobber, we’re under the hood now of Service Titan, we’re under the hood now of HubSpot. So we are bringing, now we’re staying in our lane of live video. You can purchase directly from us and get right into our platform. But now we’re also going to allow you to access that platform through the window of your CRM.

James Kademan [00:23:01]:
Well that’s incredible. Is everything video or does it also do pictures?

James Hatfield [00:23:07]:
Oh yeah, we do live video, we do recorded video, we do video in extreme circumstances. Imagine you’re in the middle of nowhere. Like I have one of the largest solar panel panel companies in solar’s as one of our customers and they’re usually in the middle of nowhere, USA with little to no bandwidth, sometimes none and they’ll need to document their work. And so we found a way to allow them to hit the record button so still save it in a browser cache. In a browser. And then when it even got to the worst of Internet like 3G LTE, it still uploaded the pictures and video. No more do you need to scroll through pictures of all your family members. And if you see a lot of these construction home service property management companies, their personal photo libraries are littered with their work which is a complete liability for them, for the, the customer and everything.

James Hatfield [00:23:56]:
We don’t want anything stored locally. So we needed to find a way to circumvent all of that and be able to take the photos, take the videos, take the pictures, upload that and then you can do all kinds of things with them, share them, draw on them, put them in projects, put QR codes behind them with leave behinds. And it’s become like platform where you can have kiosk to connect or a button on your website to connect or a scan a QR code to connect. And they come into play in all different ways for our businesses that we’re serving using our platform.

James Kademan [00:24:28]:
Very cool. I am so interested in this. It sounds fascinating because I’m thinking of all the use cases like we answer phones for windshield repair companies and getting the information that we need from the vehicle owner about their car because they don’t know all the sensors that they have get in the car, drive it, work home, whatever. And they don’t pay attention to have lane departure or auto cruise control or automatic wipers or anything. They don’t know. So we have to keep asking them for pictures to figure out by the rear view mirror what fancy cameras they have. And sometimes they’ll take pictures where the sun is in the angle blocking, so you have this huge glare where the cameras are. So then you can’t tell and you have to say like, hey, can you take the picture again where I can see this being much more productive.

James Hatfield [00:25:19]:
Here’s what we would do. We can on live broadcast here, tell you how to disrupt your industry right now.

James Kademan [00:25:24]:
Yeah.

James Hatfield [00:25:25]:
So we do two things. First, we’d start with your call center and we’d arm them with the ability to text anybody. Whether to do a live call to walk them around that windshield, or if it’s after hours or it’s not convenient or the Internet is in a bad spot, they can just send a text and that person can tap on the text and take a video again with even load of crap Internet. And it would upload right to the call center, which they could take that video and send it to anyone, the repair person, give a quote if you needed to. Additionally, what we would do is partner with anyone that’s doing the replacement or fix to create a window cling. And on the window cling, like if you, you know, when you get your oil change, they put one up there. Well, now you can put a window cling that would have two QR codes on there saying every ever have any issues with your windshield scan here? Right. And one of them would be a live connect where you’d scan it and instantly live video connect with the call center during certain hours.

James Hatfield [00:26:19]:
And the other one would be the video Dropbox where they could scan it, take the video, show them what’s going on, and you’re claiming every single windshield. So that’s how you can just start the disruption of what you’re doing, especially.

James Kademan [00:26:34]:
With the QR codes at the end, so that if they ever have a problem again, they don’t have to think, who is that person that had changing the windshield out? What company was that? They got it right there.

James Hatfield [00:26:43]:
Exactly. And if they sell the car, the new owner. Oh, I guess this is my, you know, window repairman. Mm, man.

James Kademan [00:26:49]:
I’m even thinking back, way back when I had a printer and copier repair company and we would give people little stickers that just had our phone number on there. But I can imagine this would play very well.

James Hatfield [00:27:00]:
All of our customers are doing this home services. They’re taking and. And they’re marking their territory or products. Right. Well, they’ll put the name of their company, their phone number, and a QR code where someone can instantly take a video of any issue. So our electricians are putting it on the breaker box. Our plumbers are putting on the water heaters. H Vac on H vac, Garage door.

