Race to Face: Taking Speed to Lead to the Next Level

Pete: All right, we are live. Welcome back, everybody to the Roofr Masterclass. I'm your host, Pete McKendrick. This is my co-host Nic. And, we are joined today by a special guest. Excited to have him. If you guys have seen, we did a podcast together.

Welcome, James Hatfield. James is the CRO of a company called Live Switch. So, James, real quick, we're gonna do some housekeeping and then I wanna give you an opportunity to just introduce yourself and Live Switch for the people listening that don't maybe know it, but I'll let Nic take over.

He'll run through some housekeeping slides really fast, and then we'll dive into it.  

Nic: Sweet. Super pumped for everybody to learn about you and what you've been doing that they haven't heard the podcast. But just to go through the housekeeping stuff, you got me and Pete, with the two easiest emails on Earth.

So if you have any questions or need anything, just message Pete @ Roofr dot com. Nic @ Roofr dot com. We're here to help. As a reminder, these are always recorded. They're gonna be live at Roofr dot com slash masterclass and our YouTube channel.

And, if you have any feedback, we got Joel in the back end here, can answer any questions you guys have in the chat. But also you can email him at joel dot castelli at Roofr dot com.

Did you guys know about our education sessions? You have these every two weeks.

With me and Pete, we usually go over a topic and deep dive in it with guests, but every day, we have education sessions that go through a specific part of the tool that's live. You can join with a bunch of other roofers, ask questions, get answers, and really deep dive onto one of those tools.

Highly recommend those. Those are free every single day, Monday to Friday. And last but not least, is AI giving you stale advice? Learn from us instead. Our latest articles, eBooks, and podcasts are human planned, human researched, and human written to help make your business grow. Joel, you're on fire right there.

Yeah, I like that one.

Well, today's talking points, we're gonna over race to the face, which is amazing, term that, we heard in the podcast you did with Pete there. Putting your money where your mouth is, changing how you do business, making yourself redundant. And lastly, being an honest leader.

So, and then we'll do some q and as at the end, please put any questions that you guys have into the chat. Excited to get to it, but, we'll start from there.  

Pete: So excited to have you, James.

Like you said, we did a podcast together. You and I talked a couple weeks ago as well. Probably could have talked half the day. I want to give you a second here to just introduce yourself and then really introduce Live Switch for everybody listening that maybe doesn't understand what you guys do or, or how you guys, are working with the home improvement space.

James: James Hatfield. I'm currently the Chief Revenue Officer over here at Live Switch, but prior life I used to own and operate painting and power washing companies. So I know what it's like to live on the ladder. I know what it's like to work with my hands. I do know that, and I know about hitting salaries, hiring, firing, promoting. You know, the headaches of finance and making sure we hit payroll right, and doing good work for our community and people that we serve.

So I've lived that life. I had to figure out my numbers, which is what got me off the ladder. I went back to school, to business school because I'd go to the bookkeeper and they'd speak English to me and I wouldn't know what they were saying. So it's like that's probably not good as a business owner, because I grew up with blue collar family.

My dad built the house we lived in. I know how to fix things with my hands and work on a car I was a business owner. I became an accidental business owner. So I don't know if anyone else listening or watching can relate to that, but hey, that's where I got my start.

But because of the problem I had, which was not understanding my finances, that is what changed everything for me. When I went back to business school, I met a guy who ran a landscaping company and he invented a tool where you could take an income statement and balance sheet, run it through the technology.

This was before AI was on everybody's lips, and it would tell you how you were doing in plain language. And I was like, I love that. It's like, that's the problem I had. He is like, well, do you wanna try to sell it? It's like, well, if it gets me off a ladder, maybe I'll give it a go. And that worked out really well.

We took that company from nothing to Inc 500. We were one of the fastest growing companies in the country for three years, and now it's a multi-billion dollar company. So that kind of worked out all right. We'll take it. We got philanthropy, we do inmates to entrepreneurs, go into the jails.

We teach folks how to become entrepreneurs, business owners, people, everyone needs a second chance. And that turned into an ABC television show called Free Enterprise. Check it out. We're quite proud of that and the story behind it. And then finally, I am in Live Switch and we purchased this company five years ago and it's everything doing with live video.

We're gonna talk a lot today about speed to lead and that, hey, your face still matters these days. It helps close business, but we help save gas in your gas tank and we help get to that customer as fast as possible because speed matters nowadays. Thank you. Amazon Prime, which just knocked on my door an hour ago, leaving a box.

So there you go. There you go. A little bit of an intro. I know we'll hop into deeper, but, guys, thanks for having me today.  

Pete: Absolutely man, excited for you to jump on and, you and I have talked a good bit about this kind of stuff and Nic and I always, preach this whole speed to lead thing.

