James Hatfield, founder of LiveSwitch, explains how contractors lose deals due to slow response times and how live video combined with AI can dramatically improve speed, margins, training, and documentation in home services businesses.
“Time is the killer of all deals. It doesn’t matter what you sell.”— James Hatfield
Here’s what we discuss in today’s episode:
00:00–01:55 — James Hatfield’s Background
- Blue-collar upbringing, early entrepreneurship in painting and power washing
- Struggles with bookkeeping led him to business school
- Co-founded Sageworks, scaled it to Inc. 500 and eventual sale to KKR
01:55–03:27 — From Sageworks to LiveSwitch
- Transition back into tech with a focus on practical tools for the trades
- Philosophy: technology must be usable, not theoretical
03:27–07:05 — The Real Constraints to Business Growth
- Growth constraints differ by market, region, and service type
- Speed matters most in competitive markets
- Margins, team retention, and quality matter more in less competitive markets
07:05–09:31 — Recurring Revenue vs One-Off Jobs
- Maintenance and recurring services create predictability and stability
- Install-only businesses must optimize heavily for margin
- Analogy: selling cars without offering service is leaving money on the table
09:31–12:47 — What LiveSwitch Actually Does
- “FaceTime + ChatGPT built for the trades”
- Instantly connect with customers via one-tap video links
- AI observes, listens, and generates estimates, contracts, CRM entries, and material lists
12:47–15:57 — Speed to Lead and Cost of Free Estimates
- Deals are lost simply due to waiting days to visit a site
- Live video eliminates unnecessary site visits
- Gas, time, and labor costs of “free” estimates are rarely accounted for
15:57–17:56 — Training & Field Support Use Cases
- Remote experts can guide junior techs in real time
- Sessions are recorded and turned into internal training libraries
- Reduces repetition and improves consistency
17:56–19:19 — AI as a Field Assistant
- Technicians can ask AI what to do when they’re stuck on-site
- Helps compensate for talent shortages
- Improves quality without needing senior staff everywhere
19:19–21:16 — Pricing & Accessibility
- Starts at ~$160/month ($80 per licensed user)
- Not required for every employee
- Anyone can join sessions via QR code
21:16–23:17 — Why Waiting Is a Mistake
- AI is becoming infrastructure, like electricity
- Data and documentation will define future business value
- Video data increases acquisition multiples
23:17–24:28 — Recommended Resource
- Book: Making Money Is Killing Your Business
Focus on actually working on the business, not just talking about it
Actionable Key Takeaways:
- Speed closes deals. If you wait days to see a job, you’re already losing.
- Free estimates aren’t free. Gas, time, and labor add up fast when deals don’t close.
- Live video beats site visits. Seeing the job instantly is often all you need to quote accurately.
- AI should save time, not create noise. Practical tools beat flashy features.
- Recurring revenue stabilizes growth. Maintenance services create predictability installs can’t.
- Document everything. Video documentation increases training efficiency and future exit value.
- Talent shortages require leverage. One senior tech can support many juniors remotely.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- LiveSwitch – Live video + AI platform for estimating, training, and documentation
Website: https://liveswitch.com - Book: Making Money Is Killing Your Business
Context: Practical guide to shifting from working in the business to on it
LinkedIn: James Hatfield
Context: Best way to connect directly with the guest
Episode Transcript
Rob – Intrigue Media (00:31)
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the IM Landscape Growth Podcast. Today, a very cool, I would say unique guest, James Hatfield Thanks so much for doing this, man. James was introduced to the Intrigue ecosystem through an unbelievable solution by a company called Live Switch, which we’re going to talk about today to help people understand.
James Hatfield (00:41)
Thanks for having me.
Rob – Intrigue Media (00:54)
how they can leverage video in a way they probably never thought they could. But before we get into it, why don’t you give us some context, tell people about your bookends, help people understand what you’ve been up to so they kind of get some ⁓ perspective in terms of where you’re coming from.
James Hatfield (01:04)
Yeah, so you know, my father built the house I was born in, right? And I come from a blue collar family. We know how to work with our hands, fix engines, work on the house. You know, we’re playing in the dirt basically. So I knew when it was time for me to feed myself, I was going to have my own businesses because I didn’t like to be bossed around to be honest with you. I prefer to kind of just do it my way and built painting companies, power washing companies, I enjoyed building that out.