James Hatfield [00:27:20]:
On the garage door. They’re claiming territories. But also to your point, you know, whether it’s a windshield, whether it’s equipment, you know, think of our irrigation systems, anything. You want to claim that because it puts your brand out there and it starts to box out Google. We try to train our companies to box out Google because the first thing people will do is go to Google and say window repair near me. Right. And they’ll look for the stars. And then when they start going through that, I’d rather them look on the cling as an example.

James Hatfield [00:27:48]:
Oh, that’s my repair person. And then I get the first shot at the business.

James Kademan [00:27:52]:
Yeah, go take care of it instead of dinking around with whatever Google search engine is has at the moment.

James Hatfield [00:27:59]:
Exactly.

James Kademan [00:28:00]:
Moving target. Tell me, as far as marketing this to companies, how has that been good or bad?

James Hatfield [00:28:08]:
Oh, that’s always hard. I don’t care what you sell.

James Kademan [00:28:14]:
I got this new exciting thing. I’m busy.

James Hatfield [00:28:17]:
Exactly. So after we got the aha of like, okay, this is going to work first in the moving industry. Because the guy that was like, hey, this, you’re sitting on liquid gold. Remember, he was in the moving industry. I just humble myself like I did at the company that we took from Incubator to a billion dollars, you know, the financial technology company. And I made over 100 cold calls personally to moving companies with no brand, very little assets, two customers maybe, and it’s going door to door, which is how I built my home service company. I start off going door to door. A lot of people like to start off going to, you know, fill in the blank marketing, you know, whether they’re going straight to Google Meta X and they start swiping their card in there and it’s a lot of burn.

James Hatfield [00:29:07]:
Right. Which is fine, you know, and at some stage that’s. There’s wisdom in that. I’m not poo pooing that. I’m just saying in the very beginning, when you have no customers in a product, you want to be in scrappy mode. You know, unfortunately, a lot of times people Will go and take VC money or PE money and dump a ton of cash on it. And their burn rates are, I can always tell when I go to a conference who’s got PE and VC money because I’m like, if that was their own money that they were burning, they would do it differently. So it takes a lot more discipline, takes a lot of.

James Hatfield [00:29:37]:
You’re going to get a lot more gray hairs this route. But by the time you’ve effectively landed and you’ve gotten enough customers and you’re really listening to the customer and really tweaking the product with your product team now when you do pour that gas on the fire, you can really start to scale even faster. Okay, so that’s, I mean that’s what I love doing is scaling, you know, experiencing three figure growth year over year. But you got to operate a little different when you work at hyperspeed and not everybody can handle the ride, which is anytime I’m interviewing anybody, I’m like, have you ever worked for Hyper Growth Company? Because it’s not my. So I asked to prepare them, you know, before that. It’s a fun ride, exciting ride, but I always like to, you know, dose the truth and reality. What it means to be part of a hyper growth company.

James Kademan [00:30:26]:
You raise an interesting point about the marketing slapping your credit card down using whatever Facebook or Google or whatever for the ads. I was just talking, talking to a marketing guy I don’t know a couple weeks ago, something like that. And I told him where we want to be and where we are now. And he puts together this plan that was essentially, I know it was in the neighborhood of 75% of our profit, net profit. And I’m like, hey, that’s silly too. I mean, and then because there’s also the like, hey, can you guarantee this will work? And of course I can. Happy to take your money. Have no guarantee whatsoever to speak of.

James Kademan [00:31:09]:
And then that got me thinking, you know, maybe this isn’t something that we have to throw a credit card at. Maybe this is something we have to be a little bit more strategic or a lot more strategic about because we have the time to take some actions, we have the bandwidth as far as people goes. Maybe it’s not just necessarily a money problem or a problem that can be solved with money. So it’s interesting that you’re talking about that. We gotta find different ways to grow outside of just paying for ads, hoping for the best.

James Hatfield [00:31:36]:
That’s right. You need to. If you’re going to pay and you’re going to look for the shortcut in the line. You better be right or you’re going to burn money quick and we all chase it. I’m just as guilty. I’ve put my credit card in that machine before just to burn it up, right? You better know it’s an amplifier. If you’re terrible, it’s going to amplify how terrible you are. If you’re spot on the money, it’ll amplify how spot on the money you are.

James Hatfield [00:32:00]:
So it’s just, you know, and they’ll always, I always call them false profits with P R O F I T s. They got no money. They’ll, they’ll sell you the world and happy to take your, your money. But then you can’t be guaranteed and nobody wants to work on pay per performance. I haven’t found a marketing company that wants to work on pay for performance.