We have for years, on this masterclass and it's speaking at events and everything. We're seeing a big shift now. In roofing specifically to like really, heavy use of products to capture that speed to lead, right, to be that first person in the door.

I've seen guys changing their process to be the first guy there to be more competitive, to supply more information, all of these things to be better prepared and to be the first one in. I literally texted after I did the podcast with you. I texted Nic and I was like, we've got a new one.

Race to face, right? Yeah. Like speed to lead has evolved into race to face and I love it because this is still an industry where so many sales happen face to face. At the end of the day, I still wanna look you in the eye.

You know, even if I've read your Google reviews and someone referred you, I still wanna look you in the eye before I sign the contract, so I have that, warm and fuzzy and I feel comfortable with you and that trust factor's there. Getting in front of these customers obviously is still a huge part of it.

Even the guys who are starting to use AI are still talking about how do I still incorporate, some type of an inspection. So I'm still getting out there and doing a face-to-face with the customer. It's still a huge piece of our business and a huge piece of the success and the conversion of jobs, in the roofing space.

So when you said that, I was, this is like the next evolution of speed to lead, race to face. How can you be not only the first guy to make contact, but potentially the first guy to really have your face in front of that customer?  

Nic: Yeah, from my perspective too, when you're doing that job, you're going out and meeting the people, the neighbors, doing that six pack and knocking. Talking with them and then speed to lead on top of that by, you know, drawing it out, getting them the proposal on the spot. Makes a big difference.

Nothing could be truer than the need for that race to face as well because roofing is still in a spot where you can do a lot of great stuff. You can get someone quotes within 30 seconds with an instant estimator.

You can price condition them, you can price qualify. But we know from experience, Pete, when we had the marketplace, nobody's really buying that stuff sight unseen. You'll have the odd one here and there, but the exception to the rule doesn't make it true. It's a five figure job typically, and people are not looking to spend five figures on something that they don't know a lot about.

Take the car industry, for example. People are not buying cars sight unseen all the time. They need to know a little bit more and people know a hell of a lot more about cars than they do about roofs. So I think it's very important to bring in that face-to-face value, whether it is on a video, whether it is on some type of social media interaction where they can see who that is, what you've been doing, the type of work you've been doing to really take your speed to lead to the top.

Back in the marketplace days, I was selling 50 to 80 roofs month over month. Never going out to a job. But they had videos of me, they had Zoom meetings with me. They had a bunch of stuff that I needed to make that personal connection so that they felt that they were gonna get treated properly, that they were not gonna lose their money.

That I was a real person, not a scammer online. It's a big thing nowadays still.  

James: Yeah. We sell trust, right. At the end of the day, like you're trusting someone with five figures or more. Whether or not insurance pays for it or not, you know, that helps, but it's still a big job, right?

For most people, their biggest asset, you know the thing that they care about the most. So they wanna see you as an owner or see your salespeople before they agree. Now, does that mean you always have to be on property boots on the ground with a firm handshake? Not all the time. It can be built through virtual means.

But you gotta be willing to show the face. That's the difference with a lot of folks, especially in your business where there's, well, I didn't sign up to be on the video. No, but you did sign up to help make payroll and I think you wanna get paid. So we're gonna have to clean up and be race to the face.

If you've ever had where you call up somebody and you say, Hey, we're coming out for the estimate, and they're like, oh, don't bother. We already signed somebody. You lost because of speed. You didn't lose because you didn't have enough five star reviews. You didn't lose for any other reason.

Well, you didn't even have a chance to bid because they already just went with somebody else. That person basically is like, I got the money, our insurance has approved this. Get up on that roof and, you know, take care of it. So speed will matter. Now, sometimes you're gonna have those that have to get the three quotes and three handshakes before they make a decision, right?

No, we don't. We like to be efficient. But when that person is on your website filling out a quote form, going through the process, maybe even chatting with the chat bot or phone calling up. You are now on the clock and they don't think about you any other time, but they're thinking about you right then.

Yeah. And that's when you've got your chance to build that trust. Either earn the right to come out on property and bid or earn the right, if they're ready to move quickly to get her done immediately.

Pete: That's the point where you've got 'em at that point, right? Like they're three quarters of the way there. If they're filling out your instant estimator or they've made it to your website and they're filling out that form, like the door's wide open for you to close them at that moment.

So many contractors have the form fill out, but I fill that form out and I may not hear from that contractor for. Days, right? Even if he's efficient, it still could be hours.

What if I'm looking for a roofer and I filled out five and now you reach out to me and I don't even remember who you are. And so you have this window of opportunity that when they're on your site and they're filling that stuff out, they're thinking about you specifically and they're obviously interested,

'cause they've taken the time to do that, like you said, like here's a goal and opportunity to jump on them. And it doesn't have to be like you pulling up to their front door. Right? But you know, there's just. So many ways that you can interact.