And then I just had a problem was I didn’t understand the bookkeeper when I went to the bookkeeper. They’d speak English. I’m like, I don’t know what you’re saying to me. You got to tell me like I’m five, you know? I was like, it’s probably not good. So I went to business school and got a business degree and some accounting because I knew that’s where I was weak. Everything else I was doing great, making great money. But I just didn’t want to be taken advantage of. think it’s kind of what it comes down to, you know? But then that changed my course.
Rob – Intrigue Media (01:55)
Mm-hmm.
James Hatfield (01:58)
That’s when I met my business partner. He was running landscaping companies and he went, he was going to business school and he was really good with the numbers. So he invented a technology where you could take an income statement and balance sheet and run it through and to tell you in layman’s terms. What it means. was like, this is awesome. He’s like, was Sageworks, man. Then we were in it. We were nothing. We were incubator. We were nothing. And he was like, do you think you can sell this stuff? I was like, I don’t know. I can sell painting jobs. I don’t know if I can sell software. I’m not, I’m not.
Rob – Intrigue Media (02:14)
That was Sageworks? Yeah.
James Hatfield (02:27)
I don’t know if that’s me, you know, but because I loved what it was doing, because it was helping me, I felt like I could help others and it worked out. That company went from nothing to Inc 500 and is a multi-billion dollar company now that we sold to KKR. But I also took a stint, another direction and we can talk about that. But then I came back into technology and we’re building a company, we bought a company this time rather than starting from scratch since we had capital and that’s where LiveSwitch comes from.
Rob – Intrigue Media (02:35)
Yeah.
All right, cool. Well, I mean, give us the Coles notes on live switch in terms of like what you’re doing to help folks.
James Hatfield (02:59)
Yeah, the best way I can explain it is imagine FaceTime and ChatGPT got together, had a baby, and made it for the trades. That is us. And made it like practical and tactical and usable. You know, like that’s kind of us. Because I mean, I think all that AI stuff is cool and it is cool. But I’m like, man, if we can’t use it and we can’t make it practical, it’s just noise, you know, and like make it real, you know, and that’s kind of where we step in the fold. My business partner being a landscaper, me being a painter.
Rob – Intrigue Media (03:10)
I love it.
I love it.
James Hatfield (03:27)
We translate technology well. think that’s why we’ve done well over the years is I think we’re just good translators because the coders are engineers, man. We make fun of them. We’re like, you guys have soft hands. You’ve never spent a day on a ladder. Like, you don’t know. And I don’t know coding either. So it’s like, I don’t know how to sit behind a computer. Now I do. But, you know, I think we do a good job making it real.
Rob – Intrigue Media (03:39)
Right.
That’s cool. And I would agree wholeheartedly, which is a big part of why we have you on the show. So before we get into Live Switch and help people understand how they can leverage the birth of the child from FaceTime and ChatGPT, why don’t you give us your perspective on what you see as a primary growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back from growth, even from your own experience or from working with others?
James Hatfield (04:11)
funny, it
depends on the industry, right? And even within the home services space, I can kind of pick on that space, right? And it also depends on your location. Like one cool example I heard from someone’s like, hey, you’re thinking about starting a home service company in a certain town. Let’s just pick on painters. Call the painters in your area and see how fast they answer and how ready they are available. Right now, if they’re ready, you can call after hours. They’ll be there tomorrow and you can have three different people doing that.
Rob – Intrigue Media (04:35)
Hmm.
You’re
in a hard market.
James Hatfield (04:41)
That’s a hard market. Now, if you make those calls and nobody picks up the phone, you go down the list because they’re all busy out there doing work and you can’t get scheduled. OK, now we’re talking. So but that’s different by home service industry, by region. Right. But I think your constraints, if you’ve got heavy competition, it’s probably going to be speed. How fast can you get out there and bid it? If you’ve got no competition, it’s probably going to be how you got your margins right, your quality right, like you have the right team.
