Voices in Hard Hats: Starting a Podcast in the Construction Industry

In this unexpected yet value-packed episode of the Brubacher and Beyond, we take you inside a recent meeting of the Marcoms Business Development Group—a powerful network of construction-focused professionals sharing ideas and collaboration opportunities. 

Hosted by Elaine from M. Davis & Sons Inc., a fifth-generation industrial construction company based in Chester County, PA, the discussion dives into launching a podcast in the construction industry. 

A.J. from Brubacher joins the conversation to share lessons learned, helpful tips, and a behind-the-scenes look at getting a podcast off the ground. Whether you're in construction or just curious about starting your own show, this episode is full of insight, inspiration, and real-world advice.

We want to hear from you! Email podcast@brubacher.net with questions or comments.

Transcript

Brubacher and Beyond Podcast, Ep. 26: Voices in Hard Hats: Starting a Podcast in the Construction Industry

Intro:

Chris S.: Hello and welcome to the Brubacher and Beyond podcast where we are shaping the world we live in, so more people can find the construction industry uncommonly refreshing. Today's episode was not supposed to be an episode but we thought there was so much value in it that we should publish this out to our community so you can listen to it and if you want to start your own podcast remember please reach out, email me, text me. I'd like to help and support our community.  

So, this podcast was for the Marcoms Business Development Group. This is a group of business development professionals that meet on a monthly basis to talk about best practices, and if there's anything that they can collaborate together on.  Elaine from M. Davis and Sons Inc. is the host. Again, this is the Marcoms Group.  It's a business development group that helps and support each other. They bounce ideas off each other, it's a networking, and also if there's any projects maybe to collaborate together on. Elaine hosted this meeting at her company's headquarters, M. Davis and Sons Inc. They are a construction company in Chester County, Pennsylvania. They specialize in industrial construction and they're fifth generation.

In this episode, AJ is with me from Brubacher and we start talking about how to launch a podcast, the things that we've learned in the past, and if there's any ideas amongst the group and really how to get the platform off the ground.  I hope you find this podcast interesting. And if you do have any questions or if you wanted to know more information, please reach out to me on LinkedIn, email, send me a text message. 

At the Marcoms Conference:

Chris S.: This is how we started. So, we brought a recorder.  It's got two microphones here.  And if you really wanted to just put it on the desk and record it, probably you couldn't tell the difference between that recording and this recording, unless you're like a tech nerd, if that makes any sense.  The other thing that we did was we got these microphones to clip on for people out in the field. 

So, we did a couple equipment demos and when we purchased new equipment, went out into the field, had the sales rep with us. He told us about the features and benefits, and we could record it. And the thought was it for that too, is we could do that for our team members.  Let's record it, how to use the piece of equipment in the field. Now we got it. So, we've evolved from just starting to do internal with Keith Brubacher, Brad Cober, and really talk about safety and our core values. So, if someone ever in the company needs to go, what's our core values or why are they important? They can listen to episode two, if that makes sense. But really, why I thought it was important is our, guys spend, and ladies, they spend about an hour a day in their vehicles driving back and forth to a job site. And we don't want them watching YouTube, but we want to keep them connected, right? 

So how can I, or we, make something that keeps them connected and what Brubacher is doing, because they always want to know why. So, we can give them the why sometimes. But also, can we help the industry rise the tide to lift all boats? My thought in that is if we can teach somebody who's maybe a smaller contractor going through a situation like one episode, we had our CFO on and we talked about a large equipment purchase, how to justify a large equipment purchase.  And if it doesn't justify, what's the next step?  You can rent equipment, you can buy equipment, you can do different leases.  But if someone doesn't know that, then they can hopefully listen to that and think about making a large purchase.  So, that's the purpose is for keeping our employees connected and offering insight to external audiences.  I would say this, here's the impact.  right, and a lot of our accountants, they'll say that, what's the ROI, Chris?  How can I justify this?  Like, what's the return, right? And I go, what's the ROI of your mother? And that's when they get them all riled up, right? Everybody's got different moms, right? Everybody's got different moms.  But I say this, but this is when I do have some wins, right? Like when one of our board members goes, “I listened to that podcast, and I thought that was a great point.” That's a good ding.

A banker says, oh, I've been listening to your podcast. And so, it's just the awareness of the industry and getting it out to everybody. But I would say this is, I think, the best thing that could come out of a podcast. Hopefully somebody has an idea. 

One, you would be my guest on a podcast because there's always new guests. 