You and I did some stuff with video the other day. You're not gonna be asking a homeowner to climb up on the roof or anything, but there's a lot of stuff you can answer just over that video call and be able to at least get it set up to where when I come out and do an inspection, this inspection's more or less formality now, instead of me essentially coming cold calling, trying to win a job.  

James: That's right. When there's money to be made and when somebody's pissed off.  

Pete: Yeah.  

James: All right. Keyboard courage is real Texting courage when they go and they write that beautiful one star review on your Google that you just love.

How do you prevent that when someone's pissed? Like when I got my roof done, they left a lot of these things called roofing nails behind, and they, a bunch of 'em went down this thing called the gutter. In addition to that, there was some metal scraps that went down the gutter. And so what happened when our first hard rain, well, that gutter was plugged and I had water firing in reverse, like the other way.

Nic: Crazy how that happens.  

James: And you know what wasn't fun was when I opened up that gutter and saw. A ball of nails and metal. Like you want me to reach my hand in there and rip that, which is what I did, but I was not happy. Right. So the way to make me not pissed off and put a one star, 'cause you did all that work, is when I call, pick up the phone.

Right. And then when I can. Immediately video and they can see me as the owner and I can say, oh my goodness, I'm so sorry that happened. That's an oversight on our part. We'll be right out to take care of that. Or if you'd like, we can mitigate that together right now. It's not too big of a deal. I can walk you right through it.

I apologize this happened, but when they see a face, the race to the face, it also takes down the pissed off level.  

Nic: Yeah. If they're in front of you.

Their levels go down. 'cause people don't want that real confrontation. They feel strong behind a keyboard, strong behind a phone. But you have that face to face. People aren't gonna start swinging. It's just our nature.

Doing a video response to that or being out there and being like, Hey look, we effed up. Here's what I'm gonna do for you. This is what I wanna promise to you because you might get someone to reverse a one star review from that, or you might have such a big impact on them for how professional you are putting your money where your mouth is, that they might actually refer you people.

Some of my favorite referrals came from people that I effed up on. I made it right. And then they were like, you know what, not only did they make it right, but this is why you should go with them.

'cause they're honest. And that face-to-face thing, I always love going on Zoom if it's like a roofer to customer situation and just have a face-to-face. 'cause it makes a huge difference. Pete, you're the one that taught me that way back when you started as well.  

Pete: Yeah, I've had my fair share of those type of calls in the past.  

Nic: Yeah.  

James: So yeah, I think that's where, you know, what we're talking about is this live video. It's not just record, it's live and they're seeing you and maybe your guys left a bunch of ladders all over the place and roofing tiles everywhere. They spilt gas on the grass and, you know, killed part of the lawn.

If you can connect with them and now they're showing you what's going on? You're recording all of this, so now you can show this to your team. Let this be a learning moment for the team. You took the pissed off level down, but now you've documented that process to where you can say, Hey guys, this is our gold standard for customer care.

This is how we do this. It can be on the front end when you're selling. A new person comes, Hey, this is how we connect with our people. This is how we connect with when we're in sales. Look at how I went for the close four or five times here. Right? And you can have all of that recorded to show the team to document your process.

And we all know documentation of our process raises the value of our business when we're ready to exit and leave.

You're also giving yourself if there's preexisting damage, right? So if I'm doing a live video call race to the face, now they're showing me around, you know, after they go and look over that beautiful new roof and they see gutters all banged up, who are they gonna blame?

They're gonna blame you and your team. Well, if you go back to your instant replay before you even set foot on property, like, Hey, here's the thing. I've gotten video before we even got on there. Those gutters were already banged up, and I'm sorry that happened to you, but that wasn't us. Again, that gets the pissed off level down and it protects your backside.

You want to start arming your team. 'Cause they already have these cell phones in their pockets, taking video of everything. You know, like as an example in the sales process, when a guy goes up on the roof and we're seeing rotted wood. Now I can show a live video to the customer.

Or maybe we've already bid something, we're up on the roof, and you're like, Hey, we didn't notice this in the bid, but would you like us while we're up here to replace the boot around the chimney? And now they can see it. And when a customer can see it, now they're not gonna run up there on the roof, but now that they're seeing it live from your guys' phone or recorded phone, now it gives you a chance to upsell, gives you all kinds of opportunities, or even when you got junior folks up on the Roofr and they need to talk to a senior person who might be back in the office.

Now you can live video, connect, and race to the face when it comes to meeting your team and talking to your install team. So there's so many things with race to the face that are not just selling, but it's operations and callbacks.  

Pete: Yeah. James, explain to the people listening exactly how Live Switch works, right?