James Kademan [00:32:17]:
I’m like, no, no, if you can.

James Hatfield [00:32:19]:
Perform their services, I’ll sell it. You know, my team will sell it and then we’d be happy to write you a commission on performance. No, no, no. You got to give them a retainer. You got to give them all the upfront money with no guarantees. Like, well, I’m not doing that. Burn me a couple times, which I have been, I’m over that. I don’t need that.

James Hatfield [00:32:38]:
But yes, scaling, marketing, growing is every business’s challenge.

James Kademan [00:32:44]:
Totally true. Totally true. I always joke. So my printer repair company was called Doc Jams way back when. And I used to joke with people that I’m a doctor that’ll actually fix your stuff because I, I don’t want to fix your stuff. You’re not going to pay me where a doctor, they may or may not fix your stuff. And you really don’t have the option. They still charge you regardless of the outcome.

James Kademan [00:33:03]:
They might even charge you more if they broke it.

James Hatfield [00:33:05]:
That’s right. And that’s why for our stuff, I put a 60 day money back guarantee you’ll get every single dollar back if we are not solving your problem and you have two months. You know, like if you’ve given me money, I haven’t earned it until you see your value. And people, people like simple. People like fast and people like effective. You miss any of those, it’s a hard, you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna hyperscale.

James Kademan [00:33:27]:
Fair, fast, simple and effective. I love it. Tell me a story about setup. Cause you got these guys that are your clients that are not necessarily the most tech savvy in the world. Probably don’t even have the time, even if they did have the knowledge. So how do you get them to go from essentially zero to offering this service for their clients?

James Hatfield [00:33:46]:
Yep. And this is where you’ve got to spend a ton of your time simplifying, getting to those first principle thinking. Right. The beauty for myself and my partner is we used to own home service companies. I used to live on a ladder, so I know what it’s like when people affectionately call my guys knuckle draggers. I’m like, maybe, you know, but I think it’s a problem with the engineers. Like, I make fun of our coders and engineers. I’m like, you guys, I all have soft hands.

James Hatfield [00:34:08]:
You’ve never spent a day on a ladder. So you’re going to come in an engineer for people on a ladder, and you’ve never been on a ladder. It’s not going to go well. You know, it’s like men designing female products and vice versa. Right. Usually it can go. I’m not saying it can’t. I’m not saying a coder can’t figure it out.

James Hatfield [00:34:23]:
I’m not saying you can’t figure this out. But the beauty on my end is I knew what I tools worked really well in my business. When I was on the ladder one back in the day, I’m dating myself, we had these things called CB radios in my truck. Right. You pick up and that’s the bandit, right? That’s it. C radios. And then came along the cell phone. And then came along this thing called the Nextel walkie talkie, which you talk to any home.

James Hatfield [00:34:47]:
Yes. You talk to any home service guy who’s been around. Why did we like it? It’s one button touch, and we’re instantly voice connecting. Right. It’s easier than. Because back then you had to remember phone numbers. Right. Now you don’t have to.

James Hatfield [00:34:59]:
So we had to come up with something as easy as a Nextel walkie talkie. Something that I could train the quote unquote knuckle draggers to do, which is not even true. They can learn and have learned my stuff in less than two minutes. If they can send a text, we say it’s so easy, your mama can do it. Right? So literally, if you can send a text, if your guy can’t send a text, you got a. That’s a whole different ball of wax. But if you can send a text, which most every person in this country can do, they just put the phone number in, hit go the receiver. All they have to do is tap a wink, and you’re on.

James Hatfield [00:35:29]:
There’s no app in between. There’s nothing to download. There’s no extra software. This is not a CRM. This is for speed and simplicity. So we designed for simplicity. It’s like when Google first came out with just a search bar. And they still have that to this day.

James Hatfield [00:35:43]:
Right. And they’re fearing adding anything else. We live in that same reality of like, if you want to answer a phone call, it needs to be a swipe. You want to start your truck, you need to tap a button or turn a key. We like one button fixes. And so that’s what we design too. One button fixes.

James Kademan [00:36:01]:
I love that. I wish my car had that. I was just, I saw a meme, I said, how come we can’t look at our phone and text while we drive, but if I want to adjust the fan on the climate control in my car, I gotta go three levels deep and that’s okay. I’m like, I miss knobs. I miss being able to just turn it off without even having to look. You just know it’s there. And muscle memory.

