In this special episode, we went into depth on our views of content, marketing and branding in the wind energy sector. As one of the most active online educators in wind, we wanted to share a glimpse of why we do what we do and what we’ve learned in building an online audience. Though we have a long way to go, 2020 was a fascinating year to look back on. We’re sharing the lessons we’ve learned in hopes that you might run with them and view your company’s web presence in a new light.
Learn more about Weather Guard Lightning Tech’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
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EP36 – Wind Energy Content & Marketing: A Glimpse into What We Do and Why We Do It
I’m Allen Hall. I’m Dan Blewett. And this is the uptime podcast where we talk about wind energy engineering, lightning protection, and ways to keep your wind turbines running.
All right, welcome back. This is the uptime podcast, episode 36 and in today’s episode is actually gonna be a special format. We’re not gonna hit all the typical news. What we’re going to talk about a little bit is sort of our company branding and strategy, and some of the interesting things that we’ve done.
That’ll probably apply to a lot of you who are in the, in the industry, whether you’re working for wind energy company, whether you’re in marketing or content, or you own a business yourself. A lot of stuff that we’ve been doing is I think a little bit unique to the energy industry, from everything that we’ve seen.
And so we’re going to chat about it a little bit today. It’s a holiday weekend, so we figured mixing up the show a little bit, uh, will be fun. So, Alan, first thing we’re going to cover today is, uh, sorta like the company origins and obviously. Weather guard, lightening tech produces lightning protection systems for wind turbines, but also for aircraft.
So let’s talk a little bit real quick about how you got from how you made that sort of, not necessarily a pivot because you still covered both markets, but how we got from aerospace to wind turbines and what was the gap in the wind market here? Uh, so we, yeah, we did start with in the aircraft market. Uh, the product itself is used on most airplanes flying today.
It provides slightly protection to the non-conductive covers the radar homes that exist on the, the front of the airplane, on the nose of the airplane. And over most of the larger antennas, like the television antenna, the SAC satellite antenna, that’s beaming live television into your seat. There’s a cover over that.
And our product gets installed on that. So, yeah. The years and years ago now seems like an eternity ago. Um, there’s, there’s some similar products out in the market, but the issue was just durability and making it last a really long time and awful environments and aircraft go through alpha environments, hot, cold rain, snow, sleet, uh, they’re exposed to a ton of chemicals, cleaning chemicals, the icing fluids, uh, You name it and you’re just going to get hit with all these different aspects.
And so he just needed a very durable product, right? So the, it it’s the lightening protection. Part of it was the piece of it, obviously, but just the durability. We need to increase the durability of the product so you can install it once and it can take multiple strikes and you wouldn’t have to remove it or replace it over the lifetime of the aircraft part.
That’s how it started. And then as we got going, we realized that the winter market basically has the same problem that, uh, the lightning protection systems are good, not great. And by adding our product to a wind turbine blade, you can greatly enhance the existing lightning protection system. But again, there were similar products on the market long before us that just wore out within six months or a year or so.
And so we knew the product would work from a lightning protection standpoint w where the issue was, was just our ability. So we spent many years and hundreds of thousands of dollars developing a very durable, uh, lightning protection of ISIS. We call strike tape now, and it’s been proven and proven and proven, and it’s flying on.
Federal express airplanes all around the world every single day. Um, it’s on most commercial aircraft today in business aircraft today, and a lot of wind turbines. So we made that transition just because the application was very similar. The need was very similar and the both, both markets needed that durability aspect, which we offered.
So what I want to pivot into is the, the branding. So obviously you and I began working together back in, uh, 2019. And where was your company? Prior to that you were called WX guard. And why did you decide to a rebranding, uh, was, was necessary? So there’s actually a couple of different steps in there. Our, our, our, our base company or, or top level company or holding companies essentially is called pinnacle lightning protection and pinnacle lightning protection.
Uh, developed, uh, delighting diverter and the, the brand and for the latest version, it was WX guard, weather guard. WX is an abbreviation in the aerospace industry for weather, uh, and like the weather radar, which is the system that sits on the nose of the airplane. That’s looking for weather out in front of the aircraft is spelled.
WX regular. So we’re just a play on words sort of thing. Uh, so that literally limited us to the aircraft market aerospace market and the winter market didn’t understand that acronym at all. Right. So, so when we, uh, decided to make some changes in terms of overall structure, the winter market was a, a growing business for us.
We wanted to rebrand and that’s when we reached out to you and we all kind of put our heads together and. Basically made everything simpler, make a little more, uh, weather, the guard, lightening tech became the name. Uh, we branded the lightning, divert our strike tape just to make it a little simpler, to understand what the product is and make the, the name a little more common usage and searchable too.
Right. And a lot of it had to do with being able to search it on the internet. Yeah, because I think one of the early challenges was we didn’t want to think, like ours was just another product of the same in a, in a big catalog of items. Right. So if you sell, Oh, I make a knife. Well, you know, you go to, uh, any home store and there’s like 15 brands of knives, right?
So obviously like a kitchen knife is a kitchen knife and the brand name works. But if you could rename it, like this is the slicer, MADEC 2000. Obviously they do that in hokey things, but like having the brand name. Is helpful in differentiating just your own product and all that other stuff. And that’s where the logos and the new branding came into that too.
So what we’re, when we did the rebranding, what was your main goal with, with logos and colors and all that stuff? Because. What I find interesting about the industry is that those are today’s tent. They tend to be afterthoughts, right. And we’ve talked and we’ve laughed at Siemens Gamesa a little bit versus GE.
I mean, even with a wind turbine, I imagine that there’s some effect on marketing. When you’re talking about the Halle eight X, which is a cool name for a huge wind turbine, right. Versus the SG 14 to two, two DD, which sounds like this is just another device out of a catalog. And that, I think that was your overarching goal, correct me if I’m wrong that you just didn’t want to be another.
Device in a catalog because your product is better than that. Right. And by labeling the product and sticking a brand name on it, that’s memorable and short enough that you could repeat to somebody else and he could use it in a conversation and even treat it like a, like a verb, right. Strike, tape it.
Right. You can actually apply it in that fashion. It makes the, the usage of it expand a lot more than. Creating a number. Right. And if you look at, uh, I’ll use Tesla’s example, it’s not the best example, but it’s pretty useful so that they were pretty smart in keeping the model numbers. It’s S three X, Y, right.