So in this case, like you and I a couple weeks ago, I jumped on a call with you. We demoed it, I pretended to be the customer. And so explain to them exactly how it would work. The customer gets to a point where they've got questions, they want to talk to a person, how do we end up in a live video with them?

Just kind of explain the process so people understand exactly how the flow goes.  

James: Yep. So first and foremost, we don't do any apps. When you're dealing with race to the face speed, nobody wants to stop and download, oh my goodness, another app, or remember a password to get in there. They want convenience.

People do not wanna think. So when we were actually inventing this technology, we were reinventing the nine one one phone call for the chief police in Washington DC and we had to come up with a way to get into those cameras of a compromised citizen with no app and no time to train them. So now what you're able to do is when you wanna connect video with your prospect customer sales team or operations team, you just go on your computer, your phone or tablet, and you send a text right through Live Switch.

And it's literally, if you can put in a phone number, you can use our stuff, hit send. The person receiving, like in this case, when Pete received it, he just got a text and he tapped it and he was instantly on with me. And it's tuned up for third party and remote assistance and remote selling. So for Pete being the homeowner, in this case, it was the reverse of a FaceTime call.

He saw himself big and me small, and on my end it automatically puts up a virtual background in case I'm, I got a lot of guys that work outta their trucks. They're mobile all the time. It'll make 'em look pro. And it'll have your branding behind it,

I could see Pete. Large on my screen or on my computer, and I can take remote photos of him if I like, Hey, lemme take a photo. I have laser guidance where you can laser guide him around the property if I wanna see things. And then after it's all done. We can run it through AI.

Pete: It was really cool. We were playing around with it and essentially James pretended to be the contractor. I pretended to be the customer. We were literally looking at my house from my front yard, talking through some stuff.

I talked about how we had a hailstorm in the past and, looking at the roof, while we're talking through some stuff. James wrote a prompt asking it to assess the roof and diagnose the next steps. It was really interesting to watch the AI process the video, the photos he had taken, and came back and said, this is the pitch of the roof potentially, based on the video.

It caught trees that were potentially too close and needed to be trimmed back that are in my backyard. It was just really in depth, much more in depth than you would expect AI to be. And then it also made suggestions of next steps for James as the contractor to address our situation, what he should do next as far as an inspection and, how he should quote. And it actually even allowed him to write a prompt that critiqued his performance as the salesman and said, you know, Hey, here's some things that you could have answered differently, or you could answer potentially differently next time.

James: AI didn't have any emotions, so it just laid me flat out where I suck.  

Pete: Yeah. Very objective,  

James: James? This is bad. Yeah. You forgot to ask for the money. Exactly.  

Pete: Yeah, I know. It actually took my responses and his responses and it critiqued them both.

It said like, based on the customer saying this, this is what you could have said, or this is what you could say next time, or these are some things that you should address with the customer. It was really interesting how in depth it went, in response to the information that I presented and the questions that I was asking as the homeowner.

Nic: That feedback is super important because as a sales leader, I walked away from some of those interactions like, shit. Did I do that right? What could I have done? And as I'm walking to the next house, I'm just like, what could I have done differently there? And move on, then knock on the next person's door and have a conversation with them.

But having real time feedback like that, if you were doing that video and just sending that off to someone and knowing like, Hey, this is the next steps you should make. These are the improvements that you should make that's gonna help your company big time.

There's roofers and there's business owners. Very rarely do those two mix. Now, what we're seeing that's really interesting from Roofr standpoint, because we're very good with the SMB and everything else in mid-market, is we're seeing a lot of the people coming in and starting up their company fresh are business owners. Which is very different from when I was growing up.

Yeah, a lot of people were roofers 'cause they knew how to do the job and now they're coming in there. Now it's people who have worked in roofing companies where salespeople have roofing companies or owned and operated different types of verticals coming into this. And when you're looking to make a splash in your market and take over from those large legacy brands that have been there for a long time, there's a bunch of things that you need to do.

The main thing is separate yourself from the competition. So you can do that with your presentation. Your tech stack, your speed to lead, all that. Adding in this race to face and adding in that training to make you guys better as you go along is really going to change the way that you do business.

It's really going to be able to let you take those big steps in those first couple years when most companies are going out of business. Just the mindset alone, of always getting better, learning how to do this and making sure there's a face to the name is going to be a big, big benefit for anybody who's listening.

James: And it works on both sides of the ball. You mentioned that some of us are really good operationally, and we're not so talented on the business side. Sometimes we're talented on the business, but not operations. You can queue up the AI to help you where you're weak. So if I'm operationally sound, teach me the business side.

If I'm business sound, hey, help me with the operations side. Just use it as this coach as well to build you up and also just keep you honest, you know, maybe you think you are so good at sales until you get lit up by AI and you're interrupting somebody too much like the AI report with Pete said, I interrupted him too much.