Two, maybe you start your own and grow it from there. Or you tell somebody about it. That's all.

We want to grow the numbers as large as we can grow it. And the other thing though it does, it opens doors to people in a different avenue.  Because if you've been trying to get a hold of a CFO and say, we would like to do business, but why don't you come on my podcast? It's easier to invite them on a podcast to open the door than to let's set up a meeting and have a sit down and talk business. No, let's talk business later.

Let's work on the relationship, and build a relationship, and then we can talk business. We don't have any sponsors yet. We don't get paid for this. I can tell you that this is under a thousand-dollar investment. 

So very well, like, it's going to take so much. It doesn't take that much money. If you wanted to buy this is a couple hundred bucks, and you can get going. Everything here has been purchased on Amazon. I went and listened to videos.

I listen to other people. so... 

Audience Member: I will say, it looks impressive. It looks like it's more than a thousand dollars. 

Chris S.: Yeah

A.J. C.: Not even. 

Chris S.: Yeah, I mean, we're on a pretty much budget, but the most expensive things, the mics, I don't hear the difference between a $200 mic and a $1,200.

The first starter kit that we got, we would just take the mics and then plug it into here and then take the phones and plug them out to there. That was our base that we used everything. And then as we got, we got more guests, a little bit more budget. That's when we got the mixing board. And that really helps if you have someone that's softer spoken, you can mix that volume to get a level amount of vocals coming out. 

A.J. C.: What's nice is the editing software when you go into post-production, and this is the stuff I've done thousands and thousands of times. So, you have different voices. Somebody has a softer voice; somebody has a higher one. And I did this with morning shows all throughout the years.  But the program is nice because it'll normalize that. You can do processing; you can alter it however you want. And if you want to add flair, you can find sound effects libraries, bed libraries for your intros and outros, however you want it. You can basically customize it any way you want.

And it's actually funny, like I never mentioned this story, like how I found Brubacher was because of the podcast.  My question was, they have a podcast? And that's how I got curious.  So..

Audience Member: That’s very cool. 

Chris S.: The vision behind the Brubacher and beyond again is connecting with potential clients, internal team members.  Our goals is to increase exposure, deepening the relationships with customers.  So, we did a podcast that was our last podcast with the president of Aqua, Mark Luca.

I don't know about anybody else.  I've tried to get into meeting with Mark one-on-one. I was never at that level, right?  But I got Mark for two hours to record a podcast and we edited down for maybe like an hour.  You know, so now you've got that connection, and you can leverage their contacts too. And then we could talk a little bit about this is once we record the podcast through the editing stages and then send it out to your social platforms, you need as many likes, follows, reposts as possible to gain your network as large as possible. You wanna throw the biggest net you can throw out into the ocean to catch stuff first.  

Through people like that, Mark has how many connections.  There's a percentage that are gonna come and listen to that.  So, one thing though that I will say is some people do get like the CFOs get, oh how many people listen?

I can't really tell you exactly. The only thing I can tell you is on our platform that we use is called Buzzsprout. And this is some things, if you are thinking about this, this was the hardest part, is finding the platform that is gonna store, like that's your home base, that's gonna store all your material inside.  That's where all your episodes go, that's where you download.  Once you have that platform and you gotta pay for that, and it's not much money, it's like 12 bucks a month.

You get so many hours, and you can upgrade.  But here's the hard part about the platforms.  So, when you first post your first one, you’re only gonna be able to unlock so many tools.  As your numbers grow, you’re able to unlock more tools.  And what I mean by that is now we can go to Apple, can post on Apple, we can post on iHeartRadio, we can post on Spotify.

So, it opens up. So, once you start, you don't get to use all the tools.  Does that make sense?  You have to build your audience and then it lets you use and then it helps you grow faster. 

Audience Member: Because I don't understand. 

Chris S.: Yes.  

Audience Member: When you first started, how could anyone listen to you?  

Chris S.: I sent text messages out to people. 

Audience Member: With a link or? 

Chris S.: Yep.  Yeah, so I would...  

Audience Member: To Buzzsprout? 

Chris S.: From Buzzsprout, I would sign up on Buzzsprout. It's a paid service.  We elected to use Spotify as the app.  So, Spotify is here and there's all kinds of stuff and we're on Spotify now. And then what I would do is get the Brubacher and Beyond episodes. They're all here.  I just start sending them. 

Audience Member: But you were able to get the Spotify?  

Chris S.: Yeah, Spotify is like the lowest.  It lets you in. It lets you do stuff.