James Hatfield [00:36:22]:
One one button fixes. We like one button things. So designed to have a one button fix. If you’re in software.

James Kademan [00:36:29]:
That Knuckle Dragon thing is kind of. It’s interesting and rude because I always think in a zombie apocalypse, nobody’s gonna be like, quick, where’s our insurance broker? Where’s our programmer? They’re gonna want the person that knows how to work a hammer and a drill and stuff like that.

James Hatfield [00:36:44]:
That’s right. That’s right.

James Kademan [00:36:45]:
Survive.

James Hatfield [00:36:46]:
So the Main street guys, man, the truth is we all kind of need each other for different things to fill because fair. You know, I don’t think the Knuckle Dragger wants to code what we’re coding either, so. And just like my guys and my coders don’t want to hop on ladders.

James Kademan [00:37:02]:
Right.

James Hatfield [00:37:03]:
Fair.

James Kademan [00:37:04]:
Totally fair. Tell me, AI seems to be mentioned everywhere. So I suppose in the software game. I have to ask you, is AI yet involved with what you have going on?

James Hatfield [00:37:15]:
Yes, but I don’t subscribe to AI being the next coming. Right, I’ll go and I was just down in Orlando, Florida speaking at a conference to a bunch of home service owners. And what I like to do on stage is cold call businesses acting like a customer live on stage. Right. So I happen to be in the audience where a lot of power washing companies. I was in Orlando. So I just googled just like a customer would. I said, let’s pretend I just got a new House.

James Hatfield [00:37:44]:
I got a big party tomorrow. I got plenty of money. I just want someone to come out this afternoon to wash my house. Everything looks awesome for my guests. So that was my Persona. So what did I do? I went to Google. I said power washers near me in Orlando. And I started with the first one that had 766, five star reviews.

James Hatfield [00:38:02]:
So I called it. Called it. It rang about eight times and went to voicemail. Nobody. They didn’t even pay a phone. I know that hurts you because you do a call center. I mean, it’s painful.

James Kademan [00:38:11]:
That company. We got a potential client here.

James Hatfield [00:38:13]:
Well, listen to what happened. So. Well, the next one. The next one I call, I just went right down the list. 566. Up pops the AI robot. Hi, welcome to so and so Power Washing. How can we help you? Hey, I’d like to speak to a representative.

James Hatfield [00:38:27]:
I need something done today, and I got plenty of money. Oh, that’s great to hear. But before I transfer you to a salesperson, I need to collect a few simple information. I said, the simple information you need is I got lots of money. I need a power wash. I’m in Orlando and I want it right this second. Transfer me an hour. I’m hanging up.

James Hatfield [00:38:42]:
Well, thank you again for your interest, but before I transfer. You hung up. All right. Then I asked the entire audience, who here, their number one salesperson is an AI robot? Agent. Nobody. AI agents are good for simple dumb questions. Not getting money or helping someone when they’re extremely pissed off. When you’re extremely pissed off, what do we say? Representative? We want to talk to a person.

James Kademan [00:39:06]:
Yes. Agent operator. Yeah.

James Hatfield [00:39:08]:
Yep. And we want the head person in charge when we’re pissed. Right. Or if I got money, I want that. I want. I want the Ritz Carlton experience. I want the White Glove experience. So, yes, AI can be practical and tactical, and of course we’re using it, but we have to understand where it is today.

James Hatfield [00:39:27]:
And we have to understand our customers. And we need to understand the customer experience and journey. Because all customers are not built the same. Right? We bucket our customers into three buckets. Well, we don’t. But our customers. Customer does, right? Bucket number one is, you’re educated, got lots of money. Maybe it’s a referral.

James Hatfield [00:39:43]:
Like, you should close this deal in your sleep. Right? And they want it now. Just like Agent Amazon, they want it overnight. On the other side of the spectrum is a person who has no business calling you. Like the people that call to Mover. They’re like, how much is that? I’M just going to get two pizzas and my friends, right? So you want to eliminate that. And then your middle bucket is the ones where you’re going to have to put in a little work. You do discovery.