Nic: It is easy to interrupt Pete though. Just, yeah, like Pete, that's it.

Pete: Well, and I think the big thing to note here, at the root of all of this is the customer experience.

And if you have that customer first focus and that customer first approach, it will shape everything that you do in your process. If you have that mindset of how does it feel like from the customer point of view, what is the customer's perception? This is just another kind of feather in the cap of that whole customer experience of, we have an issue and we need to be able to get to that customer really quickly and diffuse the situation.

Back in the day when I was out in the field, a customer would call and you'd have to be like, okay, let me call my project manager. He's across town, another job. He can be there, but it's probably gonna be two hours before he gets there. Now the customer's fuming for an extra two hours, then he gets there and gets completely blown up.

Because the person's had even more time to think about how mad they are. Right. As opposed to being able to just say, Hey, let's jump on a call really quick. Let's take a look and let's diffuse this. So, I think there's just so much to say about how this can positively affect the customer experience and what that does for you long term.

Across your company. From a referral standpoint, from a Google Review standpoint, like all of these other things that feed off of that customer experience.  

James: Yeah. And you never quite know what it is, right?

You wanna be consistent in your customer experience. So if you start dissecting from first phone call to last handshake to maybe appreciation gift, everything needs to be analyzed.

Had a customer that was a referral from another customer and in this case, they gave the customer a spa ticket.

Like they just thought, Hey, here's your spa day on us. And then this customer calls in. They booked the contractor. The contractor does the work. And then this time they gave him like a dinner card and they followed up and the person was kind of disappointed and they're like, what's wrong?

They're like, oh, well you gave the other person a spa day and I got a dinner card. It had nothing to do with the contractor work, it had everything to do with the gift because they were inconsistent and you, we just never think about this stuff. I'm like, you kidding me? I got them a free dinner and so they're upset 'cause I didn't get the spa day 'cause the other person got the spa day, but they only bought your stuff because they needed the work done and they wanted the spa day.

That's the thing. We're like, oh, I didn't even think about that. So it's wild when you start dissecting and going deep on customer experience.  

Pete: I mean, we talked about reviews, very rarely do you see a review that says like, oh, the color of my shingles is exactly what I wanted, or the price point was right where I wanted.

It's always, their team is great. They were very attentive, my salesman was phenomenal. The project manager was great. He was very accessible, all of these things that are around the experience as a whole, and not necessarily the technical aspects of it at all, down to something as simple as what gift they got, right?

Like it's, that's kind of rounding out the experience for them and it's. You know, and that's really what is driving them to positively review you, right? It's not necessarily the craftsmanship or the work or the product necessarily, like obviously that's all part of it, but very rarely do you see those things come up in an actual review.

James: And it's knowing where your strong players are too. Using the right people in the right seats of the bus. So like when you have somebody on your property, like let's say they've already signed with you, you're up there, you're taking care of the roof, but you have a install team that's not really good at the customer experience or upselling or making sure they're happy.

Now you can have the reverse of the race to the face, where now you can have a customer care person back in the office and when your install team gets up there, they can just say, Hey, they can hand 'em like a tablet and say, Hey, look, our. Talk to our customer success person. And now they're video talking with that and saying, Hey, I've got, you know, Pete and Nic on the job.

They're up there taking care of the roof today. We're doing this, that, and the other. You know, this project's a two day job. Let me know. I'm your customer care person and you're all doing this virtually face-to-face, but they're getting to talk to your. Customer success person who might also be incentivized to do upselling and oh, while they're up there, do you wanna put an additional warranty?

And hey, the guys told me that they saw some damage around, the chimney. Do you want them to take care of that? Let me upsell you there. So you wanna make sure if you don't have that unicorn person who can sell. Run the team, install, do all the 20 jobs, try to find where your talent is, and then start using technology and leverage, across your business to give that award-winning customer experience.

Nic: It's super cool. Just to think about like the opportunity there, like, I know it's one of our talking points that we had at the beginning, but every business owner's goal should be getting to a point where you make yourself redundant. And being able to really rely on tools like this and this kind of mindset.

Ultimately, if you can really focus on the key principles and the core values of your company being there, it's customer centric and being that assistant buyer throughout the process, not a sales person, but an assistant buyer, that's where you're gonna take your sales to the next level and your reviews and referrals to the next level.

So having that aspect there, that race to face and everything else, you're gonna make yourself redundant, which is great because then you could work more on the business instead of in it. Allow and be confident that your team is going to take that mantle and be able to continue to grow that company without you having to be involved in every little piece.

So I think that's a huge part here with the tool or without a tool. It's this mindset that you're preaching here, James, that needs to be implemented. And furthermore, if you have this mindset implemented and then you're ready to take on a tool like, like live switch. It is just going to take off and be more successful.

