Shed Geek Podcast
The Shed Geek Podcast offers an in depth analysis of the ever growing and robust Shed Industry. Listeners will experience a variety of guests who identify or specialize in particular niche areas of the Shed Industry. You will be engaged as you hear amateur and professional personalities discuss topics such as: Shed hauling, sales, marketing, Rent to Own, shed history, shed faith, and much more. Host Shannon Latham is a self proclaimed "Shed Geek" who attempts to take you through discussions that are as exciting as the industry itself. Listeners of this podcast include those who play a role directly or indirectly with the Shed Industry itself.
Shed Geek Podcast
Race to the Face: How Real-Time Video Is Transforming Customer Experience
The digital transformation wave has finally crashed into the shed industry's shores, and it's bringing video technology that could revolutionize how we connect with customers. In this eye-opening conversation with LiveSwitch founder James Hatfield, we journey from his humble beginnings as a painter with a ladder to becoming a tech innovator helping businesses harness the power of real-time video.
James shares his fascinating story of unexpected entrepreneurship – from running painting crews to building tech companies valued in the billions. His latest venture, LiveSwitch, solves a surprisingly simple problem with profound implications: how to instantly connect with customers through the cameras everyone already carries in their pockets, without requiring app downloads or complicated setups.
For shed builders and dealers, the applications are game-changing. Imagine documenting every stage of delivery with video evidence, creating what James calls an "NFL instant replay" that shows exactly when and where issues might have occurred. This accountability system protects businesses while dramatically improving customer experience. Even more compelling is how video connections are revolutionizing sales – in many industries, video interactions close at rates comparable to or even higher than in-person meetings, while saving time and expanding your effective service area.
What resonates throughout this conversation is that digital adoption isn't about abandoning traditional values or craftsmanship – it's about enhancing them. The most successful businesses will blend the reliability of time-tested practices with the efficiency of modern tools. As James puts it, "We're going from ears to eyes," creating connections that build trust faster and solve problems more efficiently than ever before.
Ready to see how video technology could transform your shed business? Visit LiveSwitch's website and discover how simple tools can create extraordinary connections with your customers. The future is visual – and it's already here. Book a DEMO
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This episodes Sponsors:
Studio Sponsor: Shed Pro
Hello and welcome back to the Shed Geek Podcast. Here's a message from our 2025 studio sponsor. Let's be real Running a shed business today isn't just about building great sheds. The industry is changing fast. We're all feeling the squeeze, competing for fewer buyers while expectations keep climbing, and yet I hear from many of you that you are still juggling spreadsheets, clunky software or disconnected systems. You're spending more time managing chaos than actually growing your business. That's why I want to talk to you about our studio sponsor, Shed Pro. If you're not already using them, I really think you should check them out. Shed Pro combines your 3D configurator, point of sale, rto contracts, inventory, deliveries and dealer tools all in one platform. They even integrate cleanly into our Shed Geek marketing solutions, from website lead to final delivery. You can quote, contract, collect payment and schedule delivery in one clean workflow. Contract collect, payment and schedule delivery in one clean workflow. No more double entries, no more back and forth chaos. Quoting is faster, orders are cleaner and, instead of chasing down paperwork, you're actually running your business. And if you mention Shed Geek, you'll get 25% off all setup fees. Check it out at shedpro. co/ shedgeek. Thank you, Shed Pro, for being our studio sponsor and, honestly, for building something that helps the industry.
Shed Geek:Okay, welcome back to another episode of the Shed Geek podcast. I'm excited about this podcast this morning because this is such a unique thought idea. It just really, you know, to me this this just drools what today is in the digital platform world, like there's just no way to avoid it and like we try to avoid that in our little neck of the woods and our in our industry sometimes. But I've got James here today. James, just yeah, I've been thinking about this and look at your website. I want to know more. I'm a student right now. I'll be honest with you. I'm a student right now of what you do and I'm trying to understand more. Tell me a little bit about who you are and what you do.
James Hatfield:Yeah. So, I found myself in technology, but it never started here. I never thought I'd be here. It didn't come from family that would ever. I never would have thought I would be a tech nerd when I grew up, type of thing. Because a few decades ago I come from, you know my father built his own home. My grandfather, never even graduated high school and, you know, worked at a tire store.
James Hatfield:We come from simple means, we're simple guys, but we know how to build stuff. We're builders and inventors. Like we build, we invent, you know, we tinker, you know, and so you know my grandfather wanted me to be a painter when I, you know, my grandfather wanted me to be a painter when I, you know, graduated high school and that's what I did. You know I started painting companies and power washing companies and had crews and you know I knew how to. I knew how to paint a house. I had to tell. I know how to power wash, know how to stain decks. I know. You know I was taught from my family how to do that. I could do it well, I could teach others to do it accidentally found myself as a business owner.
Shed Geek:Is that how it goes? You're like I'll tell you what, if you could, if you could write the story. Like you know they say truth is stranger than fiction and I, and I truly believe it because you know a blue- collar guy here myself. You know same story. It's like me and you. The more I get to know you, it's like you're my, you're my long- lost brother or something here. You know, like neither parent graduated high school. You know like I was the first one to graduate high school, first one to go to even some form of college. You know, and like now my kids have obviously, you know, both graduated, they're both getting degrees, all of that stuff. But yeah, I mean grew up in a very blue- collar world. You know, where my parents taught me work hard for a living and you'll get ahead, and it was kind of like man. With the age and the emergence of the dot-com boom in the nineties and then all that's come with the internet since then, it's changed my whole world because I found myself to be in this sales world conversationalist, podcast Like you tell people you make you know what do you do for a living?
Shed Geek:I do a podcast. People are like you can do that. You can feed your family on a podcast. Yeah, it's like, well, if you're one, if you are creative, if you tap into the creativeness that the creator gave you. You know, I always say all the time you know, in the beginning God created Like we're made in his image. So, I think we're made to be creative. So, like for a lot of business owners, they're like I need you know they're risk adverse, I need tried. True, you know I need all the ROI, I need all this stuff and like that doesn't really allow for a lot of room for creativity. Like Maya Angelou said, you use the more of it you have. So, if you just keep finding new ways and that's kind of what Live Switch is I'm going to guess that you somehow made the transition into that. So, you tell the story, not me.
James Hatfield:No, no, it's great, I love it. We're definitely cut from the same cloth. So I was running my painting and power washing companies with my crews putting food on the table, and I would go to the bookkeeper right and this bookkeeper, and I'd hand them my stuff and they would talk to me and speak English to me and I would nod and I'm like I don't understand a word coming out of their mouth and I was like that's probably not good Cause you, you start, like I said, you start off being a builder and you find yourself you're accidentally a business owner. So, I was like I think I probably need to go and learn business. And I wasn't going to learn it from my family. We had no business owners in my family. So, I was like, well, I'm going to.
James Hatfield:Well, back in the day when college was affordable, right I went to a state school and I was like I'm going to learn business, I'm here to learn business and numbers, because I was afraid maybe somebody would kind of pull the wool under me. You know, because I didn't if I didn't know the well enough. So, I started doing that while running the companies and when I graduated, I connected with a guy who was running a landscaping company and his same type of thing. You know, interested, the problem that we're we both had, which was not understanding the numbers. He created this like technical model where you could take an income statement and balance sheet, you could put it into the system, and this again a couple decades ago, before all this ai stuff. It would spit out a plain language report that any business owner could understand, and then the magic of it was it was also collecting private company data. And he was like do you think we could sell this? And so, I'm like I can try. So, I got off the ladder for a little bit and started trying to sell this software right before software thing was really a thing, a big thing, and I started making sales and we started an incubator. We were nobodies and then it went over the years. It became Inc 500, which means you're one of the fastest growing companies in America, and now it's a multi-billion with a B, a multi-billion dollar company that we sold to KKR, and so that worked out all right. And from there it's like well, let's get into nonprofits. So, we have a few nonprofits. One of them is called Inmates to Entrepreneurs, where we put thousands and thousands of incarcerated men and women through our program teaching business and that turned into an ABC television show called Free Enterprise Can't make this stuff up Finished. That season won a bunch of awards. It's fantastic, you should watch it. My business partner is a star of that show.
