535: How a Local Business Owner Made $1.3M From YouTube With Only 15,000 Subscribers

Summary

The Think Media Podcast, Ep. 535

Title: This Grandpa Made $73K on YouTube With Boring Videos
Date: July 23, 2026
Host: Nathan Eswine (Think Media)
Guest: Tracy, Founder of Homestead Roofing

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Episode Overview

This episode features Tracy from Homestead Roofing, whose unpolished, low-key YouTube videos have driven over $1.3 million in business revenue for his local roofing company in Colorado Springs. Tracy shares his journey—highlighting how his simple, information-driven content for homeowners has built massive trust, brought in steady leads, and turned YouTube into his top sales channel. Throughout the episode, both Tracy and Nathan explore actionable strategies for small business owners to grow via online video, the power of authentic branding, and the importance of consistency and patience.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Tracy’s YouTube Channel & Business Model

• Target Audience & Approach:

  • Tracy’s channel creates educational content exclusively for homeowners, unlike other roofing channels targeting industry professionals.
  • Focuses on common homeowner questions around roofing and insurance claims.
  • Tracy’s style is approachable, non-salesy, and prioritizes trust-building.
  • “Pretty laid back, pretty chill. I’m not good at marketing, but I can give away information.” (Tracy, 00:50)

• YouTube’s Role in Business Growth:

  • Became the #1 source for leads and sales, surpassing all prior marketing channels.
  • In the first half of 2024 alone, generated $230,000 in sales directly from YouTube.
  • Lifetime YouTube-attributed revenue since 2019 is about $1.3 million.
  • “It is the number one source for sales for us…We still get most of our business from YouTube.” (Tracy, 01:53)

Content Strategy & Video Formats

• Authenticity & Human Touch:

  • Videos are filmed casually—often Tracy sitting in his truck, speaking directly and informally to viewers.
    • “In the video, you’re just sitting in the back of your truck…there’s a very approachable feel…almost like we’re close friends.” (Nathan, 04:26)
  • Inspired by Jason Fried (of Basecamp), who advocated “giving away information” to grow a company.

• Consistency & Longevity:

  • Created the channel in 2013; serious consistency started around 2018.
  • Growth really accelerated after 2022, as consistency in uploading increased.
  • “I think then… the YouTube algorithm is feeding my channel to more people here locally” (Tracy, 07:02)

• Video Topics:

  • Solves for questions like “Are asphalt shingles still good?” and “How do I choose a roofer?”
    • Example: “Asphalt Shingles are Dead” – 300,000+ views
  • Leverages trending or frequently-asked homeowner concerns.

Monetizing Local & Global Traffic

• Managing Non-Local Leads:

  • Implemented paid consultation calls to qualify serious out-of-area inquiries.
    • “We’d say, yeah, okay, well Tracy can…let’s set aside a 30-minute time frame and that will cost such and such. That weeds out almost everybody.” (Tracy, 11:26)
  • Created free resources, like a downloadable PDF “How to Choose a Roofer,” to serve global viewers without draining time.

• Building Referral Networks:

  • Seeks to establish a network of trusted roofers in other cities for quality referrals, turning non-local audience into indirect business value.

Impact of Brand and Personality

• Reputation Built on Value:

  • The formula is Personality + Information = Reputation (over time).
    • “You’re giving away insane value from your years of experience…that combination of you being yourself plus what you know.” (Nathan, 13:41)
  • Despite “only” ~16,000 subscribers, the channel’s real-world impact rivals much larger creators.

• Examples of Trust and Rapport:

  • Clients often binge on multiple hours of Tracy’s videos.
    • “Who sits down and watches six hours of roofing information videos?” (Tracy, 26:43)
    • “The right person.” (Nathan, 26:51)
  • Some clients use Tracy’s own PDF questionnaire to vet roofing contractors.
    • “They were asking us our own questions.” (Tracy, 28:24)

Lead Generation Tactics & Optimization

• Calls to Action:

  • Uses low-pressure lower third graphics “If you’re in the Colorado Springs area, call us at this phone number” briefly during first third of each video.
    • “All we do is we just pop up a banner…for like five seconds and then it goes away inside the video.” (Tracy, 17:13)
  • Improved by adding phone number to video descriptions and channel banner.
  • Balance between being unobtrusive but effective in capturing leads.