James: Yeah. Piggyback on that point, Nic. There is a great book. When Nic's talking about making yourself redundant and the book is called Making Money is Killing Your Business. And it helps you look through and they call it freedom mapping, where you're putting all your processes down and when each process you have a double click on it.

There's another process, but we're trying to. Document all our process. So when we hire new staff or staff transitions, and you as a business owner, you're trying to have all your process in place so you don't have to be in all that day to day, so this book is really, they call it the freedom map because they're trying to free you.

As a business owner to be able to work on your business instead of in your business. But they really, the undergirding of it is really documenting those process in all the right way so it can be handed off and improved upon by your team. 'cause the people that are closest to the data can make the best decisions, right?

If you can empower your team, say, Hey, you own this part of the process, improve it. Like, if it can't be improved, great. It can't be improved. But I would bet for some of your smarter, sharper folks on the team, they can improve it, enhance it, and then update the documentation for when the next person down the line comes on it.

But, check out that book. It's phenomenal and I recommend it to all business owners.  

Nic: I'll definitely have to look at that. 'cause Pete, that's exactly what you've been talking about forever, is making something replicable and easy for you to scale. So if you have that stuff laid in, it's gonna help you out.

Pete: I love this idea of empowering your team, right? Because I think so many times when we think of building a process, building our workflows and our CRM doing all this stuff, we think of it very high level. Like, you know, the owner's gonna do it.

Management folks and office managers and the people who are really kind of in it, and so I love the idea of saying like, Hey, you own this piece of the process. So you tell me how we can make it better, and empowers your team.

Like you're, you're already figuring out ways to empower those people so that you don't have to be involved with the day-to-day. Traditionally, whether it's pride or ego or whatever it is in this industry, we tend to hold on really tight. To how the business is run and changes that are potentially made.

Looking at a process, we think we've got it dialed in. You should be constantly tweaking that process or at least looking to make it better.

James: And when you're doing this the right way, okay, and you're taking time to document everything, your process, you're increasing your value of your business upon exit. And how you choose to document your process is quite important. Let me give you an example. I imagine a lot of us are, do-it-yourselfers, right?

Or handymen. But when something breaks around the house, especially something that it's not an easy fix, I bet one of the first places everybody goes to is YouTube. To visually see what's going on. So we're writing down all of our processes, which you need to do, but also if you can visually document everything so people can watch it, it even enhances it further.

So what a lot of our customers are doing is they're taking a through live switch and they're walking around. Talking through the process while they're videotaping it, and the two things are gonna happen. One, you're gonna have the video in the cloud for anyone, and you can tag it as training or process.

And two, you can run an AI prompt on it that says, turn this video into a documented process so you can start using tools to make your life, that much easier. But man, oh man, becomes so much simpler for you. And that part of that freedom mapping I was talking about earlier.  

Nic: Yeah, that documentation is such a critical, critical piece. When you're building a business, nobody's gonna care as much as you 'cause it's your baby.

The thing that everybody talks about when they're running a business is like, man, if I just had another me or another early adopter or co-owner, if I had another one of those people, then we'll be great. Well, guess what? There's not those people out there because ultimately no one's gonna give a shit as much as you because it's your tool.

So how are we gonna figure that out? One of the ways is, you know, automations documenting, step-by-step task and everything for each stage so that you know what's going on. But the ultimate way is having your mind in paper so that if anybody comes into a situation, they know how to find it.

I listened to a really good podcast yesterday. For anybody who doesn't know, there's a company, a massive public company called GitLab, and they are, in the tech space I was listening to how they scaled their company to make it to what they are. It's called the Eric Rice Show, podcast.

It's, called How GitLab scaled to 30 million users with transparency. What's really cool is they've documented their entire employee handbook is public at any given time. Anyone in that company or not in that company can go in there and learn from it, and it's always being updated.

So if you're running a roofing company and you've got your sales guys knocking on the pavement every single day, they know more about what they're doing than you do. So giving up that reigns and getting feedback so you can update that documentation makes a huge, huge impact to your company. Not only now, but as James says, in the future when you're looking to exit, because people who are buying your company are not just buying the revenue, they're buying the idea.

The processes that got there, and they'll take it and scale it to something else that they need to after.

James: Yeah, and there's just a lot of creative thinking that you can do to get people to become more owners in the company.

How do we make more owners, right? Like an employee, if there's trash on the floor in the office, they'll walk by it and say, that's not my job. You know, an owner will walk by it, pick the trash up and throw it away because they care about the business.

So how are we creating more of these owners? And there's some creative things you can do around your bonusing, or maybe if your startup just, you can do creative things, like you can have giveaways and tickets, and there's things you can do as you grow. You can have, quarterly bonuses that you can account for, and you can tie key performance indicators to it.