Which is some version of sexy. Okay. So there’s a little play on words there it’s memorable, right? It’s hard to not remember that. Right. And even, even there on the rocket launch business, they have these really unique needs for the, uh, the launch pads, the rockets themselves. So that they’re memorable. They kind of stick in your head.
They’re just a little bit outside of the common usage, but not enough that you can forget it. And it’s a, it’s a very smart way of going about it. And then on the color side, there’s a lot of. Uh, psychology and colors. And, uh, this is where you need to spend some, we spent a good bit of time researching into that and looking at different colors and how it plays and how memorable it is, how it sticks out.
And I think if you look at different logos from larger companies who spent time on these things, they have really spent a lot of money and research into picking the colors, picking the fonts, picking the look, uh, so that it sticks. And it’s a memory. And we went through that same sort of exercise. Yeah.
And you also wanted to be able to play and different backgrounds on different, like some logos don’t look good on as a, as a cutout. So obviously like you see some companies, they have their logo and it’s still got the white background attached. Like you need to cut that out. So it has a transparent background.
So if you overlaid on a video or a. A dark background, a white background. It still looks the same. Some logos just don’t depending on their colors, just don’t cut out well. Or they don’t work well on a dark background versus a light background. See if they either have different versions or. You know, it just doesn’t we’ll look for, he could.
And so, yeah, there was a lot of iteration there trying to figure out what’s gonna, you know, we do have a bunch of different, you know, versions of the logo that are different uses and all that sort of stuff. Um, which isn’t anything like, you know, crazy out of the ordinary, but those are just still important steps because this kind of goes into the next big thing is again, you not wanting to just be a device in a catalog.
A lot of what goes into the website and YouTube and podcasting and the articles are sort of telling. The story, not only of your company, but the, uh, that of the OEMs and the operators and the, and the, and the technician. Oh, sure. And we decided early on that we were not the, in that storyline. We were trying to tell a story on the website, on our YouTube videos.
Yeah. That we’re not the hero of the story, right? Where are the people helping the hero? Because the, the heroes of the story are the, in the winter, but industry or the technicians who are actually applying the product, they got, they have the hard job. We have the easy job. And so we’re just trying to make their lives easier and to give them success.
And our, if you look at the way, our YouTube videos are set up and a lot of our online. Uh, content is, is may to make it easier for our customers to use our product. So we’re highlighting them. They’re not highlighting us. It’s not about us really. It’s about at the end of the day, having a winter, when that.
It takes a lot less lightening damage. And if we can do that, then our job gets easier. Everybody’s job gets easier. Uh, but that’s an approach, right? And we made that decision really early on about what our approach was going to be with our customers. It’s not about us. It’s about delivering clean energy.
Avoiding lightening damage and making the wind turbine blades in particular lasts as long as we can, because that’s part of the efficiency of the market as we need wind turbines to last 20 years, which is really difficult to do. So as a company, would you be telling that story? Yeah. And that’s, that’s a good point.
So I know a lot of times I was looking at something on the web the other day. And I was trying to figure out, I think I was looking for some kind of software that I can’t remember what it was, but I went on this website and I know it was a transcription service. So a new one that I hadn’t heard of, I was like looking at it and trying to figure out what’s the pricing, like, is this better?
Like, what does this do differently? And the website was just hard to use where I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was. I couldn’t figure out what the pricing was. Uh, it wasn’t sh it felt like it was geared towards like really big volume, like commercial, because they want a quote and there’s a big form.
And I was like, well, and I just, I ended up just leaving the site after like, 45 seconds. Not really being sure who their customer was. If they wanted my business as just like one person who needs transcription consistently. And, uh, you know, they lost a sale. I still don’t really know what exactly it is that their company does.
I know they do transcription, but it’s not clear how you do it or how you get it. Is it what their model is, how much it costs, like any of those details. And that was really frustrating. I think that’s the case with a lot of websites where. You get on the website and then they assume that you’d, that cost whoever’s on the website is going to figure it out and disseminate email.
And that’s not really the case. Really. You kind of just get gunshot, just like being in a, in a store where if you’re in a store and you start to look around and be like, what I want is not here. Probably you just leave. Right. Right. Right. And, um, I think the web is a lot like that too. Oh, it’s, it’s worse than that.
I think just because you can leave it so quickly, write a story. You have to physically walk, walk out the door on the internet. You have, sorry, commit because you had to get yourself to it. And on a website, there is no commitment, right? So you need to be telling that story up front and making that story connect with the user.
And that’s where we’ve tried to get to. And you were right early on Dan and that. You really pointed some of these things out early, like, look, we really need to connect with the person that is doing this job and what are they looking for and what do they need and how do we answer that? What questions are they posing and how do we answer that?
And how do we get them to get to the answer they want to get to? It’s not what we want to get to. It’s what they need to get to. And I think our website does a good job with that, but I think the second part of that is that a website is not a stagnant. Piece of paper, right. You know, when you print out a piece of paper, that’s it, you know, you got one shot at it and you can’t really change it on a website and all social media.
It’s a changing moveable thing and it evolves over time and we’ve made some evolutions over the last year and we’re going to continue to make them because as we get. Our customers provide feedback to us. We can answer questions right on the site upfront. So we’re trying to make that line of communication easier than it ever has been.
And, but that takes a lot of reaching out. And this is why we like having guests on our podcast is that. They have a different perspective than we do, and they have different life experiences and they’ve been working in different industries and when they bring their knowledge base to the table, we learn from that they learn from us and, and hopefully everybody gets our, our listeners.
Can understand where everybody’s coming from and it actually gets something out of it. Cause I think that’s one of the, and the wind turbine industry, it seems like was one of the missing pieces is just, just the lack of communication and sharing of resources. It doesn’t seem to happen all that much. And I know you made a really good effort of trying to do that, Dan.
I mean, obviously a weekly podcast is one way out of many, but it does help and we’d get a lot of feedback that says, yeah, we appreciate that. You provide some technical content, some description of news and it’s worth listening to. I think it’s important. Yeah. Well, and it’s interesting that Google, like you see changes in Google and they’re becoming more and more the answer of questions.