Can you retain that team? Because someone’s probably going to try and steal your employees. So like, or go start their own. So there’s different challenges, but you got to know you and you got to know your market. And then I think those constraints change per. So that’s not a great answer, I guess, but that’s kind of what I’m seeing from my purview.
Rob – Intrigue Media (05:17)
Mm-hmm.
Well,
I think it’s interesting in a couple of ways. One is just the way that you’re thinking about it, right? Like you’re looking at market forces and trying to analyze the essentially the situation, like what is the state of the market? And then how do I approach it differently? That in itself is a strategic perspective as opposed to
I can get some equipment and start doing this thing. And so think there is an interesting perspective on how you think is going to help almost create or alleviate constraints in itself.
James Hatfield (05:53)
That’s it. That’s it.
When I sit down, every day I’m usually with two or three business owners across home services, sometimes property management, and sometimes across the world, but mainly North America, we start to look and dissect the business by where they are in their growth stage and maturity. If you’re mature, you know your market, you got a solid staff, you’ve been doing it for quite a while, you’re going to be operationalizing for your margin, your bottom line. How much cash can we get? And where you can incrementally save different costs, where you can
you know, leverage your people a bit more. Or on the flip side, I got guys who are just starting, it’s them and a buddy and they just got their first truck and they’re just trying to say, hey, how do I go and find this business? How do I start the business? How do I make sure I don’t get the flu so I’d miss a week? You know, like it’s a different set of challenges, but I love meeting people where they’re at and then constructing a plan for I’m just getting rolling or like, hey, I’m trying to go from seven figures a year to eight figures a year. You know, what am I doing to optimize my teams and where they sit and what they do?
So it’s a wide spectrum within the industry and it’s actually a lot of fun.
Rob – Intrigue Media (07:05)
Yeah, well, and I think it’s really interesting too, because a lot of people that have an opportunity to speak with lot of entrepreneurs, know, in this case, landscapers and all we talk about, but.
there’s like this pattern recognition of these different levels of business. And you’ve alluded to, I mean, you of explicitly stated on a contrasting point of view, one being just getting going and the other one being, you know, really trying to operationalize their system to like, you know, essentially make cashflow as efficient as possible with like a crew and a staff and leadership probably in place. And they’re really strategic in the way that they’re looking at everything because they have the time to take the space to do that.
When you look at the people that you’re talking to and you’re trying to bucket into maybe like three or four, you know, you got your startup, get the business, you’ve got your established, you know, make profit efficient. What’s one or two other kind of segments or pieces on that kind of evolutionary scale that you’ve seen over time?
James Hatfield (07:59)
It’s also the
service, like let’s pick on the landscaping industry, right? Because a hardscape, somebody doing irrigation, someone like doing water mitigation is different than someone who’s actually taking care of property. Think of just doing the lawn. Think of coming annually to do the flowers, the beds, those things. That’s recurring revenue. Like if I’m mowing the grass, I love that during the season, right? Because that is recurring revenue. Just give me more recurring revenue customers, service them well and make sure they’re always happy and book myself out.
Rob – Intrigue Media (08:02)
Yeah.
James Hatfield (08:28)
On the hardscaping side, on the irrigation side, that might be a one and done install and maybe a service if there’s an issue, but that you have to optimize for margin, right? Because you’re going in and do one job, so you want to make as much profit and still win the job as you can. Where in your recurring revenue business, you still need to make the margin, but it’s more about like, I can’t lose this customer because they’re feeding my team and they’re kind of my, they can help me plan. It’s hard to plan when you’re just like, okay, I’m
Rob – Intrigue Media (08:33)
Right.
James Hatfield (08:55)
putting irrigation in and I’ve got to win business, make a high margin and what happens with the economy goes down and now people are not putting irrigation systems, they’re just grabbing the hose and doing it by hand, right? So, you know.
Rob – Intrigue Media (09:06)
Well,
and I think you’ve just illustrated a really important point about recurring revenue and the nature of essentially a service annuity and how a lot of people I’ve spoken to say that, I just do install, I just do design build, I just do construction, I don’t do maintenance. I’m like, God, man, there’s such an opportunity to take care of that property forever. Yeah.