And then from here, you can put it on all your socials, but mine's just messaging. 

Audience Member: Chris, can you, like, let's say you're, when you first started and you were on Spotify, can you send a link to say LinkedIn? 

Chris S.: Yes, I do. 

Audience Member: And then, so I would just need Spotify in order to, if I didn't have Spotify, I just don't…

Chris S.: No, so here's the weird thing. Once I send it to LinkedIn, and this is where the numbers get skewed, I send it to LinkedIn, I post it on my account LinkedIn, you can go onto my account on LinkedIn and say it, the last one, you listen to it, it doesn't tell Spotify. That's where the numbers get skewed.  So, I know that I had 1,925 listeners on LinkedIn.  It only probably counts as one to Spotify. 

Audience Member: I gotcha. 

Chris S.: It's one link. Does that make sense?  So really, when I talk to the CFOs, I go, listen, we got to…we got to have this conversation. How many text messages did I send out?  I don't know how many people saw me on LinkedIn, I can tell you and I can tell you the demographics.  I could tell you Spotify, could tell you. So, do you take all that and add them up together? That's what I do for the CFO. But then for me, I'm probably like, it's probably half.  Yeah. something around there.  

Audience Member: Is there some overlap?  

Chris S.: There's lots of overlap. Yeah. And I'm hoping that I send it to you and you repost it and then your person repost it and that person repost it. And then I lose. I can't follow the train that far down the track.

Audience Member: Can you put it on other platforms as well? Facebook, Instagram? 

Chris S.: Yes, that's what we do. Yes…

Audience Member: From the spot. Well, actually from your…from the platform, it's on. 

Chris S.: Yes. So, from Spotify, that's where I used to handle all this stuff. That's AJ’s realm now. 

A.J. C.: That'll be my realm.  

Chris S.: Once that…once it is recorded and edited, AJ is responsible for getting it out into the mind.  Yeah. So we'll go through Facebook, Instagram, all the stuff. 

Audience Member: Will you post everything on all of your platforms or will it be dependent on subject? 

Chris S.: We just post everything. The one thing that we're gonna start to do is teasers.  We've never done them before. We did it on this one. Where it's like a 30 second clip that we think is the highest-level talking point and that'll be thrown out there before it goes live.  

Audience Member: Imagine something that really interests me, so you show us this little...mics and you talked about being out to demonstrate or do podcasts so people can do educational for your people.  How do you get them to listen? I love that idea. I love, you know, they're driving to work, they're engaged.  So, I don't know about you, but some of the people that work for us might not be that apt to listen to it.  

A.J. C.: Well, besides social media, we also do that in our internal communications. We do a weekly newsletter. We also do the quarterly newsletter.

So, we have the podcast when we have a new episode or a teaser for it. We have it featured front and center in a part of the weekly and the quarterly. 

Chris S.: Yeah. So weekly communications, the guys are reading, the guys are reading the jobs that we've won awarded. Um, what, whatever, whatever you want to do, what's a safety topic of the week was dealt tailgate topic of the week. And it'll be in there that goes through right now goes through Sarah. is going to be transition. 

Chris S.: What's the, what's the.

A.J. C.: Constant contact. 

Chris S.: Constant contact.  

Audience Member: So that's what you said to your voice for constant contact? 

A.J. C.: Yes. 

Chris S.: Weekly communication goes through constant contact.  Quarterly communication to customers and stuff, that’s once a quarter or something like that. 

Audience Member: How do you produce the podcast?  

Chris S.: We are, two podcasts a month right now is our, is the goal right now. 

Audience Member: Your goal is two. 

A.J. C.: The goal is gonna be two and the goal is gonna have, like if we record podcasts, we're going to try and get as many like in the tank, like, you know, maybe have like one dedicated day to do like two podcasts or another one to do two and just have a whole bunch. 

Audience Member: That way line up your interviews. 

A.J. C.: Yep. We can line it up. I can edit as needed and then we can get all the topics and everything ready to go. that via social media and internal, we can just run it.  

Chris S.: So, say if we do have a couple of employees that read, this is the weekly communication that they get through their email. And this is just one for the Brubacher and beyond podcast. They can just hit the links, the Buzzsprout, Spotify, podcast, YouTube, and index, and they can listen to it then. So, they can be driving and then listen to it. We did get a camera. That's our next, hopefully our next evolution is video. 

