Introduction

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In 2018 I attended a roofing conference called Win the Storm and the keynote speaker was Gary Vaynerchuck. There was a Q&A session at the end of his talk and anyone from the audience could go up towards the stage and ask Gary Vaynerchuck a question. I had been following Gary Vaynerchuck for some time and I was excited at the prospect of not only listening to him speak, but also being able to engage with him directly by asking him a question. I quickly scrambled ot the front of the stage and waiting in a line to ask him a question.

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Engaging Personally with Gary Vaynerchuck

When it was my turn to ask a question I got nervous but forced myself to speak. There were literally hundreds of people maybe even a thousand people there and I asked him a good question about where he projected the future of marketing. After doing a classic Gary Vaynerchuck abrasive tone of voice towards me and saying that he is not the Nostradamos of Roofing, and that he is just a guy with ideas, he said that he saw the future of all marketing leaning towards voice. He discussed how common it is for people to use Amazon Alexa and Siri by Apple and how in the future poeple will simply ask their phone to send them the best roofer in town. He said that if I could be a part of that by figuring out how to use voice in particular then I could get an advantage. He also went on about how in his minimal research in the roofing industry, he noticed that there was not a recognizable podcaster in the space. He said that he believed that the industry could use a great podcaster and he said that I could be the one. He literally said that I have a great radio voice and that I should go out and start a podcast! 

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Starting out as a Podcaster

I've always liked the idea of broadcasting and was fascinated by all the different aspects that went into professional broadcasting and radio. I had even been on a radio show when I worked in the non-profit industry years ago. There happended to be a podcasting studio in Downtown Denver and they had started a program that encouraged community members to use the studio and start their own podcasts. The studio was equipped with professional microphones, mixers, recording devices, soundproofing, and they made it easy for me to jump in and start podcasting. They even coached me on a title and approach to having guests and promoting the podcast online. I jumped into podcasting and they helped me get it all figured out. That first season I had several guests and I started building a small audience. I loved being in the studio and wearing headphones and getting the feeling of being a professional broadcaster. I'll cherish that first season for my entire life.

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Covid Strikes

Podcasting was a hobby for me and I started my roofing company Foothills Roofing and Exteriors in 2019. I struggled to start a roofing company and maintain my podcast but my goal was to do one podcast per month for one year. I nearly accomplished that but then Covid struck and the podcasting studio closed it's doors to all outside guests. I began to think that my podcasting career was over and I focused on my roofing company more than ever. I was in an enormous amount of fear and anxiety and I had no idea that I was also dealing with undiagnosed Adult ADHD.

As I figured out ways to keep my roofing company in business through an unprecedented global pandemic it occured to me that I could build a podcasting studio in the office building where my roofing company was based out of. There was one room in particular that had no windows and was small. It seemed like it would be a perfect room for a podcasting studio. I approached my landlord and she said I could rent it month to month for only $75 a month! It helped that I was also renting six other offices on the same floor.

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Podcast Studio Buildout

I started to get to work on building out the podcasting studio and I had an understanding and vision for the look and feel that I was going for. I also had hired a videographer during this time to help me create promo videos for the roofing company and he helped me build out the podcasting studio as well. I had always wanted to incorporate video into podcasting and this was a great opportunity to do that. I also had the idea that I could transcribe the audio from the podcast and post the transcription onto my roofing company website to assist me with improving my SEO. This idea was a bit ahead of it's time because the process of transcribing and converting the transcription into good quality and relevant content was very labor intensive and technical.

I have since learned to that with the rise of artificial intelligence. I can now upload voice files to a transcription website, then download the transcription file, then upload the file to ChatGPT and ask ChatGPT to give me a well organized blog post or well organized Q and A. I can then post that to my website and those kinds of posts helped move the needle towards ranking better with Google. Back in 2018 I did not have the skillset or insight to delegate such a task.

The podcast studio was finally done and I started podcasting all over again and added video to the podcast. Although the idea of adding video sounded awesome, logistically, it was extremely challenging and it ended up getting expensive and time consuming to do video right. For one, we needed two good camera angles and the ability to switch back and forth between cameras. Once the footage was recorded we then had to edit the footage and podcast footage can be as long as an hour. After many attempts and many podcasts I decided to do a livestream because I simply could not get the quality video that I wanted for the podcast.

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Podcast to Web Series

Although the video quality was not where I wanted it, I was having a lot of fun podcasting and networking with roofing industry leaders. I loved being in my podcasting studio. I used to take my computer in there and work on my roofing business in that studio. Looking back I could have operated my entire business out of that $75 a month studio rather than having up six offices on the fifth floor for my roofing company--I took up about a third of the floor! 

I decided to start livestreaming in the hopes of improving the quality of the video and eliminating the need for video editing. by this time I had started a video marketing agency to offset the cost of having a videographer on my roofing companies payroll. The basic idea was that I could sell video services to other contractors and then the videos that I made for my business would essentially be free. Theoretically this sounded like a great idea but in practice it did not work out. I ended up getting consumed with selling video services and creating videos and adding more costs to my payroll and overhead.

Together with the team that I had we came up with a livestream show structure where I would be the host and carry the show alone if necessary at times. I ended up getting sponsors for the show and launched with very well known guests in the roofing industry like Paul Reed and Kimberly Reed. I also had Jonathan Sherwood, John Dye, Jen Silver, Eric Oberembt and others who have gone on to start their own podcasts, web series, and YouTube channels based around the roofing industry.

I did this series for about a year and then it simply got too expensive and my passion for it had run dry. My last episode aired on Facebook on December 10th, 2021.

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Conclusion

Looking back, I wish I would have approached podcasting differently. The idea of transcribing the voice file to a text file and then posting it as a blog post was the best way to go about using the podcast to gain a return on the investment. I should have learned to do that before I jumped into recording and posting. Hindsight is always 20/20. Back then I did not know or understand what Adult ADHD was. I wanted to learn web design years ago and I simply could not sit and concentrate long enough to learn html or javascript. I couldn't even learn Wordpress and Lord knows I tried.

The funny thing is that I now have a treatment plan and medication and building a website is fun and creative. I now create blog posts using voice files but I just talk into my phone for 15-20 minutes, convert the file to text with an easy to use website, and then upload the file to ChatGPT and tell it to turn the text into a blog post. All of this costs me very little personally and it's not very time consuming. I don't have the fancy podcasting studio or broadcasting equipment any more, but I'm ranking on Google better than I ever have before. Go figure.