Latest / The Slump Monkeys Concrete Podcast / 023 - James Hatfield

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023 - James Hatfield · The Slump Monkeys Concrete Podcast

• Paul: And welcome into the Slump Monkeys Concrete Podcast. On our way to being the world's number one concrete podcast, and we are brought to you by Southern Concrete Machinery. That's right, our friend Chris Davenport. He's bringing it all month long in October. As you may be able to see if you're watching on YouTube, it's October 31st. Just got back from trick-or-treating, and it is not a trick, it is only a treat. When you deal with southern concrete machinery, if you're looking for the Aztec brand of batching equipment and you're anywhere along the Mississippi River, that's right, if you border it left or right, including Alabama by the way, well, you can get your batch plant from Chris. Give him a call. Chris Davenport, visit him on the web, Southern Concrete Machinery.com. it's been a fun month. Thank you to Chris for being our very first premium sponsor ever. Allows us to do what we do the way we do it. And that's what it's all about. It's a beautiful Saturday here in the Philadelphia area. We had a wonderful trick or treat. I hope this audio sounds okay to the audio people, it looks hilarious on the screen if you ever watch the YouTube of this. we had a fun time this week. We have so much fun stuff coming up for the podcast. We're gonna be live in different locations. You're gonna see some pretty fantastic audio come out from live events elsewhere. you're gonna see obviously the concrete work stuff still floating around and coming out. It's just been an absolutely whale of a time, and I can't be more happy, proud, honored, humbled, Been a great podcast, been a great start to the year. the slump monkeys pick on brought to you by Vince Hagen. The college pick is rocking and rolling. We're in the middle of the Saturday games right now. nobody's having like a perfect week, but a couple people are having a good week. So we'll see how it all shakes out. We'll come to it next week with a full recap. Today, we're doing something we've never done before. We're gonna have a guest join us for White. Paper of the Month. So, without further ado, let's roll into it. White paper of the month. And for the first time ever, now we're gonna walk into the white paper of the month with a little help. Welcome back to the program Dustin Highland Concrete Supply. What's up, brother? Dustin Heiland: Going great, Paul. Glad to be back. Paul: I guess technically this makes your third appearance on the show. We've got the full interview that we did. We've got the concrete works, which may or may not have come out by the time this airs. And then now you're here for a third time with White Paper of the Month. Bro, this is awesome. Thank you so much. Dustin Heiland: man, glad to do it man. You can't keep brothers apart for too long. Paul: That's right. That's right. Hey, this time around on white paper of the month, for the new for the new listeners, just like why do we do this? Why are we doing white paper of the month? Well, I had someone tell me one time they thought the industry would be better off if everybody read one technical paper, one white paper every month. And I thought me being a technical person that like that sounded like a great idea. And also, I was already doing that. Because I was reading the things that were coming out and the announcements, and I thought I was on top of that stuff. And then informally gauged my own readings throughout the course of a year and realized I was nowhere near one a month. I was probably like four a year. So, in an effort to practice what I preach, what I think is a great philosophy of doing at least one white paper a month, we incorporated it here into the show. Is that one of our monthly segments, our other monthly segments are. Conspiracy corner, which I absolutely love. we have white paper of the month and we have the Bell Pole, where we spent a long time talking about college football and the new pole that Joey Bell built. So this time is our first time to do white paper of the month with a little help from Dustin Hyland. He actually has a small part to play in the paper we're gonna talk about here. today we're looking at a paper out of the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Paper's titled Freeze Thaw Durability of Concrete Containing Microspheres. All right, Dustin. Lay it on us. Dustin Heiland: Mm-hmm. Paul: Why on earth did you choose this paper? Dustin Heiland: Well, as you said, we we had a little bit of a hand here in our lab helping out working with UNC Charlotte. we work with them quite a bit. Tara Cavallini over there runs that engineering department. she's been a great help to us and when we have free slaw beams that need to be ran, for example, and then we try to partner with that program as much as as much as we can to help them out as their students kinda go through the concrete lessons and start learning about this product to have even more informed engineers that know maybe a little a little deeper about concrete than maybe the average the average engineer spending. My understanding is they only spend about you know, one or two weeks of a six week, you know, materials class and they have to go Paul: You Dustin Heiland: wood and steel and every other material they might have have to deal with one day. And so if we can make them little more well rounded in that two week period. We're we're more than happy to help with that. So this was actually a pet project of our VP Adam Newwald which we've mentioned on the show before. I'm I'll have to see if you can rope him into an interview one day. but we've always you know, you can ask any supplier. Air has always been a challenge in the Ready Mix industry. It's required for free thaw durability. We have to put it in there in pretty much anywhere North of I Interstate thirty you gotta have air. where you experience free slot cycles. And so it's one of those things that we're constantly it's one of the most it's one of the hardest parameters to hit. It's such a moving target. It's something you have to test and then factor in drive time, temperature rise, temperature fall, you know sl workability, your slump. Like, is it a dry mix, is a wet mix, to try to figure out what your target air is. And we have Every plant has their own data sheet and they're tracking that on every all these different mix designs. So trying to reduce the amount of rejected loads by the by having an air spec that's out of range, or even taking it a step beyond that and looking at the sustainability aspect. If I can remove air, air doesn't have any strength, right? It's it's air. So if I can remove the the variability, so I'm losing less loads, I'm already being sustainable. But then if I can lose if I can remove air which which reduces my strength and requires higher cementitious contents, then I can also be more sustainable by by lowering total cementitious and if I can create a mix that's non-air but still has the same durability characteristics as an air mix. And so this gentleman brought this a manual and neither of us can figure out his last name at Kobe. Paul: We we were practicing we were practicing the name before the podcast got off. We're I'm Dustin Heiland: Yeah. Paul: I'm going with Adiobe. Dustin Heiland: I like it. Addiobe, Emmanuel. he brought this product from the automotive industry, and it is a microspheres product, which I know admixture companies have looked pa at in the past but never seem to get off the ground with. But no, it's Paul: And it's not a glass microsphere. It's po it's polymer. Dustin Heiland: it's yeah, polymetric it or polymeric, it's I believe it's filled with nitrogen and they are it looks It looks like a slag almost, just this really fine white powder and t or it's styrofoam kinda ground up, you start getting you get a little static electricity in there, it'll kinda float, around. Yeah. Paul: that's interesting. That's cool. Hey, real quick, let's take one step back before we dive in. This audience has now become kind of diverse. Like the first people that were listening were like me and you were knee Dustin Heiland: Yeah. Paul: deep in quality and concrete mixed designs. It's it's kind of fanned out a little bit. And we've got some people who may not be like super hardcore technical, but they've heard of air and train concrete, non-air and train concrete. Why is why is it important? And so You mentioned freeze thaw testing, which what's it this paper's built around. And that's the test we run because concrete is going to get damaged when it's out in the environment. Some of the most common damage we deal with in concrete, even when the concrete has been poured placed and and maintained well, you can still have damage from the environment when it goes through cycles of heating and cooling. but specifically when the temperature gets below freezing. The reason it damages concrete is concrete is naturally porous. And when it rains, water will get down into the concrete, it'll be wet. If it freezes, the water inside the concrete will expand. It has to go somewhere. Concrete loses that fight every single time. And Dustin Heiland: Yeah. Paul: over the course of i I mean, sometimes it can be just the course of a single winter, sometimes it could take 10 winters. However many winters it takes, the and and in harsher environments it could be even worse. That your concrete could deteriorate. And so we have tests for that. And we call them freeze-thaw testing, freeze thaw durability testing. We're going to go through one of those versions here in this paper. the way we get around that deterioration of the concrete is we purposefully inject air into the concrete. We have air and training admixtures. The admixtures supposedly they put in these perfect little s little microspheres of air. You know, the paper's gonna talk about polymeric microspheres, but the air is putting in little air bubbles. The air bubbles are Dustin Heiland: So I can even speak to how those air bubbles are kinda the the admixture doesn't generate air or or or make air. It doesn't disperse air. What it's doing is when concrete mixes, it's it's kinda viscous, right? It's kinda sticky, Paul: Mm-hmm. Dustin Heiland: it it's gonna entrap air naturally regardless. And so even our non air mixes still have an entrapped amount of air. Less than three percent typically, depending on the mix. Paul: And a lot of that can be attributed to the folding of the of the mix