James Hatfield [00:40:06]:
You see, you’re like, I think there is money here. It is worth driving out, drive out, do it and close it. Right. But the two ends of the spectrum, the educated one and the person who has no business, you want to get that quick speed to lead race to the face. Okay. So we really start educating that way. And then you have AI come alongside of that experience, whether it’s translating English into Spanish or English into different or Spanish and English or whatever it might be, you know, for that type of or monitoring the entire conversation to give an output or to come as a copilot to do measurements. All kinds of things that AI is going to is very powerful at.

James Hatfield [00:40:44]:
And it’s still coming alongside. But we’re not anti AI, but we do believe in a human connection. And humans so far still have the highest close rates to cash there is in existence.

James Kademan [00:40:56]:
Fair. Totally fair. It’s interesting because we get asked a lot in the call answering world if we’re worried that we’re going away. And I always answer, you know, maybe in a few years, five years, whatever. But right now I feel like it’s 80 to 90% good. But that 10% is so huge that it’s like flying to Hawaii and they’re like, we can get you 100 miles shy of Hawaii from any destination. I’m like, well, 100 miles shy of Hawaii is in the middle of the ocean, so that’s not worth the trip. I’m not that good of a swimmer as far as 100 miles.

James Kademan [00:41:35]:
Joe’s. So it’s got to get that extra bump until like you said, you do the super simple stuff. Sure. Got it.

James Hatfield [00:41:41]:
Yep. And that’s, I think what you’re going to see happen in call centers is the evolvement of using video. Right. Because that’ll be the next layer of differentiation, be the next layer of also be able to upcharge. You’re just going to have to get people who are willing to be on calls now willing to be on video. That’s going to be the challenge for the call center. But once they’re on video, boom, perfect segue.

James Kademan [00:42:03]:
Because I want to ask you about this because we, with the call answering service that we have, this was during the pandemic 2020, 21, we were playing with some video software and we were trying to get it to clients Or I was trying to lay it out for some clients. But the pushback that I got was not from the clients. It was from my crew who are working from home. And they’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Now we got to talk to some weirdo on video. And they went down this rabbit hole of, oh, my gosh, we’re gonna have all these creeps reach out. We’re gonna have all this blah, blah, blah, blah. And I tried to counter, but I was on full defense thinking, okay, who in the world is gonna find this video link and then do something crazy that you don’t want? And that’s going to run into an issue.

James Kademan [00:42:55]:
I’m like, one, you have control over accepting the video. Two, you have control over ending the video. So, I mean, there’s a lot of things for control. But I guess that said, I got a lot of pushback. So I want to talk to you about that and see if you’ve gotten pushback at all from being on the.

James Hatfield [00:43:12]:
Other end of the video. 100% pushback. But here’s. Here’s what happens, you know, is if you get the pushback, you understand the pushback, and you hear them, then you say, well, who in this room would like to earn more money? Just one person. One person. Anyone here want to earn more money? Oh, a hand flies up. I’ll do it. Great.

James Hatfield [00:43:30]:
Because you can pass that cost on to your person. You, service say, hey, look, we’re starting to put video capability into the call center. Why would you want video? It closes at an exponentially higher rate than voice or chat. Okay. And we can also record that entire video and send it to your on property folks. And so here’s the other thing about the bad apples. The bad apples like to stay in the shadows. And you know what video does? It lights them up.

James Hatfield [00:43:55]:
It really exposes somebody. Now, if it’s a bad apple, it’s. Everything’s recorded. It’s SOC 2 certified. It’s safer than a phone call. Okay, so we have department of Defense and things that use stuff, this kind of stuff, right? So now you’re arming them. And then also, it’s protecting your caller, it’s protecting the customer, and it’s protecting your client. And now because you have the NFL instant replay, it’s going to do a lot for you.

James Hatfield [00:44:19]:
One, since everything’s recorded, it can be used for training. Since everything’s recording, it can be used for disputes. And the call center people don’t, oh, it’s. You’re watching over me. Until the bank Error goes in their favor. Like I wasn’t swearing at the customer. I didn’t say that. Well, let’s check the record.

James Hatfield [00:44:34]:
Oh, you’re right. That was on the customer. You did a great job. Right. And so what we found is it elevates that position. I don’t know if you’ve ever worked in a call center before. I have. Okay.

James Hatfield [00:44:45]:
I used to manage call centers. That is a high turnover job. Why?

James Kademan [00:44:50]:
Yeah, universally, yes.