James Hatfield:And then we decided well, we kind of don't feel like hanging up our boots, let's do another business. And we wanted to stay in tech. So instead of starting from scratch, we had a little more capital at this time. So, we're like let's buy a company. So, we scoured for hundreds of companies. We found a company in British Columbia, Canada, that was founder-led, family-led. We wanted something like that, but we figured we could go and help. So, we bought them five years ago.
James Hatfield:And again, back to when someone speaks English, I don't know what they're saying. I started hanging out with the engineers because it's a tech company. I mean, they are definitely trying to speak English to me and I'm definitely like guys. I'm a pretty smart, educated guy. Now I do not understand. And they're talking to me about this technology called WebRTC. I didn't know what that was Web Real-Time Communication. So, I'm hanging out with engineers the builders of tech companies are the coders right, just like when you've got your crews, they're the workers, right. So, I wanted to be with the people and again, it took me a while to learn what we were doing.
James Hatfield:But my goodness, once I started figuring the things out, I mean we're powering the Super Bowl, like if you go to an MLB ballpark for professional baseball and scan a QR code and they put you on the Jumbotron. That's our stuff. We do stuff with the government. We do stuff with NASA. We're doing stuff I mean sports entertainment, like remember during COVID the NBA had the bubble and had all the. We did that. We piped in for the All-Star Games. We did it for that. We piped in for the all-star games. We did for WWE wrestling. I mean, I was behind the scenes for WWE wrestling you know, because we're helping them out, like it was crazy, right.
James Hatfield:So here I am, like, okay, how did I get here? You know, I'm just a guy on a ladder painting homes and now I'm with these smarty pants engineer guys. Well, I got a knock on the door from the chief of police in Washington DC of all places, to reinvent our nation's 911 phone call right. So, when you place a 911 call, an emergency, you're on your phone, and when you're in a compromised situation, it's hard to explain what's going on. I don't know. We just had.
James Hatfield:Hurricane Helene here in Nashville and it was a war zone in here and I mean we were doing river rescues, all kind of stuff. My buddy got cut out of the roof of his house with a hatchet and hacksaw from someone kayaking over Intense Trying to explain where am I? Well, I don't know how you get here because we're surrounded by the river. Good luck, but we were trying to save someone in the river.
James Hatfield:So, we had to come up with a way now that most everybody listens maybe not everyone listens, but most everyone listening has a smartphone in their pocket and on your smartphone are these things and you probably have four or five of them cameras, right? So, the idea with chief of police was how do we tap in to those cameras? With no app, you can't stop and download something in the middle of emergency, like, oh, I forgot my password, you're not doing that. So how do I get into those cameras and then transmit that live video to the police, car, fire truck or emergency medical so they can see what they're driving into? It's called situational awareness, right? So, I woke up at like 3 in the morning. I had an idea. I was like I got it. I think I got it.
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James Hatfield:So, when that what I did I sketched everything out went to my computer scientist, I was like you need to build this because I want to show it to the chief. So, like we build it, I show them a working model which allows you, basically, when you're on a 911 call, to receive a text message, because that's a different data channel. You can tap it and then instantly we can, you know, if you say allow, we can get into your camera feed, and now you can just hold your camera up and from the citizen that video can be piped into the police car, so they know what they're driving into.
James Hatfield:And so I was like that's awesome yeah and then, and then we got back in home services. I'll talk to you about that in a little bit. But you see the story kind of connecting it like how the heck am I on the shed geek right now?
Shed Geek:well, and it's, and it's wild because you know, I'm writing down all the stuff, the, the web, rt, the real time communication, like even the, I think me and you talked on our first call, you know, like you know, Hebrews 13, 3, be with those in prison as though you're in prison yourself. I mean, that has been, you know, my, my calling, you know, and it's something that I've not been able to do for quite some time because my attention span has been very much on this industry and things like that. So there's other opportunities that are starting to like pop up in my life and I'm really trying to be like, you know, listening to God on these different things and like, okay, what do you want me to do, when, where, why, all that kind of thing. But I mean, we did some prison ministry for a time. I worked for a year and full-time in faith-based drug and alcohol ministry, because I recognize that you know, most, most criminals are actually nonviolent and like I think it just depends on if you believe in second chances and like rehabilitation over retribution, you know, and things like that.
Shed Geek:So, I definitely want to check out the show. I'm not familiar with it but I want to know more about it and, um, I'm definitely going to watch it because it's just like that, like that's the kind of tv that I would watch. Anyway, like you know, I don't just really spend a lot of like just numbing hours of just tv time. Uh, you know, I watch sports because I enjoy sports, but I'm not, if you know, it's not priority, but these kind of things are learning opportunities for me and I feel like they're just chances to uh, uh, to better the world. I know that sounds a bit naive, you know, don't get me wrong, but I believe that completely. Um, and, and you know, I've never really been a lock them up, throw away the key kind of guy. I've always been like, hey, where's you know, where's an opportunity here in this, I mean some of the smartest people, I know, best people I know. I mean, you know a lot of the listeners have heard the story.
Shed Geek:You know I had Dylan on the podcast a couple of years ago, a marketing partner. A lot of you guys know them work with him daily. You know, I mean he's got that history, he's got that past. He literally is an inmate to entrepreneur, you know, and because he was driven and he had a radical change in his life right with know and because he was driven, and he had a radical change in his life right with his salvation. So, like that, it's like two different people, like literally born again. Right, it's like two different people. He has his past, but he cannot run his past, you know. So, what he had to do was create his own future through creativity. And he's done. He's done well, he's done great.
James Hatfield:So yeah, no, we've seen it with our own eyes. I mean, we hire people out of the program. We all need second chances. I mean, you're quoting the word which one of my nonprofits I found at churches. So, the thing that's coming to mind is like when did I see you sick and heal you? When did I come and feed you when you were hungry? When did you visit me in prison? And then he's like well, you did for the least of these, you did for me, right.
James Hatfield:And the Bible talks about hey, thieves, steal no longer. Go get a job, so you have something to share. I mean, if you think about that for a minute, like okay, stop stealing back to your nonviolence, right, just stop stealing, go get a job, go work. There's Adam's curse, you know, like we've got to work in thorns and thistles. So, we're working. Like even he's at work, like you would think, if you're resting, like don't you just want to rest, aren't you tired? But he's there and he says work why? So, you have something to share. And why share? Because he says it's better to give than receive. So, what's really going to fill us up? I think we're all chasing stuff to make us feel great, but what we need to do is be generous. We need to share, we need second chances because we all need them. I need them, right? So, anyway, I'll get off the soapbox here, but I mean, you get me going.
Shed Geek:Shannon, we can talk about this stuff all day long. Oh man, I wish I might have to share, like my, one of my most recent like keynote speeches that we did where it talks about how much you know the bible talks about giving and how much giving is uh mentioned in the bible versus you know, um, prayer, uh, you know, uh, just, you know, things that we think of, that are the staples of our foundation, of our faith. Giving is actually in there. It was something like 8,300 and something times like you know, even, even the Lord gave his son, right, he gave his son so that we would be healed, you know, by his tribe. So, like, yeah, we, I just love everything about what you guys do, but I need to know more about life switch. I need to, I need to figure it out, I need to understand how it works. So walk me through. You know there's a couple different options, like where I look at like live switch contact, live switch concierge, like you explained to me, like if you were a I'm trying to think of the listener's mindset right now, if you will, James, uh, uh, and I'm not usually this disheveled after 300 episodes, but you've got my mind going 100 mile an hour with like your services and your products. So, like help. Help me walk through.