• Optimizing for Discovery & Engagement:

  • Studies 90-day performance to identify topic trends and audience interests; e.g., a spike in shingle color question views prompts new shorts and posts tailored to those queries.
    • “Which videos of mine are performing the best…that’s telling me where the interest lies.” (Tracy, 20:24)
  • Repackages top-performing content into short videos native for various platforms (YouTube Shorts, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Business Profile).
    • Shift from generic AI-generated clips to targeted, context-specific shorts.

Learning the YouTube Game

• Thumbnail & Editing Evolution:

  • Early videos were “amateur,” with “horrific” thumbnails, but learning improved results over time.
  • Family-run business: Tracy’s youngest son is his video editor.

• Mentorship & Community:

  • Attributes much of his strategic progress to the support of his Think Media Video Ranking Academy coach.
    • “I have to give credit to the Think Media VRA coach that I have who’s really walking me through… what you should be paying attention to.” (Tracy, 20:24)
  • Regular review meetings with his team to analyze analytics and plan content.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Viral vs. Valuable Content:

  • “A video can kind of bomb…on views, but not bomb on the sales end…as a business, it’s still a win.” (Nathan, 25:39)

• YouTube as a Salesperson:

  • “You’ve effectively cloned yourself over here on your YouTube channel.” (Nathan, 27:05)
  • “When they call us, they feel like they already know us.” (Tracy, 27:37)

• The ROI of Patience:

  • “It took me eight years to get to a thousand subscribers…and get monetized…Since then, now I’m at almost 16,000.” (Tracy, 30:15)
  • “It’s a lot like farming. It’s not like hunting. I do both…But it’s really like owning an orchard, because that takes years before you finally start to see the fruit.” (Tracy, 30:15)_

• On Getting Started:

  • “When’s the best time to plant an apple tree? Twenty years ago. When’s the best time to have started a YouTube channel? Five years ago. But get started now so that five years from now those seeds are coming to fruition…” (Tracy, 31:37)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:13] Tracy introduces Homestead Roofing and channel goals
• [01:53] YouTube becomes top sales channel
• [02:39] Revenue breakdown from YouTube
• [04:26] Strategy behind approachable video style
• [07:02] The role of algorithm and national interest
• [11:26] Dealing with global/non-local leads
• [13:41] “Personality + Information = Reputation" formula
• [16:31] Lead gen via unintrusive calls to action
• [20:24] Learning analytics and audience interest
• [22:58] Coaching and transition to strategic shorts
• [30:15] The orchard metaphor and advice for beginners

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Actionable Takeaways

• Consistency and authenticity beat flashy production. Start with what you know—help your core audience—be yourself.
• Track where growth actually comes from. For local businesses, YouTube can drive substantial direct revenue, even with a relatively small subscriber base.
• Optimize CTAs for conversion, not interruption. Subtle lower thirds in the first half of videos may yield better results than end-card pitches.
• Leverage analytics to double down on what works. Review top-performing videos every quarter and repurpose them across multiple platforms.
• Be patient—growth compounds. The biggest rewards come after persistent effort and gradual trust-building.

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Where to Find Tracy / Homestead Roofing

• Website: homesteadroofingcolorado.com
• YouTube: @HomesteadRoofing
• Also on: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn

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Final Note

Tracy’s story shows that “boring” business videos—when rooted in authenticity and a genuine desire to help—can quietly build a foundation for massive business impact. The orchard analogy says it all: “Plant now, reap later.”

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Episode Value:
If you’re a small business owner or local service provider, Tracy’s journey exemplifies how targeted, honest, and regular content can transform your sales pipeline, reputation, and brand—without needing to “go viral.”

Transcript

[Nathan Eswine]

Hey, before we jump into the show, I wanted to give you a heads up that my free YouTube strategy class is available right now on [e-mail] on the class, I reveal the one YouTube strategy we use at Think Media to generate over 330,000 views every single day. So if you're new to YouTube, this will help you start right and avoid mistakes. And if you're a YouTube pro, this training will help you multiply your your growth. This class is 100% free, and you can watch it now on [e-mail] now let's jump into today's show.