A.J. C.: The new trend now, and they're doing this in the radio industry, is video podcasting. iHeartMedia is actually experimenting with this. While other companies were experimenting with right now, iHeartMedia was a little bit...reluctant to do that even though it has gotten a lot of positive feedback.  So that is one of the avenues that we're going to be doing to set up a background. So, we have some areas that have a really cool background. So, we get up and get the table, get the equipment, and they have the cameras. So, two people talking to each other rather than just the logo and the audio. 

Audience Member: Because everyone wants to consume media differently. I like podcasts because I don't have to look at it. Sometimes when I see something and I have a visual of it in my mind, it kind of ruins it when I see it. It's almost like when a book becomes a movie. No, it totally does. But your option here is you can do whatever you want. 

Chris S.: So, this is just some of the stuff. These are all the podcasts. Now, I'm in Buzzsprout right now. Buzzsprout is a platform that holds all of our information. The time of the podcast, how many people went to. You can get a lot of information. So, if someone wants to know who did it go to, what kind of people, if you want to monetize, you can. You've got to be over like a thousand followers or 1500 followers before you can start to monetize. 

A.J. C.: It depends on the platform, but yeah. Yeah.  

Audience Member: You better be like, sure, pay me. 

Chris S.: Yeah. Unless you're the Kelcies, I guess you get paid $10 million a year. And they got contracts too. Here's a good cheat too. We're talking about chat GPT. Once you get your episode recorded and edit it, take the whole version, put it in chat GPT, and then ask it for a description, a summary, give me 10 topics. And it'll give it to you. Boom, boom, boom. We used to spend hours going back and forth saying, what should we do?

A.J. C.: Yeah, what should we know just do it?  

Audience Member: I am a concrete company in the rally. 

A.J. C.: I mean, Now, the one thing I will give you, when you get those scripts, it's also a good idea to kind of like go in there and edit it to make it like make it your own.  Only because I know we, it's funny, we experimented this with different scripts and it's like…This sounds way too much like AI. mean, even if you put on chat, you'd doing an experiment with this, like humanize it a little bit more. It's just not…

Audience Member: There's too many like adjectives and there's like words that people say in conversation. 

Chris S.: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it'll give you time. Like, like it'll, it'll help you. I mean, we suspend so much time to like, sit around and be like, what's the name of this podcast? What, you got any ideas? What can we call it? What, what, and this is where you get 10 and you can.

Audience Member: Once you have the script or once you're done, right? You have a podcast that's recorded.  You've got your audio file. You've got a transcription of it.  Are you feeding that somewhere else? That transcription, all that.  

Chris S.: So.. 

Audience Member: Are you using that content somewhere else? Like on your website?  

Chris S.: On our website, there is a landing page for the podcast. You can listen through it…through that too. 

Audience Member: Do you guys put the transcript on the landing page? 

Chris S.: The written transcript? No, I don't think so. 

Audience Member: Cause from an SEO standpoint. 

Chris S.: We should. 

Audience Member: Even if it's just a top down. You've got all that. 

Chris S.: You've got all that. Oh yeah. 

Audience Member: That's you can hide and unhide. But from an SEO standpoint.

Chris S.: I see. 

Audience Member: All you gotta do is copy and paste it in a drop so. Cause you've done all the work. And because you're updating that every other week or whenever you publish an episode. 

Chris S.: Yeah. 

Chris S.: It's like new It's new stuff and just making that. Yeah, I don't understand how that new algorithm is working. It's, it'll blow, I mean, there's not enough time in my day. 

Audience Member: I totally will. like, just think of like Hungry Hungry.

Chris S.: Yes. Feed it. Feed it.  Feed it more than everybody else. Yes. 

A.J. C.: The SEO part is the part that's new to me. So that's the part that I'm learning because I never do anything with SEO. 

Audience Member: That's actually like the nice part about it is that I'm assuming once you have a topic, the words that you're saying are often enough where that you would hit those like SEO, KPI’s of like you need to say your topic at least five times within the first  two paragraphs or whatever. 

Chris S.: Yeah.  So, what we do is we have a scripted introduction. We have music, like it's a bulldozer track.  So that stuff stays.  Our president is very structured, but I kind of try to stay within the guide rails more than the steps.  But, yes, yes, yes.  But there are some things that are hard and fast. We have topics that are hard and fast that we won't talk about or have those types of people.