Shed Geek:If you're a business owner who builds sheds and you've already talked about that that's a that's a huge thing in the industry. A lot of guys just wanted to build sheds. They didn't want to be business owners. They didn't want to learn about se, crms, websites. How does local SEO work versus Google Ads and meta ads? And oh no, do I need to have automation funnels built out and explaining to them how automation funnels is going to take a lot of pressure off of your salespeople, but how does what you're doing help the manufacturer or the salesperson?
James Hatfield:Yeah, let me tell some stories here and paint a picture okay there's a great disruption going on, which was ushered in through covid.
James Hatfield:Right when covid came, we all hopped on this thing called zoom. I think we're on it right now, yeah, right. So, we got ushered into that quickly. Very quickly, organizations had to change how we met and didn't meet, how we stayed connected. So, this video came in to our lives and now we have, like I said, all these cameras on our phones.
James Hatfield:There's a time now to bring this in professionally. That's practical and tactical. Okay, zoom is great right now for us to record a podcast for me to see you, for us to record a podcast for me to see you, for us to have a thing many, many miles apart. But it's not so great for third-party assistance. It's not so great if there's not another person on the other end, like if you're talking to yourself, right, but now there's these tools. We want to like the chief of police, literally after I presented it, he looks over his glasses. He's like doing this on our James. He's like just why didn't we already have this? This seems so like logical to me. I'm like here's the thing.
James Hatfield:We didn't have the infrastructure. Like I think now they issue these cell phones to you when you're born, right, yeah, so like they, we all have this infrastructure. We just haven't started to really use these cameras. We know from picking up the phone when it had a cord back in the day and then it went to cell phone and now, we hook it to our ear. We know how to text really well.
James Hatfield:Well, the next piece that we're missing is these cameras that are going to start. It's coming for everything, everything, I mean. The first place some people may have already experienced it is when they get their car worked on. Right, have you gone and got your car worked on? Maybe you haven't experienced this yet, but some of the dealerships are now recording all their work that they're doing. We're changing the air filter, we're filling up the tire, we just checked your oil. Why? Because when you give somebody your car and you're sitting in the waiting room and they come out with the bill, have you ever questioned like did they really do all that or are they just? I want proof of work.
James Hatfield:I want to see that. So, you can't argue when you shine light on things just like why this is so important for emergency response, we're not going to arm all of our teachers with AK-47s in our schools. I mean we could, but it's not going to work out. So, we want to shine light on the situation, right, and when you can hold your camera, just as a citizen, just show the video. Doesn't that really shine light on the darkness, right? So now these video pieces are going to shine light on whatever you do.
ADVERTISEMENT:Oh no, Sam, what's going
ADVERTISEMENT:Are you okay? Yes, I'm fine, Lisa, oh no. Sam, what's going on? Are you okay? Yes, I'm fine, Lisa. I was just trying to get a screwdriver, and all this other stuff fell down. I'm ready to go buy a shed so we can have some space in this garage again.
ADVERTISEMENT:I agree, I keep looking at the shed Mr Jenkins bought.
ADVERTISEMENT:Let's ask him where I got his Howdy neighbor. We're wondering how do you like your shed?
ADVERTISEMENT:I love it. It's exactly what I needed and I couldn't have asked for a better service. And where did you get it? Hmm, I can't remember, but let me check Something. This nice will probably have the builder's name on it somewhere. Hmm, no, I'm sorry I can't find, but let me check something. This nice will probably have the builder's name on it somewhere.
ADVERTISEMENT:Hmm no, I'm sorry, I can't find a name anywhere. Well, we finally got a shed yes, I just hope we're happy.
ADVERTISEMENT:The thing is a lot more shoddy than I expected, and I'm sure I told them I wanted a window, but they didn't have it in the paperwork so I couldn't argue. Boy is this a lousy shed. We haven't even had it two years, have we?
ADVERTISEMENT:Barely. It was just a bad deal all the way around. Mr Jenkins told me the other day that he likes his shed so much he wants to get a second one, but he still can't remember where he got it.
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James Hatfield:Right, let's get into manufacturing and let's get into building really quick, okay? So, if you're manufacturing sheds, has your shed ever had an issue? Maybe the hinge didn't work, maybe a couple nails? Did you ever have an issue after delivery? And usually when a customer has that, are they in a happy mode. No, if you're lucky, they're a little bit frustrated, right, because they just spent a lot of money and you delivered it and maybe something happened on the way over. It was looking perfect and it would look great. Before you put it on the truck way over, it was looking perfect and it will look great when, before you put on the truck, then you put it on the delivery vehicle and then, all of a sudden, you probably want to know where did it break down, right? So, the NFL, you guys familiar NFL, they got these things called the instant replay. Wouldn't you like an instant replay of what happened, from manufacturing to delivery, to onsite? Well, we have these things called cameras now.
James Hatfield:Okay, the problem was is that it was never easy. It's not easy. You gotta download an app or you gotta go into your camera, roll and scroll through all the photos of your family. Like you don't want to have all your family photos and all of your pictures of all your sheds together. It doesn't really work right and you're not going to really use a facetime to like review something. It's not good for same with Zoom. It's not tuned up for that. That tool is not tuned up right. So, what we've done is we've tuned everything up for third party and remote assistance, as well.
James Hatfield:As the nerdy talk is called async. No one knows what that means, right? It's? I call it the video dropbox. When my father was rebuilding his, he had an old Datsun 240 Nissan Z for any of the car owners and he rebuilt the thing from a rust bucket but he would have to drop it off on his way to work because he wanted to get it painted and he left the key in the dropbox, right? So, we created this video dropbox where you can put the video in there. So, let's go back to the shed to delivery example. Okay, so what? First thing you're going to do is have a QR code on the shed or in your facility or a guy can just pick out of his pocket. You're going to scan the QR code and take a video. Okay, hey, I'm doing my walk around.
James Hatfield:Final inspection Everything looks great, got it, then that video goes right to the cloud. Nothing is stored on the device of your staff or your customer. That's a liability. If your staff quits that day out with the video and you don't want your staff scrolling through everything, right, and some of the computer science behind it is even in crappy internet situations. Maybe if you deliver these sheds in the middle of nowhere, right, you can still scan the QR, take the video.
James Hatfield:The nerdy stuff is it'll cache in a browser and I can get even a 3G internet. It'll upload the video and it's all very. It's SOC 2 certified. We had to get it for the government, I mean, it's more. It's safer than a phone call. So, if you worry about safety, it's actually safer than the phone call. So now I'm going to follow the journey of the shed. All right, let's walk with the shed.
James Hatfield:So now we've taken a video of it post pre-delivery. Now what you're going to ask your driver to do is hey, I need you to take a video upon delivery. So, we have a QR code on the shed Maybe it's on a hinge, maybe it's on the inside of the door. You're putting the name of your brand, your phone number and then take a video QR code. So now that delivery driver can scan the QR code and show he didn't screw anything up, right, and then they deliver it. And now when the customer sees a broken hinge or something, they scan the QR code, take a video. So, you've got point-to-point video evidence to find out in your NFL incident replay. Where did something go wrong? Did it happen on truck delivery? Did it happen at the truck delivery? Did it happen at the manufacturing? Did it somehow happen from the customer? So, you see how stuff's starting to weave in and I'm just getting, I'm just getting started right. So hopefully this example resonates.
James Hatfield:Maybe you tell me, Shannon, if it does or doesn't.
Shed Geek:No, I, I like I'm thinking about a million other things like what's the journey look like of the build, you know, if the, if the customer has a QR access to the build and maybe you don't want to provide that, maybe as a manufacturer you just don't want to show the actual work being done, or something like that. But maybe it's not the, the literal hammering, you know, or framing of the building, as much as it is a process at, you know, three hours in, nine hours in, oh, building's complete, just kind of gives you an update. So, it stops a lot of these calls that are like, hey, is my building done? Is it ready? Even though you've told them four weeks lead time. And you get a call a week later and they're like, hey, I'm just curious about my building. You'd be like, oh, actually, if you just scan this QR code, you can see that they're framing it up right now. Here's a picture of it in this place, or they're starting on it next week or whatever it is.