[Tracy]

We still get most of our business from YouTube.

[Nathan Eswine]

How much revenue can you actually attribute because you're making YouTube videos?

[Tracy]

About $1.3 million.

[Nathan Eswine]

In the video, you're just sitting in the back of your truck. What are you doing in these YouTube videos?

[Tracy]

That's just really kind of my personality. Pretty laid back, pretty chill. I'm not good at marketing, but I can give away information.

[Nathan Eswine]

Welcome to the media podcast, the number one show bringing you unfiltered YouTube tips for building a profitable channel. I'm Nathan S. Wine, co host of the podcast and today I'm hanging out with Tracy from Homestead Roofing. Tracy, how's it going?

[Tracy]

It's going very well. Thank you so much.

[Nathan Eswine]

Yeah, you bet. I'm pumped for our conversation today. I wouldn't, if you wouldn't mind, go ahead and fill us in about your channel. Like, what's it about and who are you making videos for?

[Tracy]

My channel is for my roofing company, Homestead Roofing in Colorado Springs. And all of the content is geared exclusively for homeowners. A lot of roofing channels out there are more for roofers. This is to just give education and information to homeowners who might be going through the roofing process or their insurance claim process. So that's my target audience.

[Nathan Eswine]

Very cool. So YouTube is supporting your business. In your business, how big of a player is YouTube?

[Tracy]

It is the number one source for sales for us consistently over the this year so far. All of last year before that, it was like rising up through the ranks. It was like number three the previous two years. So it has overtaken everything for us now. And like I said, we get more sales that come to us from people who are finding us through YouTube. Even though our channel has national reach and we're just a local company, we still get most of our business from YouTube.

[Nathan Eswine]

Okay. Wow. How much revenue can you actually attribute because you're making YouTube videos this year?

[Tracy]

First half of this year, $230,000 has come to us from YouTube since the beginning of 2024. Through today, it's about a half a million. And then since we actually started trying to keep track of all of it at the beginning of 2019. So here. What's that? Seven and a half years? About $1.3 million. Wow.

[Nathan Eswine]

Okay.

[Tracy]

It's just like. It's just like going this. Like this.

[Nathan Eswine]

It's just going up. Yeah, it's like, okay, so it's funny, Tracy, the question I find myself wanting to ask you is, why is that? You know, it's like, gee, okay, pulling in over a million dollars because of YouTube videos since you started this thing, it's only growing.

[Tracy]

What.

[Nathan Eswine]

What are you doing in these YouTube videos?

[Tracy]

It's a hundred percent giving homeowners information based on things that they're asking us or things that I think that they're. They're thinking about. Like right now, the. One of the best performing videos on my channel is called Asphalt Shingles are Dead. You know, a lot of people are thinking through, you know, why do I want to go back on with an asphalt shingle roof, right? I have to replace my roof every five years or every seven years because it gets hailed on or whatever reason. And so people are thinking through some more sustainable, some more longer living roofing materials. So that. That video, I think, has over 300,000 views right now. And it's just. Just trying to think through what specific questions are homeowners going to be thinking about and asking and how can I serve them with information?

[Nathan Eswine]

Okay, so maybe let's park here on this video for a second, because it's. It's doing really well. It's your second most popular video. Looks like it was posted a year ago. I'm looking at it now. Over 300,000 views. The title is Asphalt Shingles are Dead, but in the video, you're just sitting in the back of your truck. But I think part of why this is working, and correct me if I'm wrong if you've seen this in your content, is like, there's a very approachable feel that's going on here. Like, it's almost like if I were to hire you or if I were to hire a roofer, it's like, I would like it to be Tracy, because you're just talking to me. Almost like we're close friends or family members. Like, there's an intimate vibe in this video. Was that on purpose? Like, how did you decide to just set everything up like this?