Like you talk about, ask Jeeves, remember, ask Jeeves to search and you’re back in the day and it might still exist. I don’t know, but probably does. Yeah. Today more than ever people are typing in. How can I fix my toaster? How do I, you know, so a hole in my duvet cover, I’m just looking around my apartment at the moment, you know?
And, uh, and Google is, you know, so the, they put different, you know, like the FAQ box in common search pages. And so people are, they want, they have a question more than ever, and they’re looking for the answer. So it’s almost like a puzzle piece. Like they just want to see does your website. I have a puzzle.
Does yours match it? I have a question. Does yours answer it? And for me, my question with that, that example of software, a transcription company was my question was, will this be better, faster or cheaper than the current software that I use? And they couldn’t answer any of those questions? Like not even a single one I just left wrecking on.
So I was like, well, I’m not going to abandon what I have, cause I’ve no idea if any of my questions are answered. And I think that’s often probably the case with a lot of the, the wind techs in the industries, they say, well, I have this problem. Um, and they Google and they find patents, they find catalogs, they find company websites that are very corporate that really don’t give much guidance.
And then they’re like, well, okay. I don’t know how I solve this problem. And there’s great professional groups. Like e-cig that, there’s lots of sharing of knowledge. And I mean, that’s what e-cigs about, which is awesome. And there’s such a need for that. And, uh, and yeah, I mean, I think this whole question and answer dialog is kind of what the internet has become.
And social media is a whole different animal than like YouTube. And so, you know, YouTube for, for us, for our channel has been. Helping people understand a little more about wind turbines in general and also lightening protection and what’s going on and Oh, sure. And yeah, cause that’s where people go is when they want to learn something, they go to YouTube or they go to Google search YouTube much more than social media.
They go to learn something. Yeah. It has really evolved into. It’s particularly YouTube is evolved in what television was supposed to be back in the 1950s, which is this educational resource. How do I do this? And television was the wrong format for that because you couldn’t, it can only spit information at you.
You couldn’t ask any, anything back with YouTube, you can ask questions and you can get answers. Like how do I fix the handle on the store? Well, there’s somebody has made a video on how to do that and the same thing as this. In all kinds of aspects. And, and if I’m a technician and I want to know how to, uh, repair a blade or do make a fix, there’s all kinds of little videos about everything and that, that changes the world.
And so many ways. Because the fact that you can even ask your phone a question, because that wasn’t a thing really 10 years ago, you couldn’t, Siri was wasn’t even really around 10 years ago and now it’s Hey, Google it’s Hey, Alexa. Right? Everybody’s got things in their home. They can ask questions of a device that it responds back to you.
So you’ve changed the way we interface with technology and information. We can. Voice a question and have something, read it back to us or find it, find a YouTube channel that provides them information. And that’s where we’ve spent a lot of time on is trying to be that place to ask questions and not just look for a product.
I mean, anybody can find a product, but you can just put partner brand and find a product. But if you have a question. Find it through us and Dan, you’ve done a tremendous job there in terms of making it a, sort of a question answer based system instead of just a generic part number. Well, an what’s interesting about the podcast space, uh, kind of transitioning to podcasting is that for is, and this is because we do two podcasts here, right?
We do the struck aerospace engineering podcast. And then we do, uh, obviously this one, the uptime wind energy podcast. And there’s a lot of aviation podcasts. There’s multiple aerospace engineering podcasts. There’s just a lot out there in which is understandable. It’s travel, right? It’s, it’s engineering.
There’s a ton of people that work in, in aviation and it’s a huge industry. Uh, but there’s a surprising dearth of, of wind energy podcasts. I mean, you’re looking at one of like a couple, right? There’s a lot, you search it on, on iTunes. You’ll find maybe. 20 results, but maybe 15 of them are no longer active right there.
There’s the remnants of a show that stopped in 14 or 2018 or 2016. And, uh, there’s a handful of ones out there and some do a good job. And, and then there’s a couple of shows that are real popular, but they’re more on energy specifically. So a couple from Greentech media, the, uh, the interchange and the energy gang are very popular podcasts and they do a great job.
Um, and there’s specific to the wind industry, which is, which is kind of baffling, which was kind of why we’re here because there’s a lot of wind turbines. There’s a lot of people employed by wind power. There’s a lot of really big companies. And yet there there’s, this was kind of just a gap in the market.
Oh, totally. And the wind. Target market is going to grow exponentially over the next 10 to 20 years. It’s going to explode. It already is exploding. Even in this COVID environment, we’re in today, it’s still exploding, but the inner, I think you’re right in that the interchange of ideas is really limited.
There’s just not a lot of technical information being passed on any sort of. Podcasts a lot of it’s just policy, you know, policy. Do you want to have wind turbine power? Yes or no? Or can we define a wind places for wind turbines? Okay. And you’re going, we can have those. We can have those policy discussions.
It’s more politics than it is sort of the engineering part of it. But there’s, there’s a huge part of the industry, excuse me, which is completely. Based in for the, the technology end and that technology and it’s changing so rapidly right now. It wouldn’t seem like, unless you’ve been really into the winter market, but it’s changing so fast.
The size of these wind turbines is growing so quickly and the technology that’s going into, man, and they all dynamics is going into them and the power generation capability. And then we’re putting them out to sea. And now we’re going to have floating platforms. These are a huge, huge engineering tasks.
And robotics and drones and drugs. Yeah. Oh yeah. It just all over the place. Every part of the wind turbine industry is growing in a technology sense. And, uh, so it speeds. It’s hard to keep up with. And I think that’s one of the, the issues about the industry is kind of struggle with, is this, it’s just so hard to keep up with the changes because you ha, if you have a turbine that’s 10 years old right now, it looks like it’s a model T to some of these newer wind turbines.
Cause it’s changed that much. It’s like having an original iPhone and looking at an iPhone today. Like they’re not even really the same devices. Right. It’s, it’s changing like that. And it’s hard to think of an industrial product of that size, changing that rapidly. It’s like thinking about a car 10 years ago.
It’s pretty much similar to the cartoon today. You know, there’s more computers and buttons and push it, but essentially it’s got four wheels and a motor and it. It’s put gas in it and it goes so far and it’s roughly the same. Yeah. The gas thing is the biggest thing is changing, but yeah. Right. But it, but it’s a slowly changing.