in the drum of the mixer as it folds on top of itself, you're you're entrapping, you're pushing air down into the down into it. The same way if you were to knead bread, if you were to fold bread over in large chunks and pound air into it, you would do the same thing. Dustin Heiland: Right, yeah. Yeah, bread, yeah. Much much the same way. That's why you can have an airy croissant or a dense cake. what the air admixture does is it it's a molecule that is actually finding those entrapped based on the structure, the water resistant head and the water attracting tail, it'll actually find the it'll find these entrapped air bubbles and and latch onto them and make them smaller. And b you know, maybe fifth grade science, a sphere is just the most energy lowest energy setting for a shape in the environment. And so that's why there there there's gonna be spheres in the concrete. And you can see these we were just before the before we got on here we were talking about petrographic analysis. You can see these under a microscope when you do thin slices of concrete to confirm that there's actually microscopic air bubbles in the concrete and that that are really close together and packed packed in there at the appropriate spacing factor. and so yeah, but having that in there, when the water does get absorbed in there and expands, it has it has some place to go. The other the other side of that is ironically Air air and train concrete actually is less permeable than non-air and train concrete. It's more porous because you have all these air all this air in there. You've actually put pores in the concrete. Right, but Paul: there's no clear no clear path to get from one side to the other. Dustin Heiland: air my understanding is air and trained concrete bleeds less. And so if if water Paul: Mm. Yeah. Dustin Heiland: is not which bleed water is just water coming out of the concrete as it gets hard. And so if less water is like b you know comes out of the concrete near while it's setting, then you're gonna have less. bleed channels and less pathways for water to get back into the concrete. And that actually comes into play later on in the paper as we get down into the the weeds a little. Paul: The the fun the fun academic word they use for interrupting those bleach channels, torstious interference. Is though yeah, we just got smarter today. Yeah, it's cra it's crazy though to think that like you you mix up the concrete and you just put it into place and it literally settles. Like all the solids they just settle and so the water comes out of it. That's really all it's doing. Dustin Heiland: Right, yeah. Paul: And but if it comes out rapidly. You get channels where the water's migrated up through the concrete. If it does it very slowly, because you have tortious interference of these air bubbles, then you don't have those those clear pathways for things to travel, through through the concrete. But as Dustin said, since you have those air bubbles in there, the porous concrete when the rain falls in there, it's gonna collect inside the the air bubbles. When it expands, that's fine because there's space in the air bubble for the concrete to expand into. And next thing you know, you're surviving these freeze thaw cycles. But you mentioned earlier you you replace five percent of the mass of the concrete with air for a given volume, you're going to have a weaker concrete. And and Dustin Heiland: A hundred percent. Yeah. Paul: when you then you so you said so somebody came around, either Adam Newwalt or Mr. Addy Obie or a combination of the two and said, We might be able to do something about this. So why don't you walk us through w the how you set up these trials, what the trials were intended to prove, and then let's talk a little we can go ahead jump to the results. We don't have to bury the lead and then we can walk we can walk through it from there. Dustin Heiland: Right, so in order to quote unquote prove that we would get the same durability as the as the as an air and train mix is we looked we we started with the building code, you know. ACI have you have three different freeze thaw well four different three side freeze thaw cycles or durability exposure classes. You know, F zero would be interior, doesn't matter. F one is your, you know, Your walls, your footings that aren't gonna get critically saturated with water. and then your your F two, F three kinda kinda overlaps and I I keep hearing the rumblings that they're gonna get rid of F three eventually. but F two essentially flat work driveways, drive lanes where you're gonna get critically saturated and potentially put de icing salts 'cause, you know. Assault is an acid is gonna rust your steel if there's steel to rust or cause an expansion inside the concrete that's that's negatively impacted. So we wanted to prove so we we started with those water cement ratios based on the building code. And then from there we said, Okay, well what if we let's let's run those water cement ratios but put microspheres in place of of air entrainment and then run it through a freeze thaw cycle. an ASTM six six six test to to prove the durability of the concrete with the microspheres and see that the does it meet it? Does it still meet the six six six testing requirement? and then we re ran it again Yeah. And then we Paul: Spoiler spoiler alert. Yeah. Dustin Heiland: re ran it again with higher ash to say like, well it w it met it with this this amount of ash. Does it meet it with a higher ash so we can show like a sustainability Paul: Yep. So there's six so there's six mixes in in this study specifically. Three water cement ratios times two ash contents for six mixes. it followed so followed ASTM C triple six. which by the way, when I first got into the business and I was working, I was just a lab tech at Lafarge, and we ran so many of these. we had our own freeze thought cabinet. We ran so many of these mixes. And Some of them would perform so badly that when you opened up the cabinet, it was just a pile of soggy dust sitting in the bottom of the freeze thaw cell. So when I saw these images, jumped to section 3.3, the photographs of the specimens, we got a photograph of every single specimen at 300 cycles. So people not familiar with the test, do you can you walk us through the test real quick? C triple six and how they conduct that? Dustin Heiland: sh sh yeah, so they we we make beams. and once we make the beams we we took over to Terra's lab. actually trying remember how we ran the testing. No well, you're the expert in the room. Sorry. Paul: It's it's all right. We'll we'll ed we'll edit that part out. Yeah. So hold on, I'll I'll just no Dustin Heiland: Yeah. sorry you caught me off guard. Paul: let no let me let me back up. So we got photographs of the specimens at 300 cycles. So, what they do in the ASTM C triple six test is they make a concrete beam. And you put that concrete beam into a cell. The cell has water in the bottom of it and it's charged, and they're running through different cycles that are simulating freezing and thawing of the concrete, and you do it rapidly. And so through this solution and temperature controlled chamber. We're able to get a good sense for how the concrete fares out in the environment. This is actually, this test is actually more aggressive than what the actual environment is. And we run it for 300. The they ended up determining that 300 cycles was the point where if it survives that, then you're you're good to go. So we we got one of these. Dustin Heiland: Right, 'cause three hundred cycles, just to to back up a little bit, that's that's equivalent to in some areas thirty years of freeze thaw cycles. 'Cause to define a freeze thaw cycle is an a a mi a moment of precipitation. So you have to have a rain event or a snow event, that can actually get the concrete wet outside and then it it has to then freeze within so many hours to actually cause that water freeze inside the concrete. So, you know, I'm here in Charlotte. We might have one and a half every, you know, on average every year. So sometimes that's late December, sometimes it could be February. Some place like Denver, Colorado, where it snows and then that the sun comes out, the snow melts and then it freezes again. They might have they might have eight or ten a know. Paul: Yeah, you'd rather be somewhere somewhere very warm or very cold. Dustin Heiland: Right. Yeah, 'cause you get up in Canada, it just it freezes in September, October, and it just stays frozen the rest of the year. So they Paul: Yeah. Dustin Heiland: have very few freestyle cycles as well. Paul: Yeah, it's crazy. And when you see these beams come out, that sometimes they can be they look like nothing happened to them. They're like, that looks exactly how I set it in there. Sometimes they like the outer coating of cement paste is gone. You can see the coarse aggregate and it can go all the way down to just a pile of sand. And and there was times where we would have a beam in there and it had already gone through like 200 cycles, and you're Man, I need or it goes through sorry, it goes through 300 cycles. And you're like, man, I need to take this out and measure it. I don't even think I can. cause you measure Dustin Heiland: right, yeah. Paul: it. Yeah, because you go to pick it up and it just disintegrates in your hand. And you're like, gosh, that mix is totally done for. they do measure them at different cycles or different intervals. So whether it's like fifty, a hundred, one fifty, two hundred. So you go through different cycles so you can see it over time as it starts to work, but but Dustin Heiland: Yeah. Based on this paper it was, thirty, sixty, ninety, one twenty. Paul: Yeah. Yeah, they did it every 30. And so it's interesting though because they have photos here of the 300 cycles, which is what the test demands. Every single one of these with the microspheres looks incredible. These all pass with flying colors, to say the least. So I think they knew that was gonna happen. And so or maybe you can tell me, do you know why? They decided to go to six hundred cycles. Dustin Heiland: Well 'cause well like like you said, you pull the beams out at three hundred and everything looks almost too good to be true. it takes about three months with with those machines that w that we they were using to to hit to hit three hundred, so why not go another three months and hit and hit six hundred. And when you look at the six the pictures of the six hundred, you know, cycle photos, you can start to see some degradation for sure. and that's