Blue Collar Business Podcast
Welcome to the Blue Collar Business Podcast with Sy Kirby. Dive deep into the world of hands-on entrepreneurship and the gritty side of making things happen. Join us for actionable tips on scaling your blue-collar business, managing teams, and staying ahead in an ever-evolving market. We'll also discuss the latest industry trends and innovations that could impact your bottom line. If you're passionate about the blue-collar world and eager to learn from those who've thrived in it, this podcast is a must-listen. Stay tuned for engaging conversations and real-world advice that can take your blue-collar business to new heights.
Blue Collar Business Podcast
Ep. 22 - Tech Meets Tough: Fixing Blue Collar Communication
James Hatfield, the Chief Revenue Officer of LiveSwitch, takes us on an inspiring journey from the world of painting businesses to the cutting-edge realm of technology. James shares his incredible transition from working on scaffolds and ladders to becoming a leader in tech, offering insights and humorous tales from his days managing painting and power washing companies. This episode promises to enlighten listeners on how hard work and determination can propel anyone to entrepreneurial success, especially those in blue-collar professions seeking to integrate technology into their workflows.
Listeners will uncover the intriguing impact of digital transformation on business operations and the innovative ways LiveSwitch is streamlining communication in the blue-collar sector. From revolutionizing emergency response systems to enhancing construction project management through live video technology, we delve into how these advancements are bridging the generational divide in tech adoption. James's story is a testament to the power of perseverance, character, and the role of technology in reshaping traditional industries.
Explore the significance of networking and relationship-building in the tech era, highlighted by personal experiences and strategies to expand your professional circle. Learn how platforms like LinkedIn can open doors to new opportunities and create a robust personal "board of directors" to guide your career. Whether you're standing on a scaffold or a tech conference stage, this episode offers practical advice and inspiration for blue-collar professionals eager to thrive in an ever-evolving business landscape.
Sy-Con is a family-owned civil contractor specializing in water, sewer, storm drains, & earthwork.
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Hey guys, welcome to the Blue Collar Business Podcast, where we discuss the realest, rawest, most relevant stories and strategies behind building every corner of a blue collar business. I'm your host, cy Kirby, and I want to help you in what it took me trial and error and a whole lot of money to learn the information that no one in this industry is willing to share. Whether you're under that shade tree or have your hard hat on, let's expand your toolbox. Welcome back, guys. I am beyond excited. I think I say that every episode, but I am truly kind of getting into this groove of this. I am truly kind of getting into this groove of this podcasting thing. Little imposter syndrome starting out, but this gentleman.
Speaker 1:Today I have already had a little intro call with roughly I think it was pre-holidays, but I had a great conversation for about 10 minutes and it was super brief and we both had 85 other things going on. But today we're going to be talking about technology and the blue-collar world, so stay tuned for that. But we are 100% looking for sponsors and people investing into the blue-collar community space. Today our sponsor is Saigon Excavation and Utilities. A shout-out to to them check out their youtube page. Um, I may, you know, have a anyways.
Speaker 1:Um, today we have the man, the myth, the legend and chief nerd technology guy, the man that can not only speak his language. But when I jumped on a call with him and we're starting to talk technology, it can be a little rough for me and I tune off pretty quick and I think most of my audience would do so as well. So today is going to be a definitely different approach. And look in to his background. Where he came from, guys. He started out up and down in scaffolds and ladders, painting all custom houses to commercial. Then he did some pressure washing residential commercial. So he started out just like one of us and his story to see where he's at now entrepreneurially is honestly inspiring. I could not wait to get the chief revenue officer of LiveSwitch, james Hatfield. The man, the myth, the legend. Thank you for joining me.
Speaker 2:Sir Cy, I'm grateful to be here. I'm with my people. Blue collar people are my people. That's where I come from, that's right.
Speaker 1:Go ahead, that's what I am. Well, that's where I come from. That's right. Go ahead, that's what I am.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I just apple doesn't fall far from the tree, right Like my grandfather. His dad died really young and he was the oldest in the house, so he had to drop out of high school to go feed. The family went to go work at a tire shop and you know, can you imagine being 16 years old, you know, losing your dad and then having to find a way to put food on the table? I mean that that'll change you, that'll change you. And so when I came along, eventually my grandson you know, proud, proud Papa, uh, as he was right, he's like here's what I want you to do, james, when you get older. I want you to paint the lines on the highway, cause you'll always have a job, you can always feed your family, and that's my dream for you. And you know I was like all right.
Speaker 2:Grandpa, I don't know how to do that, but I'm going to start painting houses because you've got to start somewhere. So, that's what I did. Got out of high school and started like hey, I've got to paint my way. So I made painting companies and power washing companies. I had multiple crews for many, many years and it's hard work, but it's great and I loved it Multiple companies, multiple crews. Stressful eh.
Speaker 1:Companies multiple crews stressful, eh, oh, always never a dull moment.
Speaker 2:People falling off ladders. We're doing dumb stuff like we're trying to make ends meet. We got guys. I mean, come on we all do it, I mean, if you're running a company, you know you're going to have a little bit of nonsense, but you're going to try to, you know, do the right thing and do good business, you know absolutely dude and taking care of that customer.
Speaker 2:So give us a so give us a few crazy painter stories, because you painter guys you're a little loopy anyway. Oh, it's one time I'm out doing the final walk around and I guess my guys must've been painting during the cloudy time and I get there with the owner and it's sunny that day and I'm like golly. I'm like I'm looking at the homeowner. I was like your house is shining like a diamond, it is. It is shining bright. You got the brightest house Like something's not right, so we get up there closer. I'm like, oh, I, my paint, my painting guys, uh, shot you know glossy in my flat and so we the houses was, so we had to redo the whole dang thing.
Speaker 2:But I was like you don't have to paint your house for like 30 years, man, we were a non-profit that day. We were a non-profit that day, yeah maybe for a little while.
Speaker 1:Huh, those little hits. Back then, man, I can remember when we were first starting out those little hits. They just seemed like I'll never recover. I'll never financially recover from this, like there's no way I can get past this five thousand dollar rework situation. I'm talking about, you know, it's just and looking back you're like, well, if you didn't do that, you right, you wouldn't be a thing. Because those were the key teaching moments for me Learning from those failures. It's not about mistakes, it's how we handle them. You're going to make mistakes to pursue it right.
Speaker 2:It's going to check your character.
Speaker 1:Am I going to?
Speaker 2:walk off the job site or am I going to walk back on that job site and lose money? So it wasn't about the money right then. It was about character and old school values and doing the right thing, because I'm only as good as my worst customer and I'd rather go to bed with a clear conscience than all the wealth in the world.
Speaker 1:It's never really about the money, is it in the entrepreneurial sense? Don't get me wrong. Sometimes we need it, though.
Speaker 2:I got employees to feed, I got paychecks, I got payroll, we got costs to cover, but at the end of the day, what you're doing within your team.
Speaker 1:I know I have met some of your team. They're very passionate about what they do. Shout out to Ms Cassidy she was an absolute joy getting everything set up with my team and man, they're extremely passionate. When I asked a question about life switch, she had no problem rattling off from day one to whatever I wanted to know and I'm excited to get more into that. But why pressure washing? Was that before painting? No, no Pressure washing in the middle of it all.
Speaker 2:I wish I had gotten pressure washing before painting. But I went into painting first to see my grandpa's dream for me, right?
Speaker 1:so I'm gonna paint something.
Speaker 2:Gotta, gotta go with what grandpa says, right, but I'm dating myself. But uh, so one day we're out there painting and we're kind of wrapping up and a neighbor comes by. I was like, hey, I don't need a paint job, but I certainly could use a power wash. My house is a mess and the power washer sitting right there. So I sent one of my guys over, you know, and took no time at all, got paid. The margin was even better and I was like, all right, let me go see what's going on with this power washing thing. So I started going after commercial buildings, you know, or like large apartment complexes. And the beauty of the power washing business is when you paint something you don't come paint every year power washing. You can power wash almost every year if you want to, so that?