You guys can think of that.  your rules down when you want to do it or don't do it.  But I've done senators, bankers, safety people, I mean, you name it. think it's kind of we're just expanding as far as we can get out on that.  will say creating the topics for episodes and booking the people.  People's schedules change all the time.  yeah.  So, it's like, hey, we’re scheduled, and we do a follow up.

and something came up. So, you just got to be flexible. We did very well in 2024. We got ahead of our dumps where we had six in the queue ready to be published. And so, something changed. We weren't panicking. I will say right now we're panicking because we don't have enough in the backlog to keep up with our two posts a month if something happens to us and we get too busy next month. Does that make sense?

So, try to build your backlog as long as possible.  I'd say the problem with that though is like, in our last episode was: “Happy New Year.” Like, you heard that I was like, Oh, what?  Yeah.

Audience Member: No one. mean, I think you know, tried to. Everyone assumes you're not recording a podcast. Yeah. Or someone. 

Chris S.: I mean, you do get haters are like, that's horrible. wouldn't listen to you again. 

Audience Member: I'm like, hey, you really have. 

Chris S.: Oh, I get people like, this was a waste of my time…I was like, well

A.J. C.: If I had a dime for every time I heard that.

Chris S.: Yeah, it's okay. I'm like, listen, it's all right. I'm just trying to help, you know.  

Audience Member: Thanks for listening. I'm the biggest in an airport. of the latest episode was actually, he was very interesting to listen to because we're in the PFAS market on our fabrication side of business. 

Chris S.: I'm jealous. You know how much money you guys got coming in right now?

Audience Member: You can't really speak to that. But it's a very timely topic. It was a very interesting guest to be on today. Or on about today, but that you have one. It was worth listening to. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it was good. 

Chris S.: So, hold on. Does everybody understand the PFASs that are going on? 

Audience Member: I don't. I'll just put it out there. 

Chris S.: All right, so PFASs are forever chemicals. 

Audience Member: Oh, for everything that's our class. 

Chris S.: So, the new...

The new regulations for drinking water that the utilities have to follow is four parts per trillion.  So, four seconds to 3,800 years is the time frame. If you test positive from now until 38,000 years, you're a bad person, and your water is not good, and you're going to get fined ,and all this stuff.

That's…they're trying to get this chemical out of the water. Or it's one drop of water to 16 Olympic sized swimming pools. So, if you have four droplets of water and I don't know, 64, you're no good, you fail. That's how tight the specification is. So, in our world, all these utility companies have to stop doing everything that they're doing and put these new systems in.

and it's totally changed all their budgets, and they weren't, not that they weren't, they knew it was coming, but it was like, now it's real.  And what they thought was gonna cost, I'm gonna say five to $8 million per well is costing 13 to $20 million per well.  And so now their budgets are just gone.  And like it or don't like it, it's the law and that's what they have to follow. So anyway.

Yeah, that was some of those topics. But PFAS is a huge, it's a huge topic and not that many people know about it. 

Audience Member: Well, they had a whole movie about it. 

Chris S.: Yeah. 

Audience Member: Right? You saw the movie? I was like, wait, what movie? I can't remember the name it. I'll send a link after this. 

Chris S.: Alright, send a link. But, um, anyway, that's what's happening in our world. But just think about it, all these utility companies. The price of water is gonna get very expensive here in a short amount of time, so just be ready. 

Audience Member: People don't realize that kind of like, how this stuff is in all these surfaces. 

Chris S.: It's everywhere. 

Audience Member: You want scotch-gard carpet? You know like, stain-resistant on your couches

Chris S.: It's there. You know, the non-stick pans. The Teflon, that has all that on it.

Audience Member: Literally. It's already in your food.  

Chris S.: But when we started, we were just trying to just do as many podcasts as possible.  So, it was once a month and every like two months. And then it was just, we found that our numbers did increase when we had a steady diet of posting on the same particular cadence. It actually helped with our numbers.  We talked about the equipment again. All this was purchased on Amazon, looking at other YouTubes or using AI in the Amazon search for guide at me, trial and error.  

Audience Member: May I ask what editing software do use?  

Chris S.: So, this editing is Audacity.  

A.J. C.: Audacity is a free version, and I'll just tell you as a radio nerd and somebody who's more of a purist, it's not all that great.  I will tell you right now if you want optimal editing, Adobe Audition is what you need to get. Audition will do everything so very easy to use if learning curves good and you know... 

Chris S.: Here's the other thing and, and because we have AJ now before A.J., I used to subcontract this out. 75 bucks, 100 bucks. I'd send it to Ethan. Ethan would edit it and send it back to me. Done. So…

Audience Member: We might be able to get Ethan's phone number. 

Chris S.: I'll give you Ethan's phone number. Send it to Ethan. that does take some... 