Shed Geek:But there's a million things that come to mind here and that is, you know, podcasting. It's a perfect example. I follow a lot of podcast groups and like just identifying what we're on today. And this is five years in 300 episodes in like, if you ask five different people what a podcast is, you get a different answer. What is it Video? Is it audio only? Is it you know is? Is what's talk radio back in the day? Was that essentially a podcast? Was talk radio back in the day? Was that essentially a podcast? We added video to ours for the YouTube watchers, for those who just want to kind of understand more.
Shed Geek:I think it comes down to primary communication and I'm going to liken this to like my sales experience. This is why the digital storefront is so important is because people buy from people that they trust and there's a discrepancy there. Maybe when they can't see you like, there's just something about visible that makes a difference, even if I tell you, well, this shed today, James, is going to be seven thousand five hundred dollars, and if you just put, you know, five hundred dollars down, your payment's going to be 274, 76 cents or whatever for however many months. But when I write that down on paper, there's a visual cue for me to look at now as a customer, instead of you just rattling those numbers off and me trying to remember all that stuff. There's something about the visual. That changes things completely.
Shed Geek:And what you're talking about with the police chief, you know you're talking about uniform presence. That does most of the job. You know throwing, you know, a lot keeps an honest thief out, right, that's the old saying. Right, like, if they want to get in, they're going to get in, but the lot just deters the honest thief to say, oh, that's too much trouble, I don't want to do that. Uniform presence does a lot of trouble. I don't want to do that. Uniform presence does a lot of that. Video does a lot of that. Just having, you know, some people say I don't care, I'm going to die on this hill. So, you know I don't care about the consequences, but video does so much.
Shed Geek:And the one thing I've told salespeople, like from my, from my small little humble opinion, is like man, can you imagine the customers getting to know you before they even show up? I mean and there's so much more, James, that we can talk about that. I haven't even jumped into you know the fact that that we have a distributor who's an advertiser here on the podcast with us. That does all of the uh insignias on the machines. You know they've talked about putting QR codes.
Shed Geek:We own a uh, a company called Shed Hub that you know. Like they, they establish a Shed Hub ID. So, it's basically every shed has an ID, which means you can track in the cloud, as you're talking, all of these other details. Like, before I go move the shed for a customer, is it actually a something that has a lien on it, either through rent to own or through traditional finance? Oh, maybe I shouldn't move that building because it turns out they're trying to get me to buy this building and it's not for sale because it's owned by another entity, like an RTO provider or finance provider. Now it's stolen property. We've stopped that by addressing this QR code and not just the visual effect of it. But how can you tie in all of these other you know?
James Hatfield:So, my mind's going 100 mile an hour, but oh yeah, no, I mean, these are the things that are real right. So, if you're in the sales process, imagine going from the phone call where you're doing the envelope 7500, you know whatever, it's going to four or five figures to say, hey, since I got you, are you near the site where it's going to be constructed or where we're going to put it down? Can I send you a text really quick and you show me? So now they just tap the text. No download, you just send the text. If you can send a text, you can use our stuff. This stuff is you can learn in a minute. They tap it, now they could walk out and show you where the build is, or they can show you the shed that needs to be moved.
James Hatfield:And it does two things. You get to see it all recorded so you can also share it after the recording if you need to share it with anybody. Also, it's your NFL replay, like we talked about earlier. But then it establishes that human connection trust. Second, so being face-to-face with someone shaking hands, being on a video call, people close a lot of business. We've got thousands and thousands of customers. I got all the data to back it up the difference between being on property and being virtually with video is almost negligible, and in some industries, being on video actually has a higher close rate. How is that? How could a virtual video of a person have a higher close rate than me being on property? That doesn't make sense, right? Well, let's talk about it.
James Hatfield:Convenience and speed. Are you the only shed provider in the country? I'm probably not, right. And so, what do normal customers do? They go to Google. They look at reviews. You're not the only one with a lot of high reviews. So, if you're not fast enough, what are they going to do? They're going to call the next one on the list. What do they care? Right that they call the next one in. So, when that phone rings, you better pick it up. Or when that quote comes in, you better respond quick because you're on the clock, just like I've been.
James Hatfield:NFL wide receivers are on the clock and Olympians are on the clock. You're on the clock and you might not think you are, but look, look at what's happening. Look at the age of Amazon. People probably buy their sheds on Amazon, some of them, lot of the listeners. You're already in this, and so your customer is no different. This is where they're being conditioned. I even saw an article today Amazon's bringing more overnight delivery locations to even small towns. Okay, so it's only going to get worse, because we value an experience. If I'm about to pay you four or five figures for a shed like, connect with me, show me if you're going to come and construct it on my property. Now I can have the you know the Shannon project and anytime I scan a QR code, take a video, it goes to the Shannon project and Shannon, who's sitting at home, can watch the build from home or office and chronological order Right, and he's been in four or five figures. These are the kinds of things we like to see.
James Hatfield:And the only difference is it has not been easy in the past. Now it's dead simple.
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Shed Geek:James, there is a. There is definitely a possibility that things get criticized that aren't understood easily. I tend to find this is a conservative issue more than any other issue, conservative. I just can't get that word out. Can I conservatism? Bam, look at me like it's just. It's just one of those things where we the this is the way it's always been done, okay, it's.
Shed Geek:It's hard to move into a different world. You know, some people embrace it wholeheartedly. You know the ones that do you see them like they just jump into everything that's new, that's tech, a little bit old-fashioned, right like my wife, my son. New technology comes out, they're right on it, learning it, figured it out, even a new phone. I mean, they're excited about it. They go home and like the first thing they do, like I won't even look at the thing until the next day and be like I gotta figure this thing out all over again because it's a new interface and I gotta do this like my mind is just kind of like you know easy to criticize things. Why don't they just keep the button right there? You know, why is it? Why doesn't it stay? You know like I'm that old dad, you know that's like just grumpy and things like that.
Shed Geek:But I think we do. I think we criticize things we don't understand. So, if it's not simple user interface, if it's not simple and easy to understand, there's just this. I laugh about this all the time. I joke about this all the time in the shed industry. I say you could tell someone I have a new product, a new idea, a new vision and people would say it'll never work. And then you're like, well, do you want to hear it? You know it's just this mentality that it'll never work. First, and then tell me what it is so like. How simple is this? You talked about the text. I mean, I'm assuming that's the live switch contact service? Okay, and then what's the concierge? What's the difference?
James Hatfield:uh, concierge is more of live. We call it wall to call. Like you can scan a qr code and instantly video connect. Okay, so, like you just scan it and it'll tell you where the person is, oh, or what shed they're in front of. You can have a different qr code for every shed. Oh, you're standing in front of model one, two, three, four, five. In fact, this was the one purchased by Johnny Jones. Oh, are you Johnny? Yeah, so we're trying to make it easier to phone call.
James Hatfield:Think of all the places that that can be used, and it gets used a lot in property management. We have a ton of self-storage customers here, but that may not be something. We have a platform, right, we're like a buffet. You're not going to eat everything at the buffet, unless you're one of those kinds, but you're going to look at the buffet and find the thing that makes the most sense for you. So, on the platform, what typically gets used a lot are SMS to connect. That's our most popular. You send a text, tap it connect. Like everybody uses that. Every industry uses that. Tap it connect Like everybody uses that. Every industry uses that.