Paul: Yeah, yeah. The thirty percent ash, especially the ones with like too much water in Yeah, they're getting s you're not getting dig you're getting like surface scaling, which after six hundred cycles, a that high of a water content and that high an ash content, it's a thirty percent ash mix. That's that's above code. I mean, there's no I don't think there's any state maybe I'm wrong. I don't know if there's any state any state that would have an F two, F three exposure class that would approve that mix now anyway. Dustin Heiland: Well so F well that's where because the industry's trying to get more sustainable, that's why they're trying to eliminate F three and just say and then and then and therefore eliminate the flash limits. Because if you Paul: gotcha. Dustin Heiland: have an F two, the only time the fly the flash limits might apply to a W two, 'cause that or 'cause that's where the overlap was is like but ha but as long as you As long as you're hitting your durability factor, why are we eliminating, flash in the mix? Paul: Well, we've been saying that in the concrete space for a long time. if I have a mix that performs, why is this people's piece of paper telling me I can't do it? Yeah. Why is this Dustin Heiland: Right. Yeah. Paul: piece of paper stopping me? So yeah, it was cool that three hundred cycles, everything looked great. Six hundred cycles, it's you know, almost all of it still look great. Of the six mixes, four of them look fantastic. These res these results are are insane. They're they're absolutely insane. Six hundred cycles. That's nuts. So these microspheres are trying to say, hey, we don't need air entrainment to have a durable concrete, a concrete that needs to be durable for the specific task of surviving freeze thaw cycles. This isn't the only paper y'all did. This is the twenty twenty three version. There's a twenty twenty one version, a twenty twenty three version, a twenty twenty five version. we picked the twenty twenty three version 'cause it had all those pretty pictures on But Dustin Heiland: Mm-hmm. Paul: still still an incredible result to get out. Have you guys been able to implement on any projects? Dustin Heiland: Not so far. we've really wanted to I believe the the the issue holding us back now is that the the input cost of the microspheres themselves right now is prohibitive. But if if we can get enough data and enough people to maybe the producer of these can ramp up production and therefore and thereby lower per yard costs to to get us to a place where it becomes Paul: feasible. Yeah. It's well, Dustin Heiland: Yeah, feasible. Paul: there's a lot of there's a lot of cool technologies out there that have that same problem. It's like, man, this is great. All right, cool. It's gonna cost fifty dollars a yard. never mind, it's not that great. It's not that great. Dustin Heiland: Yeah. Paul: Yeah. That was you know it's funny that like this this study also went into like strength strength gain and you're like, my gosh, it made the concrete stro so strong. But really it's just there's no air in it. So you went Dustin Heiland: Right. Yeah. Paul: from from having six percent air to No a non air mix and the difference the difference was obvious. Dustin Heiland: and that's why we ran them so all the way down to a five five because now well, 'cause now you're getting the same freeze thaw protection of a of a four three and you're still hitting, your overdesign for a four thousand or a forty five hundred at at twenty eight days, forty five hundred, twelve hundred PSI over design, or at fifty seven sixty on a.5 five mix. So maybe I can be a.55, forty five hundred, call it an F two mix. That's still gonna save, save our save our s the variability and the sustainability and 'cause if we compare that to one of the other papers actually shows it like what our standard N C D O T mix would look like and you can kinda you can you can ball apart, you know, Paul: Do a compare do a comparison on it. Dustin Heiland: your costs and say, Well, we're gonna be we're gonna have a a better mix for a lower price with less variability. Paul: Bro, there is nothing more frustrating than having air issues in concrete and then trying to figure out like where is this air coming from? yeah, yeah, or not or not coming from. We Dustin Heiland: Right. Or not coming from like bit. Paul: had one time one time I was in a part of a a project and the air was like crazy high. It was designed, you know, just five, six percent, or it was greater than five, less than seven. And it was coming in all over the place, but it would be fourteen percent, eighteen percent, eleven percent. It's all over the place. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Dustin Heiland: And you weren't running a flow fill, you were trying Paul: yeah. And you know, so everybody's freaking out. And it wasn't just one mixed design, it was every mixed design that was coming out the plant and you know, or checking the ash, like, my gosh, is there something in the ashes? my gosh, you know, 'cause that's that's all my checklist had always been, you know. Check the LOI on the ash. 'Cause if we Dustin Heiland: No, right. Paul: got a bunch of carbon, that could be screwing us up. Check your sands. If we got organic matter, it could be screwing us up. And then Dustin Heiland: You check your plant, check all the make sure there wasn't any oilers leaking, grease. Paul: So it ended up being it ended up being the plant, but it was the admix injector was running like an extra cycle basically. So instead of it was Dustin Heiland: wow. it was double bashing air every Paul: double batching air every time. And yeah, I know I know. Dustin Heiland: We actually just had we were we're running a portable plant. and we just set up both plants, brand new seed containers, everything's you know should be you know, should be should be perfect. Came in Administrator Company came calibrated it, did everything they were supposed to. then we noticed that the plant one took a s a lower dosage of air than plant two. We were still making sure to hit our air, but we couldn't figure out why they were why they why the dosages were almost double on the on the second plant. And finally our our tech was i like and for those that don't know, there's two different types of admixture systems. You can either have stayful systems or blow clean systems. And typically air is set to be a blow clean, just meaning it fills up the line and and blows it clean. So admixture doesn't sit in there 'cause air can freeze very easily. It's a very thin product. And our tech was in plant two and realized the blow clean was turned all the way down and the line wasn't blowing clean. And so adjusted a few knobs and all of a sudden they're using the same amount of air. Paul: my gosh. So it was it was getting extra air because the line wasn't blowing off clean. Wasn't getting the full dose. Dustin Heiland: Well no, it was getting no it wasn't getting the full dose air because the line 'cause the line wasn't blowing clean. So it was just staying full and it should get Paul: okay. I see what you're saying. That's good. Dustin Heiland: it shoulda got the do like I yeah. Paul: Yeah, that's cra that's crazy. Where's that where's that job at? Dustin Heiland: up n up north. Paul: Yeah. I I always wonder when these when these problems happen. So I live in Philadelphia area and w our f we have freeze thaw like crazy, man. It tears up our roads. Our roads get just absolutely chewed up every year. Yeah, it's really tough. Dustin Heiland: I bet I know we had air issues in Charlotte years ago before I even got here and they tracked it back to the the cement supplier. One of their one of the oilers on their belt had broken and was dripping slowly dripping oil onto the cement. Like as it went Paul: Wow. Dustin Heiland: across. Paul: That's a new that's a new one. I haven't I haven't heard. Dustin Heiland: So they had to 'cause they called the plant and they're like, Well, anything changed over well we do go through a lot of a lot of, oil for the greasers and they're like, Well, how much are you using? a fifty five gallon drum a week? well, how much should you use? one a month or something? Like it's it's an obvious problem. They just I guess they didn't realize like where that roller was. It could actually drip onto the So So we Paul: didn't connect, yeah. Wow, that's crazy. That's crazy. Dustin Heiland: Yeah, we tracked it all back and, we they they made it right and we figured it out and so now whenever we have air issues, it's like well is it you know, it can happen it can happen to us, it can happen you y we just installed a new auger, we greased the auger and yeah, there was a bunch of extra grease in the tail pulley or something, you know, that happened to be able to touch the the product, but yeah, air's a air's n air's a pain. We don't really wanna we were w one day we're hoping that we can Find a product that will remove the need for it. That's not variable. Cause this this product is one percent. You run a rollimeter so you can prove that it's in there 'cause it'll all float to the top. Paul: yeah, funny you say that. I when I saw I was reading the other papers and I saw the testing and they were doing the they were doing the regular air pressure, what we would call the regular air pressure Dustin Heiland: Yeah. Paul: pot. And then they were also doing the rollimeter test. And I was like, that's why this isn't getting adopted. Nobody wants to run that dang rollimeter all day. Dustin Heiland: Right. Just gotta prove it went in the concrete, right? Paul: Yeah. But yeah, that's all I'm floating in the column there. It was cool. But man, look, these polymeric microspheres. This paper was fantastic. This technology's cool. it's great to see y'all been testing it for at least six years now. And so that as things continue to move forward, maybe one day the price can come down. maybe one day you can find a job for it where price isn't a concern and you can just keep pushing improving it. Dustin Heiland: Right, yeah, at least get it in the field. Well and well yeah, 'cause I was talking to a to Adam and it did get placed in a section of DOT Road to for testing. So, a lot of free cycle free slot cycles I'm sure. And so we will we'll see how it does over the next, decade or so and if it works out there maybe Paul: Well, that's that's you just described concrete in a nutshell. We'll see how it goes over a decade. Dustin Heiland: Right, yeah. That's the speed. Paul: That's the speed we're we're moving at. Dude, this