Audience Member: Everyone needed that. 

Audience Member: Yeah. I mean, yeah, was going to say even better. 

Chris S.: Yes. Ethan... I don't know, but it's perfect. 

Audience Member: But Chris, didn't you share with me, and I hope that I'm not disclosing anything, shouldn't... This all was sort of the brainchild of your daughters. Or you were talking about... Don't have a podcast now? 

Chris S.: No. So that we did try to, so yes. 

Audience Member: It was a very cute story. 

Chris S.: I dumped all this stuff during like Christmas break on our dining room table and my wife was kind of upset and I'm like, well girls, let's start reading too. So, my two youngest and their friends were twins. They wanted to do a podcast. I said, it's that easy, just hit record. And they just started talking for like an hour and a half.

Audience Member: But weren't they getting followers, and it became a thing? 

Chris S.: They did not. never posted it. we never did. Because I wanted them to do something. I'm like, I'm not going to do everything. But I did put that picture on LinkedIn and said it was so easy. got like, yes, it got hundreds of 

Audience Member: on LinkedIn. 

Chris S.: Yeah, LinkedIn impressions. that one. 

Audience Member: I it was so fun. I how it started because you and I were discussing that. it is. 

Chris S.: You're telling me.

Audience Member: I like the idea that you're getting people that would not open doors for you otherwise. I'm curious how you go about actually closing the deal to actually have them sit down and do a podcast with you. 

Chris S.: So, when we get a guest or we identify guests, we'll send them out. You know, we're doing this.  What's your and then we'll say, hey, these are dates that we have available that work for you or send us three dates that work for you. And then we'll try to get it through there.

What we want to start doing is doing two or three episodes in one sitting in one day if we can. right now, it takes some time and it's kind of a distraction. I would say this is kind of like when you're driving your sports car. The more you drive it, the more comfortable you feel, the easier it is. Once you get done doing a podcast, you want to do another one. Like there's not.

You just in a rhythm if that makes sense. 

Audience Member: Do you do it in your office, or you go to their office, or it just depends?  

Chris S.: So, we did our first one. We actually went to a recording studio and did it.  And then the problem with that was getting people to the recording studio.  That was the pinch point.  And then we started doing them in house.  The problem with in-house, that's where we have the...  I put this outside the door. Lisa, you've been to our like...conference

Audience Member:  I have.

Chris S.: I'll put that out there. I'll put papers all over the place because you do hear people walking. You do hear people knocking. Like, and that, the mic picks that up. I would say this too. I didn't even think about this putting on here. You have to have rules for your guests. Like, no crinkling. No tapping your feet. No pulling your pens in and out. 

Audience Member:  I did a podcast and I had this cup. And when it gets empty, the straw hits the table.

Chris S.: Yeah.

Audience Member:  And I, they like stopped me in the middle of it and they're like, so can you put your water in a different cup?  Cause every time I would pick it up to drink out of think about it. 

Chris S.: Yeah. So, to your point, how do you do that nicely? Hey, these are the things that we found out. These are just some house rules that we have.  No tapping.  The other thing too, this is not live. So, if there is, in the middle, say edit or I lost my train of thought and let me redo, let me restate my statement.

That happens a lot. Like you'd be thinking you'd be like, oh, I can't say that. Stop that. Ethan, Ethan, cut it. Ethan, start it. Ethan, go. Like you can do that when you're recording. 

Audience Member:  So, you can sit with our old longer podcast. used to do like if you messed up, you would clap really loud because there was a sound like it would sounds like, so like if you were like stumbling everywhere, like can we erase that? You just clap.

And that way like, because they wouldn't know the podcast would up being an hour long. So, you're looking at it, you're like, where the hell am I supposed to cut? So, you weren't like, re-listening the 30 minutes of a podcast to try and find the one spot. 

A.J. C.: So, another, another easy way to do it is going take three in three, two, one, and it'll go three, two, one. And then you can go right from there. 

Audience Member:  Like visual, you give yourself visual markers… 

A.J. C.: Yeah.

Audience Member:  ...in posts so you don't have to like... Realizing to it takes a lot of It just makes it so much easier. 

A.J. C.: You can also tell in the audio where they go like the...  Because it's like just a straight wave right there.  

Audience Member:  So, AJ, do you do all of the editing now? 

Chris S.: AJ has not edited anything yet. 

A.J. C.: But eventually I will. 

Chris S.: Ethan did this last episode. Ethan did them all, yeah. Ethan's done them all. don’t if is Ethan is, but it's seven.

