We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Roger Keeler. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Roger below.

Roger, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Often the greatest growth and the biggest wins come right after a defeat. Other times the failure serves as a lesson that’s helpful later in your journey. We’d appreciate if you could open up about a time you’ve failed.

During covid, after working on my career in radio for nearly 30 years, the company I worked for let me go and said, “it’s time to go home”. At the time I was a bit rattled, but left on good terms and thanked them graciously for the best and longest job I ever had, I was so grateful.

After reality set in, everything just stopped. The world in shut down and chaos from Covid and internally, I knew I wanted to continue on the radio path but, nobody would hire me. Another deep disappointment… I made so many friends over three decades, yet every door seemed to be shut. How could this be, I thought? It was the loneliest time in my life… I felt isolated, discarded and lost; my purpose was gone. Since I was hired right out of college, I had never made a resume, I didn’t need to. With a few degrees under my belt, lots and lots of radio experience, I found myself with no real survival skills, so I thought. What would I do next? I had the gift of desperation. And, with the help of my girlfriend at the time, I decided to rent out my house, the house I lived in for 25 years and moved back to my lil’ hometown and married that woman from elementary school. At that time, my wife recently left her full-time job of some 20 years in the fitness and senior care industry and went to resume building classes in an effort to create an awesome resume. She helped me get going. All of what I saw as failure ended up to be a chance to grow and stretch myself further.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I started working in radio at a student station in 1989 in Boulder County. I then worked as a news writer for the local community station KGNU-FM while I went to college. In my junior year, I began working for a large radio company in Denver; IHeart Radio. It was my dream job…everything I wanted to do and they treated me very well. I would write and produce comedy bits with my unique character voices, made concert promos and commercials, and recorded band interviews and live performances with some very famous music artists. From Denver, I produced content for stations all over the country and made specialized background music and sound effects.

Today, 18 months later, I started a business in media and production that has almost a dozen clients that my partner and I create-social media videos in telling clients unique stories. In addition, we record local songwriter demos on Sundays for free. It’s a nice way to give back to the community and makes me feel good about the work I am doing. My wife and I also have a regular radio show on a local public radio station where we play female artists form the 1980’s we call; “80’s ladies” or a 1940’s “swing set”.

I still produce for radio stations around the country. Getting laid off was the best thing that ever happened to me. Going from a very dark, scary and confusing time, to a positive, hopeful, exciting time creating a life for myself that has so much possibility and potential where others are also uplifted and empowered. When I glance in the rear-view, I realize that all of this is and was so necessary.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

It’s so hard these days; complicated and confusing, its moving so fast. Don’t let that deter you from being creative and finding your voice. My entire career, people gave me complaints/criticisms about radio. I had to silence that. My voice is radio production. I’m awesome at it. It gave me success, confidence and experiences that made a beautiful life for myself.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I met my wife and now business partner in 3rd grade (we’re in the picture sitting next to each other). We have known one another for a long time and 37 years later, during a very lonely time during covid lockdown, she noticed me and saved me with 6 words….“wanna go for a bike ride?” boom….. a beautiful connection flowered.

During covid as she was transitioning from her long-time career and I lost mine, she suggested that we are too creative and talented to just age with the only careers we had ever known as 50-year-olds. So, we paved our own career path and followed a nudge to put our unique talents together in creating TheAristocrat Studio, an audio video media production company where we work on projects for small local clients/businesses. Our tagline is; “empowering local entrepreneurs with affordable audio and video solutions”. We also volunteer with senior citizens (including our parents), and work with local bands, yoga studios, musicians, funeral homes, consignment shops, artists and keep up our creative production. We are always creating, it’s where we thrive most!

It’s a process working and living together and learning that there’s still a lot of newness in my life. We both keep part time jobs to get some space and get outside perspective. At first, I started working again at KGNU-FM some 30 years later, reading a community calendar each morning-I love doing this. A few days a week I make pizza at a local pizza shop where I worked in high school which gets me in front of customers and is totally different from being in the studio. It feels good to get out of the house and I also get a free meal! These things have come full circle for me as change has led me to different values and a less stressful lifestyle. Being creative is what I do, I love my life and wouldn’t change a thing!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thearistocratstudio.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thearistocratstudio/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61556116591848
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@THEARISTOCRATSTUDIO
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@thearistocratstudio