was absolutely a pleasure. White paper of the month with our friend Dustin Hyland. Thank you so much. We are moving in to the interview portion of our show. It's James Hatfield with Live Switch coming at you right now. And welcome into the interview portion of the Slump Monkeys Concrete Podcast. We've got the one, the only James Hatfield from Live Switch. Thank you, sir, for jumping on. James Hatfield: Thanks, Paul, for having me. I'm glad glad there's only one and only. You don't want more than one. Paul: I saw the NC State helmet in the background. ca I gotta ask. We're this basically is a concrete podcast. It's a Trojan horse to be a college football podcast. So I gotta see see the helmet in the background. Tell me a little about NC State. James Hatfield: Yeah, that's why I decided to go to business school. I didn't think I'd be doing that, but I went to business school there. We had a great team while I went. this was the Philip Rivers Toy Holt years. we actually had some good football back then. Not that we don't have great football now, but you know, we're always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Paul: Well, the the problem so f by the way, Phillip Rivers freaking awesome. his kids are really good too. So it's interesting that we're we're at the age now where Phillips Rivers kids are college prospects. And then NC State, like I mean, the Bailey kid was supposed to be an awesome, awesome quarterback. And then he comes out that first game, you get blanked by Virginia, and then it just seems like it's been madness ever since. James Hatfield: Yeah, welcome to be an NC State fan. Paul: that's really cool. Could you do me a favor and just James Hatfield: Mm-hmm. Paul: give the audience a little bit of your background? we could talk about what Live Switch is and I'll I'll tell you what I learned about it after we chatted, which was funny. And but I think it'd be good for them to say, all right. Who is this James Hatfield guy? James Hatfield: Yeah, I'm not your typical tech nerd, although I became one. I'm not sure how, but they gave me big thick glasses. And don't worry, Paul, I'll give you my lunch money later. I'm a big nerd now. But I did grow up. my grandfather built his house. My father built the house I was born in. And the guys in my family were always good with our hands. So I was good with my hands. I thought, being a contractor is exactly what my grandfather wanted me to be. In fact, he he was like, James, we come from Hummel Means. So my grandfather, His father passed away young. He had to drop out of high school to take care of the family. So he was sixteen years old. He's the man of the house, which is saying a lot about an individual, just from that Paul: Mm-hmm. James Hatfield: statement alone. But his big dream for was like, James, when you get out of schooling, go buy one of those machines that paint the highway and you'll always feed your family. Cause that's what all we cared about is like making sure we put food on the table. And so when I got out of schooling, I was like, Grandfather, I can't afford that machine that we don't have any money. Like, there's no way I'm getting that. But I can Paul: Mm-hmm. James Hatfield: paint a house. Can't paint the highways, but I can paint a house. I can paint a business. So I started a painting company. I honestly thought that's what I do till the day I fell off a ladder and died, or that was it for me. so started painting company, which also morphed into a power washing company, multiple crews, did commercial residential, and you know, I love it. I love before and after. I love I love things that I can see that I know I made a mark. so we did good work, always had. I just I mean, my problem is like probably most business owners and guys listens problem. You go the bookkeeper. the accountant, they'd speak English and you're like, I don't understand what this guy's saying. So Paul: brother story story of my life for for me and some of the listeners have heard this we've got lot of new listeners now so for the all for the OGs apologies and we'll tell the story again. I had that exact same problem in in my career of being promoted to run a division and you know CEO says all right I need all this information. It's like going to an accountant basically saying you know all this information and I I thought I provided it. Spent hours putting it all together exactly what he asked for. And he looked at me like I might as well had three eyes. And then he starts asking me all these questions and we're talking past each other. And then he starts throwing out all these acronyms and asking all these things. He at that point he might as well have been speaking Chinese. And I felt so humbled and s ashamed. And I was never gonna feel like that again in a business situation. So I went and got an MBA instead of instead of arguing with the accountant. James Hatfield: Yeah, I went and got a business degree with a little bit of accounting mixed in. so I could understand what those guys were saying. I honestly I just want to know, can I make payroll and is there a little leftover for me to feed my family? Like it was very humble, Paul: Do yes. James Hatfield: like what I wanted. I wasn't trying to go run a, you know, huge business. And so what happened is while I was going to schooling and doing my business, I met my current business partner. We've been together twenty three years, and he was finishing his degree from a little school called Duke and he was finished his NBA at the same time. A guy named Tim Cook, who used to run Apple. was finishing it, but my business partner twenty three years ago was working on this little thing called AI, but we didn't call it AI back in the day. I just called it voodoo magic because I like, I don't know how you're doing this witchcraft, man. He would take Paul: Dude, a hundred percent. James Hatfield: he took my income saving a balance sheet and it rewrote it to like my language and I could understand what the numbers meant. I'm like, you are absolutely solving the problem I got as a business owner. how are you doing this? but he asked me to do something that he wasn't gonna do, which was do you think you could sell this thing? I was like I don't know, man. I I don't own a computer. I got carbon copy, pink, yellow, white sheet, paper. I got my next Towaki talking. I put paint guns and water guns. I don't I don't know if I can sell this stuff. But I love it and because I love it, I'm gonna try. you throw your weight behind something. Paul: You talk about AI voodoo magic. I don't know how explain. I think about that sometimes if like like the world collapsed and we had to like go rebuild it and somebody came to me and said, Hey, you keep talking about you wish we had Wi Fi back. What is Wi Fi? I'm like, I you know, just like magically the internet gets captured out of out of the air and you can do James Hatfield: Yeah. Paul: you can do whatever with it. And they'd be like, Well, how does that work? I'd be like, data packets. I I don't know actually. I have no idea. I have no idea. Well then you couldn't talk on the phone. Yeah, man. I well James Hatfield: Yeah, back in the day you plug it in and you hear this like beep boop boop shh like I was like what just happened? Like that's it. That's it. I was like, this is crazy, man. Like nerds. Nerds are different than we are contractors. Paul: see, I saw like that's like back in the day. Me and my wife joke about this for like at what point so we're not lower class anymore or squarely middle class. At what point do you think? we become upper middle class and we laugh about it. And I was back in the day though, there was clearly when I was a kid, I realized when one of my friends was was upper middle class because he had he he got on the internet, but his phone worked. I was like, Whoa, how did you do that? He goes, Well, we have a phone line for the internet. You don't have one of those And I was like, You can have multiple phone lines. He's like, We have four. I was like, No, no. I you know, we went to his pantry and had three different boxes of cereal. I was like I don't know how how do you have three boxes of cereal? You don't have to just pick one and share. So yeah, man, there's there's different James Hatfield: Yeah. Paul: ways. But if we had to describe how to rebuild James Hatfield: Mm-hmm. Paul: how does Wi-Fi work? I don't know. So for you being a guy like me that is working in construction and now you're jumping over this tech platforming, what was that transition like? James Hatfield: fish out of water. I mean, I don't know how that stuff worked. Again, I didn't have a computer, man. Like I could fix my engine and I could, you know, I just cared that it had two wheel drive or four wheel drive, you know, that was kind of it. so then when I got into it though, I was able to speak language to other folks, right? Like I could say, hey, this is in plain language, like no acronyms, no five syllable words, just like here's what she is. And people would gravitate towards that. And that helped us out. Cause a la last company where we could take that information and make it understandable. We took it from nothing to Inc. five hundred, which means you're one of the fastest growing companies in the country. And then eventually we sold it to private equity. And she's a six billion dollar company and runs all the banks in the country. So it it totally worked out. I still can't believe that happened. and we got out of that and, you know, I didn't really want to chase a little white golf ball around. So we got into philanthropy. We started inmates to entrepreneurs. We go into the jails and we teach men and women how to run a business because we really believe in second chances. I know I needed one. So we Teach men and women how to do that. and that turned into an ABC television show called Free Enterprise, which I'm like, okay, didn't have that on my bingo card, but won a bunch of awards. I can't even watch it. If you watch it, just get your tissue box. If you're any kind of emotional, you'll lose it because you if you believe in second chances, it's just incredible. We hire people out of that and even into our software company here that we got now. So we ended up eventually buying another software company because we're idiots and we wanted to do another big company. Like I should maybe just go chase the little white golf ball around, but I don't know, when you grow up building stuff, I gotta have something to wake up to. I I can't wake up to that every morning. I gotta build