Even the number of electric vehicle sales in United States is not huge. Not yet. Yeah. It will be, but just not yet. And I think from a company standpoint, We feel like we’re still on this precipice piece, where there are some really interesting technology companies out there. And we we’ve talked to, had some of them, obviously on the podcast, like sky specs and Danny Ellison, a number of others, but that the technology they are pushing and they they’re looking two, three years down the road.
If, if you listen to where they’re going, it’s a. Downing it’s astounding, what the capabilities are, because I think on some level they’ve of pass, what happens in aerospace and aerospace always makes the point of why we’re the cool kids on the block, but I’m not so sure anymore. There’s some really great technology is going to come right that come out of wind because it’s just a lot of smart people going into it.
And they’re working really hard at it to push the envelope and that’s what we need. And as our little company sits into this bigger picture, You know, we’re trying to help that market grow. And that’s what this podcast is all about, is trying to provide that, that resource where people can listen to at their own leisure and learn something new.
Right. Which is interesting because the LinkedIn community is, I would say like pretty active, right? There’s a lot of people sharing a lot of really good information in the wind industry on LinkedIn, but it doesn’t extend much beyond that. You know, companies have a couple, some companies do some really good work on YouTube.
Uh, But there’s just not a whole lot out there beyond LinkedIn, some companies on YouTube and then there’s not much in podcast land. And, uh, it would just be cool to see a lot of that change because there’s a lot of companies that have a lot of, lot of really, really smart people who have a lot of interesting stuff to share.
And, uh, you know, I think we both hope that grows just in general. Like we don’t, we don’t want to be the only wind podcasts. In the industry for the next five years, it’s beneficial for everyone to have more people out there sharing their ideas and getting their network on the show and, and, and all that stuff.
That’s just such a interesting web of where a podcast or a YouTube channel can kinda kind of take you. I think you nailed it up about social media. The social media for wind turbines is really odd compared to aerospace because aerospace, they want to drive in every nook and cranny. Aerospace is on Instagram and aerospace is on Twitter.
They’re on YouTube. They’re on, uh, all the other Snapchat. I mean, they’re, they’re everywhere on every possible social platform. You, you will see an aerospace company grab into that space. Now whether they’re doing anything useful or not, that’s really up for debate, but the winter market doesn’t really. Do that so much, it’s much more of a social network than aerospace is.
And I think that’s, I think the thing that binds everybody together because aerospace doesn’t have this feeling anymore. It probably did 50 years ago. It doesn’t really have it now is that we’re onto something. New rod is something that is a, it’s a new frontier, so to speak, right. We’re we’re going where no person has gone before sort of event.
And when you do that, you tend to build relationships like that because everybody’s has. Uh, general direction they’re driving toward, and it seems that LinkedIn is that place where you’re trying to you’re building sort of relationships with one another and watching what some other company is doing. I think that’s, it has sort of evolved into that LinkedIn very profile and it’s also very professional.
That’s the other part about it? Uh, is that the wind turbine industry is a very professional industry. It’s not. The wild West. It definitely is not that, uh, maybe there are some pieces that we just really haven’t seen, but for the most part, it’s a very professional, um, uh, well-respected industry. And we treat it like that also.
Right. And it’s, it’s kind of a nice place to be because the people you meet and the wind turbine industry are phenomenal. People working really, really hard. And that’s why we like having guests on too, because, uh, they’re sharing the same experiences that we sorta have. Like there’s a little bit of comradery here.
That. Yeah, we’re on something big here and it is going to grow and it’s going to be exciting. It’s going to be new. It’s going to keep coming things fresh and you can sort of feel that excitement and COVID strata. Knock it down a little bit, but we’re, we’re getting close, you know, we’re, we’re beyond the halfway point for COVID I think so we’re going to see that wave off and then we can get.
Going again and doing it. Don’t you kind of feel that a little bit of excitement on LinkedIn. Like there’s just that people are willing to connect and to relate to one another and share. Yeah, it’s nice. I think it’s really nice. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a, it’s a far cry from like the, uh, the, the sports world, the youth sports world, where especially like baseball and Twitter, where everyone just wants to punch each other in the face.
Uh, that’s my, my other world, uh, as a former baseball player. So. Yeah, it’s not very friendly over there. It’s everyone while I know more than you do, and you don’t know anything. And, but the wind industry, it seems everyone’s real eager to help each other out and talk about what they do know and what they don’t know and just share ideas.
And that’s, that’s, that’s pretty cool. Um, so Alan, what, uh, From the head of one company to another. Is there any advice you’d give to someone who might be listening who’s running their own company or in marketing or in any aspect of a, the wind industry? I think right now it’s about just getting through the COVID.
Bit and realizing that it is going to be something better on the other side. Uh, everybody’s taking their lumps right now and that’s understandable. It’s just a tough, tough period of time. But I do see a lot of doors opening. I think people are a lot more receptible receptive to, uh, new ideas and they’re going to be much more open to, uh, different forms of energy and wind turbine is going to be big.
Be a big piece of that. I think as a small, as a smaller company, not necessarily small, but a smaller company. I think some of the keys. In this environment is just to be upfront and to tell your story and to participate in somebody else’s story, to be part of something that’s bigger. And that’s what we’re trying to do.
Like I said, we’re, we’re not gonna fix every winter bin. We’re not out to be on every wind turbine. That’s not the point here. The point is that we can make. Product worked better last, longer, be more efficient. And that’s what we are all striving to do from the technician. Who’s sitting on a rope right now to someone who’s designing a new wind turbine over in Denmark.
That’s what’s happening. And it, it, I, I think we all have to sort of keep that in perspective. I know the ups and downs of every industry is going to make everybody a little crazy. And we’re in that one right now. But. I, I, from a, just a, a business standpoint, I think the outlook is very positive that we do have a positive growth outlook.
We do have, uh, we see new technology and a lot of coming from a lot of different places on the planet right now. And that’s a, that’s an extremely positive story to tell really positive to tell. Yeah. So I think from, from my standpoint, I would urge any company out there to. Start creating content, knowing that it’s a longterm play.