Speaker 2:revenue. I can just book out my business even a year in advance, and I would sell recurring rev. And I told the customer hey, we're going to do the power washing job now, but if you go ahead and pre-book for this time next year, I'm also going to give you a little bit of a discount because you're pre-booking. So I like to get recurrent revenue and I love squeezing all the juice out of customers.
Speaker 1:And we can talk about more of that later. I was going to say being chief revenue officer, sir. I mean, that is your main and that top line man I was. Yeah, early days, that's all I was concerned with. Now you've got to get profitable first before you can chase more revenue and make sure your foundations are set. And you know, that's a little bit of what I'm going through over 24, like we were just talking about. But, um, dude, so you used, you started out in painting sounds like painting didn't go so well. We were eating, you were doing.
Speaker 2:Okay, it's going great okay, it was doing me so. So well, I'm like maybe I ought to go and learn some more about this business thing, because maybe it would be good for me to get a college degree Not that you have to get one I just at that time, 25 years ago I'm dating myself I got some gray hairs up here. Okay, I felt that I wanted to do that, and so I did. And I went to a state school while I was running my companies and I just learned business because I wanted to know my books, because I'd go to the bookkeep, I'm assuming you put yourself through school right.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. No handouts for me.
Speaker 1:No handouts.
Speaker 2:But when I went to my bookkeeper they would be speaking English and I'm like I don't understand a word. This guy is telling me you know the accountant, the controller, and I'm like, oh, I'm in trouble now. So that was my prime reason to go back to school. So I took a bunch more accounting classes while I was there than anything else, Cause I just I didn't want to get hoodwinked and I wanted to do my margins. I wanted to know all that and I ended up meeting a guy who was getting his.
Speaker 2:MBA. I didn't go get the MBA, but he was finished his Duke MBA and he was also. He was running a landscaping company, right. And so he came up with the idea of let's create something that for us blue collar guys, let's make a technology where you can put in your income statement and balance sheet and it would tell you in layman's terms, regular guy's terms, how I'm doing and then compare me to my peers in the private area. Well we I was like, let's go. So we got into an incubator meaning like it was me and him in an office and we took that company to inc 500, which means we were one of the fastest growing companies in amer for three years in a row, and it became a multi-billion dollar company and we sold it to KKR. Boom, ladies and gentlemen. How about that? For?
Speaker 1:entrepreneurial spirit Okay. All right, y'all paying attention, attention, gentleman's fixing to drop some knowledge on us both, and you know what? That's what I love about these podcasts, dude. I learned so much and before we skip too far, I want to talk about. You mentioned your grandfather and my grandfather.
Speaker 1:His faded out picture and his union card is still sitting on my desk to this day. It was in the back of my first machine. My grandfather I don't think I've ever told this story on the podcast, so a little exclusive here. But how the name Sycon started was when I was four or five years old.
Speaker 1:My grandfather I lived in Toronto. I was a Canadian immigrant, right. He would come from Newfoundland where they would fish all winter long, and then he would come to Toronto and work construction all summer long. Of course in Canada construction would shut down in the winter. So it worked out and it was perfect and they were making some good money and he would take. He would literally pick up my die cast, maybe date myself a little bit here, diecast equipment, toys and he would ride Psy-Karno. I still have some of them. It's really cool and so I literally ran with that and it's funny how those key influences in our lives stick with these major responsibilities and business decisions that we make. But those key influences from 25, 40 years, 25, 30 years ago is what's still driving it, isn't that crazy. So I mean I've lived it.
Speaker 2:I mean, we have an impact on younger people and one day I've got a bunch of kiddos, but one day, if I'm fortunate enough to be a grandfather, I got to remember how much of an influence that that can have on a young man or woman and what that means, especially if someone who has a dream for you even whatever the dream was, you know, like his was paint the roads, you know not a big dream, not solve world peace, but like that was his dream for me and I latched on to it.
Speaker 2:But that's got me started and some days I do look out the window and long to go back to my painting and power washing days. I mean, I just happened to make the jump.
Speaker 2:I mean I would never. I mean I love tech and we can talk more about the next thing here, but I like a good day's work, Like I like to go up, wake up early, go get a good breakfast, get out on the site, meet my guys, get them motivated, talk about what we're doing today. And I like the before and after of it. Like I love cutting the grass. You know what I mean, that sense of accomplishment. Yeah, you can find me on a john deere every weekend, you know, and I'm I'm very happy I could be a forrest gump. No, no problem, I mean that's me man. I mean I'm a simple man.
Speaker 1:I freaking love that dude, john deere, every weekend. That'll probably end up cut into a short for sure. All right, buddy, let's talk about why you're here and it's this digital transformation, and I want to give a little bit of backstory. I am literally have my guys procedurally trying to figure out the best software and best system that I can get my you know administrative admin team and the cost trackers.
Speaker 1:I can get my administrative admin team and the cost trackers to the guys that are the direct costs out there applying all the costs right, and they're just out there doing whatever. Well, they need to talk and of course, that's so much easier with programs that are all over the market. I can go on about really good project management software that I've had and really, really bad project management software and really big names that you would know, but I'm not here to do that. I'm here to let you speak about what I believe 100% LiveSwitch. When you started, just gave me a scootch in our intro call about what LiveSwitch can maybe do in the blue collar world that it's already doing in so many other sectors of the industry. That number one, I think the technology and the blue collar world. We're doing this anyways.
Speaker 1:You've got golly guys, I'm sorry. Today You've got these guys that are old heads golly guys, I'm sorry today. Um, you've got these guys that are old heads uh, baby boomers that don't want anything to do with it. And then you got the owner man. That goes well, it's okay, because that guy probably produces the most money out of all the crews. So we're not going to push it on that guy. So, and then you've got these new guys that are looking for it. That that you know, the 25, 35 year old band of generation that's coming up there. They're longing for this technological structure per se, because that's how they live their entire lives is right here, you know. So you have a tool that is going to help us take it away on here. All about it, bro.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, we never intended to be back in this, back in in this area, like we just didn't, like that wasn't where we got our start. And you're it's funny you mentioned software like you bang your head against the wall. You know, the problem with software is it's made by engineers who we affectionately say back in my day, have soft hands like they've never been on the job site and they over engineer stuff.
Speaker 2:They they don't use their own stuff and they've never walked in the shoes. So you know, I think that's a lot of reasons why we bang our heads up against the wall. As you know, blue collar guys like running businesses because we're dealing with something that someone made in an office somewhere and they weren't out on the job site using our stuff and but again, we never intended to be in the trades. Again, like what happened, is we bought a video company.
Speaker 2:Four years ago, after we had the big exit, we went into philanthropy and we bought this company four years ago, actually out of Canada, there you go.
Speaker 2:We looked for yep out of British Columbia. We looked through hundreds and hundreds of businesses and we wanted a more family-owned business. We wanted to stay in tech again, and then we wanted something that was unique and maybe and hard to build, and so we found this guy who had been building. Uh, it's called web real-time communication. Don't worry about that, it's video, live video. Live video is really hard to do. Live video, recording videos and pictures are one thing, but live video connecting two people point to point on the globe is incredibly hard. So we didn't want to start an incubator again, so we purchased this company, which a bunch of computer scientists, bunch of nerds, big glasses, they're really smart and we came in and I start coming in and I work on product. So I'm working with the engineers.
Speaker 2:They're speaking english to me and I I'm like nodding my head but I don't understand a word they're saying, but I'm like not explaining to me like I'm five right and they do, and I had the chance to work with the chief of police in Washington DC to reinvent the 911 phone call, because my heart was really out for all these school shootings.
Speaker 1:And that's what I wanted to do. Whoa, that is huge bro. You can't just skip over that and just throw that in your spiel. You reinvented the 911 call in Washington DC, our federal capital.
Speaker 2:Yep. So historically we've had companies come to us that can't figure out video problems. As an example, if you ever watch the NBA or if you were watching WWE wrestling back in the day when they filled this arena with screens, we did that. That was our stuff. We take complicated things and get creative and use video to do it. So I had this passion project and so when I was working for Chief, it was when people make a 911 phone call, you replace it over telephony.