James Hatfield:The QR code that has the video Dropbox that's the second most popular and then the other things that we have, like instant recording. Tap on a tablet kiosk to connect. Tap a button on your website to video connect. What we're trying to do is wherever your customer is. I don't care if they're on your website, if they're standing in front of the shed, if they're in their car. I want to meet them where they're at right. I want to human connect with people wherever they're at, and I want to get we call it race to the face. Okay, the faster I can get my face in front of you, the faster I can do business with you when you go to video. For that you can take the situation down notches and it changes everything, because people have a lot of keyboard courage, even get a lot of voice courage, but for you to yell at me when you're looking at me, Absolutely.
Shed Geek:It changes a lot of everything. That's why you know the uniform presence I talked about earlier. Just I wrote down the word accountability. It just provides some accountability because you see the memes on Facebook and social media and things like that. This is man. I'm glad I grew up in the last generation where everything wasn't recorded. Well, take a look at the opposite side of that coin flip there and say well, why it's like because I'd be held accountable or there'd be a lot of like embarrassing footage of me doing some stupid stuff whenever I was a kid. Well, it just kind of like neutralizes that platform, right, like you know, if, if, if somebody's seeing you, I like your, I like your term keyboard courage and even you know voice courage. You know, sometimes my phone man. I love, I love.
Shed Geek:I would love to see a demo of something like this. I don't know where I go to see this or where would love to see a demo of something like this. I don't know where I go to see this or where others go to see this. I'd like to find out more information just to kind of understand how it from a sales person's perspective. I don't feel like we've even really tapped into using video chat. Enough for sales, because you said it earlier. I mean it's.
Shed Geek:I'm going to get into this whole soapbox here now. Right, please forgive me, I'm going to get into this whole soapbox about self-checkouts and things like this. Like, look, I try not to argue with people too much, James, if I can help it, but I love self-checkout. I love self-checkout not because I believe it's taking jobs. I take a look at somebody like Walmart, let's say, their largest employer in America. How on earth are they the ones that should be accused of costing jobs?
Shed Geek:Things change over time. We don't pump. Someone doesn't pump our gas anymore. We pump our gas. We never stop saying oh no, it's taking jobs because I have to pump the gas. Like we never stopped saying like, oh no, it's taking jobs, you know, because I have to pump the gas.
Shed Geek:Like I returned my own shopping cart, you know, uh, you know somebody doesn't like walk out most of the time unless you're elderly anymore and like help you with your groceries to the car. Like I remember my first job was a you know, as a grocer. Like that's, that's all I did was like you know, I I took groceries to people's car constantly because of the service that you offered. It wasn't removing people's jobs, so we love self-checkout. We love you know. Uh, um, click and pay you know.
Shed Geek:No, that doesn't mean that we don't sometimes want to spend some time in the store shopping too. We're in this hybrid model where it's the best of both worlds today, and that's why the digital storefront in the shed industry is necessary and the brick and mortar location is still very necessary. Like, I don't think that you need to be all of one and none of the other. I think that you just have to find a way to navigate through this day and age, which is a complicated retail market where you have to both embrace what was and what will be. To both embrace what was and what will be, and this is part of what will be because it's making it. All you're doing is increasing the efficiency of the person's time in their day by being able to look on this and see this. Yeah, I'm soapboxing now it's already happening.
James Hatfield:This isn't something that is some idea. We have thousands and thousands and thousands of users all over the world and all kinds of industries using this. Once you get it in the hands, once you service a customer in a way that wow, once you protect your backside, you know like oh, it left the manufacturing facility. Perfect, it was a delivery guy. Or you know, once you're able to save a trip out, like oh, they just couldn't figure out the latch. Like I can just guide you through it Right. Like it's little bits and pieces like that where you didn't have to leave the dinner table with your family at seven o'clock and somebody was able to still solve the problem.
James Hatfield:I remember my big aha moment was when I was talking to this guy who takes care of the NFL team, the tight Tennessee Titans. 20 years in the FBI, he's been around the block a bit and he protects the stadium and the players, and the stadium at Nashville is huge. So, I'm talking to him his name's CT and I'm showing him everything and he's like James, I love this for emergency response but he's like I got the stupidest question Like what is it? He's like sometimes the trash cans fall over on the other side of the arena where my other guy is and I have to hop in my little golf cart and drive all the way there. He's like, can I just send him a text and he could just show me so I don't have to hop in my golf cart anymore. And I'm like, yeah, you could. And that's when I was like, oh, this reminds me like the next walkie talkie or cb radio that I used to have, like I get it now. We were going from ears to eyes. That was the big aha. And so, once you start having that into whatever it's sales or operations or post-delivery think customer testimonials, before and after's, think training, think best of breed, think of how we construct something, something, think one-offs. Like once you have a video record of everything you are, you just have so much. Imagine taking the NFL instant replay away from the NFL. People would go crazy. Yeah right, it's that kind of thing.
James Hatfield:Once she gets into the mix and just land and it'll expand. It's what we've seen every time. You just find a couple like, oh yeah, that's where it goes and then it expands across the business because your wheels just really start to turn in crazy. It's like I've had people come to me oh yeah, I started using this for recruiting. I'm like what do you mean? He's like well, we'll just if someone's interested, you know, I'll ask them three questions and send them a video Dropbox link and they have to answer them and I'll look at it and I can decide if they should be coming in for an interview or not. I'd rather just save my hour-long interview if the person can't even answer three simple questions and I get to see them.
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James Hatfield:So, all these crazy use cases and things that happen, but you know, saving that extra plane flight out or that trip in the truck, that's really where the rubber starts to meet the road, because this stuff's really inexpensive, this is not expensive stuff either.
Shed Geek:Well, it works for all applications. I mean pole barn, post frame sheds. There's a lot of people in our world that sell furniture outdoor furniture, play sets, pergolas, gazebos, you name it, the list goes on and on. Animal shelters a lot of dog kennels, miniature play sets, pergolas, gazebos, you name it, the list goes on and on. Animal shelters a lot of dog kennels, a lot of horse run-ins and livestock shelters and things like that. So, even if that's not their primary business and storage, typical storage, backyard storage, shed storage, is.
Shed Geek:There's all these other applications in which it could work, but there's a reason that me and you were here, like I could go to an audio only podcast. That's what we did. Start now, you know, and there's nothing wrong with that. Actually, audio only podcast saves me a significant amount of time because the video is more complex just in the sense that you have to upload it, the edit and things like that. But the value that it offers is so much more valuable if people and things like that.
Shed Geek:But the value that it offers is so much more valuable if people sometimes people just want to see you, they just want to see who they're talking to. They even want to know that you're a real person in today's day and age, with a lot of the ai generated stuff that we see, they just you know that's. That's why google bought uh, was it was? Was it a Reddit or whatever? You know, what I mean Was just like because the emergence of AI just had so much, literally, you know, authentic or artificial intelligence that they just wanted to hear from a real person when you need to change a timing belt on a 92 Chevy you know, like AI can get you this really cool stuff.
Shed Geek:But there's just some things that human interaction is necessary for, which is why I love that we still have regular checkouts. Like being a fan of the self- checkout. When I'm in a hurry, is great because I got to go and I'll be quicker. But you know, when we're in a more leisurely atmosphere and me and my wife aren't in a hurry and we just want to go up and talk to the cashier and have that human interaction, there's nothing wrong with that. It's good. It's a you know, like, but you're in control. The whole point is that, like, you're in the driver's seat whenever you're able to have more information.