James Hatfield (09:23)
I know it’s like selling new cars and not doing the service. I’m like, the service
is where you make a ton of recurring predictable cash, but I still want to sell new cars. Yes, you’re so on it.
Rob – Intrigue Media (09:31)
Right.
So let’s leave that one and let’s just dive into this thing. Like typically this podcast isn’t meant to illustrate, you know, technology and new products, but I think Live Switch is a bit unique in that.
A lot of people don’t necessarily understand it, maybe never even heard of it, but there’s such an opportunity to make it valuable. And one of the things that really caught our eyes and then as we were talking, you know, the second, third, fifth, 12th use case became ever apparent. And we were, I was actually literally just on a, a talk to me in like a 20, 25 year in review. We were talking with speed to lead. And so like responsiveness, communication, richness, how quickly are we able to get to people? What are the pains?
steps and scheduling walkthroughs and estimates and site visits. And then we had a chance to meet and I was like, okay, what’s this LiveSwitch thing all about? And then all of a sudden it hit me over the head. I was like, wow, this can be a game changer for so many people if they were to just embrace a little bit of change. So why don’t you just walk us through some of the primary use cases in terms of how you’re really helping people.
James Hatfield (10:34)
Yeah, I think we all knew even in our industry, AI was going to come and disrupt a few things. Now, I don’t think AI, maybe a little bit, right? So it’s on the horizon, but like, how’s it going to affect me as a landscaper, right? So, and then how can I leverage its power in my business? So first practical thing, because FaceTime met ChatGBT and had the baby, is that when you get that call, whether it’s a new customer or a service client or whomever, you are on the clock.
Rob – Intrigue Media (10:40)
Maybe.
James Hatfield (11:03)
And why are you on the clock? I’ll make it real practical. Have you ever had a call and you like, need your services. You book them for three days later and I’ll be out there. I need to walk the property. I do my measurements, got to do all my stuff. And then you call that three days later and say, hey, I’m coming on out. And they say, don’t bother. I’ve already found somebody you only lost because of Really? That’s literally why you lost.
Rob – Intrigue Media (11:20)
Hmm.
Literally. Yeah, there
wasn’t any other factor yet, but in this case, speed killed your deal.
James Hatfield (11:29)
That’s right. Time is a killer of all deals, no matter what you sell. I don’t care what you sell. That’s a killer of all deals. When somebody calls you or goes on your website, it’s never hotter. They’re not looking at your website to see how cute it is. They’re not calling you to see it today was your birthday. They are have an active need and they’re thinking about spending money on fill in the blank service. So the faster you can get your eyes on the project, the better. So now what you can do is send a text and all the person on the other end has to do is tap it.
One tap. All right. And they are connected into the cameras, which are the most important tool in your entire company. And hopefully by the end of this, I’ll convince you if you’re not convinced. Hopefully I convince you just in the first one. But when you can see the job, then you can start estimating because here’s what happens. We wrap all of that connection in AI. It’s literally watching, listening, translating if it needs to. And then you’re telling it at the end of that.
write me a contract, tell me the budget, give me the timeline, give me all the materials, and I’ll write the CRM entry. I’ve never met a landscaper who loves to write CRM entries.
Rob – Intrigue Media (12:38)
I don’t even know if they understand what a CRM entry is. Let alone do it.
James Hatfield (12:42)
Exactly,
exactly or writing out a contract or we forget stuff and now you can even tell it the local local Lowe’s Home Depot fill in the blank store where you get all your stuff and it will go and get all the materials and the links for you. All right. Time is what we want to give you back. Saving gas is what we want to give you back because that’s free. Last time I checked my free estimates weren’t free for me as a business owner ever. In fact, they’re really expensive.
Rob – Intrigue Media (12:47)
Yeah.
Mm.
James Hatfield (13:11)
especially if I don’t win the business. And then the final thing is documentation. It is killer. If you ever want to sell your company, if you have fully documented everything, your process, you’ve got video documentation of everything, your multiple will go way up. All right. And I don’t even know if you ever thought about selling your business, but it may not be today, but it might be at some point in the future that that will matter.