So any actions that you wanna see from that team, you can affirm it and you can put AI scripts against it as well and say, Hey look, you guys do this. That way when people are coming, Hey boss, you know, how can I make more per hour? Let's hit the KPIs, and then we make that public what our KPIs are, and at the end of every quarter, you know, we'll review it.

And that's your share of that bonus pool, right? And so then you can sit down in your one-on-ones and review that with them. Hey, you typically make this much per hour, but because you're hitting these KPIs now you're making this much more per hour because you're hitting the things that we wanna do,

giving them that ownership towards like, man, these are things that we value as an organization. So you just can think of creative ways, to do that and to pass on ownership within the team.  

Pete: Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I do these Roofr of the Month interviews and I ask, a question to every single person that I have on those calls.

And I ask them, who is the most important hire and why? Most of the time it's the person who has most bought into their business, whether that be, a brother that they brought on to be a sales manager, whether that be an office manager, whether that be a production manager, whoever that person is, it's always because that person has bought into the whole idea.

And is there more for the welfare of the company than for the welfare themself, right? Like they're there for the bigger picture. And I think so much of that is, because you are allowing that person to grow in that company and take that control and have that input.

That's why that guy that you hire as a production manager off the street becomes the best hire you ever had, right? Because now he feels like it's his company. Just as much as it's yours. And so he's willing to go that extra mile and pick up the trash off the floor, or pick up the nails before they go down the gutter.

You allow these guys in and you treat them well, and you do nice things and you incentivize them, you know, they'll buy in, and now you've got a completely different, like you said, now you're building essentially more owners than just employees.

And it's a totally different mindset. It's a totally different feel in a company like that. And the culture is completely different.  

James: That's right. And things that you hold onto as an owner. That you're afraid to make yourself redundant and pass off to other people. You're actually holding back opportunity for your team.

By you making yourself redundant. Of course, it gives you that freedom, but now you're transitioning that ownership, those responsibilities to other people in your team, and you're elevating them within the organization. As they elevate, they get to pass off some of their responsibilities to the rest of the team as well.

So now you're creating a succession plan, right? Everybody should be working to make themselves redundant in case something happens, like someone walks out, life happens as well. Or if you need to multiply your business in the two locations, you know, you wanna prepare your team for growth.

I used to run one of the fastest growing companies for three years In America. We were Inc 500. It was always on the back of making yourself redundant. Check your title at the door. We want to teach everybody, every part of our process end to end so we can keep raising things up.

'Cause if we grow, I'm gonna need more people.  

Nic: You wanna enable your team to make fast-paced decisions. So that they can go in and do that for their customers.

And now your customer, you're more customer centric for it. But by doing that and letting go of the reins, it doesn't matter if they were gonna come to that same decision overall after all these touch points, every touch point they go, that original decision changes a little bit. So being able to document the process on exactly what to do, how to do it, be able to track that, be able to be in front of that customer and make those decisions live is not only gonna increase that customer experience and happiness, but it's also gonna result in more work for you overall.

So that recruiting becomes easier, that retention becomes better, your sales become better. It just, it's a trickle down effect from the top down. And it all starts at being, having a process in place, doing that race to face and that speed to lead and documenting everything so that each person that comes in knows where they stand and allows them to grow in the company as well.

James: I like people to think of it like a football team. Right. So when you start off, you're the quarterback. You're down on the field, you're throwing, you're doing the pep talks, you're doing everything. you're that startup business owner. The first thing you wanna start doing is, how can I need to find my replacement quarterback?

'cause I wanna be on the sideline coaching. It doesn't mean that you're checking out the building and you'll check on it once a month, eventually we'll get to there, but your first step is going from quarterback to sideline, quarterback coach, and coaching that person, watching that person.

But don't run off on that field and grab the ball. But yell crazy if you gotta call a time out and have a huddle. And then you're gonna do is go from sideline coach to general manager. You wanna go up on the box. So now replace yourself there and then general manager, place yourself there. And then you can, watch the games on Sunday and not be so involved in the business because you've made yourself redundant.

From all the way down to the field to the entire organization. But I like to think of it that way when I'm thinking about how do I make myself redundant as a business owner? And if you don't know you're the quarterback, that's maybe your first thought. Go ahead and get some, coaches around you and some other guidance and the, mastermind group that can help you understand how much the business got a grip on you, and it's time to take a deep breath and start letting someone else throw the ball down the field a little bit.

Nic: That's a great analogy.  

Pete: Yeah, you said something in the podcast that stuck with me, James, about your employees. you said, if an employee doesn't know where they are in the picture three to five years from now, they're not in the picture. Right. And I think that that's huge.

