Showing a customer the part that failed was about the person standing in the hallway in their socks, being asked to approve four figures for a part they have never seen. This is about the other person. The one who is not in the hallway, is not going to be home until six, and is the one who actually says yes to anything over a thousand dollars.
Every exterior contractor knows this house. You are on the roof, or in the gutter, or at the rotted corner of the fascia, and the person in the driveway is nodding and saying "I'll have to talk to my wife," or "let me run it by my husband." They mean it. They are not stalling. In that household the spouse who is at work makes the call, and the one at home is about to try to describe a roof to them over dinner, from memory.
The spouse who is at work gets the same link
The fix is almost embarrassingly small. The link I text the person at home works on more than one phone. So before I climb I ask one question: "Is there anybody else who is going to want to see this before you decide?" Nearly always there is, and nearly always they are at work.
I text the same link to the second number. It opens in whatever browser is already on their phone. No app, no account, and their camera is never requested, which matters more for the spouse at work than for anybody, because they are at a desk or in a break room and are not going to install anything or make an account to look at a roof for eight minutes. They tap, they watch, and their phone stays a phone.
On my screen I see a count of how many people are watching. Two means the decision maker is on. That number is the only reason to wait thirty seconds before starting to talk.
Narrate for the person who is not in the driveway
The spouse at home can see the house. They can walk to the corner and look up. The spouse at work has a phone screen and a vague memory of which side the garage is on. So I talk to the one at work.
Name the side of the house before the thing: "This is the back, over the kitchen." Say the size in something a person can picture, because a phone screen throws away scale: "about the width of a door." Say what is ordinary as well as what is not, because a twenty year old roof on a phone looks alarming to somebody who has never been on one, and if they hear that the other three slopes are fine they will believe you about the one that is not.
Then show the part that failed, the way the earlier post lays out: wide first so they know where they are, then in close, narrating on the way. The cracked pipe boot with my thumb next to it. The soft spot in the decking with my boot on it. The daylight through the fascia, shot from inside the gutter.
Two people watching means two people who cannot talk over each other. The viewer side is watch-only; there is no chat and no microphone. What either of them can do is tap "I have a question about this," which saves the frame they were looking at, with a short note if they add one, and shows it on my screen while I am still up there. The spouse at work flags the valley with "that whole section?" and I walk back to it and trace the edge with my hand. The frame stays with the recording. When two people need to watch the inspection is about the narration habits that make a plural walk work, and the main one is saying out loud who you are answering.
The decision on the driveway
Here is what changes. I come down, end the inspection, and call the number at work from the driveway, standing next to the spouse who is home. Both of them saw the same eight minutes. Nobody has to explain the roof to anybody. The conversation is about the number and the timing, not about whether the problem is real, because both of them just watched it.
That does not mean the yes has to happen on the driveway. Some people want to sleep on it, and a contractor who pushes for the answer right then is the reason people dread the driveway conversation in the first place. Following up without turning into that guy is the tone I want on that call. The point is not to close faster. The point is that when they do talk about it at dinner, they are talking about the same roof, with the recording open between them instead of one person's memory of a stranger's description.
The recording is the other half. It starts on its own when I go live and lands with the company, not on my phone, with the flagged frames and a timestamped history of when the walk started, when each of them joined, and when it ended. So the spouse at work who got pulled into a meeting halfway through can watch the rest that evening, with the same narration, and the spouse at home does not have to reconstruct it. It is private, reached through a short-lived signed link and never a public URL. The security page has the rest.
One thing to plan around: do not take a call while you are live. On an iPhone, answering suspends the stream. End the inspection, then dial.
When not to bother
Not every job over a thousand dollars needs two people on a link. If the spouse at home has already said "I can approve this," believe them. If the item is a downspout and the fix is under the number they told you, fix it. And if the spouse at work has said they do not want to watch and will take the other one's word for it, do not ask twice. Asking twice is the thing that turns a courtesy into a sales tactic.
The two-question test in the parent post, when live inspection video is worth it, covers it: is there a decision, and is the person making it unable to see the thing. The spouse at work is the clearest yes on both counts that most exterior contractors will meet in a week. The mechanics of the second phone are on the how it works page, and every plan has a seven-day trial with no card if you want to try it on the next house where somebody says "let me run it by."
InspectStream records what an inspector observed. It is not a public adjusting service and does not prepare, negotiate, or advise on insurance claims.