James Hatfield:And as the price tag goes up, the level of expected customer service goes up as well. Right, like when you're getting ready to spend four or five figures or more on something, your expectations rise up a bit more. So, if your average product size is four figures and up, there's other kind of things that you can do that makes sense. And when you can see what the customer sees like, let's say you're, you don't ship things fully assembled and the customer has to do final assembly. And if you're most guys like me like we're gonna put the directions down for a second, I'm like I got this All right, and then we get in a little bind. And we get in such a bind we're like, oh, dang it. So, we start going to YouTube or we actually pick up the instructions, right, and so then if your person back on at in your office can now see what they see, like no, show me, it could be, a part was missing, it could be a problem on here. And oh, I need to ship you out this part. So sorry, I didn't come with the kit. Or actually it looks like you got the wrong bar up. Uh, take, let's take that one off. And these people be educated and the level of that is next level for someone who might you just dropped off something that they've got to do, the final construction on um. Or call back, preventing those callbacks. You know it's already expensive enough to have somebody go out there to deliver and to install. Now callbacks are usually net $0. People don't pay for callbacks so, but you're paying for the callback, you're paying for the gas, you're paying for the hourly wage person. All you're trying to do is get a satisfied customer. If you could prevent that from at least looking at it first. Also, it prevents oh crap, I forgot to bring this tool Right. Yeah, these are wasted time. So, seeing what someone else sees, or even when you have your team on property and maybe they're more junior, I need to talk to more senior, the owner, or hey, we got an issue here Right. When you can see it as the owner or as more of a senior person, you can have your eyes on more projects and be in more places at once.
James Hatfield:You know, and in addition to that, you talked about AI. As AI, we like to view it as something that as a co-pilot, as something that empowers. I always get the vision of Iron man with Jarvis. You know he has an iron suit. That's good. Ai right. So, things like we're adding is like translations. So, when you're speaking to someone who's English as a second language, think of a ninja movie where it's putting up that. Think of it. We have a laser guidance system where you can put a laser on the live video to guide someone. Think about GPS measurement tools, like on video. All these things that come alongside that are AI driven. Still, we're having the human experience. I'm still, you know, the guy in the Iron man suit, but now I've got Jarvis beside me helping me to serve and giving me that next level of I don't know protection.
Shed Geek:So, is this 100% like phone generated? No, okay, so there's other tools you can do it on.
James Hatfield:We have no app, we're appless right. So I don't care if you're on a PC, a Mac, a tablet, a phone, what brand phone, how old phone doesn't matter. If you've got a camera and a browser, which most every device does, you're good to go. Okay, so we're off to the races, because I got guys that'll be back working from a computer and then sending the text to a text there, and I got others that'll just send a link to a tablet, or someone will scan it with their iPad on the QR code. So, it doesn't, it doesn't matter. I would say that the phone and the computer are the most popular.
Shed Geek:You talked about being in the home service field. Tell me a little bit about that, because I work with a couple other companies in that home service field in the tech world and that's really a market that obviously people are trying to get into, because business is business, but our daily lives consist of all the products that we buy in business for a purpose of trying to enjoy our home life or make it better or whatever. So how does this affect like homeowners?
James Hatfield:So, we are one of the only one of very few companies in the world that do live video and so we're powering like. We're even under the hood of Service Titan, If you've heard them. We're under the hood of Jobber. Even the largest companies struggle with live video. So, we're able to empower those folks when we have plenty of electricians and plumbers and restoration companies like serve pro is our customer and one tom plumber and college hunks hauling junk and all those are our customers.
James Hatfield:So, all they are doing like the homeowner, all they're doing is tapping a text or tapping a link. That's it. Like again, they're not having to go into any app, it just launches and boom, they're connected. Same with our home service guys. They're literally just putting in a phone number or sending a link, boom, and they're on and it's tuned up for them. So, because it's third-party assistance the homeowner it's actually the reverse of a FaceTime call for them. So, they see themselves large and they see the service person or a salesperson small, and that service person even has a virtual background behind them. Maybe they're working in their truck or they're in a call center or they're in the office. Makes them look very professional because they'll have their branding and then the homeowner can just hit a flip the camera button and if you're like you and I, Shannon, we have these big glasses on right. If you were trying to look through a FaceTime call, it's the size of a postage stamp.
James Hatfield:I'm going to fall down the stairs you know, and now we've made it to where you're looking through your phone and it's large and it's little things like that.
James Hatfield:Like, even when you flip the camera, you can hit a button and it turns on your flashlight, like I got customers that will have to go to water heater, to the plumber or the breaker box, to the electrician, right, so we're able to just, it's just thoughtful. This is the kind of stuff you're not going to find in other platforms because it wasn't made for that right so we use the right tools for the right job. You know, I mean, I can probably hammer a nail in with the end of a screwdriver, but my hammer works better. Yeah, no.
Shed Geek:I get it. Yeah, I'm thinking about like the service after the sale, the postscript, automations and things like that that we're doing right now, that we're even trying to show that I can be beneficial if you're a manufacturer who maybe you do a finance or rent on payment, why, you know, once a customer gets out there and then they're like, oh, I don't remember who I call, who I talk to, or whatever. We're trying to increase that level of communication. We're trying to. I mean, there's some setbacks along the way because when you're working on your business, while working in your business, those are very hard things to do, so you spend so much time. Like a carpenter never finishes work at home, right, because he's finishing it for everyone else. You know, if you're a mechanic, you know you never quite take care of your car like you take care of others, and it's the same way whenever you're in any kind of other services. You're working in your business, so you don't have a whole lot of time to work on your business.
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Shed Geek:And I think there's a lot of manufacturers that can identify with what I'm saying there, because they're doing a lot of this and you're the chief, everything you know. Sometimes in the smaller operations, you're the chief marketing, the chief sales, you're the CEO CFO, you're the you know, chief trash taker outer. I mean like you got to do a lot of it. So, time savings is very important, but it's understanding how to use the tools.
Shed Geek:I think that's been my biggest challenge is like, what we've had to do is like and you talked about your, your aha moment, I like to say my watershed moment and things like marketing was whenever we gave a guy a quote. We were a little concerned because the quote that he wanted was very, uh, uh, rudimentary. It was just very simple, it was very blase. And we were like, man, we do high-end work and we're a little bit concerned that this simple website may reflect on our inability to do some of the more fun things or bigger or better things. And he said, at the end of the phone call, we get through the whole phone call.
Shed Geek:At the end of the call he said and. And he said at the end of the phone call, we get, we get through the whole phone call. But at the end of the call, he said oh, by the way, I know it's really important for those websites to show up first on Google. So, for the same price that you're quoting me on the website, can we ensure that I'm number one on Google anytime someone searches? And I was like boom watershed moment. We have to educate people to sell to people and I think you know that's kind of the approach I took with sheds, you know, and you got to be careful not to go too deep, right, you got to be careful that you know you don't offer the kitchen sink when all they're asking for is something very smaller. You know like you almost got to lead the horse to water. So how do you guys navigate that with video?
James Hatfield:Yeah, we crawl, we walk, then we run right, like as we talked, like oh, look at this whole platform, like nope, we're going to start right here. This is it. We're going to start with one or two people on your team and we're going to start with one clear value that you can add. So, we try to keep it. We almost, as my sales team was, like hey, just keep it simple. Like just, you know, keep it to one piece because we're going through change management as well, so we make that first change very simple, like they can learn it in two minutes. You can start using it the same day. Time to value. Like this is not. We're not teaching you a new CRM. We're not teaching you new. You know AutoCAD or some like huge program. You know we're teaching you this one thing and there's enough value in that one thing that I mean our stuff is so affordable, so like that is how we land it. Then they get curious. They start using it every day.
James Hatfield:I mean I have people that their titles even change at work, like they go from estimator to virtual estimator or you know on-site follow-up project manager to virtual project manager, and because one they're very good with people, so you want to also start with a person that not everyone likes to be on video sometimes right, that's one of our big challenges One who is your best at customer service or sales and is willing to get on video, because now I can put that person as my Walmart greeter. Right, I want my Walmart greeter, I want the first interaction you have with my business to be this person who actually likes people, who like connects with them and otherwise, like if I got one estimator over here or one deliverer over there, one project manager over there, like they can only service so many. So that's why you start to find some of your best people and centralize them. I need you to touch as many people in a day as you can. So, we kind of start there and then we expand and, as they see it, what they're doing is everything they do is getting recorded. So now you've got best in practice.