Speaker 2:Isn't the weirdest thing that your phone is the worst part of your phone, like can you hear me? Now? It's on an old technology, it's like a fax machine. It's on an old technology, it's like a fax machine. So what we created was a way for them to send a text and then you can tap it as a citizen and point your cameras. Now that all the phones have so many cameras on them, you can point it, and that live video goes right to the police car, fire truck so they can see what they're driving into. It's called situational awareness, next-gen policing, and so that's where it started, okay.
Speaker 1:Wow, and so, as I'm building that out, government stuff takes forever.
Speaker 2:Shocker, I'm no. I'm like well, who else could use this? So I start dealing with these guys that are been in the FBI for like 20 years. I meet the guy that takes care of the Tennessee Titans football team. You know the NFL football team Cause he's taking care of the arena and I'm showing him my emergency response stuff. And he's like James, this is all well and good for emergency. He's like I got the stupidest question. I'm like what is it? And he's like can I just text my guy across the arena when the trash cans fall over so he can show me, so I don't have to hop in my golf cart? And I'm like, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:And that was like the oh snap, like my blue collar background came back. I was like that reminds me of the next tell walkie-talkie that everybody had to have. Sit in the waffle house. You got your next tail out your truck out there and you were the coolest thing on the planet. You were man. It would talk with walkie-talkie now, like that is what that is.
Speaker 2:So I was telling my buddy uh, he's in like the self-storage industry about this, just like I'm telling you right now. He's like why don't you just come and like disrupt self-storage. We're trying to manage all these facilities with less people like I don't know a dang thing about self-storage. He's like, don't worry about it, you can come and you got the big glasses now and you're the nerd, you come figure this out. So I spent two years doing that and in my ignorance I just didn't know. Like there's these companies moving in storage. I saw storage. I'm like, oh well, clearly it's a storage company. I need to talk to them warehousing. They don't do like mini storage, like where people are storing their stuff. But I met this really serious guy in the moving industry. He's like he puts on all these conferences. He's just like the mover of movers, right, and he looks at me and he's like james, I have you.
Speaker 2:He's like you have no idea what you got. You got no idea and I'm like what do you mean? He's like we'll just use this, just like the guy said hey, can I just text my guy across the arena with a trash can? He's like we'll just use this to do remote estimates? Oh, I need to take a look at something. I don't want to drive in the truck or document, and that way my guys can connect and we don't have to because he's like James. The most expensive thing we do is I put a guy behind the wheel of one of my vehicles. I got to pay him hourly he's not productive out there in the hopes that I'll get money. I don't always get money. It's the most expensive thing I do as a business owner, and that was like two years ago and he was so right and we have just taken off like a rocket in all these different industries, but we started off with trying to reinvent the now phone call.
Speaker 2:That's where it started and to where we ended. Crazy, right.
Speaker 1:Seriously, that was my initial reaction, though, you saw, when you started a little bit on our intro call and you started talking about this product and I'm like, so you have do what now? And in my world I started thinking quickly of, oh well, I could have this and document and literally the guys can just pull out their phone and just bam, bam, it goes straight to the admin Dude. I am like I, from the instant you told me about it, I'm like this could literally simplify from the field to the admin, because the admin team, yes, they're experienced enough, they have enough Excel knowledge. They can work around an email week. We got guys in the field that I can barely get them to clock in on their phone, let alone send a daily log or a weather report or a maintenance report or anything like that. But man, if they could just whip out text message boom, boom, boom.
Speaker 2:That's it.
Speaker 1:And it goes. And not only does it go to the right person, it can correct me if I'm wrong, it can store in the place that I want it to.
Speaker 2:That's right, that it can correct me if I'm wrong. It can store in the place that I want it to. That's right, that's right. So when we were in 59, one call. No one has time to download an app and, frankly, no one wants another app I know I don't so we had to make it as easy as a phone call because you're in an emergency compromise situation Like I. Live in Asheville, north Carolina. We just went through a huge hurricane and my entire neighborhood was flooded and we couldn't get in or out.
Speaker 2:And when you're in a compromise, we're doing river rescues. When you're in a compromise situation, you can't explain what you're seeing, because you're just shook. You're like living out. You know poor people out there in california.
Speaker 2:You're living out like a a terrible movie right so we had to do something where you could just tap it. And when we got into the now going to the trades, I look, I know my crews, my guys don't want to have to go to classes and learn a whole nother thing, they just they don't want to do it. But if they can just tap it and go and there's no thing, and also my customers right, my customers if I'm dealing with maybe an elderly person, now there's elderly folks out there that are more high tech than the young folks. I get that, but some of the elderly are not. And, frankly, some people just aren't tech people and that's who we have to invent for. I got to invent that for my users and the customers. Everything has to be simple. So we're not over-engineering it because, again back to, I don't have soft hands. I know what this is when I'm on the job site and I know my guys, I know my customers. It's got to be as easy or easier than a phone call or it won't be used.
Speaker 1:It won't be used Well, 1,000%. And if you guys have been a fan of the show for a little bit and a part of the audience, you guys know at bluecollarbusinesspodcastcom in the last 25 episodes we've hada few civil engineers and that's exactly what I'm trying to do through the show. I've had an aviation uh specific civil engineer. I had a larger civil engineer, mr ellis, mr maestri shout out to those guys, go check those episodes out there. But, um, you know there is a big button head situation between the civil installer. Dude, I had literally 10 minutes before I walked in here.
Speaker 1:The civil engineer didn't do his job and he's calling the installer, which happens to be me, going hey, do you have all this data and information for all this pipe and everything that's already in the ground? Well, yeah, of course I do. I wouldn't just put it in the ground. It's not about work I can do. It's about work I can document a villain and prove to the end customer saying hey, look, but what do you mean? You're an engineer, anyway, so I can go off on civil engineers. You guys have heard me do that in the past. That's not what I'm hearing about, but the soft hands comment is exactly right. They build this on paper. They're like what do you mean? It's not going to work. How could you prove that to me? And I'm like well, I know the specification within that city and that fitting and that fitting is not going to be allowed. And when you try to make that connection with their world, what these guys are trying to build businesses and don't get me wrong, there's a lot of small business ownership here that aren't really worried about building value in their businesses. We see it every day, I know you do. But there's also entrepreneurs that are 100% in this audience trying to build value in their business and it's not easy to do so it I got to before.
Speaker 1:Before I go off onto my next point, dude, I want to say the Appalachian, all, all of Hurricane Helene, dude, it's been 130, I've been counting 130 some days and I hope you guys are now starting to see some support. We'll see either way. But, dude, that was the riddle and that was unbelievable. And we got the California fires. Of course, prayers go there, the translation you're giving my audience. My guy is so down to earth and I just wanted to point that out because I told my audience that when we try to do these.
Speaker 1:The whole design of the show is to bring the white collar world and help these blue collar guys that are masters at their craft but they're struggling as businessmen and I wanted to just say thank you so much for just keeping it layman's terms and building the product. I know it wasn't directly for the skilled trades, but that's why I was so excited. I'm like what do you mean? You haven't been in our industry yet. So I know you've been saying things are trending really good, Any entry into the blue collar world. Yet here with us.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, we've started picking up. Since we last spoke, I just picked up one of the largest solar installers in the country. Uh, they're out in the middle of nowhere and they use it for documentation, like so you're going out to dig, you go to excavate, you go to install and you, there's some stuff you just can't see on the paper, right when you're. You're behind and you're digging, well, guess what? You hit a pipe that you didn't know was there well what's going to happen.
Speaker 2:It's going to affect the timeline, it's going to affect the budget, and you've got to explain that to the project manager and you've got to explain that also to the customer.
Speaker 1:Upstream, downstream. Yes, sir, upstream downstream.
Speaker 2:But if I've got my guy boots on the ground right there with his phone in his pocket, he just taps the dagger on text or even scans a QR code. Now you can just put a qr code on the truck and you just scan it, take the video. Like here we just hit a pipe, we're excavating, see a video, it's going to record the whole thing, show the project manager wherever they are, and then they can take that video and deal with the customer and my guys can get back to work. But we documented it, we showed why, and then you can put that in the file and you know, a picture's worth a thousand words, but a video is worth ten thousand. Right, so you, so you can just, you know, have that right there.