Do your employees really know, you know, like, Hey, here's the mission and here's where I see you in this puzzle. Right. Because that's a game changer too. If I know where the company's trying to go, and I know as an employee, Hey, this is the role I'm going to play in this now, three years from now, five years from now, now I'm bought in, in a completely different way then if it's just like, Hey, I just need you to show up tomorrow, and do what I need you to do.

So that one really stuck with me from an owner standpoint, you know, to look at your employees that way and be able to answer that question could completely do a 180 in their mindset of how they approach their job.

James: Exactly right.

And then I challenge you, if you're listening to this and you're not the owner, like go ask them what's my five year plan? If they're, I don't know, to Pete's point, you're not in the five-year plan, but if you are that owner and like what Pete's saying, you do get ahead of things. You do have vision.

Like I just launched a new initiative within inside our company at the beginning of this month. I brought a couple team members into my initiative and my first conversations with them is, I'm gonna make myself redundant. You're gonna own this initiative and it won't be long.

I'm already looking for the door, not in a bad way, but if I stay in this seat right here for too long, our growth as an organization is stunted. But now to Pete's point, I can put together a game plan for that person, a vision for that person that they can work towards and be excited about waking up to every single day knowing that, hey, I'm gonna be the CEO of this part of the organization and make those command decisions and get empowered.

And my coach believes in me. They're gonna support me. And I'm gonna tell 'em the truth. Even when it hurts, right? I always tell 'em, I'm gonna tell you the good side. I'm gonna give you the attaboy, atta girls, but I'm also gonna be the first one to tell you where you're messing up and it won't feel very good.

But I'm gonna come up front with the truth first, and that's gonna raise 'em up as well.  

Pete: I love it. Well, this has been a great conversation.

Obviously things changing, right? In the roofing space specifically, but in the home improvement space, AI is a huge thing. I'm gonna give you a second here, James, to just kind of give your take on it.

As a roofing company, maybe I'm looking at AI, how I can employ it, where I should plug it in. What advice would you give me as a company owner?  

James: If you are like, oh, this is the way we've done it for 20 years. You've been in this for 20 years, that's good.

A lot more opportunity for success in the future. But if you go in with that mindset. These technologies that are coming up in front of you right now are some of the biggest game changing technologies that we've seen in the history of home services, and it will automate and help your team like no other business.

And the practical and tactical side of these things are, it's gonna cover your backside. I always call it like the Ironman suit, right? They got Jarvis in there like he's helping Iron Man, and he created that. This is what the AI can do for your business, whether it's helping your sales team advance, whether it's assessing damage on top of a roof and doing an assessment report, it layers in everywhere, AI, and it's only gonna be more and more and more. And I'm so excited about it.

People are so worried. Oh, they're taking our jobs. AI is not gonna put the roof on that building. What I wanna do is. Make it most efficient as I can as a business owner. I wanna watch my bottom line.

And I wanna beat any of my competition with race to the face, in that line too. But the AI component, once you see it in action, I mean, Pete, I'm pretty sure you're a little bit blown away after that AI report, we did a two minute video and it just woo.  

Pete: Yeah, unbelievable. Yeah, extremely detailed, right?

Like it was able to garner so much information from literally a two minute video and a couple of still photos that you took. We're seeing more and more contractors kind of dipping their toe, trying to figure out where it fits in the process.

Like James said, it's really gonna be layered in almost anywhere from, you know, the sales process to analytics, to a ton of places in between.  

James: It takes out the stuff your team doesn't like doing.

You know what your team doesn't like doing, they don't like all the notes. They'd rather just take the activity and have a script of it. Frankly, when you're writing stuff down, don't you forget things? I do. The older I get, the more I forget stuff. So now it's making sure everything is well documented.

So it's all these little bits and pieces that Pete's talking about. We are bringing the NFL instant replay to your business right now.

Once you install it into your process, how did we do this back before we had this?  

Nic: It's some crazy stuff, man. It's really exciting to see where things are going and what's really cool for me and Pete to see is our community kind of embracing it and wanting to get involved and asking questions about it.

So, I'm glad we were able to have this chat. Thanks James.  

James: Thanks for having me.

Pete: Well, thank you James. I appreciate you jumping on again.

This has been a great one, and hopefully you guys got some good stuff out of this. James, where can they go if they wanna learn more about Live Switch?

James: Two spots, just go to liveswitch.com. Tell us you heard us on the Roofr webinar today. Also LinkedIn. James Hatfield, right there on LinkedIn. Reach out, I'll communicate with anyone who reaches out and I'll make time for you personally.

Pete: Awesome. Thank you guys for joining us. Be sure to join us next time on the masterclass. And we will see everybody next time. Thank you James. And thank you everybody for joining us.