And so for me personally, so if you, if you were to Google me beyond just my work in the wind industry, you’ll find a lot of my baseball stuff, which is sort of, you call it a side hustle or whatever. I used to own a baseball Academy for about 10 years. And so I’ve been in like the YouTube podcasting all this game for, for a long time.
And, uh, Having been in it from lots of different angles and not just as like a marketing person, but actually doing it for myself. You do, you take a lot of lumps and you learn that, okay, this is not a overnight thing. And, but what you do you’re out is that, and this is where the wind industry lacks is.
People are really hungry to say, okay, I’m considering this product or the solution by this company. And if they can suddenly like, listen to your CTO, talk of just about what he knows and share some things that not even just about the product, but just his knowledge on a YouTube video and go through a bunch of things.
You start to build comfort and say, let me, I’m going to reach out to this guy or this, this girl. And, uh, she, you know, she’s just, she’s sharing tons of great information. I really want to work with this company and now, and you know, as well as anyone that. Sometimes people buy from someone just because they really trust that person and like them and like, yeah, this is the company I want to work with.
I know there’s other companies out there that make the same solution, but I just really like, uh, you know, this woman or this guy and I trust them. So I don’t need to look further. And it’s what, which book was that in? That, that you and I both read sat, satisficing, right? Was not the term where I think that’s where you don’t, you don’t have to look.
You might have 10 choices, but if choice, number three, checks most of the boxes and you’re pretty happy with it. You’re not going to go check the other six options. You’re just going to pick number three, ignore the other, uh, six or seven that you haven’t touched. And like that’s what humans do is they satisfies, they look for the best choice, but then.
They settle early because they don’t really want to do all the work going through a million things. So if you’re comfortable with someone like, yeah, this leading edge erosion, um, you know, the company owner spent a lot of time with me, seems like a really knowledgeable person and I trust him. It’s good enough for me.
Check it off. We’ve got to loop leading edge, edge solution. Right. I don’t need to go vet the other six companies if I’m comfortable with this one. Right. And I think that’s what part of our whole. Content outreaches is just, you know, cause you have a big camera rig and your, your office. I have a big camera rig in my office that was an investment upfront.
Right. And learning it and forgetting to turn the camera on to frigging, to turn the mic on, uh, having the frame rate row wrong. And that there’s a lot to learn and we’ve had, I’d be like, Hey yeah. Guess what I forgot to do. But, um, you know, those things, it’s a long turn play and it ends up really paying off.
And there’s a lot of stuff, especially with like you talking about COVID, there’s a lot of things a company can do in house for just a couple thousand bucks in equipment to make a really high quality video. Like the ones that you’re watching right now. That sound great. Look great. And then no one would ever turn their nose up at whether it was on your corporate website or your YouTube channel.
And that’s a. It’s an interesting, easy thing to do that it’s just, uh, helping to get, we need to humanize your company. Like you don’t just sell a product. Like you’re people that care about the environment and you care about helping other companies solve their problems. You’re not just a product. And, and have you think that has changed over the last couple of years and maybe it’s sort of COVID related in this sense that a couple of years ago, it just seemed to be sort of becoming less personal.
A lot of interactions online were just less personal and even, even Twitter today is, is very much like that. You don’t know who’s really behind any of this stuff and going to like Walmart or a store of that size is. Really impersonal you. Don’t nobody that works there. You don’t really care. It is. It’s a lowest product quality product at the cheapest price that you can get in mass quantity.
And you know what it is when you walk in the door and that has evolved back now into it’s becoming much more of a person to person. Which I think is where it needed to go. Anyway. Now there’s a lot more, especially in sort of the, the, the technical realms. It’s becoming much more person to person. And I think that’s really helpful because when we start to share information with one another, then that only makes products better and it makes it much easier to have.
Uh, to get to solutions then like going online, looking for a product and ordering it. And it doesn’t, it doesn’t work like that. Especially in wind, it doesn’t work like that. Isn’t it hasn’t worked like that ever and went, I don’t think. Um, so that sort of personal relationship part, which is sorrow is hard to get today, unless you’re online and in, in your.
Putting yourself out there is really hard to do. And I know you do that on your baseball side, and we’re trying to do that on, on our lightening side too, but it’s, it’s a hard play to make, but I think it’s the right play for, uh, and especially a new business and when to really get out there and explain who you are and why you’re there.
Yeah. Well, and especially when you talk about the way, like, I guess I’m still in the millennial generation, but what is it? I mean, you, your, your son is in college, daughter’s still in high school. What gen are they a gen Z? Is that what they’re referred to? Whatever to that. Yeah, whatever the young people are.
But I mean, for business owners to understand who their future procurement people are, there’ll be dealing with future buyers, our 25 year olds today, who will be, you know, in 10 years, very experienced buyers for energy companies and everything else. They, uh, the, I mean, there’s been so many reports, like they’re buying companies that they believe in the morals and values of these companies.
I mean, like Patagonia is one of the prime examples. So many young people wear Patagonia because they know the company stands for helping the environment and they give back to the environment and they will choose that company over another one. And so you do have to sort of humanize your company and make your values known and the why behind your business known?
I think because I think. More. So as every year goes by, because you’re gonna have more and more new people coming into this space who are passionate about the planet. And if they have two companies and ones has like some outreach stuff and they’re there, maybe they’re giving back in certain ways and they’re doing all this stuff, which is a thing you can showcase on YouTube, social media, et cetera.
They’re going to probably push their boss to. Go for them rather than someone, obviously there’s a lot of factors that go on and, you know, bidding a contract or whatever, but that’s going to be a factor because these are still people that you’re dealing with. And I mean, we’ve all seen how, how in politics, major decisions that affect the whole country can come down to a room full of people or one person.
Right. It’s crazy to think like the way Tik TOK was effected by president Trump, right? Like I don’t really care what happens to Tik TOK, but that was a company that came to a screeching halt because the president was like, Hey. You know, like we need to do something about this and there’s people in that, that in every company where it stops with them, or that could be just a really high up person that says, Hey, I’m not buying from this company because I don’t like the way they treat the environment or I don’t like their, whatever it is.
Or I really want to work with this company because I see the good they do. And I’ve gotten to know them and their people through YouTube or through podcast, whatever it is. Um, and of course in-person conferences we’ll come back and that will be important as well, but especially in COVID and COVID times.