Speaker 2:Because now that's what the chief of police when we were building. He looks over his glasses, he's like James. He's like why didn't we have this before? And I'm like chief, not everybody had a cell phone in their pocket with four cameras. Like now they give you one when you're bored and they're like welcome to the world.
Speaker 2:Here's your cell, so we all have it. And like I just remember, like explaining this to like at one point, you know my, my folks, and like they're like a smartphone or Gmail. Why would I want that? Now that now I can't, my parents love the tech. They're addicted. They're more addicted to the phone than I am. Right and all the guys, they all have them. I mean, find a person who doesn't have a smartphone and they're still on the nine keys on a flip phone.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's a rare breed of individual and maybe their life is simpler than maybe I need to take notes, but everyone's got this and everyone's texting everybody, everyone's texting. So that's where we are. Let's stay in the text. Let's do the QR code, because I can't get on an airplane without showing a QR code, so we all know how to do that too. So just take the technology everybody knows and make it useful as a tool, like when I hop in my truck and I turn the key or press the button. I just need it to go, turn on and go. I don't need to know the engineering under the hood.
Speaker 2:You know, I don't need to know about the engine. Although I love the engine, I like to work on engines, but not everybody does. I just need to get to the job site, and so we want tools that you hit the on button, it works, it does the job, it doesn't break. That's how we want it because we're building. I ain't got no time to stop, I just don't have time to stop.
Speaker 1:Or one new thing. Sorry to cut you off there, but the downtime is my number one largest expense. When a machine breaks down, say just a tracko, and the guys are laying pipe. When that tracko goes down, not only is it going down in the worst possible position, of course now I've got to get another machine to take its place while this one's down. And do I need to get it worked on? Do I need to mobilize it in or out? Is a big machine, little machine, whatever? But now I got four to five guys standing there going well, what are we supposed to do the rest of the day? And and production shut down. And so it may take till 10, 11 o'clock the next day, midday, and you've burned up a whole 24 hours in your timeline because a machine went down. And it is the most expensive thing that I try to avoid 1000% and go ahead. Your product man, it can.
Speaker 1:I can see like going to an emergency situation where the guys are like, hey, I just smoked a gas line. I have been on those phone calls. Well it's, I think it's a two, I think it's a three inch steel. I'm like just FaceTime me, facetime me, you know. And then, well, I don't have enough connection, it's too loud. And so, man, if I could literally get a text message. Boss, we hit something. Okay, I'm in route. Then, two seconds later, ding. Here's this beautiful video of what I'm facing. There's not six phone calls between my team. I can handle the five emergency phone calls that I need to make the archives, the city entity or the public entity, and if that 9-1-1, any of any of them. You know what I mean. I don't have to sit here and go back and forth with my team and procure information back and forth.
Speaker 2:It's going to speed all of that up that's right and we had to design it in such a way. And there's there's really tough computer science challenges, like the engine under the car, the truck hood is really difficult, right like now, it's all full computers. But the hard part is when you're down in the middle of nowhere or you're in a part of the property, like in the attic, basement or in your middle of nowhere where it has terrible internet. We had to come up with a solution where you could still either touch a button or scan a QR code, take the video and you can even turn on the light, take the video and then just upload it to the automatically uploads to the cloud.
Speaker 2:So there's no scrolling through all the pictures of your grandkids and your kiddos just to like upload something or text something. Nobody likes that, so it's just I want to hit the button, show the boss what the problem is and then be done with it and then, like I said, get the ding so all of that we had to think through all of that, not just a live connection, but what happens if you're in the middle of a swamp somewhere?
Speaker 2:how are you going to to do that? So we have to go to center earth on that. And it's all about reliability for us, because a day, down to your point, the machine breaks. You're done for, so we have to when you hit the on button.
Speaker 1:It has to work, no matter what the conditions?
Speaker 2:and everyone wants to blame stuff, and definitely technology gets. Technology gets so much of a pass. Oh, it's just buggy. No, it's because we give technology a pass, like when I'm in the middle of a situation and I'm excavating and I hit something, I can't afford excuses because that's my neck on the line and that's my customer on the line and everything needs to work. So you know, this is the kind of stuff that we bang our heads up against the wall to make sure it works every time, dude to make sure it works every time.
Speaker 1:Dude the money I have in digging technology. I've got a dozer with 32 sensors on it. It's called an iMachine Intelligent Machine Control, and it's fully auto-hydraulic. It literally does exactly what's on the screen in front of my dozer operator Won't let him cut too much, apply too much grade, et cetera. It's unbelievable, the base and rovers that we have.
Speaker 1:And then not only that, we went a step further, we went full top, gone the whole entire way from the estimating side of things, which is a ginormous program called magnet.
Speaker 1:It feels like to me, cause I'm I'm the dirt and pipe and pipe guy, right, and so we're trying to integrate into this techie world and I dive, dude, I don't do anything like tiptoe, I am like straight away all the way freaking head first buddy. Well, that's okay for me to be like that, but it can obviously overload below, downstream, right, and so I've really checked myself over the last couple years of when I go to make these moves. I'm talking with my team, but let me not stray too far. Magnet was, uh, incredible. But the things that we can do now with our equipment estimating, quantifying, uh for a raw piece of land, without even having an engineered set and design plan. I can come out and basically do a plan design, as long as I can set my own control anyways, not getting too far off in the weeds. But like the dirt guys and the pipe guys, we're everything's on that god want now and it's so technology heavy.
Speaker 1:But man, man, the implementation and onboarding is something I never want to go through again in my entire life. It was the biggest struggle, because there was always one extra thing I didn't know, and that's what I think you probably face the most. Entering into this is guys, just immediately they hear technology, I'm done, no, I'm not, uh, it's, it's this, I dealt with that one, this. But you are literally taking it from a standpoint of look, I understand, guys, give me just a second. It's literally scan the qr code, this or a text message, and and, if I'm not mistaken, you just said it works offline as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can lose internet. Yep, you need to be. That needs to happen yeah, and it's all about ease right, like once. Everyone's been burned by technology. That's the problem. You know, one bad apple spoils the bunch, you know. But then you get something, you know, and it comes along and now everyone's got a smartphone in their pocket. There was a day when people were like, oh, I'll never have that.
Speaker 1:Now everybody has it right. You have to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have to, and the same thing that's happening in our industry is you're going to have to. You're going to have to be able to document before and after. You're going to have to be able to do your dailies with video. You're going to have to show the customer why there's a budget or timeline increase. You're going to have to have the junior tech connect to the senior tech who's on a different job or maybe half country away that needs to take a look at what's going on, Because what you don't want to have to do is get on that airplane and sit on that sucker for hours because it's expensive and it's a whole day of your time, or hop in the truck just to know that they should have hit the on button. Has that not happened to everybody listening? You on button. Has that not happened to everybody listening? You drive in your truck half hour both ways or longer, just to get there and it's the on button. Hey boys, did you plug the dang?
Speaker 1:thing in. Oh sorry, boss, dude, this morning I got to tell you a story. It's literally, and this guy was my first ever employee. It'll probably give it away who it was if you've been a fan of the show for a little bit. Um two hours I'm trying to get some stuff done in the office and they keep coming in. They're like man, is the truck good to go? I'm like yeah, bro, I just have to charge battery a little bit, maybe jump start it, maybe hook it up to a diesel.
Speaker 1:You know, bam, 30 minutes like man, we can't get that truck started, just can't get that truck started. I'm like guys, are we serious? What do I do? Go out there boom fires right off, you know, and I'm like it's. It's exactly what you're talking about. Is that that time, dude?
Speaker 2:and it's like I had anyways continue no time is the biggest thing we fight for you know right time is a thing, and I had a guy user. He is the best thing. He's like James. I used to drive around my truck to four sites a day and now I can touch eight of them, and he's like. I just had a two-year-old daughter and I get more time that I save from behind the wheel with her and I mean that's it for me, it's that time saved that makes all the difference.