Rob – Intrigue Media (13:28)
Yeah.
Yeah, and well not to mention the customer experience, right? Like if I call in and I’m like, hey, I’m thinking about, you know, redoing my front, you know, walkway yard, whatever, you know, like, hey, cool, I’m going to send you a text right now. Just open up that link and we’ll be on a video call together. Let’s walk through it together. Why don’t you just show me around? I can get you a rough quote in a couple hours, minutes, like just to give you an idea of ballpark. I mean, there might be some due diligence required to make sure everything’s tight, but for the most part, it’s going to be really tight.
James Hatfield (14:01)
It’s really tight and you can optimize your prompt. The prompt is what you tell it with how much you pay your folks. Everything given examples of stuff that you’ve done. The customer doesn’t see that you’re feeding the AI for when it does the review. It’s going to make that estimate the way you would have made that estimate. And what will shock you is when you A B test it and it’s not that far off. And you’re like. And that’s where we think, my secret sauce does not your secret sauce as nobody’s secret sauce. The secret sauce is.
Rob – Intrigue Media (14:04)
you
Right?
James Hatfield (14:30)
quality of your team, quality of your work, speed, and then optimization of your profit. Right? In addition to amongst other things, I don’t want to simplify it too much, but we’re going to start getting graded more and more on the quality of our work and the speed to get it done. Because people pay for those two things.
Rob – Intrigue Media (14:41)
Right.
Yeah.
yeah, and they want those two things more than probably anything else. If you can do a really good job and have it done tomorrow, I’m in.
James Hatfield (14:51)
That’s right.
Yeah, I don’t want to wait another two weeks to get my grass cut because you know what my grass looks like in like two weeks? I got the gorillas of the grass coming out now.
Rob – Intrigue Media (14:59)
Yeah.
Nice. So then as we were talking through this whole thing, what kind of hit me over the head was like, you’ve got somebody in the field, they don’t necessarily have a supervisor on site and they run into an issue. They’re trying to figure out how to cut, you know, something at a 90 degree angle. It’s on a corner. They’re trying to make it rounded, whatever. They’re like, how do I, I don’t know what to do right now. I better call the super, get them to come check this out. Wait a second. There’s another use case training, field training. Like how does that work?
James Hatfield (15:27)
Multiple ways. One, now the senior technician can be back in the office helping all the junior technicians by sending the text and show me what you’re looking at. The system has laser guidance. Go that way, buddy. Go that way. And then we can take photos and videos and it records the whole session because now what you’re going to do with that recorded session is, you know what I don’t like doing? Repeating myself. It’s never fun. So now I’ve got a YouTube inside my business of like, well, this is how we do the cornering. This is how we do the install. This is how we fix a break in the irrigation line.
Rob – Intrigue Media (15:47)
No.
James Hatfield (15:57)
Oh, and it’s documented by the way, because after I bury those integration, those irrigation lines and they call me in a year, I’ll know where they are. So it starts to all add up. We’re like, oh, wow. Live video, recorded video becomes like, I always get like, why didn’t I think about this sooner? I should have been doing this earlier. Right. But that you’ve got that remote, you’ve got it recorded and then you can mark them as training. So when you hire the new person, here’s our training. Just go ahead and watch it. I’ll ask, I read people don’t like reading anymore either.
Rob – Intrigue Media (16:02)
Right.
Right.
⁓ Sad face, but it’s
James Hatfield (16:27)
You know, there’s all these…
Hey, when something breaks around the house and you don’t know what to do, where do we go first? I bet it’s YouTube or I bet it’s an LLM, aka AI. So the other thing that your technician can do, maybe you have a lack of talent. I hear a lot of that in home services right now. It’s hard to find good talent in senior people who know what they’re doing. I a lot of juniors, I got people changing careers. So now what you can do is that technician can pull out of their pocket their phone.
Rob – Intrigue Media (16:38)
Yeah.
James Hatfield (16:56)
start talking to the video saying, don’t know what to do here. I don’t know what to do there. And you can run an AI prompt and the AI prompt can help them. So use the power of the largest AI on the planet. And it might even help your senior technicians or what you forgot. Like I made an entire landscaping bid the other day with this. And this guy who came over to do the work for add some water issues from erosion. He’s like, yeah, I almost forgot to get that because I gave him the work order plan. I’m a painter. I’m not a landscaper, y’all.