[Tracy]

The answer to that question is really twofold. Number one, that's just really kind of my personality, just pretty laid back, pretty, pretty chill. Although I can get excited. And some of that does come across in some of my videos when I start talking about roofing scams. But the other thing that prompted me to make these videos was I started Homestead Roofing in 2013 and I started my YouTube channel almost right away. Like within a few months. I had seen a video back in 2012, 2013 that was made. It was almost like a TED talk, although it wasn't a TED talk and it was by a guy named Jason Freed who owned A company called 37 Signals at the time. Now it's become Basecamp. And he was in that talk talking about how he grew his software company to a nine figure company without marketing. He just gave away information, just gave away education. I was like, I can do that because I'm not a very good, I'm not good at marketing. I've, I've tried it numerous times and I stink at it, but I can give away information. And so we started doing that and it took. Well, I got my first job from a YouTube video that same year. But I, I, the light bulb still didn't come on. And so I was really inconsistent making videos. And then about 2018, I thought, man, I'm going to really jump into this. And so we started being consistent, making videos pretty much every week. And then I fell out of it because we get really busy.

[Nathan Eswine]

Yeah.

[Tracy]

So I kind of went on this roller coaster. You know, we would see revenue coming in, people would call us and they, we always ask them, how did you hear about us? Oh, I saw your YouTube videos then about 2022, that's when everything, it was like grow, it started growing exponentially. Meaning the, the amount of revenue that we started seeing from it. The amount of people that would call us. Now we get calls from people all over the country and emails, you know, people asking for help about this. How do I, how do I choose a roofer? I don't know if my roofer is trying to scam me, what do I do with my, about my insurance claim, et cetera, et cetera. But the nice thing about me having a, a YouTube channel that has a national scope of interest, meaning people nationally are interested in my topic. Yeah. Is I think then that the YouTube. This is my opinion. It seems like the YouTube algorithm then is feeding my channel to, to more people here locally. You see what I'm saying? If my channel was just roofing Colorado Springs, I don't think YouTube would feed it to as many people real quick.

[Nathan Eswine]

A little behind the scenes story from an episode just like this one. So, recently I was recording an interview, exact same setup as today, me and a guest remote. We wrapped on what I thought was an awesome conversation, but I looked at the dashboard and the footage on my guest side hadn't finished uploading yet. So, like, I turned off the session. Things weren't fully uploaded. That's usually the moment that your stomach completely drops as a content creator. But we record on Riverside, which is the partner of today's episode, and Riverside records everything locally on each person's device and up to 4k with clean, separate audio and video tracks. So every frame on my guest side was actually already saved, even though we stopped recording, recording. And it just finished uploading on its own in the background. No reshoot, no lost interview. And honestly, that's like, why I sat down with Tracy today with total confidence. Because a conversation like this one got a business owner walking you through how a small channel did over a million dollars in sales with YouTube videos. Like, you know, you get, you get one shot at that and you could miss something if. If the software you're using isn't trustworthy. Like, and it just feels good that I'm not babysitting a recording. You know, like, I'm just here, present, hanging out. And it's the same lesson Tracy's whole story teaches, right? Which is like, the tools that you choose matter. So if you're trying to deliver quality content, the tool just has to match the job, in my opinion. But it's not just the recording. Once the conversation is captured, Riverside actually gets you from raw footage to published episode way faster. You can edit from the transcript, which is my new favorite way to edit. Just edit the text in the video updates itself. AI can remove any filler words, clean up those awkward pauses, and even generate captions automatically. And the magic clips feature can even turn the best moments from this conversation into shorts, reels, and TikToks, all from the same dashboard. And for fellow podcasters out there, Riverside can also host your show and even distribute it on Spotify, Apple Music, even publish directly to YouTube. So again, the whole pipeline just lives in one place. So if interviews or podcasts are part of your content plan, especially if you're someone like Tracy, who's a business owner, limited time, already a full workload. Riverside keeps the whole process simple. Plan it, record it, edit it, publish it, use code, think media at checkout for one month, free of Riverside's pro Plan again, that's code. Think media. At checkout, you'll find that link in the description and show notes down below. But for now, let's head back to Tracy. That's huge. I think you're, I think you're spot on with that because what you're, it's kind of like instead of tagging Colorado Springs or having that sort of, kind of niching down ahead of time, it's like you're letting, you're letting the audience niche itself down, if I could phrase it that way. So it's like you're kind of going broad. You are making videos about roofing in general, like asphalt shingles in general, home insurance in general. And so you accrue a lot of views. And naturally through those views there's going to be people that are local. Can I ask you there, like just tactically as a local business owner, like brick and mortar location, like, what do you do with the global traffic? So like if you have. Because right. If you have a lot of people watching your videos, you can only serve the people that are local, I'm assuming. But what do you do with global traffic?