Speaker 2:That makes all the difference. Back to my guy, the NFL titan. He's like James. Can I just text my guy when the trash cans fall over so I don't have to hop in my golf cart? That's the magic. That's the magic. And once it saves you that one trip, or books you that one next job, or covers your behind from one more claim, then you just got to have it. And that's what we're finding, as long as we keep it simple, find different, no nonsense places to put it. Let's just crawl, walk, run. I'm not trying to boil the ocean, let's just find a couple spots in your day to day.
Speaker 2:That makes sense for you and let's rock and roll with that, and then we'll go from there.
Speaker 1:The time creation that you're going and I need everybody to understand why I'm sitting here so excited is because it's the one thing that I am spending money on to create systems, procedures, processes, on getting that data from the field every single day back to the cost trackers as fast as I humanly possibly can, because those cost trackers are providing me reports going, we're on track, everything's looking good, and then as soon as I see a red flag, I can go. What is that? Because, dude, I'm literally sitting here telling you two and three years ago it would be 90 to 120 days, or sometimes never even catch it and go. Six months goes by and go. We may wouldn't do good on that job. And then you start looking at the numbers and it.
Speaker 1:But where I'm tracking with that is the time creation for these smaller guys to see why a straight off the bat on a smaller end excavation contractor or utility contractor, if you're not documenting what you're doing every single day, of every single move that you're making, you're messing up and live switch. Number one is going to create the time, but it's also going to allow you to scale with that time and that's kind of where I was going with that dude. You're seeing talk about some of the customers, maybe not in a blue collar sense, but you know, hey, we've introducted LiveSwitch or helped one of our other products technology-based and injected it into this operation. And this guy, not only did he go from here to here in revenue because I understand revenue is a big thing in what you do daily but profitability as well.
Speaker 2:That's right, and so a lot of examples are firing off for me, right, like, honestly, I don't even remember what I had for breakfast this morning, right, and you can't remember what you did last week on the job site.
Speaker 1:I can't either dude.
Speaker 2:Right Like good luck and everybody breakfast. No, no one can remember.
Speaker 2:So by being able to document everything and record it. You can pass it off either to your future self, who is going to be like I can't remember where I laid that or where I put that, especially if you buried the dang thing. You can't literally can't see anymore because you buried it, or when your new guys decided to be, you know, run off the rails and he lost the job, or he got fired and now you got to see all what they did, right? So if that person had been documenting, you won't you won't skip a beat, right Cause now let's go see what Johnny did before he got fired. All right, thank goodness, we got all the video documentation of what he did, so we can see what he did right or what he did wrong.
Speaker 2:But in addition, as we implement it, think about training. Like okay, this is a new machine we're going to use. This is how we do the startup process for the new fill in the blank. You know, you can take a video of it. And, hey, just go over here and watch the video. So now you can just text your guy. A video like this is how we start up the machine, guys. Or this is how we do this.
Speaker 2:Like, training is a great thing that gets used, and especially on a rain day where we can't go out. What they'll do is they'll grab the videos, say, hey, I've marked all these training, let's work through this and what we do. Or hey, I think we're going to see the situation at a future job and thank you to, you know, sally sue, who documented it. We can watch this as a team on a rain day and we're prepared for the next time it comes around. So, as you just it's like a new tool in your tool toolbox that you never had. But now that you have it because you got, you know, 45 cameras on your phone you can start to weave this in to everything you do. And once you taste it, you know it's like okay, why didn't we? Okay, why didn't we do this? Like, why haven't we been doing that?
Speaker 1:I'm literally sitting here going why have I not been a live switch customer right now? So probably going to have to firm that up after this Cause I'm sitting here at not only what I would talk about scaling. I already have a software program this is probably a question you get often but the capability with this technology that is so simplified. What if these guys are already out there running a program that they spent the last five years implementing and we got them to this point? How seamless could LiveSwitch integrate with any of those programs? It sounds like we can track it and store it. Do you guys help within LiveSwitch? Do you guys help come in, have a implement manager, et cetera, and kind of help push towards that? How does that work?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So again you're talking to the guy who's going to err on the side of simple, right, I'm going to air on the side of simple. So what are most of our customers do? Because our stuff is easiest in a text message. After you have the video record recording it's, there's also a link to every video. You can just tap the link and then you paste it into your other thing that you've implemented and paid a ton of money for. Just I like to copy and paste.
Speaker 1:I like to click.
Speaker 2:Now, that said, we're still, you're going to see us under the hood, like we're getting under the hood. The issue with that it's great, look, I'll be under the hood, you can use this stuff. But what will happen is you'll have to click three different places just to get to the one place where all you wanted to do was take a video. Take a video, so it'll be there, but, like, I just want to use it, right? So I'm like, hey, just use it, the thing that's front and center, and don't bury it underneath the hood of this, as we talked about earlier. And I'm not going to name any software names, but you know how complicated some of those platforms are and you're you're already banging your head against the wall how hard it was to implement I don't want to go in there.
Speaker 1:I don't want to play in that sandbox.
Speaker 2:That's a complicated sandbox that I want my own little clean, one button. Like you know, when you go to google it's one thing you just put you where am I, where's the local restaurant? Where can I get some coffee? That's what we want. So I'll play nice with others and we are gonna play nice with others, but I'm also gonna have the to use. I don't want to go through the 18 layers of click, click, click, click, click just to do the one thing. So there's a little bit of that balance right.
Speaker 1:So the simplified I mean entering into our industry base is everything. It's literally yes, oh my God. Yes, I, oh my God, I have pulled my hair out, spent tens of thousands of dollars, uh, waste it because we don't even end up using the program, because my guys don't end up doing anything with it. The admin team, so frustrated from trying to implement, they keep hitting brick walls that they don't know about. You're right. And then it's oh, let's click to here, to click to here. To click to here.
Speaker 2:Um, I mean, I'm still click to here, I'm still going to go, I'm still going to put it there as well, because there's going to be the guy that has to have the click, click, click, click here to get it. Most of us are just like I just want to tap the button, just the button here. Can I just tap the text or can I just scan that QR code? Great, Done.
Speaker 1:The linkability of it, though, is just it's that easy, hey, it's stored here, but you can literally copy and paste the file in a link in any software. Hey, watch this video. That's pretty easy to type in, and you can send that link to anybody.
Speaker 2:Send it to insurance, send it to a customer, send it to a tech, send it to whomever you want. Anybody can watch it. It's in the cloud. Nothing is stored on device. Your guy could literally drop the phone down anywhere in a gutter. You still got the stuff. You don't want to store all the stuff on the device. It's actually not a good thing. That is a danger. If you lose that device or that person quits, you've just lost all of that stuff on device.
Speaker 1:As long as the cloud-based service isn't super complex, that it's hard for me. I'm like what's an iCloud? And you know I'm not trying to be any way, but there's guys like me that are like they don't know that they hold a bunch of storage and memory on their phone and need more memory and can buy more memory and all this other crap. They don't care about that. They just literally want to simplify. Well, number one, you've got that group of guys. You kind of grouped it differently.
Speaker 1:Yes, there is going to be that guy that wants to click to here, to click to here, to click to here, that ADHD guy kind of like myself, that OCD guy that wants to check, to check, to check. But how are you going to capture the other side of the market with the simplified version? And that's the struggle right there. You need to be able to still easily adapt into any system that is already implemented in our sector. But literally walking into a police department and helping them change how they do 911 calls like you talk about linkability to something and and the crap that you had to go through to make everything jive, but that's, that's insane.
Speaker 2:There's two people, you want to make the super happy, all right. The two people you want to make the super happy, all right. The customer right. You want to make sure the customer is happy and you want to make sure your guys, who are the boots on the ground doing the work, are happy. So I start with those two first, and then all the middle people who are like, well, you gotta do this, and the abc and the tps reports.