We talked about finding guests and topics. That's something hard.  You just gotta kinda keep it out there.  It does take, if you want like a half an hour of edited version, you’re gonna need a good 45 minutes to an hour of recording to get it, to get that much quantity.  If you think you're only gonna record for 20 minutes, you're only gonna get 10 minutes at max.

We talked about the outsourcing, Ethan again, Buzzsprout, distribution platforms.  The new one that just opened up to us was iHeartRadio. We hit a certain thing.  So, we're on iHeartRadio now.  What's that?

Audience Member:  Okay. And I don't know that we are. did. We're on Apple, Spotify, YouTube. 

A.J. C.: What have you had your podcast for? 

Audience Member:  So, we had one three or four years ago. I hated hosting it because it was just asking people about marketing and I got really bored because I was like, I don't want to talk to marketing people about marketing. It's just sounding awful. I don't want to talk about it. So, we redid our podcast. We started, I guess, last summer, so almost a year now, even though we are a marketing company. Our podcast is called Yes Genius. So, we find people who have a genius idea, and we asked. So, our unofficial tagline is we come from a place of yes, which is a very dangerous place to be in the marketing company. So Yes, Genius kind of talks to people who have done genius things, and we find that moment that they said yes to something that became this genius idea. So, it's more just we use it as a marketing avenue of like, “do you want to film me on my podcast,” just to get people to talk about themselves. Because when we'd set up our podcast, the thing I said was, what are things people want to talk about? And I was like, themselves.  And what do people want to hear from people they don't know? It was like an interesting story.

Audience Member:  It's interesting, I asked about getting people where you do it because I was thinking of people that I would happily give to you if I don't do this, but I could see it being an issue of them coming to you.  

Chris S.: I would go to them. 

Audience Member:  You would go to them.

Chris S.: That's why we're doing…

Audience Member: …where you set that up and do all that. 

Chris S.: So that’s how this got, that me go to them.  I went down to the Dirt World Summit in Texas, and I did two interviews in like the cafeteria area and it sounded pretty good. I mean, you had a little bit of background noise. We're like, hey, we're in San Antonio, Texas, and we're at the Dirt World Summit and did and then we actually got the people at the Dirt World Summit to repost and like it. And then you had Aaron Witt do it and he's got 15 million followers. And then it really helps the more longer you can get that net out. But yeah, you can be…

And some people had like big, I didn't have this big setup, but you can, and people do it. So, I think it's something, something I would say like the creative design, like we came up with the Brubacher and Beyond logo.  We use a marketing company called Grit. They did the artwork for us, but I'm sure you can now put it on Chat GPT and figure out if you want to do low budget or use Canva.  I don't know. 

Audience Member: Just plug something into Canva.

Chris S.: What's the other one? 

A.J. C.: No, honestly for you, Canva would probably be your best bet. 

Chris S.: Oh, is that cool one where you could put it in? You say I want two excavators. We just learned that. 

A.J. C.: I have it linked but honestly…

Chris S.: I forget but anyway, how do you measure the success again? I think just doing it and people some people saying they like it or don't like it or just trying to keep it going talking interesting topics doing something different Leveraging your LinkedIn to maximize the visibility, there are people that have lots of followers that will contact you and say, hey, I'll be on your podcast for a month. We never did that.  

Audience Member: We always got an email from people saying they want to be on your podcast, but it's very clear that they have not listened to your podcast. Because I've gotten a couple that are like, I'm interested in the first one. 

Chris S.: We have a list of potential people for you.

Audience Member: There's, well, there we want to feel like I'm interested in being a podcast guest. see that because they'll read like the Epic Marketing bio, and they'll think it's a marketing podcast. But then if you read like the Yes Genius bio, like we had somebody reach out with a really great yes story. We'd love to talk about it for our women known business, blah, blah. I was like, OK, they might not be bad guests. But then like two weeks later, we had another email that was like, I'm the CEO of my company. I founded it. And I think that I could bring you a lot of listeners. And I was like, nothing in this email tells me that you have even been remotely known with this podcast. 

Chris S.: Yeah.

So that's pretty much all I prepared for the list of questions or the list of topics that I thought would help you. 

Audience Member: Absolutely. Well, I mean, there's a lot of people that did want to come Tuesday. 

Chris S.: Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. 

Audience Member: Couldn't make the switch. But you know what? have, I got, I'm actually recording on voice memo. 