something. So we bought a company six years ago and that's where we're at today. And that's a whole nother story, but yeah, I I never meant to go from, you know, turning wrenches and cleaning homes and power washing homes to working in the software space. But I've come to love it and I see it as a different kind of build and different kind of building and creating. and because of that, it keeps things really interesting for me. Paul: Well, you still did what your grandfather wanted for you, which was to have a business that would provide for your family. And, you've exceeded his his dream for that. But it's it is interesting to think back and be like, Man, I can't afford that paint striper. And James Hatfield: Yes. Paul: now and now look at you, you've you're in a position where you wouldn't have to work another day of your life if you didn't have to. how does it feel to be in that position and honor your family's legacy? James Hatfield: Mm. Just try to stay humble. Don't let the left hand know what the right hand's doing. don't get the bigger boat. don't let know. you've heard all those stories about the guy who drives around the F one fifty and's got all the money. That's that's right. I wanna try to remain. You know what I mean? I drive an F one fifty and I don't want and even the one with the leather seats. I don't want that. You know what I mean? I just wanna be humble. I wanna not let the left hand know what the hand's doing. I don't want my name on buildings. I just wanna give it away. I think you give me more, I'll just give it away. I just I I don't know. It's like that's where I come from and I don't wanna I I I you know, it's like fish out of water, like I said. So like I don't run and I don't look the same as the other guys that have what I have. You know what I mean? And I don't want to. Frank. I I just I don't want to. So Paul: I g I gotta disagree with you on the leather seats. I don't know if I can have another truck that doesn't have the the air hockey air cooling ventilation in the seats, man. That would that was made for me. James Hatfield: If they still made roll down windows, I'd do it. If I could actually still work on my engine. My last truck I had a old older Toyota, I I still could change the head gasket. I like to work on the stuff, but now I open up it's like, it's a computer. Dang it. How'd the computer get in here? Computer's everywhere. In my toaster, also I'm like, get out of here, man. like I as much Paul: They are. James Hatfield: as I like tech, I also like analog stuff, man. It's crazy. Paul: Have well, everything well, everything they went we ended this mode in consumerism where we went into the internet of things. everything had to be connected to the internet. Have you seen maybe it's just my algorithm. Have you have you seen lately the Samsung TVs? Have they actually have been listening to like everything we're saying and they're s it's selling all that data back on the back end and it's just and that James Hatfield: I'm not shocked. I'm not shocked, man. A lot of these companies, don't always have the ethics you want them to have, But I don't want to lie, cheat or steal. I want to r win the right way. And even if it's harder, I'll take the harder out, but that's how it can be hard. There's a lot of temptation out there in this world. Especially when you put money behind it. People make bad choices. Paul: Yeah, and I and I always it is tough for people to make the right choice all the time. And you just have to tell yourself that that's that's the only thing we're gonna do. And it just ends up being it ends up being a lifestyle. But you you so you you had this great success, you you took a massive chance to help your buddy with his new company. It worked out incredibly and you said if I make any more money, I just give it away. And I I think it's Interesting that you when you had that success, you decided to do something with philanthropy and you you chose to help inmates. I'm I'm curious, how did how did that thought come about? How did you build that program? I mean, obviously you weren't you didn't set out to make a TV show, but like when it's just an really interesting that's like one of one type of thing, man. So like I I really want to know like what what was the thought process? that led you in into that space and how did it come about? James Hatfield: Yeah, so my business partner and I help out in a lot of different ways. so he's spearheaded, the inmates entrepreneurs and I went out. I like vulnerable parts, people that really can't help, like orphans, peop kids in group homes, women's shelters, hospice. My family, we go in and we sing to people on their last day. I don't like people dying. I've been around a lot of death. And if you can hold someone's hand and sing a song on the way out, that's what I'm trying to do. So we really try to get into the vulnerable parts into places where people don't people don't really like going to jails. I don't know about you, but I haven't meant to be like, Hey, this weekend I'm going to hang out the jail. Wanna come with? we wanna come to the hospice with me, Paul. We're gonna go watch help people as they die. d we try to go to places where they can't give us anything back. Really. I mean, eventually sometimes people make it out of those situations, women's shelters and out of jail, and they really can give a whole lot back, actually. Like w you'll meet people that have the means that have been into those systems and but it can be hard to get out of. those those things, right? we don't always get dealt the same hand. so if we can make someone's ride a little bit smoother, although we can't smoothen the ride all the way, that's kind of what we hope for. so that's where we end up going together and we kind of divide and conquer and we've got different associations and no I have nonprofits and so is my business partner. And we have wonderful people that do that full time and you know, put them to work in a different way. Paul: Golly. I yeah, the whole foster system and the the orphan system, like y you I mean, you wanna start breaking me down. Like that stuff just it kills me, man. I just I don't know how you even James Hatfield: Two of my kids are out of that. They they're with me full time. So yeah, we we put our money where our mouth is and you know it's not easy. It's not easy. None of this stuff's easy, man. This stuff all has a story. and you know, just give I would tell people just give what you can. If you can just give money, just give money. If you can give time, give time if you ain't got no money. or if you can just give prayers, you know, just give some prayers, you know, like those are powerful and effective. So give what you can give. and if you make it, if you won't make this world all about you. it'll make it a better place, especially when it's all the crap that we see. So just try to give back a little bit and you won't get your name in lights. You won't end up on the news because the news loves to put the crazy stuff up there. but just serve quietly and make one other person's life a little better. And I kinda think that's kind of it. We don't need this grandiose stuff. Paul: Yeah, I I agree with the not grandiose stuff and I I appreciate that you wanna serve in the background and I appreciate you telling some of the story here because when when the audience of slump monkeys finds out we're having a technology guy on and they're gonna be like, Why in the world are we having a technology guy on? But when they hear your story, like this is the kind of person we want in our community. This kind of person we want leading companies around us. So so thank you for going into that. How many kids do you have, by the way? James Hatfield: I got four. And a a wife Paul: Or James Hatfield: that we have an agreement she can't die until the last one's eighteen. 'Cause if she goes, I'm gonna have to get a male order bride, a chef, all the stuff. s she does the work of multiple women. I'm like, I can't do it. I'm like, let me go first, man. Please let me go first. I can't do all that she does. Paul: that's that's great. If if my wife decides to listen to this, I hope she hears that and we we need to strike up some kind of similar deal. That's hilarious. my gosh. So James Hatfield: It's true though, that's the thing. Paul: so my first job when I was fourteen years old, my first job was with a gutter company. And before then I didn't know you could make forty foot ladders, extension ladders. I learned real quick. I also learned I didn't like heights. So when you're thirty James Hatfield: Yeah. Paul: feet up on a ladder, nailing gutters into a roof, you realize like, yeah, this isn't for me. I need to I need to go to college. So you went to college. D did you go to college first and then become a painter? Or was it painter then c okay, painter first? James Hatfield: Painter first in college, yeah. Paul: Painter first and what what was that? I mean, I guess you had no no fear of heights, getting up that that high on a on a house. I mean James Hatfield: I had more fear of not eating food. So get your butt up on the ladder, you know, get over it. I'm from the rub some dirt in it generation, you know. Like we didn't talk about mental health that we should have. But I'm in the rub rub some dirt in it generation. So a little bit of grit, you know, like that that that grocery bill ain't gonna pay itself. so I put hooks on the end of my ladders. Like you can put these at the very top. Have you seen those like shoe horns? where you can put it at the top. Paul: yeah. Yeah, James Hatfield: I just Paul: yeah. James Hatfield: added that that way if I'm putting it on the roof or putting on the side I had a little more stability at the top. that always made me feel a little better. But no, I've seen unfortunately one or two of my guys hit the deck 'cause he didn't set the ladder right and that's always the worst call of the day. You never want that call. I hated those calls. Paul: Yeah. No. Never want that call. I've seen those anchored what you're talking about. guys are they're doing roofing. If they gotta carry, you know, shingles up onto the roof. We usually had those on the ladder. But, you know, with the gutters, they they didn't didn't have that and you couldn't have that because it would get in the way of what you're trying to do. Man, that was that was crazy. I realized like, nope, cannot, cannot do this. In fact, I was probably more of a danger to everybody because I was afraid of heights. I'd get I'd get stiff when I got too