Speaker 2:I'm like the guy in the boots on the ground doesn't have time for that. You do that, that's your job. You're the project manager. We're not all here trying to make your project manager life easier although we will try but we're trying to make the customer happy and my guys boots on the ground happy, because once last I checked the boots on the ground. Guys build the work and the customer pays the bills, so we can connect all the other particulars. But don't make it hard on the boots on the ground guys. Let them scan the QR code, get it and then you can route it, as a project manager, into the right file or send it to the customer. It's not hard, but we got to think that way Because a lot of times we always think about what's best for us. First, which I get it.
Speaker 2:We're all human, but we really need to think about the other guy first and when those guys win human.
Speaker 1:but we really need to think about the other guy first, and when those guys win, guess what's gonna happen? You're gonna win, we all win, and and you know what? It's funny, I think, pms they do. It's so funny. They get a bad rap, but, um, whatever, to make their job easier. Yes, they're answering every phone call upon, every everything, but they do tend to well, why don't you just go ahead? Hey, can you? Hey, can you get me this? And I'm like man, you're a pretty resource. Why don't you just go ahead? Hey, can you get me this? And I'm like man, you're a pretty resourceful guy, aren't you?
Speaker 2:Maybe do it yourself, anyways, so, but now we got it tuned to where if that boots on the ground takes the video, it will ping a notification to the project manager and they can take it from there, because that's all the project managers know. Got a new video, got a new video. They video got a new bit. They're doing and the guys there, they, the guys don't care what the project manager like, they're not trying to make your life easier.
Speaker 2:project manager I hate to tell you and when you ask them to do x, y or z, you're not making a whole lot of friends. I know you got a hard job, pms.
Speaker 2:Bless your heart, you got a hard job but you know so here's the problem you'll never get what you want if you don't take care of your boots on the ground, guys, and he won't get it the way you like it and I have to talk about it for just a minute because I have been the project manager, ops manager, president, youtube podcast, all this stuff that I'm doing right now.
Speaker 1:Daddy number one brought new baby girl into the world over the holiday, so it's like it's a. But let me tell you something. I had to peel back the onion. I had to go see what my guys on the ground because I yes, I, I tried to delineate that line project manager in between, but at the same time, dude, I got a little out of touch with reality, with what they were actually going through. I was hearing a lot of there was somebody in between me, right, so I was hearing a lot of this oh yeah, oh, that's good. And then when I really started stopping by the jobs, I was like I don't really like what I'm seeing James like at all, and so that's been a hard transition for me.
Speaker 2:Big failings of an owner is they're not spending enough time with their guys or they're not spending enough time with their customers. You've got to make time for both. The farther you get away from your guys and the farther you get away from the customers, you're going to become out of touch, not relevant, and when you talk, everyone's going to roll their eyes. Yeah, that, out of touch, not relevant.
Speaker 1:And when you talk everyone's going to roll their eyes. Yeah, Like that's what it is.
Speaker 2:Like I won't allow myself to just go sit in the ivory tower because nobody wants. Caesar to come down on the battlefield, the gladiator on their white little horse, after we've been fighting and I got mud in my nails and blood and he's going to come down there just to raise his pretty flag, like that's what we think.
Speaker 2:When you're in your ivory tower, like you don't, and look you're paying the paychecks, you're paying the bills, like we get it. You know, but you got to go be with the customer and be with the guys and that's it, you know, otherwise you're out of touch.
Speaker 1:Seriously, and the morale of those guys correlates directly with production and profitability. And if you don't understand that, I've actually probably led with my heart a little bit more than my mind, especially over the last five, six years. We've done my team. I can't. You've heard me talk about my team. Literally.
Speaker 1:I'm very passionate about my team, but I am the guy having to sit there and go hey guys, look, I screwed up. And I was literally telling one of my superintendents yesterday. You know, when you screw up it's kind of private, right, but when I screw up it's public. Every 20 families, 25 families that we feed my wife, the banker, everybody knows when I'm having a bad time, whatever it may be, it's public, everybody knows. And so, anyways, I don't know how far I got off there, but the PM level is something to help. I think live switch could, just from the simple fact of all the different subcontractors when you said he could they, any of those subcontractors, when you said he could any of those subcontractors take a video, scan a QR code wherever they're at on the job, and it goes directly to the PM.
Speaker 2:And here's how to tie it all together. Right, the PM is going to watch the video, the customer is going to watch the video, you're going to watch the video, so you are getting as close to the guys. Now we don't want to live in the virtual world alone, but being able to add to where you can see things, rather than just read a report, see one or two photos or talk to somebody on the phone, when you can actually see that video, it's the next best thing to being with the people. Right, and it is very effective. There's this virtual stuff now.
Speaker 2:Well, we're not talking about getting on a conference call thing. We're talking about remote assistance technology built for purpose, built for this type of work. When you can't be with your boots on the ground. It's the next best thing, because you're going to see it, your guy will get to see you and you're able to talk through it, and now you're almost physically there. You're going to be the guy who could still be the project manager in the office, but now, with this technology, you're out on the field as well, and I think that human connection is what we're all about. It creates that human connection so you're able to be in more places anywhere in the world and manage your business in that way, not with the power of this type of tool in your toolbox.
Speaker 1:Right. I mean there's so many different levels. I'm sitting here getting lost in thought and literally I went this way and I went that way. But I've got to encourage you guys. If you're sitting there wondering about the technology world and the dirt excavation, hvac, I don't care what you guys are. You have to start embracing technology, whether it be a software program or something designed as easily to be user-friendly as live switch, where it's just a quick video back and forth and you can store that data. You have got to be documenting what you're doing.
Speaker 1:It's not the game isn't just go out there and put the stuff in and they'll believe you when it's time to bill and everything's a lot easier when you've got a video and I know this coming from the YouTube side of things. It's definitely helped. You know marketing and sales market. It's a lot easier to sell something when you're marketing and they can see the whole pie Right. And so why would it not be just as easy with something like live switch to start doing?
Speaker 1:There's a lot of guys out there with two crews, just like you know, james and sy. When we first started, we got the one or two crews and we're just thinking, we're pulling our ears out. Oh my god, there's just got so much going on. How am I supposed to just, you know, keep up with all this? Well, if they integrated something and they're sitting there maybe feeling, come here, I'm not doing any of this, dude, get in touch with LiveSwitch and start something. That's even so simple that you know it's. You can take it as far as you want on the administrative side, as James has mentioned many times.
Speaker 1:But for your guys in the field, stick a QR in the machine. Stick a QR on the machine. Stick a QR in the machine. Stick a QR on the machine. Stick a QR in the windshield. Stick a QR in every stinking toolbox when they don't have a tool. Hey Bing, this tool's not here. This is where it was supposed to go, and it pinged the whole company and find out where the tool is. I mean, there's so many different applications that I could see something like this and I would have much rather met you five years ago and started with you, instead of the hundreds of thousands worth of softwares and crap and implementation and onboard and all the crap to get us where we're at. But go ahead.
Speaker 2:Well, that's what makes it hard, right? Because I'm the vendor, right? I'm the evil vendor going after your credit card. I don't care whether or not you use me honestly, that's not really why.
Speaker 1:I'm here, right what I'm trying to do is educate.
Speaker 2:We're educators at the end of the day and if you can make a mastermind group, get other guys like you in a mastermind group that you know they're not just looking at your back pocket looking for that wallet, they're actually in front of so many other owners every day that you can't be in front of all those owners every day and they can filter out like here's what I'm hearing working not just from the technology side, but staffing, recruiting, retention. You know top and bottom line focus, like you're. You, you're creating your board of directors of people and that's going to help you determine the meat and the bones right. You're going to find the meat because some of your mastermind group has tried stuff and it didn't go well. Some of your other stuff.
Speaker 2:Mastermind guys be like hey, I'm trying this new thing and it's working out, but you got to surround yourself, especially if you're like in a bad spot or like haven't hit that next watermark or can't figure out how to grow that top line like you want it, or your margins aren't there, you know, I would say you know, make sure that you're getting that extra time and prioritizing that time with your board of directors to help you save time. It's so weird, you got to give time to save it, but it's knowledge, right, it's that experience that it comes with, and don't just put only gray hairs on your board directors. Some of these young guys coming up are super sharpened and with it, you know, you need to have a variety of of these folks that can speak to you and you can speak to them plainly to figure out you know how to kind of unlock yourself.