So, I'll have a file to transcribe and clean up and put it to the ChatGPT, you can take a cloth and let them clean it up a little bit more, format it and, and I'll give it to you guys to take a quick look over before anything goes out to the group. But honestly, I mean, this is such awesome information and like, it was just pretty fearless to be like, you know what, I'm just gonna buy some equipment and we're just jumping on it. I think it's awesome. 

That's the way Chris is. That's the way I…

A.J. C.: And again, as Chris mentioned, it doesn't really take that much. You can do basic equipment. mean, there was another piece that you had that was a more basic mixture that you had before you got this one. And it'll work just fine.

You don't have to have the $700 radio quality RE-20 mics, or you don't need a $4,000 Comm-Rex to go out on the scene. I listened to that podcast, one of the first ones I listened to was Dirt World, and it was like, you're on location, and just the ambiance is more than enough to give you that sense. It makes you feel like you're actually there with them.

Audience Member: Chris, do you ever send your guests a description of what you're discussing beforehand? 

Chris S.: Yes.  I mean, have an outlet. So, I never want to have specific topics like you're reading.  We'll come up with questions that we're going to or topics that we will talk about. So, there will be an agenda to keep people on the rails.  If we come down the street and we want to make a left-hand turn, we can do that.  But here, let's just try to stay on the guide rails, stay on the road. This is the path. So yes, we do have an agenda. The other thing we started doing was like thank you bags. So, think about that. You know, we say thank you, give them some treats from local markets around us, some Brubacher swag. That stuff has evolved, you know, too, when we started. So now we have like a list of things that you should do that is have a checklist. Make sure like before you take off on the airplane. The day before, two days before, you make sure you have your guests, that they have the topics, they're comfortable with the topics, and just kind of go from there. 

Audience Member: Have you had someone though that went off the rails? That you had to be like, hey Ethan, this is what you're cutting out or? 

Chris S.: Not too far, but yes, there have been some times where people are like, oh, you know what, I divulged too much information, take it back a little bit and we will edit that out.  We also send the edited version to our guests first for them to approve it.  And once we get their approval, then we can put it in the queue. So, they, it's one touch or they have an availability to change or edit.  We did have a customer in the past that was going through an acquisition and they said something and we're like, well, how are we going to edit that out or something?

We're gonna wait. gonna wait. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna wait for that to go through and then we'll release it and go from there So yeah, there's a bunch of stuff. That's the other thing with the programming you can put it on but here's my thought on this: God forbid something happens and you're posting about the best day of your life, and we have a world tragedy That's what I don't like doing that but I like kind of getting it ready in the queue so you can post it but I don't do auto schedule. No, never ever.

Audience Member: Like I have that because we have so many accounts in Sprout that there is a massive pause button in like the admin settings that like sends every single post in our Sprout account to like drafts. Like if something were to happen, you'd use it one time. But it was terrifying because Ed was like, am I really pushing it? Because I was like, I'll just manually go through. And Nancy was like, that would take you hours. You have to hit the button. was like, what if it does something wrong? You talked about this for a while. talked about the social media day. I think I believe that was covered. It's a really big deal.  There's a little tragedy in the death.

Chris S.: How do you post 300? Is that just for your company or for all? 

Audience Member: We have like 30 some companies that we have. And as part of their contract with us, we have a massive agency level like Sprout Social Account. So, like I, because I'm on all the accounts, can switch between all of them, kind of like tabs in your internet.  But because I have everyone that I have access to, I, in my settings have a, like there's a little button, in my settings there's a button that's like…pause all content. The only thing that scares me about it is that instead of just putting it into drafts and saving it on the day, it puts everything into draft, everything, everything. So, if I've scheduled out months’ worth of content, it puts it all in drafts and takes the dates off it.

A.J. C.: It's like a kill switch. 

Audience Member: It is, it's a kill switch. Which means that then I have to go back in. Oh yeah. So, like, people think it's sound redundant, like we have two content calendars, so like I have a Google Sheet content calendar and Sprout Social on, because if God forbid, I have to hit that switch, at least I have something to reference, like where all of the like M. Davis Facebook posts are supposed to go. Yeah. That It's good to have the backup. Yeah. I agree with that.

But yeah, it is one of things. There you go. There's the secret hot tip of the day.

Outro

Chris S.: Thank you for listening to the Brubacher podcast today. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe to our podcast so you can listen to new episodes every month. Share it with your friends in the industry and those who might like to learn more about the construction industry. Feel free to check us out on our website at www.brubacher.net. We hope you found the discussion insightful, and we look forward to the next time.