You know, who is, who is your company on the web? Can people find anything about you? Those are important questions to, to address. I think. Right. And I, I think one of the things you mentioned early on when we S we started up this new effort was to be reachable, right? I mean, how much do we hate going online and asking questions and never getting a response, not to say that we’re perfect because we’re not perfect, but we sure as heck try to be, and we make ourselves available.
So you send us an email and we get, we get email online, uh, feedback or questions that we correspond with online. From school kids are asking questions about their homework on wind turbines, right. And all the way to, Hey, I got, I have a hundred turbines in South America that need help. Can you help us? And so you get this wide wide range of, of questions and responses and every one of those is important to us.
I think the, the, the high school, uh, Kid who’s, who’s asked to turn in a paper next Thursday is interested in wind and that’s important. We need to get that message out there. Just as much as it is to fix the a hundred wind turbines in South America, all that’s important and you, and, but that also helps us sort of.
Create a little bit of a network that we are easy to reach relatable. We’re trying to be, you know, we may not always have the right answer. We may not even have an answer that we can provide, but at least we can maybe point you in the right direction. And a lot of times that’s what happens with us is that they’re asking questions about, uh, installing on a per pick, uh, wind turbines in Ohio.
We don’t know much about Ohio, so here’s a place to use the ratios. You can go find that. Yeah. But that’s where else do you get that today? If that’s okay. Coming to us as a, as a relatively small company, to find that information, it tells us that the larger companies are not providing that and that there are no answers on the web.
And some of the articles you’ve written, Dan. Yeah. Are tremendously high searched and researched and read on the web at thousands of times a day, because there’s just not much information out there on a wind that’s useful to most people. And I think that’s been a big boon is as they’re just trying to help the industry little bit.
Yeah. One and one thing I’m really hoping that happens is I would love to go up a wind turbine and have a GoPro and film the experience. So if someone’s out there and listening and they want to have this content for their channel, let me know. But that’s also like why don’t we have more? And I know there’s so much secrecy and all this other stuff, but so many companies that are, are, are doing these repairs that are sending drones and inspecting that are just doing all these things.
There’s so much fascinating. I mean, it’s, it’s Heights. These are beautiful settings. So many of these turbines are in it’s like there’s so many com companies that are right there with, they just brought a drone, you know, A DJI drone with a camera on it. I mean, you get a 400 for 500 bucks. You get a DJI drone with a 4k camera on it.
Just spend the day filming, you know, beg the, uh, the wind farm owner to let you do it, run it, not divulge any trade secrets, but just show what you did for that day. It’s fascinating. I would love to watch what a tech does and there’s some, some footage out there, but, um, There’s like so many good ways to tell your company story what you’re out there doing, because it’s really interesting.
And again, it’s, it, it follows with so many things. I give the beautiful scenery from, uh, you know, 150 feet, 300 feet up, and just the treacherous nature of the job. It’s just a whole fascinating thing. So I’m hoping some companies start to put out out there what they do a little bit more. I’m interested in it.
I think it’s hard to the same thing as just an aircraft all the time that. You don’t see a lot of video from pilots because of trying to fly. Oh, the airplane. But you don’t see a lot of you don’t see a lot of airplane video from people who do that. Like mechanics, there’s just like no information from the mechanics, even though it, because it just becomes second nature.
You like, well, everybody must do this. Everybody must know XYZ about airplanes. I think the same thing exists. And when everybody must know XYZ about winter means they don’t the, the, the general public doesn’t know anything and putting. Information of videos like Dan was pointing out is really, really important.
Important. You will get hundreds of thousands of views, and that tells you something just, just by you going on a wind turbine and taking some pictures about hiring, repairing it, putting online, explaining what you’re doing. Okay. Uh, yeah, people are interested in that stuff and it’s important to the industry that we get that information out there because it makes it seem a little more relatable that it’s not so new technology in the sense.
And when you’re trying to put new wind turbines in a new places, you really need to get past that barrier. And sometimes the wind turbine industry really hurts us up by not doing that. Yeah. One, I think the thing that keeps you from starting or trying very long is that they, they make a bunch of videos and they think they’re pretty good and they just don’t get many views.
And so they stop. Rena was telling a friend who’s a realtor that he needs to start a YouTube channel. And he’s like, man, I’ve seen so many of my peers start. And then six months later they give it up. I’m like, yeah, because they got nine views on a video, this and that. But if you look at any YouTube or any channel in general, even the big ones, if you go sort oldest to newest, they started with crappy videos.
Crappy audio. No, no viewers. And they kept at it and the content got better. They got better. They got better finding ways. Cause there’s tons of ways to optimize it. So people found it. And I think, and I have a lot of theories about YouTube search algorithm and all that stuff, but you just have to keep at it and you start to get rewarded over time and you see this with our channel.
We don’t have a tremendous amount of subscribers. We don’t have a tremendous viewership for, for some, uh, episodes and some videos, but over time they grow. And it builds this volume. And when you do find someone who’s like, Hey, this was valuable. What else do you have? That could be an important person that ends up buying from me or just being plugged in or telling someone else that this is a thing that exists.
And that’s really just how it grows. So you can’t stop when you produced 10 videos, 20, 30 videos. And just give it up. You just have to say, okay, this is gonna be a long-term play. We’re going to give it a year or two years and see you really see how it goes and see how we also improve at it. Cause like, what are you good at in the first six months of anything?
I’m like, nothing everyone’s stinks at anything they’re brand new at. Right. And, uh, so you can’t, you can’t let the, uh, the results dictate your overall process. If you find that it’s valuable investment money and investment people and help them get better and let them keep going. Because, you know, if you, if you don’t worry about the viewership.
If you don’t get discouraged about it and you just focus on making stuff that you know is valuable. It’ll find, it’ll find eyeballs and it’ll find, you know, people will find that it’s valuable. And at worst case, it helps you tell your story. It gives you practice at telling your story. And that’s, that’s an important part of any business is being able to, to tell your story in a way that’s relatable and it takes time and it takes practice.
And so, so what if you have 10 people on YouTube watching your video that first six weeks of YouTube? That doesn’t matter. You’re getting better every single time you do it and you’re providing better content and you, and it’s painful to watch any early episode of any podcast or YouTube channel, uh, and they get better over time and, and you also get getting that feedback.