Speaker 1:Dude, you have been, in layman's terms, literally making my mind wander, sitting here thinking a few various different ways, but uh, any, any key point that I'm missing here with live switch before we move on no you got it like this is not complicated stuff, you know I hope you know like is why I was going with that.
Speaker 2:That's what we need and that's all we want you know. So that's that's the major takeaway simple, and then starting to put live video into your business so you can be anywhere on the job site and get all over all the different job sites it gives you visibility of. Isn't that what you want? Isn't that your biggest fear? You don't know what's going on. And then you get that call. You know, and then they try to explain it to you and you're like crap, I gotta go see it. So you hop in your truck, you know, isn't that what you want is to be able to see what's going on your eyes. We're trying to go for the phone connected to our ears to start using our eyes and you can start using your eyes and ears together, and that's with anything it's literally.
Speaker 1:It's literally with anything, and I think, dude, I'm so excited to be on the live switch train with you because that's it's going to be very intriguing to watch and see how it transforms literally what we do in and out every day. The biggest struggle bus session for a blue collar guy I don't care if he's sitting there been at a job for two or three years. You're the kind of king of scale here, coming from the blue collar. Yes, you're in tech now. It's the coolest story I think I've ever had on the show coming from the blue collar world to being techie nerd king guy. Coming from the blue collar world to being techie nerd king guy. So talk a little bit more about scaling for that blue collar guy. Talk about a few things that he needs to be concentrated on and it's not things that we think we need to be concentrated on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's not hard. So I'm talking all about making your board of directors and making your network. They always say the size of your network determines the size of your net worth. So you need to be able to quickly and easily grow that network without having to go to all the places. So there's a little tool called LinkedIn and I know some of us would rather not have to deal with that.
Speaker 2:But in modern day, you can't be all over the place. So you join LinkedIn and I'm going to tell you the secrets. And I'm going to tell you from someone who's had to, like, go into new industries where nobody knows your name, nobody knows. And if you're sitting there and you're like I don't have a big network, I'm about to tell you how to do it, and it's not hard. You download LinkedIn, put a nice photo up, put a little bit about yourself, okay, okay, and then a little bit of your work history, and what you need to do is go and connect with 20 people a day.
Speaker 2:And how do you do this? You can do this while you're sitting on toilet. That's how easy this is. You literally can do this at any time of day. You open that thing up and you start hitting just a connect button. You don't need to send love notes, you don't need to send any kind of messages, you just hit connect. In the beginning, you won't have many connections, right? You don't have a network, or maybe your network is stalled out. You're going to have some brave souls. What you can only connect to 20 people a day. Kick connect button 20 times a day, which you should do, and even on the weekends and because if you do more you get, you know, blacklisted so don't do that, just do 20, 20 people you don't even know they're in industry, they're maybe even the thought leaders, and you'll eventually start picking up some connections.
Speaker 2:That's how you start. All right, then what will end up happening is you'll pick up more and more connections. So when you hit connect with somebody, you might have no mutual connections and again they're going to take a chance on you. They're going to think you're probably selling something which you're not selling, something which you're not you know and you hit connect. Then what will happen? When you reach out to someone all of a sudden, like when I hit connect with someone, we have like 300 mutual connections. You know what that person is thinking when they see that they're like why don't I know that person?
Speaker 1:And they'll say yes.
Speaker 2:So your connection percentage will grow, go up. Then what you do is you wake up and you just scroll on your LinkedIn news phase Okay, this ain't Facebook, y'all this just. And what you're going to see is all these people you've been connecting with talking about things going on in their industry. They're teaching you and what you could do is make a little comment Thanks for that. Cy learned a lot. Maybe you'd send a note.
Speaker 2:I've been Cy, I've been watching it, congrats on the new baby. Not in a weirdo way, although you know, but just be cool. Try to be cool. All right, try to be cool. And then what'll happen is you'll connect with what I call serious people. You'll connect with some people that aren't as serious, but you'll get those connections and eventually you're going to find whoa, this guy or gal is hot stuff, and you start getting to know them. And then you go from LinkedIn to texting and talking to them and calling them every now and then, and they sit on your board of directors.
Speaker 2:This is how you do it. This is how you go from nobody I'm a nobody, no, nobody. But then you become somebody, and what will end up happening? Now I'm flying and talking on stages. I'm on this wonderful podcast right now, amongst others, and you become an educator and you put those podcasts in your ears, which you're already doing. You're already one step ahead listening to this podcast. You're already way ahead. So already give yourself a high five, self high five. Now you're going to take that and go to the next level and you're going to start surrounding yourself with all the who's, who's and you're going to learn, and some gracious soul who has done it before will tell you the good, the bad and and the ugly, and they might even talk to you and tell you the truth about who you are.
Speaker 1:Hey you're not a very good listener.
Speaker 2:Hey, you're not asking great questions or you really need to hit the books here and you'll get these mentors in your life and they will grow you and you will scale your own self, because knowledge can't be taken away from you right? Everything else can be taken away. The fire can burn your house down, the bank account can be stolen, your identity can be even be taken. But as you fill yourself with what's going on, and then these people they have this saying called game, recognize game, because once now you're educated through it and you talk to them like this guy knows he's talking about and you may even know stuff they don't know. They're like dang, I need to talk to that guy more. Do you see how it compounds that? It's like you ever watch gran torino, that movie. I love that movie.
Speaker 2:Eastwood at the end he's got this kid. This kid comes to him. He's got nothing. And clint eastwood has this huge garage full of every beautiful tool you could want in a beautiful car. And this kid comes in.
Speaker 2:He's like how did you get all these tools? And he's like this kid was a thief. He's like I, how did you get all these tools? And he's like this kid was a thief. He's like I know it's hard for a thief to understand this, but I bought them over like 40 years of my life. He's like you're just starting, young man, here is a hammer and here is a screwdriver. You start there and you work those hard and then you grow. So don't go. Woe is me. Why don't I have all this network? Why aren't they asking me to speak on stage? Just take your hammer and hit connect 20 times a day. My man, put yourself out there. Nobody's going to come, wake up to you and give you anything. Welcome to the world. There's no participation awards. You've got to go get the dang thing. And that's how you do it. You go give, give, give, give and eventually some soul will give something back to you and it feels better to give than to take I'll get off my soapbox side.
Speaker 2:But this is like if someone's listening, you're stuck. That's what you need to do.
Speaker 1:That's the playbook dude, that is literally I am your guy that you're speaking of. Uh, I'll tell a little story on myself. I I think it was February, march last year A salesman looks at me. He's like, hey, dude, why don't we have LinkedIn? I'm like we got a meta, we got the channel going YouTube channel. It was doing really well. At that point he's like, yeah, but why don't we have a LinkedIn?
Speaker 1:Dude, and he was very, he comes from a sales side. He's very, very in touch with the linkedin world, coming from a guy that um has been self-taught tech. Like talking to him you wouldn't think he knows his way around the tech world. But he's very surprising, built our crm. Like thank god for him, um. But he literally looks at me. One day he he's like I'll build it right now, like I just need to get it started.
Speaker 1:Linkedin is everything. He's like why are you not on LinkedIn? And I'm like, well, I didn't know it was a thing. He's like, dude, get on there please and just make a few posts. So I get on there, make a few posts and start talking about what we're doing at YouTube, what we're doing here at the podcast. And, dude, I have got almost 400 and something connections.
Speaker 1:At this point I'm not hitting the connection button 20 a day. I'm kind of being a little bit select. I'm not actually trying to connect with many people at all, to to completely add you to the, to the layer there. Like, mainly the connections have come to me, but I'm also got this podcast and youtube. Actually, today is the anniversary of a two-year long grind content creating on youtube my guy and uh, so I felt like and I'm putting myself out there a ton, you know, and I'm finally doing this marketing thing. And number one, I'm focused directly on video first and then expanding from there. Nobody really reads words anymore. 82% of web traffic globally is video. Like, what are we doing here? Nobody cares about what you write anymore, they just want to watch it. Cares about what you write anymore? They just want to watch it.