James Hatfield [00:44:52]:
University can be cool. Now it can be high turnover job. But also people are looking for career ladders. Well, now you can start implementing additional pathways for career success. And your end customer, who you’re selling to, you’re offering even a higher level service that they’re going to value by showing turning of all of the things we just talked about. So it’s an opportunity really. And then with all of these agentic AIs, you’re going to need to find more ways to compete with that. And agentic AI struggles with live video.

James Kademan [00:45:23]:
Oh, totally. I can definitely see how that would be a problem. Yeah, but you’re right, you’re right. There is. I can definitely see the competition, the AI competition coming along. We even introduced AI voice. So I tell people, I guess the first conversation that we have is it is not an apples to apples replacement for a human. It’s just not.

James Kademan [00:45:44]:
It can do things, it’s a tool. But this is a fisher price tricycle compared to, I don’t know, Ferrari truck. Whatever you want to, whatever vehicle suits your industry best, we’ll get you to A to B. Sure. Ish. Yeah, yeah. We’d like tell them you got to be careful what you’re, what you’re buying here and understand what you’re buying to know that this is not the end all be all completely replacement for a human.

James Hatfield [00:46:10]:
That’s right. And everybody’s very focused on the AI piece. I’m like, you should be just as focused on the video piece. The video piece. You’re going to watch the great takeover of this. It’s already happening. It’s already well underway. So you’re going to get caught behind if you don’t offer this.

James Hatfield [00:46:27]:
Whether at your home service, whether you’re a call center. Speed delete is real. Race to the face is real. And people buy trust at the end of the day. And a human face elevates that level of trust. Ask people how much they trust AI compared to trusting a human. Boom.

James Kademan [00:46:45]:
Tell me a story about pushback that you received from potential clients.

James Hatfield [00:46:49]:
Yep. When we talk about potential clients, you’re talking about clients for Live Switch or clients of people that are clients of clients.

James Kademan [00:46:56]:
Clients for Live Switch.

James Hatfield [00:46:57]:
Okay.

James Kademan [00:46:59]:
Power washers and the lawnmowers and the painters and stuff like that.

James Hatfield [00:47:02]:
It’s what we’ve been talking about. Just, oh, I’ve got to be on video.

James Kademan [00:47:06]:
Right.

James Hatfield [00:47:07]:
It comes down. It’s really that. It’s not. The cost stuff is very affordable. That hasn’t been our pushback. It’s not time to implementation. It’s one button. The only thing that comes down to it is, do I have people willing to put their face on a video?

James Kademan [00:47:22]:
All right, so it wasn’t just my company. Okay.

James Hatfield [00:47:24]:
Oh, that’s what it is. That’s what it comes down to.

James Kademan [00:47:27]:
All right. That was so. It’s so interesting because I was not smart enough to anticipate that type of pushback.

James Hatfield [00:47:36]:
We.

James Kademan [00:47:37]:
We even did add. I forget what we added for a bonus. It wasn’t nothing, though. I want to say it was like a dollar a call, something like that. It was. I thought it was impressive, but I’m the guy that always wants to chase and grow and the crew that we had, you know, now that I’m thinking about this, maybe it was because of the crew that we had back then. It was different employee base during the pandemic. I mean.

James Hatfield [00:48:00]:
Oh, yeah, things change, you know. And then you can also work commercial agreements with your end customers. Like, hey, if my guy can close the deal there and it’s to your. The best of what you would have done, can you give them a spiff.

James Kademan [00:48:11]:
Mm.

James Hatfield [00:48:11]:
So it’s not just a dollar call now. We’re talking about incredible opportunity. And, you know, sometimes more money makes people do things that they want to grow in.

James Kademan [00:48:20]:
That is true. That is true. It’s a motivator. Usually most people, not necessarily, not everybody. Yeah, yeah, that’s. I assume that’s what they’re doing here. They’re not just wanting to hang out with me and the callers that we have now.

James Hatfield [00:48:33]:
You got to pay them to show up. Still. Last I said, what do you see.

James Kademan [00:48:37]:
As next for Life Switch as you grow?

James Hatfield [00:48:40]:
Oh, just expansion across more and more industries. You know, like we’re. We continue to pick up more and new industries from property management, self storage to all different kinds of home services now to construction, of course, emergency response. Not just. We’re starting to get international customers. We got plenty to do, you know, and to scale into as far as the product goes. Continued AI implementation continued. Because we spend majority of our time with our customers and end users.