[Tracy]

There's been a few different things that we're trying to do because I'm trying to figure out how to monetize that. And that's mostly because, I mean, I love, I love helping people, but the reality is I only have so much time.

[Nathan Eswine]

Yeah.

[Tracy]

And we used to get a ton of people call just wanting help and so on my drive home, because I have like a 40 minute drive home. So I would try to talk to him then because then it's like, it's not sucking up my time. Then we started when people would call, we'd say, yeah, okay, well Tracy can, you know, I have my gatekeeper, right. He would, he would say, yeah, Tracy can, can talk with you. Let's set aside a 30 minute time frame and that will cost such and such. That weeds out almost everybody because they just want the free information. We have a series of videos on how to choose a roofer and I turned that into a PDF that now people can download for free off our website. So they just go to the website and we have tubebuddy set up with a, a canned response. So that way if somebody's asking for that, I just click the canned response and it tells them how to find it.

[Nathan Eswine]

Nice.

[Tracy]

That's eliminated so many of our calls and emails, so I'm not making money off of that. But I got my time back and I'm still serving people. If that makes sense.

[Nathan Eswine]

Oh, 100%. And I'm even thinking about you're just creating an opportunity for future products and services, I'm sure. Which is probably what you're thinking through now, right? It's like, okay, what is the digital stuff I could put together for people?

[Tracy]

Actually what I'm thinking through on that is I'm trying to build a network of like minded roofers, right? Roofers that operate like we do all over the country. So that way I can refer these people to them. So exam. For example, if somebody calls me from Houston, we get calls from Texas a lot. Somebody calls me from Houston, I can say, yeah, here's, here's a roofer in Houston, call him. Somebody calls me from dfw, it's like, here's, here's a roofer down there in the Dallas area. Call him. Somebody from Orlando, right? So I've got roofers in these other places and. But I'm still looking for more, right? Because I'd like to expand this so that I can always help these people and get them connected with a roofer that's going to treat them right and not take advantage of them.

[Nathan Eswine]

There's this equation that I kind of wrote down as you were talking, as we were kind of looking at this one of these big videos of yours in its personality plus information. And that seems to be the thing that's recurrent. It was like watching several of your videos right, in preparation to hang out together. Personality plus information. And I would say like if there was an equal sign, it's almost like personality plus information equals reputation over time. You're giving away insane value from your years of experience and expertise and just like literally sharing decades, I'm sure, worth of information and knowledge with people. And I think that that combination of you being yourself plus the things that you have a well of knowledge about, this is why YouTube is just like the wild west, like so much stuff can happen. And by the way, your, Your channel's at 15,000 subscribers. So we're also not talking about a channel that like, where you've just gone viral with every single video and you have, you have a gold play button and you're like, you're massive, but you're having massive impact. And I think this is, this is, this, this is what's beyond posting a video more than just the cool thing about like people getting into your business, but it's this brand play that like I've been obsessed with lately. When you started YouTube, you started making videos. Like what was, what was the hardest

[Tracy]

part for you probably was figuring out the editing, right? Because I didn't have any experience with editing. Sure, I had a little bit, right. I mean, when I had my personal channel, I, I was, you know, dinking around with editing, but very amateurish. And so when I started with Homestead, everything was amateur. It wasn't polished, it wasn't professional looking. So that was probably the hardest part. And my, my. If you sort on my channel by oldest. You can see my thumbnails back then were horrific. They were terrible.

[Nathan Eswine]

Yo, this is good. But you, I gotta say, you mastered the classic YouTuber face of like shock and awe, you know, like the big what is happening? I kind of love it. If you'd walk us through a little bit of like a mini master class that I almost want to call like the anatomy of a YouTube video that gets leads. So like you, you're right. Because. Okay. To do over a million dollars because of these YouTube videos in business revenue, it's okay. It's sure. We talk about personality, talk about information. We talked about being yourself and like really sharing things, being value driven. But what else are you doing in these videos? Because I would. If I'm listening, I'm like, okay, how do you connect dots between someone being a viewer and then becoming a lead? Like getting them to go where you'd like them to go, where you. That you can pick up the phone, it's through email. Like, what's that process like? And then what do you do in your videos to point people there?