high. And then they were like, Yeah, maybe maybe you should take care of the the shop. Yeah, you know, not not the most manly moment to get taken off the truck. but yeah, we got to I got to keep the shop clean and keep the property straight and loto race trucks for in the morning. But that's what you do when you're fourteen, fifteen years old. You have to do all the all the groundwork. James Hatfield: I love that. Gotta start from the bottom, baby. Best place to start. Paul: Always, man. so I was looking into live switch a little bit and the branded stuff is great. I love your neon sign on the back, by the way. It I needed yeah, it made me want to get one for for slump monkeys for the back. I'm in my office here. In fact, I got we gotta run a joke. Like every every week there's like a something new behind it. It's usually it's usually piling up. So yeah, I got a suitcase back there back from the trade show we just got back from and new trophy. By the way, check little bad boy out. Look James Hatfield: look at that thing. Paul: at this. So it's not done yet, but this was this is the icon of the show. And it's 3D printed and it's gonna be mounted on a base, it'll be painted, everything'll look real nice. But we have a college football pick contest for the show. So there's a few dozen people in that. So the winner will get a five hundred dollar prize and this beautiful little trophy. He yeah. James Hatfield: I love it. You see these trophies behind me here? I used to have a million followers in fantasy football, sponsored by Buffalo Wild Wings and I got all these all this stuff. There's a Joe Name of the ball Buffalo Wild Wings sent me and stuff, but that's a whole nother story. But yeah, I love I love the three D printed trophy, man. Thing is super cool. Paul: You're over there living seven different lives, James Hatfield: yeah, I'm like a cat, man. Paul: dude. A million followers on a fantasy football program. Hold on. We're going on another tangent, which the show's known for. wait a minute. All right. How James Hatfield: Mm. Paul: do you how do you how do you do that? James Hatfield: So went back to business school and had to learn the numbers. Remember I told you you didn't know the numbers, learned the numbers, then fell in love with numbers and then started watching football with the numbers. And I was like, wait a second now. If you stop paying attention to the back of the jersey and, you know, who's got the most fame, you start learning something. And I started applying that to fantasy football and started kicking smoking people. Like people don't even let me in their leagues anymore. so what happened is back in the day this little website called YouTube came out. I don't know if you heard of it. I Paul: Yeah. James Hatfield: was like, I wonder if other people could benefit from me just making a silly little video and you know, telling them who to pick up off the waiver wire. So I did that. And you know, first bits, no views, no views. And then this little paper that you might have heard of called the New York Times, put my video on their website and it went through the roof and I was like, Who did this? So I I hunt things down sometimes. I was like, I gotta find out who did this. So I found this gal, her name's Sarah. She was at the New York Times and I was like, why did you put my janky video on the New York Times? it was janky. she had no, it is janky, but the content is really good. you need to make a website or try to figure this out. So I was like, I guess I gotta figure out how to do websites. So I figured out how to make a website, put it on there, and then this little thing called the iPad started coming out, the first one ever. And I used to do drafting players with pen and paper. Paul: Mm-hmm. James Hatfield: And I was like, man, there really should be a app. on this iPad for it. So I went and created one with a couple of guys and we were one of the number top ten sports apps in that app store on that iPad 'cause we made the first draft guide. and that turned into fantasy pros. If you guys wanna look that up, it's pretty good. I still think they're the best. And Google was launching this thing called Google Plus to compete with a little thing called Facebook and Twitter and they reached out and said, Hey, do you want to do some radio shows with Tiki Barber? And we'll put you on there. And so Ended up having a million followers, doing radio shows and getting sponsored by Buffalo Wild Wings and apps and all that crap. And I tinker, man. I'm telling you, I'm a tinker. So I was tinkering in fantasy football. Still love fantasy football to this day. Paul: That's incredible. I I actually I like the idea of fantasy football. When I actually get in and the draft is a lot of fun. And when I get in and I then the season starts, and I'm not really an NFL guy, I'm a college football guy James Hatfield: Mm. Paul: from Alabama. College football was everything. So a real big college guy. And then to dedicate all day Saturday to watching college and all day Sunday to watching the NFL to keep up was really tough. So during the season, I wasn't keeping up like I should. And then the trades start happening, people are bye weeks and sitting and I would just lose track. And it became it got to the point where they were laughing when they would ask me to sign up, you want to do basketball too? 'Cause they knew it was a free twenty dollars if I would jump in. So I just had to had to bow out gracefully and say, Sorry, I I'm just I'm stretched a little too thin and the what what is the thing that gets chopped off the block is fantasy football. James Hatfield: You're a smart man. Paul: I wouldn't go that wouldn't go that far. I got tired of losing twenty dollars to ever to every league to every league James Hatfield: You're a smart man. Paul: I joined. Don't enjoy pain. one of the things about me, I I I only learned lessons the hard way. So I learned the hard way. I was gonna lose twenty dollars if I signed up. And one of the things I thought was interesting, circling back around to your company, Life Switch, I actually thought it was really, really interesting the technology because I was watching another podcast you were on and you were talking about it and it you said you know there's no app to use use your thing and that was the first first thing that caught me off guard. I was like, huh, this guy's talking about a product that has no app. Like that's what kind of technology product has everything has an app. You gotta gotta have an app. And I started digging in and and saw where it was it was instant video. So here I am. I'm I'm a concrete moron. I'm not a technologist. So I I I asked the old AI. I said, What in the world is instant video? It was like, it's peer-to-peer video through a through a server. There's no middleman, there's no middle app, there's no middleware. It's just your phone to their phone and you're both looking at the same thing at the same time. I was like, well that would be great if I was a concrete guy and the mix is having a problem and I don't know how to solve it, but I can call my QC guy and just live be like, hey, here's exactly what the concrete looks like as it's coming out of the shoot. As we porton he might have other questions. Well, show me show me what the finisher's doing. Show me where the guy was adding fiber. How's he adding it? Show me the truck as it's loading. I want to see the whole thing. The fact that not only can he see it live, but it gets recorded later and we can look at it later. I was like, my gosh, I don't have to teach anybody how it how to use an app, you just text them on their phone and say, just open this link and I'm I'm live rec sharing right now like that. So I gotta ask, given all that and given the seven lives you've lived, you're on your eighth life here, what how in the world did you come up with this idea and what made you decide to apply it to the trades? James Hatfield: So we bought this company six years ago. She's a sixteen-year-old company, one of only few companies in the world that do live video. and that's a whole nother story about people speaking English to me and I didn't understand it. But where this came from is because we're only one of a few companies in North America that have live video, the chief of police in Washington, DC reached out to us directly to reinvent the nation's nine one one phone call. So I worked with the chief of police and my computer scientists. I got a bunch of nerds to figure out how. Do we get into the cameras now that everyone's carrying two to five cameras around and then stream stream that video to a police car, right? the idea was hey, call 911, you're on the phone, right? You're talking to 911. How do we get into those cameras? Well, four years ago I woke up at two in the morning because I figured out that in order to get in those cameras, you don't have time to download an app if you're a citizen. And by the way, you're compromised, so it has to be idiot proof. So got with my computer scientist 'cause I figured it out. The phone has three channels. And I'll show you how big a nerd I have. This is the new iPhone Duo thing. But Yeah, she's pretty. She pretty Paul: nice. Open that bad boy up. If you're on YouTube, all five of you, you can see the he's got the new iPhone. That's sick, dude. James Hatfield: Got to. Gotta stay ahead of my people, man. so I'm the first one out there. But anyway, so this phone has three channels. it's got a phone, telephony, that's what they call it, SMS texting, and then data. So when you're talking to 901, you're on telephony. Then while you're talking, I can send you a text via SMS, then you can tap on it, and I can get into your cameras now and stream this one, in this case, to the police car. All right, it's idiot proof. I had to make it so easy. And the chief loved it. He was like, James, why don't we all have this already? I was Well, you didn't have a video company that cared about this stuff and it ain't easy to it might look easy, but it she ain't easy. so then from there he loved it. You know, now that that's out there. I just had a question like, Well, who else could use this? You see what I see, no app get in the way. Technology, and I meet this guy, he's taking care of the Tennessee Titans NFL team. Twenty years in the FBI, his name's CT. He's looking at my stuff for emergencies, and he goes, James, I love this. But I he's like, I got a dumb question, actually. lay it on me, man. He's like, this arena in Nashville is enormous. Can I just text my man across the arena