James Hatfield [00:49:07]:
We’re always getting really novel ideas right from the. I always say the customer has the answer to the test. So as long as we’re listening, we remain open. Like we were just building out something today based on a customer request. So, you know, we build that into the product and because we don’t have an app, we can instantly deploy it quickly. So we’re continuing to develop our platform and develop our verticals.

James Kademan [00:49:30]:
Very cool. Tell me about the company. Your partner’s partner.

James Hatfield [00:49:36]:
Partners, Yep, partners.

James Kademan [00:49:38]:
Okay. How did you find them and how is that relationship going?

James Hatfield [00:49:43]:
Well, it’s over 20 year relationship. Right. We met each other from coming out of home service companies and then we made that first company go from nothing to a multi billion dollar company. That would get you connected pretty fast and also connect you to other people that want to go on the ride again. You know, like one of our sales guys, I hired him at the last company 20 years ago and now he’s on for another round. In fact, a lot of people are on for another round because we’ve proven we can do this before and we’re already on the way to doing it again. So we continue to bring more people back that we work with. Of course we’re always open to new faces and names, which we bring new faces and names in all the time we’re aggressively hiring.

James Hatfield [00:50:21]:
And so, you know, we’ve, it forges a bond, you know, when you, and especially the last five years when we had to really crank through and figure out how do we, you know, start selling usernames and passwords again, you know what, and there’s a lot of friction in that, right. So we have different ideas, different. We’re very forward, we’re not, we don’t hold back, you know, and that friction is really helpful when you are trying to get the boat off the dock or go from, to another tier of growth. You need that healthy friction. And we battle in all the right ways internally.

James Kademan [00:50:55]:
Tell me, tell me a little bit about that, about that battle because I understand it happens in every relationship. So I’m just curious about what you’ve had to deal with specifically.

James Hatfield [00:51:03]:
So we have competing priorities. We had competing products. You know, we’re, we’re red blooded Americans. You know, like we’re competitive, right. So one of the partners puts out one product and it doesn’t go as fast as my product. Right. And in the last company, their, their product went faster than mine. So there’s that competitive edge.

James Kademan [00:51:22]:
And.

James Hatfield [00:51:22]:
But you’re, you’re testing, right? You’re pivoting Quick, you’re changing fast. You’re listening for the money. You’re listening for the pain points. And then you’re arguing like, look, I can smell it. I can see it. But until you actually see it, like, I’m a visionary, right? So I can. I feel like a lot of times I can see to the future and then bring people along, you know, along the ride. But not everybody sees it in the future.

James Hatfield [00:51:41]:
They want to see the facts, Jack. Like, so they want to see the money coming in. So when it was me and just myself with my product, I got attention when I started selling, and, like, all right, let’s pull another sales guy over there. More selling, more selling until the fact that this product became our premier offering, right? So. But it. It was arm wrestling, you know, it was like, I don’t think so, or, I don’t believe you, or, show me the money, or all that good stuff where we, you know, we. We are meritocracy. We let the money do the talking.

James Hatfield [00:52:11]:
The best ideas will win, you know, but if we’re arrogant and we think about ourselves more high than the others and we don’t have room for other people to win, you could be snuffing out your best opportunity because of your arrogance and pride. So you got to watch out for that. It’s two sides of the ball.

James Kademan [00:52:28]:
Fair. Totally fair. Tell me a story about the nonprofit you mentioned. The. I’m gonna say the inmate one. Freedom.

James Hatfield [00:52:37]:
Yeah. Inmates, Entrepreneurs.

James Kademan [00:52:39]:
Okay.

James Hatfield [00:52:40]:
Yeah. Well, we even have folks in our organization now that went through the program. It’s beautiful.

James Kademan [00:52:44]:
Oh, interesting.

James Hatfield [00:52:45]:
Yeah. You go and watch the ABC show Free Enterprise. You just get the tissue box ready. They’re incredible stories. We believe in second chances. It’s always something we’ve believed in. We’ve all personally needed second chances, my partners and I. So this is just a way that, like, I can’t hardly even go the graduations anymore.