The feedback makes a big difference too. So look at it as some, like going to school, it’s like going to school those first couple of weeks with a new textbook or impossible. And you’re trying to figure out what the teacher’s saying. You didn’t do well on the first exam. And that’s just part of the deal you’re going to have to stick with it.
Long-term, you know, it’s a longer term play. You got four years to get through college. So, you know, that first exam is meaningless. Let’s keep going and keep pushing it and it will evolve over time. And the, and the companies that stick with it really have seen a lot of benefits at the end. And we’re, we’re already seeing benefits from a tremendous and their sheriff it’s from it.
Yeah. So last thing as we wrap up here, Alan, any podcasts, audio books, books that you would recommend for people in, in any, any vein of this I there. So there’s a, there’s a number of aspects in sort of the sales marketing piece in which there’s some decent books. And I tend to focus on ones that are more about.
Sort of human psychology because that’s universal. It’s not United States specific. It’s not Europe specific. It’s just sort of world specific on how people relate to one another interact with one another and how they think. And also being able to think critically. I think that’s a big thing. I mean, your own accompany, you have a ton of decisions to make and you have to have a way to think critically through them and to have a lens on life.
Uh, it’s a life changes a whole lot when you’re responsible for employing other people. So, uh, some of the books that I like to read are the, the Robert Cialdini books, which are about psychology and how the human brain sort of works and how it processes information and how we receive information, how we process it and then react to it.
Um, The, the, the one that’s out right now. I think it’s called Pre-Suasion. That’s a really interesting book. Um, there’s, uh, the, I like the Scott Adams books, which are, this is the creator of Dilbert. He can take them, people can take them, he can leave him. But I think as a really unique perspective on how to interpret information, how to process it and how to have it, how to create a way of looking at the world and looking at the business market.
That’s unique from other books. Uh, so those are places I like. What books did you have you been up in? To Dan. And I know you listened to some audio books or you used to listen to a bunch of audio books. Yeah. Not used to. I just have taken, you know, with all the different COVID evolutions of people and places and things.
I’ve, uh, actually just spent more time walking. I walk around DC all the time, but I’ve actually just make it a point to just not have music, not have an audio book, just be silent while I’m walking. Just lets my brain get back to thinking, you know, so, but I still, I, in the last couple years I’ve been at like a 50 to 70 book a year pace, mostly audio books.
And this year I’ve definitely, it was at that pace for the first half of the year. And then just last couple of months, I’ve just been. Just doing new things to have some me time. Like you, sometimes you just need me time away from a voice in your head, whether it’s music or whatever. But, um, a couple that I really like, I really liked thinking in bets, by Annie Duke, she’s a former, uh, professional poker player.
You’ve probably seen her on TV. Um, and she talks about decision-making not as ever certainties, but as you know, when I, when I, you know, like how, how certain are we that acquiring this company is going to be good for us? Long-term well, I’d say I’m 80% sure. Or I’m, you know, 80% of the time it’s going to be great for us.
10% of the time I could see this really hurting us. And 10% of the time I could see it just being a, uh, you know, a push, like not a big deal. And that’s sort of how poker is, or you, you make plays knowing that the outcome is literally never, almost never certain. Not very, very rarely certain that’s a good book just to kind of reframe the way you’re thinking, because when you make a business move, you just don’t know if you pick a stock, you just don’t know.
And so that one’s, I think a really interesting way of reframing what you’re thinking. I really liked switch. Bye Dan Heath and chip Heath. I’m scrolling through my audible here. They had another one too. W which one? That, Oh, the power of moments and made the stick. Those are three different books that talk about ideas, um, sort of like storytelling and just how to get ideas off the ground.
And that’s, uh, a big selling point. If you have new technology, which. Somebody has got to convince people that this is a thing that exists and also that it works. And also that you need it and it’s not, yeah. Just having a good product or a good idea, but two people want to adopt it to people, get excited about it and feel like they can run with it.
I think that those are important, interesting books, and I just really liked the storyteller’s secret by Carmine Gallo. Um, Carmine Gallo is, uh, he’s uh, essentially a coach to CEOs helping them. Share their message. So he, he shares in that book, how the Intel CEO was trying to explain this new processor that they had and he, the speech he had created, or I think he did a press release before he, uh, retained mr.
Gallo services. He kind of went out there and talked about all the tech specs and basically it got no traction. Like no one was like, well, we don’t even understand what you’re talking about. And basically mr. Gala was like, look. You have to speak to the people, not as if they’re stupid, but they don’t know.
They don’t know processor language. They don’t know what you’re you’re engineers. Now. He says you need to speak to them on a, and he advised that most people give speeches at a third or fourth grade reading level, because your goal is that everyone understands and tell the story of the product and be relatable.
And. And, uh, he just talks about the huge transformation in support for this new product push. So this Intel CEO got by revising his message and telling the story of the product in a much different, more layman and relatable way. And I think that’s also a really relevant message for a lot of what I see in the wind industry, especially on websites and stuff like that, where companies like, I don’t exactly know what problem you guys solve.
It seems like you would know a ton of stuff, but I’m not really sure how it. Fits in what I’m looking for. Um, so that was a really, really important one that drives into the YouTube education too. Haven’t you I’ve been watching more YouTube as a sort of a educational resource, more than entertainment. I don’t watch YouTube at all for entertainment.
It just doesn’t. There’s nothing there that incites me, but the YouTube. Can provide a ton of information at your fingertips. And there’s a lot of high quality products out there now that there wasn’t five years ago. Are you, are you listening or watching a lot of YouTube now for that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I do.
And, uh, it is fascinating. I would say the vast majority of companies don’t do it very well because they’re either they’re making a video that they would understand themselves or they just don’t. They’re not sure who they’re speaking to. And that was something I learned a long time ago as, and this is going back to my, my other passion of baseball.
Um, as a baseball coach, most of the videos that I film teaching a baseball concept, I’m doing it. I’m, I’m talking to a 13 year old and my camera, I’m literally talking to a kid that I used to train. Um, And I’m explaining it to him. And I know if he understands it, cause I worked with lots of kids that age, uh, than anyone else who watches the video will be at understand it.