when there's an issue at my facility so he can show me so I don't have to hop in my golf cart? Because that would save me a lot of time. I could just see what's going on. your concrete example, right? And that's when the big aha hit me. I was like, this is the next Tel Walkie talkie that I used to manage all of my crews with. I love that thing. I don't know what happened to it. But now with this generation, because we have video cameras because my phone back in the day my next hill did not have a video camera we just talked on it and I could I could whatever's going on. Hey boss like this is what's going on it but now it I was like this is this is this generation's next hill. but with the with cameras. So I ended up meeting this really serious guy just out of happenstance in the moving industry, like moving residential commercial moving boxes. And I'm same stories I'm telling Paul. Like same story. He like James he's like Buddy you are sitting on liquid gold. what are you talking about? He's like, For me as a contractor, the most expensive thing I do as an owner is put one of my hourly wage guys on one of my vehicles, burning up diesel, driving all around Florida, just for people to find out in this case how much it costs to move their family. Sometimes when they find out how much it costs to move their family, they have sticker shock and they just go rent a U-Haul. Right. But for Paul: That's right. James Hatfield: me as a business owner, that wasn't free. That was that was a lot of money and time. So he's like, What I'll do is I'll send a text to the homeowner and they can show me and if they're kicking tires, then get away. If it's a small job, if I'm just moving an apartment, I I can bid that in my sleep. Or if it's a big job and I know they got money, they are now worth my trip out. And I was like, Well, you Paul: Mm. James Hatfield: pay me American money for this. I love selling usernames and passwords. He's like, yeah, buddy. That was three and a half years ago. And then we came out of Canon shot out like a rocket. And we're now one of the fastest growing software platforms in the whole country. It's crazy. And I sell all over the world now too. It's cra it is it has been humbling beyond belief. what this has done ever since. But that's how she came about, man. Long story long there. Paul: No, that that's incredible. I yeah, when I s when I heard about it, I was like, Man, to have a a problem at a job site, how many times are you on the phone and trying to describe what's ha what you're seeing in front of you, but you can't do it. So then you try to take a video of it and send it, but maybe the video is too long, so the file's freaking huge, or maybe now it's just stored on your phone and then you try to show somebody later and you're scrolling through your camera roll trying to find the white w right one. the whole thing just what when you hear about what you're doing, and it's like, my gosh, this makes way more sense that us folks, especially in in concrete, but I like to joke, in concrete, it's okay if you get it wrong. It's just permanent. So James Hatfield: That's good stuff right there. Paul: you'd like to get it, you'd like to get it right. And if If you have something that can instantaneously be the next tele video, can instantaneously connect you with somebody on your team that's you know, in my in my case I'd be calling people smarter than me and be like, Please tell me what to do to fix this 'cause, you know, last thing you want is tear something out or or send something back. James Hatfield: Mm-hmm. and the the other big problem I see in technology is everyone over engineers it. You give stuff to engineers, what are they gonna do? They're gonna overengineer it. It's like in the brand. And so with my, nerds, I call them, my computer scientists, or make them go out on on job sites and I'm like, hey, you gotta design differently. my guys, we don't read instructions. when I got my paint sprayers, I didn't read the instructions. I just blew up a few houses like six houses and a couple of my paint sprayers. Paul: Ha ha ha. James Hatfield: Cause I don't read the instructions. I'm not going to. you can't get me to sit through any training or any of this stuff. I'm not doing it. I'm just that's how I'm wired. I don't know if anyone else is like me, but probably. So I was like, guys, what you gotta do when you get out on these job sites, go up on a ladder, take an older phone, put it in a case, and then rub that joker in dirt, and then get up halfway, put big gloves on your hands, and then you need to be able to use our stuff with your nose. They're like, What are you talking about? I'm like, unlock your phone with your nose. Click record with your nose. hit the send button, what Everything, because I'm on a ladder. I can't take two hands off a ladder. You know what happens if I take two hands off a ladder? I fall off the ladder and die. So I ain't dying for your technology. So I'm like, you better be able to hold the ladder with one hand and do everything with your nose. And that way you can show the boss, you know, if I'm up on a ladder, hey, this window's broken and I didn't break it. Hey, these gutters are dinged up and I didn't ding them up. Hey, Paul: That's right. James Hatfield: I'm up on a roof. And I'm looking at this. Like, you gotta understand, like, we work on safety so we don't hurt ourselves. And we work on ease of use, but we want tools. Like, I don't need to know how the engine works in the truck. I just need to know that if I turn the key, well now push the button, she starts up and I go from A to B. Like you gotta understand, we're looking for tools that do the job that I ain't gotta think too hard because I'm trying to one worry about my safety and two, making sure the job gets done right. I already got enough stuff to worry about. So it's trying to teach these engineers. how life is in the contractor world. And so that's that that's what I think a lot of these technology companies get wrong, to be honest with you. Paul: If your data scientists were actually good, when it shouldn't be even using my nose. I should be talking to it or I should be blinking at it. And if it right left, right, left, boom, it's recording. Don't make me don't make me touch nothing. James Hatfield: Mm-hmm. Paul: Tell to get on that. James Hatfield: I will. Well, we're gonna put it on your face. You seeing these glasses they got coming out with video? Paul: like the metaglasses and all those. Yeah, I James Hatfield: Mm. That's where we're going next. That's where and drones. Paul: I saw a really good I saw a really interesting concept product. I don't think it ever came to market, but it was it was a sh it was like a shield, so it wasn't a full helmet, but it did have it did have a front facing shield. And on inside of the shield you could see whatever visuals were up on the thing, but it was really cool because It was the the the concept anyway was like if you were a mechanic or a maintenance person and you walked up to a piece of equipment, it would identify the equipment and say, Are you trying to fix this? yes, here's the problem that's been recorded because somebody uploaded the problem somewhere, or maybe it identifies or you tell the problem and it's like, here's the problem, here's how you fix it, and it walks you through step by step if you even need that. Or you walk up to it and you're like, Hey, this is malfunctioning. Can you see what's happening? It's like, yes. It'll see it's like, yes, the gauge is reading high, it's running hot, this and that. And I c and it says, all right, well, what are some potential troubleshooting steps that I should go go through? What what's the potential problem here? And it and it identifies everything and walks you through it. And I was like, shoot, that would be that would be fantastic James Hatfield: Yeah. Yeah. Paul: if I was on a job site and it knew the blueprints of the job that I was I was at. And I start James Hatfield: yeah. Well Paul: walking, walking the slab and it realizes hey, it's stubbed in the wrong place. You don't wanna fix that. James Hatfield: Well, we already got that in Live Switch minus the shield across your face because the boss man ain't gonna buy a bunch of those. Just telling you. Like I I have to go where Yeah. no, totally get it. Totally get it. Paul: Yeah, no, no, it was it was the concept of having the the AR, yeah, yeah. James Hatfield: Like the thing though, th but what you're saying is really, really interesting, right? Because we all got smartphones in our pockets. Soon eventually we'll have the things on our faces, mark down. Not today, but it's already coming. But we all got the cell phone in the pocket. So now you can whip the cell phone out. And I've got when you're talking to it and video in it, I have AI watching all of it. So everything you're set talking about, this thing, my I don't can we don't sell as consumers, but my my wife used this the other day and she just told the th live switch, what's going on with the toilet, and then it told her how to fix it. And she fixed the first toilet she ever had in her life. This thing fixed my HVAC unit the other day from a thirty second video. One of my customers, he's in so down south, he calls it switchy. So the live switch I I love switchy, man. Switchy. Paul: Actually that's that's actually a good name. You might you might want to go trademark that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. James Hatfield: Might have to change it. Yeah. Might have to change it. He was like, James, I love switchy. He's like, check this out. He's I bought myself a a used boat from an engineer, so the thing was super clean. And he's like, 'cause he's down in Florida. He's got my family in the boat. I go to come up on plane, you know, on the boat at full speed, and she dies. I try to do it again and she dies. And he's like, I didn't know what's going on. So I took Switchy out and I opened it up and I told it what kind of Mercury engine it was, what year my boat was and what it was happening. And then we ran AI on it and It said it didn't have this certain kind of gasket. So I turned the boat in to the mechanic. He starts fixing it. And he calls me and he's like, Hey man, I'm so sorry you're never going to believe this. And he goes, Let me guess. It's this random gasket. And he it's got a funky name. He's like, Yeah, man, how'd you know? We just forgot to put that back in. We were tuning her back up. We just forgot to put that gasket back in. He's like, You gotta be kidding me, man. Paul: That's awesome. Yes, sir. So James Hatfield: Okay. Paul: in all the all the things I've seen you talk about switchy, I've not seen this this being promoted. This to me, like I think you're sitting James Hatfield: Yeah, that's off label. It does a lot of off label stuff. So you're we're taking the biggest video in the country and we're connecting it to the biggest AI in the country and you're getting guys with experience talking to it. So here's the thing that happens all the time. You got guys twenty years, thirty years experience. They're like, I don't care about this AI stuff. I d and and they probably shouldn't. But twenty, three year I've been doing this my whole life, James. I don't need AI. I'm like, I got it. I'm like, before you throw that sucker AI in the trash can, let me tell you You are the best person to use AI for all these different reasons. I'm gonna tell you why. At 30 years old, you're probably thinking about retiring at some point, right? And you got this whole crew of guys, maybe guys that are in their first year, and you got all that knowledge in your head. I said, what you can do is whip out your camera and hit record and start talking out loud with what you're thinking with your 30 years of experience and what you'll be doing while we got a video running and you talking. With your 30 years experience, we can now take all that rich information, put in the biggest AI in the world, and you can produce something to hand down to the guys that I think you want to do this thing called take a vacation or retire, because your body's gonna give out. This thing can write out how you do it, has a video for them to watch it. And you this is why the 30 guys with 30 experience, you are the absolute best. it's one thing for my first year guy to go around and talk to it, but it's a whole different ball of wax for my guy with 20, 30 years. experience goes around and talks to AI, it's game changing, man. So that's one of our biggest challenges, right? Is getting the twenty, thirty something year bets to guys, you racists, you're gonna change your whole company. Paul: I d I don't think I think you're exactly right. I think that we've got an issue in this whole industry where the guys that have the thirty, forty years, there's not like a a a set like way, there's not like a process to hand all that information down. And I don't think this is new. I don't think it's new to twenty twenty six. This has been an issue from time immemorial is the the greatest guys, the founders, they can't you just can't push everything down to the next set of people. James Hatfield: That's it. That's it. I try to get my business owners or anyone running, if you're, one of the the leaders in your in your company, you don't have to r get a book and read it, but if you can get go to Audible, all right, that app we will and get this audible book or real book, whatever you like, prefer. It's called Making Money Is Killing My Business. It'll change your life. It'll change your life, man. Like anyone that comes to me, I do a lot of business coaching and teaching. I'm on stages all the time. If I can only give you one book of required reading or listening, you're gonna do that one. And here's what it's gonna start to teach you a little bit. It teaches you this thing called freedom mapping. Because you're trying to get free. All right. Because sometimes we go and we become a business owner, we actually make ourselves a job. We don't make ourselves a business because a business owner should be able to go take a vacation or eventually retire. Right. But if you can't do that, you've made yourself a job. So what you do is you have to get this huge long document, and it can be however you want it. but you wanna write out every step that you have in your business. Every step. And then what you're gonna do, and this is the humbling part, is each one of those steps in your business, you write a name of who does it or names. And a lot of times you're gonna find for my guys that can't take a vacation, your name is gonna be on a lot of those lines. And you know who I'm talking about. But you start there. Then what you do is you tell your people in the company, hey, if your name is next to one of these steps, try to make it better. If you do, lunch is on me or whatever, right? And then For yourself, what you got to do is hand that step off somehow, whether it's someone you already have on your team or someone you're gonna need to hire. And you're gonna start taking what's painstaking and freeing yourself until your name is not the primary name next to each step. And when you do this, you can do things, not only can you take a vacation, when you come back, the business didn't blow up. So I'm I'm constantly trying to fire myself every six months with this kind of methodology. I hire the guy, I teach the guy, I put his name and I'm out. Paul: well man, this this has been fantastic. if somebody wanted to get in touch with you or learn more about live switch, wherever they go. James Hatfield: two places. if you're on LinkedIn, just look up James Hatfield and Live Switch, L I V E S D P I T C H. Just reach out, send me a message. I'll talk to anyone listening. I'm easy to get a hold of if you want to. if you want to learn more about my company, just go to live switch dot com. We got free trials on there. We got whatever you want, you know, and it's actually free. I don't even take your credit card, believe it or not. I believe in what's free. And if you want someone on my team to walk you through everything, go for it or you can even ask for me and I'll I'll walk you through it myself. which I love doing. So I mean you get a hold of Paul: And if you're here listening to this and you're wondering if it's for you, they've got a lot of use cases on their website, by the way. So you might see one that you know, think about your neighbors as an HVAC company. I was like, Man, they should probably think about this. They they've got a bunch of use cases up there. I think for concrete, I didn't see any specific concrete use cases, but after like thinking about it and then this discussion about how the AI enables it, you're not just not only were you sitting on a gold mine, I think you're also sitting on a diamond mine. This whole is whole AI integration into the video. James Hatfield: yeah. Yeah. It's it's hard to tell people how many places can the next tell d walkie talkie be using can you s I'm like no no no you can see what your guy sees without you having to drive out or you could be halfway across town on a different job. what's the value of that? Time my time, my money, my gas. it's so obvious. Paul: Well we're Yeah. We're already doing that now. We're already doing that now in concrete. What we did was we took there there's hatches, like viewing hatches on the side of a concrete drum. And in in in there they've bolted in these like telematic systems that can they have sensors on the inside of them and they can sense things about the concrete as it rolls over the sensors and then it broadcasts that into the truck or just wired into a broadcast system, then it relays it outside of the truck. And back to a central command or the app on your phone or whatever. And so they're already doing things to look at data and try to diagnose what may or may not be, it may not be any problem, but they can still diagnose that concrete and say, Yep, it's doing exactly what it should be doing. Or no, it's not doing what it should be doing. And they were able to they're able to solve problems remotely by looking at this data. Why not take that to the next step and and have a it adds a layer? James Hatfield: Well, just as a layer, right? You got all that video feed going on as rolling. Now you might want to talk to Joe who's in the truck looking at that thing if you can't figure it out and be like, Hey, just show me what you're looking at. All right. Walk down, show me the like everyone's got the you know, the phone in their pocket. So like just pick that thing out and it's all tuned up for remote assistance. This ain't no FaceTime call. Paul: I was just about to say another another thing is that I'd heard you say before was yeah, we have FaceTime, but that's not a pro level tool and it's not categorizing it's not cataloging, categorizing, saving, it's all just on on if you're even recording it. James Hatfield: No. Mm-hmm. Paul: It's just on your if you even record it, it's on your phone. so this is the next level. It's a it's a pro pro level tool. I just James Hatfield: Yeah. Yeah. No pro I know uses l FaceTime unless they haven't found the they they just are like, Well, I don't have any alternative, right? well, check this out. Now you do. you FaceTime is cute, but it is not meant for remote help. It's meant for grandma to watch, you know, the grandkids blow out the candles, not for concrete guy to like to get the job done. Like that's just but you had nothing else. I mean, that's what the chief of police said. Like, why didn't we already have it? It seems so obvious. I'm like, Paul: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. James Hatfield: you just you didn't have someone in my shoes or my a company like mine that cared to build this for you, but it's here now. Paul: That's funny. The only time FaceTime gets used in my house is when the the aunties overseas or or granddad on the other side of town he calls is the only time it's the only time it gets used in our house. James Hatfield: 'Cause it's perfect for it. it's absolutely perfect for that. But it ain't perfect for li that's it. Just ain't perfect for looking at concrete. Paul: They wanna see they want to see the kids. Yeah, they want to see the kids. man. Yeah, you ain't lying. All right. Hey man, dude, this has been great. I really, really, really appreciate you coming on here, sharing your story, letting people know that you exist. I mean, you're everywhere and everywhere, but in our little corner corner of the universe, I'm happy that I get to be the person to introduce you to the slump monkey audience. James Hatfield: Thank you, Paul, for having me. Paul: Absolutely. That is another episode of the Slump Monkeys Concrete Podcast. On our way to being the world's number one concrete podcast. If you want to reach out to us directly, it can be admin at slumpmonkeys.com. That's M-O-N-K-E-Y-S dot com. Admin at slumpmonkeys.com. Talk to us or we can get you hooked up with James Hatfield over at Live Switch. You can learn a little bit more about what he's got going on. And we'll see you on the next one.