James Hatfield [00:53:03]:
It’s just so emotional, you know, watching people and coming out of really challenging situations and backgrounds, knowing that they are more than capable of contributing in a way that is meaningful to them. I mean, as small as a coffee shop or, you know, the construction company or whatever it might be that they choose to do, those stories are incredible. And then they end up watching those companies grow and employ other people and they become these bosses. And I’m telling you, more people that I’ve met, when I bring up these stories, they open up. And some of these guys have very, very profitable big businesses where they’ll be like, you know what? My past had you know, incarceration in it type of thing, right, where they open up. And so I’ve met and shared more incredible stories of people where they had a second chance and they just got made young people choices or bad decisions right in that moment. But they’ve totally changed, and it makes their story stronger and it makes the impact even that much stronger because of. Of, you know, you rise up through the ashes, so to speak.

James Kademan [00:54:06]:
Yeah, very true. I don’t. There’s no one that is perfect. And I even have. I volunteered with big brothers, big sisters. My little brother is now in prison, getting out in a couple months, and I go to visit him every couple months. And it’s interesting chatting with him because I tell him, man, you got all the time in the world and you got three hots in a cot, right? So you don’t have to worry about rent or anything like that. So you’re essentially retired just within these walls.

James Kademan [00:54:38]:
So what are you doing to learn and educate and improve yourself so that when you get out, you can actually do something, whatever that something is, that’s going to contribute to society as well as contribute to yourself? And it’s interesting watching as he has progressed throughout his. I don’t know what the sentence was. I think it was three years just to move along. So something like this, I feel, would be very beneficial.

James Hatfield [00:55:05]:
Great organizations out there and great folks that’ll give second chances and help you get out of the cycle. Sometimes it’s a cycle and a repeating one, and it’s unfortunate. And the way the judicial system works, sometimes it’s challenging for certain folks. So, you know, it’s. It’s a full measure, you know, but we just sit back, try to give back the best we can, and. And that’s it. It’s. It’s a very much a labor of love.

James Kademan [00:55:27]:
Is that local to your area or is that a national program?

James Hatfield [00:55:30]:
National. National. We were actually in the White House getting some awards a few years back because of the work it’s done, and that’s why it’s become an ABC television show. Tons of press. We’re, you know, it’s been a very successful program.

James Kademan [00:55:42]:
Nice. Very cool. James, we got to wrap this up. I want to get a little bit of information to the. The listeners here. Let’s start with the website for Live Switch.

James Hatfield [00:55:53]:
Yeah, website is https://liveswitch.com L I V E W S I T C H.com and when you get there, if you want to get to me, when you click on demo, you can circumvent everyone. If you’re listening to this podcast or watching, you know, you can come right to me. All you gotta do is ask for James. I want to talk to James. I’ll take care of anybody personally listening to this podcast. Or you can come find me on LinkedIn. I live on LinkedIn there as well. James Hatfield.

James Hatfield [00:56:18]:
Reach out. I’ll personally respond to anybody who reaches out.

James Kademan [00:56:22]:
Nice. Very cool. And then tell me really quick, is there a website for that nonprofit Inmates to Entrepreneurs?

James Hatfield [00:56:30]:
All right, just Google it. You’ll find us quickly.

James Kademan [00:56:33]:
Very cool. Very cool. Thank you so much for being on the show, James.

James Hatfield [00:56:36]:
Thanks for having me.

James Kademan [00:56:38]:
This has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and training successes of business owners across the land. My name is James Kademan and Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls On Call, offering call answering and reception services for service businesses across the country. On the web https://callsoncall.com and of course, the Bold Business Book, a book for the entrepreneur in all of us, available wherever fine books are sold. If you’re listening to this on the web, if you could do us a huge favor, give us a big old thumbs up. Subscribe and of course, share it with your entrepreneurial friends, especially those friends that may be in the service business and they need to get well. I mean, what are we doing here? We’re closing more deals, we’re getting more details from our clients, and generally speaking, saving some time and making some money, which is always a good thing, right? We’d like to thank you, our wonderful listeners, as well as our guest, James Hatfield of Liveswitch. James, can you tell us that website one more time?

James Hatfield [00:57:34]:
https://Liveswitch.com L I V E S W I T C H. Com doesn’t get easier than that.

James Kademan [00:57:41]:
Past episodes can be found morning, noon and night at the podcast link found at https://drawincustomers.com. Thank you for joining us. We will see you next week. Want you to stay. Awesome. And if you do nothing else, enjoy your business.