I’m not dumbing it down. I’m not insulting. Anyone’s intelligence. I’m just saying, I want a 13 year old to understand this. You know, I was a pro baseball player. I know a lot of complex things, but I don’t need to, I don’t need to sound smart. I need him to understand. And so he’s like, I get it. I can do that.
I’m bought in. Let’s like, let’s go that’s, that’s the goal. And it’s still the goal with all this other technology. I mean, when we have engineers and super smart people who can explain these concepts really clearly, and I think this is why our podcast works because I don’t, I’m not an engineer. Like my dad was an engineer, you’re an engineer, but, um, I don’t have the engineering background, so I need.
You to, to simplify and I’ll often ask for you to redo, Hey, like, Hey, I don’t understand anything you just said, can you like smooth, smooth it out a little bit for me? And, uh, I think people need that. And so when you think, okay, my YouTube audience is a young wind technician who doesn’t have an engineering background, but he’s, he or she is super eager to learn.
And they’re passionate about the environment and doing a good job and being professional. And they want to understand my really technical product that deals with air dynamics of the blades. How can I make that young? Go getter understand. I think that’s a really important thing that a lot of, a lot of companies miss on, on YouTube, I think the YouTube experience does provide a benefit to people and sort of my position in which I was running the company and being that sort of the face of the company on some level is that there’s a lot of, uh, presentations.
Uh, if you want to watch it. A Ted video was going to be useful. I think because the, the way they, they sort of segment it down and how they, what language that they use. I like watching, uh, I think the Steve jobs, uh, presentations are very fascinating and you can learn a lot from them because of the language that has chosen, how simplified it is.
How explanatory it is, but not in a child and not so much in a childish way, but explaining how re how this impacts you, not how it impacts me, Steve jobs, how it impacts you as the, as a user, we’re going to make things possible that you never thought were possible. And here’s how right. And I think I don’t have, I, I don’t watch them for.
To learn about how the iPhone was introduced, who cares? Right. I think what’s important. There is like the sort of the framework that they use, the pacing that they use, the language that they use and how they’re communicating because Steve jobs, wasn’t a great technical person. I don’t think anybody’s going to dispute that.
I think what he was was a really good communicator and a tactician. Tactical and business in a sense sort of ruthless, um, and which hopefully I’m not, but I mean, there, there’s some part of that of just watching, just watching, observing it, go and see who has been successful and who has not been successful in understanding why it’s just a huge education that could be out there now.
And in COVID times where he can’t go, he can’t go out. Uh, it you’re, you know, you can, if you spent 20 minutes learning some things. It’d be time well spent. Yeah. Well, and wrapping up, I think one of Steve jobs, biggest, biggest things that changed the world was his phrase, you know, a thousand songs in your pocket rather than explaining what an MP3 was.
Cause no one knew what an MP3 was back at the moment, right? Spraying the compression and the size of the hard drive and the interface of the iPod. It was just like, This device puts a thousand songs, which would previously be what a stack of a hundred Juul cases of CDs. It takes this massive thing and it puts it in your pocket, a thousand songs in your pocket.
You didn’t have to understand anything beyond that to be excited about the product. If you’re a music lover, now you’ve got a hundred CDs worth of music in your pocket. And then. Whoever wants to learn about the tech later on, we’ll be able to find out, you know, what is an MP3? What is all that stuff? But for everyone else, they got the gist of it.
And that’s, that’s the point for a lot of these like power curve, upgrades, and other things in the wind industry. It’s, you know, a huge boost with minimal effort, you know, one day, you know, a one day retrofit boosts your bottom line by 3%. And that’s pretty, pretty easy, but a lot of people, when they do want to go deeper, And they’re like, well, how does this work?
How does this get installed? Like, what’s the process look like? Do I need, like, what is it going to look like all day? When your texts come out, they want to know a lot of that stuff to feel comfortable like, Oh, okay, they’re going to roll up. It’s going to only take 24 hours. They’re going to bring their drones are going to do an inspection.
Then they’re going to do this. Then their guys are going to go up on the rope and they’re going to, it’s helpful to see the process, just like working on a car. If you can see someone do it in front of you, you’re like, Oh, okay. I can do that. Or. I can’t do that. I want to pay someone to do it. So all that stuff builds trust and confidence and it’s like, Oh yeah, that’s definitely what I want.
I get the message of it. I see how it’s done, you know, all my wind farm and let’s go. So yeah, it’s a big, I think it’s a big boost. Um, just the communication factor and being able to convey that. And I think you’re right. Uh, and th the Apple comparison to Microsoft, which will be made for, uh, you know, for the next a hundred years, probably Microsoft couldn’t explain.
The iPod just couldn’t do it or the iPhone. They could never do it. It all be a technical spec sheet and they’d all kind of geek out on it. And there’s a, there’s a community for that. But for the user sucks. Whereas we’re in that technical space, like who knows a lot about lightning. And why would you quite honestly, I want to know a lot of my lightning, there’s only, you only need a couple of people in the world that know a lot about lightning.
Yeah. And we can hopefully convey that to the rest of the community. So you don’t have to learn all this stuff because it’s not fun. It’s not fun. Right. Uh, and that’s the important part is that if we can convey that information to people who can use it and, and make it to their benefit, then that’s a win for everybody.
And that’s, that’s where we’re all trying to go. Yup. Absolutely. Well, we hope you enjoy this episode today. Obviously a little bit different for us. We want to kind of share some of, uh, Our background strategy, some of the branding business stuff that’s going on here, we find it really interesting. We kind of nerd out on a lot of this stuff.
So hopefully this is helpful to a lot of, you know, I’m sure it will be, but, uh, if you’re new to the show, thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe we’re on iTunes, Spotify, all the major podcast platforms. Obviously we are also on YouTube and, you know, share the show with a friend we’re hoping to grow.
And we’re hoping to help others in the wind industry. So definitely share us on your favorite social media platform. Send us by email and also leave us a review. We’d really appreciate it. As you know, reviews, help everything grow. When you’re jumping on Amazon, looking for a product you’re jumping on iTunes, looking for a podcast, listen to everyone, looks through reviews.
So if you’ve enjoyed the show, we’d greatly appreciate. You leaving a review for us. So from Alan and myself, we will see you here. Next time on the uptime pocket
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