James Hatfield:So if your sales people are selling world peace or underselling or not doing the right thing, and maybe you as an owner are the best salesperson, but you want to start making yourself redundant so you can let your business roll and you can, you know, work on some other things, this is how you start to replicate yourself through all of these. You can mark them all training, training, training, training, training. And like, hey, I need you to, this is our best in class. Or if there's a certain thing that happens sometimes, like, oh, we better keep that one documented in case we see this again, right we?
Shed Geek:started. We started adding like video as a primary thing that people get to experience whenever they fill out a lead form, perhaps for, like, even a 3d configurator, because, like, how much more personal is the message from the actual owner that you know? Today you have one of two people. You have people that just completely embrace it and they're like yeah, I'll fill out all the information and then I'll wait for the response. And then you have some people who just kind of want to eavesdrop right, it doesn't matter, because Facebook, google, DuckDuckGo all of them being they're all collecting this digital data anyway, like they know way more about us than we realize.
Shed Geek:That they know anyway, because that they're following around the ip address anyway through, you know, uh, through all these different, uh, social media and, and, like you know, search engines anyway. So, like nothing that you do is hidden in that world. Uh, anyway, and that's what helps create good marketing campaigns look like-alike campaigns and things like that. Where I'm trying to go is, like you know, I wrote down people don't shop like us. I'm you know we're Kendrick Lamar in this now to go off of your, your, your, NFL. You know, like experience there, that you know they not like us. Well, they don't shop like us.
Shed Geek:You know, like that's the trap we fall into a lot of times. It's like that's not the way I shop and it's like right, but there's a whole generation that is choosing to shop different. You know there's that the retail experience is different for them than what it was for us back in the day, whenever we went to the store with our parents, everybody got in the you know station wagon and you went to town and you was there all day or whatever it was. It's just not that way now. You know TikTok's being used as a major search engine Instagram being used in inner cities as a search engine, as opposed to you.
Shed Geek:Don't ask your friends anymore where's a good place to eat. You get on Instagram and you look. That's right. Yeah, it's just. People don't realize that there's a whole bunch of people that choose not to shop, like us, and the younger generation embraces these things. My son will completely geek out over what you guys are doing because he's going to recognize how much easier it is for him it's second nature at this point now for him to just embrace something like this.
James Hatfield:That's right and you start putting these platforms and tools into the hands of folks. They start coming up with very unique ways to do things, like one of our customers happens to be a doctor and what he does is this other service. It's kind of like a concierge service where he'll send you a link and you just tap it and you will, you know, take a video of what's going on with you and it'll be a two-minute video and then it gets sent to the doctor. The doctor can watch it at 2x speed, so that's even faster than that thing. And then he will turn around and record a video of himself and he'll do this at different times of day and then he'll record a video response and he'll send the video response back Right and so, and he charges for that service, you know, and people find it convenient.
James Hatfield:But think about this in your own retail business too. Could you imagine if you got a recorded video from the owner after, maybe, a larger sale? Yeah, that maybe you wouldn't have ever. You just hit record on the video right From your computer or your phone, say, hey, Shannon, thank you so much for the shed you purchased from us today. I know you went with one of these models that we just love our teams I've heard good things are taking care of you. I wanted you know, as an owner, if you ever need anything. We're here to service you and you and your team, or you and your family.
Shed Geek:Thank you hit record stop record, grab the link, text it or email it to the person and it's really the thing is, it's simple, you can spend a half a day, so you know, doing that to everything that you sold last week, or you know. Or even if that, or maybe you can even automate the process by doing a one-time. If you don't make it as personal, hey, James, like if you just say, you know, hey, thank you for purchasing our you know side lofted barn, and then boom, all the side lofted, you know, get that same message. It's still that personal touch, that personal message. It's like getting the emails of happy birthdays right, you know what I mean. Like the happy birthday emails I get from all of my previous uh sales people. Uh, you know that I bought something from. It's just the idea that, even if it's automated, that they took the time to think about it, to do it. Even if they took the time to think of, to automate it, they still, uh, did something to try and create some stickiness for me as a customer. Uh, and there's just a lot of value.
Shed Geek:We you know what I was saying was with that 3d configurator, you know, we encouraged our owners, like you, go to get their name, call number, zip code and address. Sometimes people just don't want to put that in right. But you know, when you have a message there from the customers and say we just want to make sure to get this information, to make sure we can service you, make sure you're in our service area, we don't waste your time or ours. You know, we don't want to get your information because we want to sell it. Google and all the rest of them are using that for their advantage. Right, we just need your information because we want to follow up with you, whether you buy, whether you don't. We want to offer you a discount in the future or something like that. And, like you know, you know the bird gets the worm, right, it's speaking of google, things have changed.
James Hatfield:Things are always changing with Google. So, these recorded videos, photos you're taking interactions. Google is scraping your websites, scraping your Google store, and if you have stock photos or if you don't have any videos or photos that are real, you get downranked. If you have real videos, real photos, all of your website and your Google business profile. You organically get put up Google knows your credibility.
James Hatfield:Google sees that and they service it. So, you can take a customer testimonial, stand in front of their new shed delivery. Check me out. Do you know how far that goes compared to keyboard, three sentences and a five-star review? Even you take that video and you put it in your Google business profile and on your website and on your socials that actually elevate it's. The impact of that is 10 X on it and not. I know you have that marketing background, Shannon, so you know what I'm talking about.
Shed Geek:Yeah, no, absolutely. We encourage more video all the time. We could keep our video production team constantly going, and they do. They go on a lot of different trips. They just came back from North Carolina on a big trip, but you know, like, yeah, video.
Shed Geek:I even called Nick, and I was like you know, you busy? And he's like, yeah, I'm in the middle of the shoot, like well, he should be, he's a video guy, right, that's what he does. It's like man, I was thinking about having you on this podcast. I thought you would really enjoy the video aspect of this. Uh, you know, just because he's, uh, he's, he's a genius at what he does and video production and things like that, I was like man, you would, you'd enjoy this and how this is relatable. Uh, the live video, we're, we're, we're up against an hour. I'm curious, who's James outside of everything? Just a two-minute spiel on who James is. I believe people buy from people that they trust and if you're trying to showcase the value of something, you are here today, how do I build trust in two minutes? Go, James.
James Hatfield:Okay, so I'm definitely just an everyday guy like everyone else listening. I have a family of four kids. We have two biological children, two adopted children. We're a mixed race family. We believe in adoption. My wife grew up in the Philippines and she built homes with her father, so she grew up being homeschooled. So, we homeschool our kids and her one dream was to adopt children. She's been saving since she's a little girl she's way cooler than me and so I knew that getting into the deal. We've been married over 20 years now doing well my nonprofit.
James Hatfield:I started with churches so I grew up atheist and converted after a bunch of my friends died in college and so I know what it is to be with God's not real. And then I read the entire Bible for myself and rewrote the whole New Testament by hand and I felt called to start churches. And the church we just started last week is I sing in hospice. I was in hospice rooms. We started a church in a hospice. We just launched it last week and I lead all the singing there, so I love singing to folks on their last day I find it to be.
James Hatfield:I've been around a lot of death in my life, so I spend a lot of time there. And then I come from blue collar family. As you've heard, I rent businesses, but I'm also come from inventors and builders. So, you know inventing product that we talked about today, I'm a proud papa. You know seeing thousands and thousands of happy customers, and you know I've got more and more staff we're building and so I really love second chance as well. Like we talked about, people were hiring. So yeah, I've got a lot of these values, you know, and I try to remain judgment free as far as possible and always assume someone's innocence before their guilt and consider others better than myself, and I like to give more than I take, whatever industry we're in, so I don't just come and squeeze dollars out of it. I really try to come and educate.
James Hatfield:I'm an educator, um I used to teach karate to duke university college. Um, so I was a second- year black belt, so an instructor teacher, um, teacher, yeah, all that stuff.