Speaker 1:And so I get on LinkedIn. I'm having a gander around and I'm like the number one thing that sticks out to me and I, I, literally I went back in my salesman. I'm like, oh my God, dude, every single freaking person that I'm trying to connect with is on there. Like, just type in their name there they are posting away. And I'm like why these white collar folks coming from the blue collar guys. This is absolutely key.
Speaker 1:Get a LinkedIn. Your people, the general contractors, the project managers, the estimators, the bankers, the financial people, anybody that you actually want to be seen by to help you get up a level, to scale, to get the next project, all of that it's right there and it's free. Now you can get the premium, etc. You don't necessarily have to. You're a long ways from that in my opinion, but if you're really trying to use it for a conversion, that's a little different story. But the B2B stuff on there and the scalability that LinkedIn offers is I'm living proof of it over the last six, eight months.
Speaker 1:Dude, and the people I've met on there, the direct messages I'm talking big companies, they're going hey man, that podcast you're doing. I've listened to a couple episodes. It's great and I'm like what you saw me. He connected with me. He got like 30 something thousand followers on LinkedIn and I'm like, okay, cool, this is working. Then I start doing it more. Then I start trying to do one post a week, then I try to do two posts a week and try and make three connections a day. Whatever the case may be, I've used that tool. Now, don't get me wrong. I've had eight years in business. I've got a pretty good clientele book built up, but usually where that clientele book is, it's outside of LinkedIn and all those clients that they're working for are right there.
Speaker 2:All.
Speaker 1:I got to do is put myself out there and everybody is so freaking scared, bro, they're so scared and, don't get me wrong, we were talking about it just before we got on about the hate that I'm catching locally. Man, it's just frothing with hate. And LinkedIn, I got to tell you, has been more positive and it's more same character, not mastermind, exclusive groups. But you can target down to the company, down to position, down to whatever you want, to find exactly what the group of people that you need to be connecting with. It's like 20 times more targeting than meta is. Don't get me wrong, you definitely going to pay more. It's, it's more to target on there than it is meta.
Speaker 1:That's going off a little bit for far into the weeds on the marketing side, but literally it's completely free. All I YouTube is completely free. And then you keep it going long enough. You're going to start gaining a little bit of revenue off of it and you're like, well, they're paying me to do this now. And then here comes a sponsorship and I'm that's the level that I'm just now getting. But I'm telling you guys, two years I've been consistently posting crap on YouTube and some of it was crap. When I first started. It was me and my phone. Dude, that was it, james. Just me and my phone. Look at me, I'm a poppender guy and trying to bring awareness of what we go through every day through the lens and man. We've built up this crazy audience. It's been insane, but if, if someone's here is listening, you're like well you know side.
Speaker 2:Good for you, man. Like you're building all this stuff and I don't have time for all this. Look the hit the connect button 20 times. Go ahead and take a picture when you're on the job site, put it on there. Hey, great day on the job site. Take a little quick 30 second video. Here's what we're building right now. Put it on. Put it on LinkedIn, connect those 20 times. You're going to see all that information flowing into you, right? And the question was what do I do if I'm stuck in the mud? Well, you're going to remain stuck in the mud if you don't try and I'm not. We're not telling you to go and create a whole nother podcast YouTube station, really. We're just telling you to click the link 20 times. But if you feel it was from the job site, put an update. Tell someone you know, click the like button and say thank you while you're sitting on the toilet, except for when you're taking those pictures.
Speaker 2:You know, take those on the job site, you know what I'm saying, let's keep it, let's keep it, let's keep it for sure, but yeah, that's that's my best advice to like level up and you just you don't know until you know, and then, when you know, you're like gosh I would have shot, did this earlier oh, isn't that how it always goes?
Speaker 1:I'm living proof of it, bro. You were sitting here going off about linkedin. I'm like dude. I wish somebody grabbed me by the ear five years ago, nine years ago, and I could have started on there and they saw my progression, because they love a good story and they buy into the story on LinkedIn and they congratulate you when you take a step up, or whatever the case may be, there is some good positivity.
Speaker 2:And here's the thing if you're not the owner, if you're listening to this and maybe you're a worker and you start doing this, guess what happens with the more progressive, higher paying companies when you become available. If you become available, guess what? They're going to know you and know your story and they may even proactively reach out to you. You don't have to be the boss. You can be your first day on the job. Just start. I promise you it's going to be game changer for you.
Speaker 1:It's marketing yourself and putting yourself out there. Yes, it is extremely vulnerable. Yes, you're going to put the wrong thing out there and people are going to correct you. It's okay, you're learning, you're investing in yourself. Man, your knowledge is power. Education is expensive, but literally, experience is priceless. You know what I mean and you just live through that. You live through those moments and, trust me, I've put some, put some crappy things out there on the internet and I got reamed for in the comments. But you know what? I haven't done that again. They're like hey, you're too loud, oh you're, you're steady. Your camera and all those little comments they add up, you know we're so scared of being, you know, corrected, and I always tell people.
Speaker 2:Love doesn't always feel good, but the truth is worth it, and the people that tell you the truth love you like it doesn't feel good. So, hey, dude, like, hold your camera. Still your mic stinks, it doesn't feel like love. And oh, they're disrespecting me. No, they're not. No, they're not. You know, they're instructing you, they're literally correcting you. Right, they're putting you know, they're putting their truth on you and that, honestly, you should say thank you.
Speaker 1:They're supporting you, man, because if they didn't Be humble?
Speaker 1:You can't humiliate a humble person after, after the year, you know, 24, man, um, I, I I dealt with some embarrassment and shame with my team and going hey, man, I've made some mistakes to get us here, but I'm going to do everything within my power bring in some bright folks and we're going to collaborate to get together and work on this as a together, as a team. And man, I can't tell you the excitement buzzing over the last three to four months and moving into 25. But James, James Hatfield with Live Switch everybody. Chief Revenue Officer, If you've loved this episode here with the Blue Collar Business Podcast, make sure you have checked out the plethora of other episodes we come out every morning, Wednesday morning, coming at you around 5 am.
Speaker 1:Catch it on your drive to work. You can catch it right on the website and not have to deal with any subscription base. I understand subscriptions can get crazy. You can watch it directly from the website. Make sure you subscribe to that newsletter to get an email about every single episode on Wednesdays when they're coming out and give you a little bit of information. You'll get a little bit of insight about who James is and some links to click to check out further. So that'll be directly in your inbox, so make sure you hit that subscribe.
Speaker 1:But, guys, I can't thank you enough for listening again. James, I probably probably one of the guests that are going to have to come back later on this year because I am just truly intrigued to see dude 9-1-1 calls to to coming down here. I I feel honored for you to sit with me and discuss game-changing uh availability for the blue collar world and trying to look, come down here and go hey guys, I've got this simple product. I can help you. Be willing to guys, listen, be willing to jump over, check out this new technology because it's going to be game changer. Get on the game now because game recognizes game right.
Speaker 2:That's right. That's right. Don't forget where you come from. That's why I'm here. This is where I'm from. So this is coming home for me is full circle. So thank you for having me on the show, cy, you're doing a great job. Thanks, man.
Speaker 1:You know, definitely through the YouTube. I was like, oh, let's start a podcast. And here we are, guys, I didn't. I let, I promise you, I didn't set out on this going, oh, I need a podcast because I I literally was like dude, nobody is helping the blue collar guy. We've got to invest in them. Nobody's investing in them or I would have found the resource. Don't get me wrong, there's some really good podcasts out there now working through on the blue collar, trying to invest in that community. But I truly appreciate you being here and until next time, my guy, you be safe and be kind to be home. If you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to give it a like, share it with the fellers. Check out our website to send us any questions and comments about your experience in the blue collar business. Who do you want to hear from? Send them our way. We'll do our best to answer any questions you may have. Till next time, guys.