Rob – Intrigue Media (17:10)
You
Have fun.
Yeah,
well, and I think that’s where you cheer point earlier about like the costing of all this stuff and understanding what’s required. I mean, if it’s not today, it’s going to be in the next couple of months, maybe a year is going to be available to everybody. At a click and a couple of keystrokes and even a picture, you know, so bringing this to help.
increase the quality of work being done, being able to elevate your team from the supporting a whole bunch of juniors with one senior that’s maybe supporting seven or eight people in the field in a day, being super fast, you know, it just kind of checks all those boxes. So if someone’s listening to this, they’re like, okay, I’m kind of interested to learn what this whole Live Switch thing is about. What’s the first step for them to go figure this or to check it out?
James Hatfield (18:05)
I want you to go to LiveFish.com, L-I-V-E-S-W-I-T-C-H.com, click on a demo, tell them where you heard about it. Say I heard it from Rob, from Murray, tell me where to go. Let them know and you’ll get one of my great sales team. Don’t worry, we’re not all hawks. I promise we try to be sweet or you’ll come right to me. Frankly, I like to still be on the customer calls every day, especially if it’s net new, because I love watching someone touch it for the first time.
Rob – Intrigue Media (18:13)
Sure. Yeah.
James Hatfield (18:30)
Watching someone see what the AI is capable of doing. It’s a magic moment and it’s a bit mind-blowing at times and a little bit scary too for some people
Rob – Intrigue Media (18:40)
So you’re like, okay, you’re talking about all this stuff. I’m to use all this like real time video. I got to go book a demo with all these hawks. Price point, help people understand how accessible this thing is.
James Hatfield (18:40)
So we
Oh yeah, I mean I go up against your gas tank. Think about me when you’re filling up your truck. It’s 160 bucks a month minimum, but basically it’s $80 a person and you do not buy this for everybody in your company. You literally will buy it for a couple of your sales team and maybe an on-site person. Other than that, people, anyone on your team can scan a QR code and take the video like everyone will have access. It’s just the people who need to run the AI pieces, but the minimum entry and usually that’s all people get is 160 bucks a month and that’s it.
Rob – Intrigue Media (19:19)
So it’s just like, if you’re listening to this and it’s Peter Riches at A-level, you gotta go to LiveSwitch.com, book a demo.
Talk to James and his team, see how it’s gonna fit, because I’m pretty sure every single time I’ve run into any situation, it always fits. But maybe for some reason you’ve got it convinced that this isn’t gonna work for you, that’s okay. I think checking it out, ⁓ can kind of see see it is believing. What else do you wanna like leave people with in terms of, you know, trying to understand the impact this is gonna have, or maybe what is the reason they might not want to look at it right now, like from what you hear from other people, just to help people think about this right.
James Hatfield (19:53)
Yeah, I
think a lot of times we just it’s either death by subscription out there because everybody wants the subscription from you, right? It’s the next thing you got to learn. You’re like, so a lot of times it’s like, I’ll just get it’s just I’ll get to it. And I get that. mean, I’m just trying to make payroll. You know what I mean? I’m just trying to make sure my customers are happy. You know, I’m just trying to make sure I’m taking care of my kids. The thing is, is that AI is going nowhere. It’s only going to stick around and do more and more. So the longer you put it off.
Rob – Intrigue Media (20:04)
It’s just apathy.
Right.
James Hatfield (20:22)
And the longer that you take to start documenting everything, you’re going to wish, because right now, no one says my competitive advantage is electricity. Of course, we all have electricity. Now, there was a competitive advantage back in the day. Well, AI used to be that, well, I use AI. Well, now it’s going to be like saying you use AI is saying you have electricity in your business. So the next race is all about getting your data, all of that beautiful data. Every job you do is data. Every customer testimonial is data.
Rob – Intrigue Media (20:32)
Right.
Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah,
James Hatfield (20:51)
Everything that you uncover, the more you can gather that data is going to make your business more valuable and then you’re going to be able to train the AI to know you as a business and how you do things. Think of it like the Iron Man suit, Jarvis. It still needs the Iron Man in it, but Jarvis is awesome. it’s here. It’s now. You know, Rob and I aren’t talking about Tomorrowland and fairy tales and it’s…
Rob – Intrigue Media (21:05)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, the release
date of yet to be determined. this is now and for 160 bucks a month? It’s just an… No, it’s awesome.
James Hatfield (21:16)
No.
That’s it. We didn’t want to make it expensive.
Rob – Intrigue Media (21:25)
Well, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing what’s going on with this stuff. And if you’re listening to this, this is a, it’s a game changer. We’re to be highlighting it like crazy in 2026 to get our customers starting to use this stuff. Cause to your point, it isn’t going anywhere. And there is a window of opportunity because people still do have their head in the sand to get ahead of it and actually make it like a competitive advantage. But to your point as well, like if you wait a year, two, three, then you’re just trying to catch up.
James Hatfield (21:47)
Really? I mean, that is what it is. And I get it. I we all hate to call it procrastination, but that’s what it is. You know what I mean? It’s like, But for some things, it’s worth it because like if it’s still around in another year, then it’s probably worth me looking at. But if this is some fad or some hype, you know, the next new tool, because those come and go. But the undercurrent of what AI is, it’s not a party trick. You know, it really is real and it can really help you as a business owner do things and that your team hates doing. Like they hate.
Rob – Intrigue Media (22:15)
Okay.
James Hatfield (22:17)
doing CRM entries if they even do it. They hate writing contracts. Ask them. You know. You know.
Rob – Intrigue Media (22:20)
Yeah, you know, you know, you know. Okay,
so LiveSwitch.com, if you want to connect with James Halfield, LinkedIn’s best.
James Hatfield (22:28)
LinkedIn’s great and I’ll make time for anyone listening
Rob – Intrigue Media (22:31)
So just check out James Hatfield live switch on LinkedIn. Anything else you want to leave this wonderful audience with? I got one last question for you after this.
James Hatfield (22:35)
Yeah.
Challenge a challenge something I bet you won’t do it. You probably won’t do it. I is that we’re all takers Sometimes we just take the information Rob doesn’t make millions of dollars off doing this stuff. He’s just trying to educate his industry He really is doing this because he cares about the industry. So I think the least we can do I don’t even care if it’s my episode Don’t don’t share my episode. Okay share something from Rob and give back to your community because there’s other Folks in the home services that need to learn from experts and I think that education
especially in the home service space is critical for anyone, whether it’s their first day or they’ve been doing this for a long time. So please share this. I know everyone here is like, subscribe, da-da-da-da. I’m not trying to, I’m just saying like, golly, this is unique, you know? Like what Rob is doing to this industry is very unique. So please just share with a colleague or a friend or someone, please, if you got any value out of this, that would make me happy.
Rob – Intrigue Media (23:17)
You’re a good man.
Thank you, James. Okay, last one then before we let you go. An article, a resource, a speaker, a book, something that you kind of got an aha moment that you think somebody should go check out. What would it be?
James Hatfield (23:44)
I have read more books this year than ever. This has been my biggest year of book reading. And I’ll give you the one book that will help anyone listening. Making money is killing your business. Read it. Everyone talks about like, I got to work on my business rather than in my business. But no one talks about how to do the dang thing. How do I do that? That sounds so good, you know, but how? This book is easy to listen to. Make your truck time, although you’re going to cancel some of that truck time and starting to use this stuff. But like
Rob – Intrigue Media (24:03)
Yeah
Yeah.
James Hatfield (24:13)
Use your mobile time as your mobile classroom. Whether you’re listening to podcasts like Rob or listening to his book, you know, and I got many, many books. If you need more, just reach out to me on LinkedIn. I got a whole stack that’ll change your life. But start there.
Rob – Intrigue Media (24:28)
Making money is killing your business. Appreciate you, James, for doing this. Thanks, everybody, for listening to another episode of the IM Landscape Growth Podcast.
James Hatfield (24:30)
Yeah, it’s awesome.