[Tracy]

It was very rudimentary for the longest time because I didn't, I didn't know what I was doing. So we just have an end card at the end of every video and that has our phone number on it. I mean, I was so dumb about it, I wasn't even putting our phone number in the description of the videos. Now the. We did have the contact info on the channel banner.

[Nathan Eswine]

Okay.

[Tracy]

But we didn't. I didn't have it in the descriptions. I wasn't putting a pinned comment on there. And I didn't, I was so naive. I didn't honestly know that people didn't watch the entire video.

[Nathan Eswine]

Right.

[Tracy]

So just recently, within the last few months, you know, we've started putting our contact info in the description above the folder.

[Nathan Eswine]

Nice.

[Tracy]

And making sure that's on, that's on the channel banner. Trying to remember. So I don't ever want my videos to come across as salesy. I want the, I want the viewer to feel safe when they're watching it, that they, they don't feel like I'm trying to sell them something. Yeah. So instead of it being a hard sell, you know, like, hey, and by the way, if you need a roofer and you're in Colorado Springs, call this phone number. And you know, that kind of thing. All we do is we just pop up a, a banner, a graphic at the bottom that says, if you're in the Colorado Springs area, call us at this phone number. And it's there for like five seconds and then it goes away inside the video.

[Nathan Eswine]

And this is called a lower thirds. Right, Tracy? This like little graphic that'll pop up, they'll sit on the bottom of the screen. I love that. I'm like, that's something someone could take and run with right away. Do you mind if I ask, where do you, in the video do you put that call to action? Like do you wait after a specific point? Do you have like an internal rule like, when does this pop up? Yeah.

[Tracy]

My editor. So I, I have six kids, my oldest son work. I have five boys, one daughter. My oldest son works for me. He's doing sales and project management. My youngest son is my video editor. So I have a full time editor, thankfully. And he tries to put that graphic, that pop up graphic somewhere in the first one third of the video is good just to. Because, you know, we look at our retention graphs and we understand once you get to that 50% mark, most of the people are gone.

[Nathan Eswine]

Right. That's real strong. So you're putting the call to action. Even though it's, it's not a hard sell, like you said, it's just a, it's, it's a, it's almost like you're saying, would you like fries with that, you know, like at McDonald's or something? Like, would you like, you know, you're already here getting great value, you're getting the burger, but like would you like, you know, here and it's just kind of popping up. That feels like it's non intrusive. But it's genius to put it at the part where most people are still watching. I think that's actually like a lot of people, like we've both have done this, like putting the call to action at the end of a video when all of our retention curves are the smallest. Right. You're a business owner and you have business objectives. There's lead gen, there's sales to close. Right. To keep the lights on. But you are creating on the platform of YouTube, which means there's certain things that you need to care about for your videos to do well and find the right people. So you care about things like titles and thumbnails and retention curves. Right. And so the reason I phrase it like that is because I'd like to know what you've had to learn on the YouTube side. Like, what are the metrics that you really pay attention to or have learned to pay attention to to help a video perform better?

[Tracy]

Man, what a great question. And I have to give, give credit to the Think Media VRA coach that I have who's really walking me through. Okay, this is what you should be paying attention to. And so, you know, I'm looking at, let's see what's probably the main thing that I'm looking at right now. Right now, the thing that I'm looking at the most is over a 90 day period, which videos of mine are performing the best, meaning which, which ones are getting the most views? Because then that's telling me where the interest lies. What that enabled me to do, like what I was had my weekly meeting with my editor. Today we just pulled up studio, sorted it by 90 days, said, okay, out of our top five long form videos, three of them are about shingles. So let's take, let's. And right now the, the best performing One in that 90 day period is about shingle colors. So I told him, okay, take that video and let's assume two things. Number one, viewers are finding this video because they have a question, what color shingle should I put on my house? Or they have a pain point in

[Nathan Eswine]

that

[Tracy]

I don't, I don't know whether I should trust my roofer or I don't know whether I can put this shingle in my house. Or I, this shingle might look crummy on my house. Okay, so we now we've got two bits of information. We know what people most likely are asking. I think I know what their pain point is and we know which video is answering those questions. So I said, okay, now go through and pick out all of the relevant information in this video that will address those two things and make a short out of it, 59 seconds or less. And so now we're doing that each week because I can, if it's 59 seconds, I can post that on my Google business profile because it has to be less than 60 seconds. So now I can take that, we can put that on our YouTube channel, but I can also put it on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and my Google business profile.