Shed Geek:I stopped by Duke University when we were out there Last time we were out there I just wanted to tour the campus and see UNC and Duke, so I drove around both campuses while I was down there in the area and, yeah, we didn't get a chance to make Biltmore, you know, it's just been too crazy. And then of course, the flood and Helene came through and our buddy, Sam's been doing a lot of efforts over there as I was telling you, about 600 sheds or so donated in that area. It was hit really hard. Obviously, you play guitar. I'm assuming I see the guitar in the back.
James Hatfield:Yep, that's why I was singing at hospice, and my daughter and I uh, we're big singer, singers and we play guitar I have a singing family so, dude, I love it.
Shed Geek:I love your spirit. I love everything uh about you from the moment we first connected and started talking. Um, uh, any questions for me? Like I always try to open up the mic because I try to spend some time and I feel like an hour is hardly time to do justice, I really want to showcase your product in a way that we can show it, uh, so that people you know understand it easily. Uh, maybe we need to just do video of some demo or something sometime, or I don't know, we'll figure it out. But any questions that you have for me before we go?
James Hatfield:Um, you know I don't want anyone you know who's listening to this to, you know, think this is all sunshine and rainbows. Right, because we're not solving world peace or curing cancer over here. I wish we were. But from what you've heard today, where are your biggest skepticisms of everything you've heard and where would you challenge what you've heard today? And what do you think the listeners are thinking after hearing us go for an hour? You know you've been in the industry for a long time and I'm I love straight shooting and raw, and you know I really don't want to come up here and I hope people's wheels are spinning. That's what I hope.
Shed Geek:I'm a firm, first of all. I'm a firm believer in the digital world, after not growing up in it, not even having a computer until I was 30, James, and then, like, like starting to go down this Avenue I mean starting a podcast alone was. You know, it was a big challenge, but it was my willingness to communicate and want to talk with people and solve problems through communication, right and nonviolence. You know I'm a big fan of Martin Luther King and all that he preached on in terms of nonviolence. I love. I love those ideas. Now I know that there are sometimes, you know yeah, I won't get into the political nature of that, but our industry is a bit if they'll forgive me for saying this we are always behind. We're always 10, 15 years behind and, like you, don't get first movers advantage whenever you, you know, whenever you constantly like there's, there's, there's a lot of intelligence in waiting and seeing things being proven and things like that. But I think sometimes you can get, you can get caught in that. You know, I'm losing my mind here this morning, james. I'm struggling to think of even the things I want to say. When you procrastinate, you can. I want to wait and see proof. I want to wait and see and then I'll be a believer Right. And so, like I'm much more inclined that as I get older, I'm probably doing different than what, like my parents generation did. They became more skeptical. I become a little bit more open to the ideas and things you know like. So I love transparency.
Shed Geek:I think I told you before we got on the call. I was like if you have any questions, just ask them on the podcast, because I don't care if it's uncomfortable. And you said the same. I think our industry just struggles to embrace things I think that you know. So, like a new technology like this.
Shed Geek:If I were going to challenge it, I would be like do people understand it clearly? Do they understand what it does clearly, and do they understand how it's going to help them? And do they have a phone number they can call to get a hold of somebody who can answer those questions? Because that's going to solve most of your problems is the auto-generated stuff that even we do is excellent until it doesn't work. Sometimes people just need to talk to somebody and get a problem solved and we're trying and that means man hours and manpower and things like that, so it cuts down a lot of the automation. So, I have no like for me. I don't have any doubts or anything to really challenge. I embrace what you're doing. I feel like I get it. Having a little bit of that marketing perspective allows me to see the value in this quickly. But are people going to embrace it? That's the question I've got.
James Hatfield:Yeah, yeah, Yep, and I mean you're not guinea pigs, right? I've got all the industries that we're in. I mean we're talking moving boxes, talking about plumbers, talking about electricians. These are my people.
James Hatfield:These are thousands and thousands of them, you know. So, the beauty that I have found is a couple things. One they do get mistaken for the knuckle draggers and the non-tech and I'm like, no, your stuff's just too complicated. People don't want to use your over-engineered nonsense. They want a one-button solution. And so, when they find that they tend to stick, and when it sticks because they're slow to change, they're slow to get rid of things too. Right, but also not just so get rid of things. When they do adopt something, they're serious.
James Hatfield:You know, you know you've got a you know, like they don't mess around, they're a no-nonsense crew. You know they're not just trying something for trying's sake. They want tools that are fit for purpose and they want to use stuff that works because they ain't got time to waste. So that's what I love about these industries that are where everyone's like, oh, they're slow, they're behind construction. I'm like, no, they're not behind.
James Hatfield:Your product just isn't compelling enough, you know, or when they used it they tried it.
James Hatfield:They didn't like it, you know. So it has to be simple, it has to be easily understood.
Shed Geek:It has to be simple. It has to be easily understood. It has to be simple. I love your one. You know the one touch comment, because it's like and the no nonsense is absolutely right. But you're also right in that if they're slow to adapt, man, they're slow to leave too.
James Hatfield:I remember when I was in my painting company I lived on a ladder. I remember when the paint sprayers first came out and everybody was skeptical, you know, about them. Like, are they going to function? Can they handle full homes? Can they handle years on the job? It was a new technology for us, it was a new tool. Well, now they got them as backpacks and you can just fire away, put the paint in the backpack.
James Hatfield:You know we had ours, we're going to put it on the ground and but were mistakes made? Oh yeah, did we hit the roof and we shouldn't have had a shield up? Oh yeah, we made. But once we got her down, we didn't go back to rolling and brushing siding anymore. You know, we did all the siding there. So, as it changes, as it adopts, you try it. I mean my power washing company. Now they got these soft washers. Oh, my goodness, like I would have been a pig in slop nowadays with the tools that they got, you know. So, you know it takes time. But having come off a ladder, I just kind of know what we like, you know, and so I've got to keep, keep educating my engineers.
Shed Geek:I love it. Man. How do people get ahold of you? Obviously, we're going to put a link to the website and the newsletter. If you guys aren't signed up on the newsletter, go to the website and sign up, or just send me an email at info at shedgeek. com. We'll get you signed up. But how do people find out more about you?
James Hatfield:Two ways. If you're on LinkedIn, just look up James Hatfield and you'll find me. Reach out, I'll connect with you and we can talk. Another very easy way is to go to our website. A very easy way is to go to our website, liveswitch L-I-V-E-S-W-I-T-C-H. com, liveswitch. com and click on Demo and just ask for James. I won't farm you out to anybody else. If you're listening to the Shed Geek, I will personally take care of you. So, I have to say I want to talk to James and so that's an easy way to get to me.
Shed Geek:Perfect, me perfect. But, James, I appreciate you being on. I feel like we've covered a lot. Maybe we could do a follow-up. Uh, anything else that you just want to share before we go?
James Hatfield:No, just thank you. Uh, anyone listening, you're already two steps ahead of the game, taking time to educate yourself and listening. You know we love partnering with um folks that, like Shannon, that are just putting good work out there, um, because you know good work from bad work, and so thank you for allowing me to be on the podcast today, Shannon. I really appreciate it. I was grateful.
Shed Geek:Hey man, we love it, I love your product and I hope people come run and embrace it because it is the future. Like that is the reality, like it is the future. Whether we choose to shop that way or not, it is the way that shoppers and retail shoppers are choosing, and if we can make that process easier for them, then we're just all the better for it. So, thank you guys for what you do, and it's definitely been a pleasure getting to know you.
James Hatfield:Back at you.
OUTRO:Thanks again, Shed Pro, for being the Shed Geek's studio sponsor for 2025. If you need any more information about Shed Pro or about Shed Geek, just reach out. Any more information about Shed Pro or about Shed Geek, just reach out. You can reach us by email at info@ ShedGeek. com, or just go to our website, www. shedgeek. com, and submit a form with your information and we'll be in contact right away. Thank you again for listening, as always, to today's episode of the Shed Geek podcast. Thank you and have a blessed day.