[Nathan Eswine]

Can we stay on that for just a second? Because what Tracy just said is the Whole unlock. He's got the expertise, he's got a real business. But the growth kicked in when someone was in his corner calling the plays. That's his coach, Samuel. And that's exactly what we do here at Think Media. If you're a business owner and YouTube feels like the second job that you're still guessing at, you film and you post, you hope something happens, you can apply to get in the exact same small group coaching experience that Tracy is a part of. Get weekly access to a real coach with a real game plan. And in a room of other business owners building the same thing. You can go to viral video coach.com to apply again. That's Viral Video coach. Com links in the description or show notes down below. But for now, back to Tracy. And you go back 90 days. And is this something that you and your editor do? Like, what's your review schedule like? How often will you do this kind of analysis? Is it every 90 days? Like once a quarter?

[Tracy]

This, this is like brand new for us.

[Nathan Eswine]

Okay.

[Tracy]

So it was before I was using Opus Clip.

[Nathan Eswine]

Yeah.

[Tracy]

And. Right. And I would just pop in the link for one of my videos. It would spit out 15 different shorts and I would just be like, okay, I like this one. I don't like this one. And I would pick out one or two and publish those. It was just like throwing spaghetti against the wall.

[Nathan Eswine]

Right.

[Tracy]

Let me see which one sticks. Most of them don't. And most people aren't really going to be looking for shorts on my channel. And I'm fine with that. It's more just to. For the additional content that's out there. Plus it's giving me something to post on these other social media sites.

[Nathan Eswine]

Sure. Yeah.

[Tracy]

Now we're trying to be more strategic again, thanks to my coach who's like, look, you gotta. You gotta start answering these questions, not just spitballing and throwing shorts out there, just to put shorts out there.

[Nathan Eswine]

Nice.

[Tracy]

But be smart about it. Light bulb moment. Right. Okay. I'm not. I'm not the sharpest crayon in the box. So I'm thankful to have somebody who's telling me this is what you gotta do.

[Nathan Eswine]

I actually would like to break this down. Two things come to my mind. So you're no longer. You're no longer doing the Opus clip strategy and you're shifting towards. If you're going to create a short, you're going to kind of. You're going to create it from the ground up. Okay. And the reason being that you want to get. You're trying to get more specific, like you're trying to create for the format. Is that the idea, like for the nature of the short form video, not trying to pull it out of somewhere else?

[Tracy]

Yes, we're trying to be specific about answering the questions that a homeowner has instead of just letting AI randomly throw together a short just so that I have a short.

[Nathan Eswine]

I'm hearing you have a different, you know, measurement of success. Of course views mean something, but they're not everything. And if you know that you put out a video that got 500 views but it made a sale or made a few sales, it's just like as a business. That's what I mean by being a business owner in a YouTuber's costume. Where we know views are important and they matter and we want to optimize for them because then more people get aware of us. But it's also like a video can kind of bomb to use your language on views, but not bomb on the sales end. And now is that video actually a loss? You know, No, I would say it's actually still a win. It served its job, it's doing its purpose. That's so cool.

[Tracy]

And that's why I feel like I have to. I've got to keep. I've got to keep putting out videos because I don't have a way to track which video is producing the call. Yeah, right. There's not a way to track that because when we ask people, how did you find out about us? Well, I found you on YouTube. Great. What video did you watch? About 20 of them.

[Nathan Eswine]

Right.

[Tracy]

That's the other thing that surprises me, is who sits down and watches six hours of roofing information videos?

[Nathan Eswine]

Dude, the right person.

[Tracy]

Hey, the right person.

[Nathan Eswine]

Which is also proves the Cool point about YouTube too, is that YouTube can be. YouTube can be one of your salesmen, to like, put it a different way.

[Tracy]

Exactly.

[Nathan Eswine]

It's actually like because you, you know, that person gets on the phone and you're closing, you know, and it's like you find out that they watch 20 or they would have spent hours with you. It's like you, you were building rapport and you didn't even know it. You were like eating dinner, you were on a job site, you were doing. You were doing something else as a business owner. But you've effectively cloned yourself over here on your YouTube channel. And you're out here bringing that personality plus information equaling reputation. Just people can find your content all around the clock so that by the time someone gets on the call, it's Like, I feel like I know you, you know, And.

[Tracy]

And that's exactly it. That. That right there just crystallizes everything about my YouTube channel that we want to accomplish is when they call us, they feel like they already know us.

[Nathan Eswine]

So.

[Tracy]

I told you, we have that PDF. In that PDF is a list of interview questions. Nobody knows what questions to ask a roofer. Right. It's like, what questions are you going to ask roofer? You're going to install shingles on my roof? Yeah. Okay, you're hired. We have this big list of interview questions, and we went to one person's house, my son and I, and they were asking us our own questions.

[Nathan Eswine]

No way.

[Tracy]

She had them printed out. So they were asking us our own questions that I'm like, this is awesome. I know all the answers. Yes. And they told us that they had been using those interview questions on all the other roofers that they had talked to.

[Nathan Eswine]

Wow.

[Tracy]

And most of them didn't have a way to answer the questions.

[Nathan Eswine]

And.

[Tracy]

And then I know a guy who owns a company in Houston. He told me last year, he's like, I went out to go meet with a homeowner, and they're asking me your questions. Wow. So that's validation right there, because that is, to your point that they feel like they know us, which means that they trust us. Yep.

[Nathan Eswine]

All through videos, too, which is the wild part.

[Tracy]

Exactly. Exactly. We've been hired and done jobs for people we have never even met. They don't even live in the state, but they own a house or, like a rental house here, and they're fine with not ever meeting us.

[Nathan Eswine]

Tracy, if you were, you know, where could people spy on you? Like, if someone's listening is like, hey, I'd love to know how he's doing things. Like, could you shout out your channel or shout out your site, like, whatever you want to share for people to find?

[Tracy]

Yeah. Website is homestead roofingcolorado.com Colorado is all spelled out. The YouTube channel is at Homestead Roofing. I mean, you can find us on Facebook, but I'm not a big Facebook guy. Facebook, Instagram, you can find us on LinkedIn.

[Nathan Eswine]

Also, hey, if you were to kind of like a classic question, if someone's listening to this episode right now and they're pretty intrigued, or they are. They are a small business owner and are trying to connect the dots between YouTube and their business. Like, what. What would you leave them with? What would you encourage them with?

[Tracy]

It's a lot like farming. It's not like hunting. I do both. And hunting you know, you go out, maybe you stock your animal, you find it, you bag it, you bring it home, and you're done. And really, it's not even like farming. It's like owning an orchard, because that takes years before you finally start to see the fruit. And it took me. I didn't get. I didn't get my. I didn't get to a thousand subscribers, 1,000 subscribers. It took me eight years to get to a thousand subscribers. And I got monetized shortly after that. And so that was in 2021, I think. So it took me eight years to get that first thousand subscribers and get monetized since then. Now I'm at almost 16,000 subscribers. And like I say this, the graph is just going like this. So the thing that I would leave somebody with, if it's a business owner, is you've got to put in the time. It's. It's that concept of the apple tree. You know, when's the best time to plant an apple tree? 20 years ago. When's the best time to have started a YouTube channel? Five years ago. But get started now so that five years from now, those. Those seeds are coming to fruition and you're able to start harvesting off of it.

[Nathan Eswine]

Tracy, thank you so much, man, for the words of wisdom, for sharing your journey, and we're just doing nothing but cheering you on. Cheers to the next five years, huh? To you and you. That's listening. Hey, come on, podcast. There's no way you didn't get value out of this conversation. Let Tracy and I know, like, rate, share, review wherever you're watching or listening. This is the Think Media podcast. I'm Nathan Eswine, and I can't wait to connect with you in a future episode.