Today we’d like to introduce you to Shane Hayes.
Hi Shane, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I never set out to start a marketing business. I simply kept noticing the same problem: local businesses and organizations had incredible stories, but many didn’t have the time, resources, or expertise to share them effectively.
What started as a passion for video production and helping people has grown into The Roseburg Plug, a Douglas County marketing and media company built around helping local businesses become visible. We do that through storytelling, marketing, websites, and creative media. As we’ve grown, we’ve also embraced technology and AI-assisted workflows to work more efficiently, allowing us to spend more time building relationships and serving our community.
Today, The Roseburg Plug is about much more than marketing. It’s about strengthening the local business community, supporting entrepreneurs, and creating connections that help Roseburg continue to grow. Every project is an opportunity to help someone tell their story, reach more people, and make a lasting impact.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
No, it has not been a smooth road, and I would not want to pretend otherwise.
The Roseburg Plug came to life in spring 2025 with almost nothing behind it. Before that I spent close to two and a half years working alongside a local business owner, a lot of it for free, and I kept watching people work incredibly hard and still get overlooked. That is what convinced me the problem usually was not the product or the work ethic. It was visibility. Believing that and being able to pay your bills off it are two very different things.
The first stretch was rough financially. Bills stacked up faster than the work came in, and there were stretches where I honestly questioned whether continuing made sense. In July of 2025 I was out doing community outreach and did not have the extra cash to print brochures. That is where the business actually was.
Underneath the money there was a contradiction I still think about. The businesses that need visibility the most are usually the ones least able to spend thousands of dollars on marketing. If I charged what the work was worth, I would price out the exact people I started this for. That is what pushed me toward a sponsorship model, where a larger business helps fund visibility for a smaller one. Instead of trying to make marketing cheaper, we changed who pays for it. That one decision is a big part of why the business is still here.
There were harder lessons too. Clients who paid late, projects that dragged on longer than what was agreed to, and moments where I did not set boundaries early enough. Those experiences taught me something I was slow to learn. Caring deeply about a client does not mean handing over all of your professional judgment.
The challenge I have now is a better problem, but it is still a real one. We are past ten recurring businesses, and for a long time The Roseburg Plug and I were the same operational resource. Sales, shooting, editing, design, websites, radio, invoicing, all of it ran through me. I became the bottleneck, and there are only so many hours in a week. Most of what I am building right now is aimed at making this business bigger than one person.
So no, not smooth. But I would much rather be solving capacity problems than still be trying to prove that anybody wants this.
We’ve been impressed with The Roseburg Plug, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
The Roseburg Plug is a Douglas County marketing and media company. We do video, storytelling, branding, websites, local SEO, social content, photography, event coverage, and marketing strategy for local businesses, schools, nonprofits, and community organizations.
The short version is this: we find the businesses doing great work that nobody knows about yet, and we make them impossible to miss.
What sets us apart is that we did not stop at production. We’ve built The Roseburg Plug into one of the region’s leading local marketing platforms by helping businesses and nonprofits craft stories that actually connect with their audience. Most shops make you something, hand you the file, and then finding an audience becomes your problem. We built the audience side too. Our partnership with The Roseburg Receiver gives us the ability to bring professional, on-the-ground video storytelling into an already established local news audience. This summer, KQUA Community Radio named me and Joseph Ziegler of The Roseburg Receiver as its new co-program directors, succeeding longtime manager Patrick Schneider, which is expanding our presence in Douglas County media even further. Combined with our own show, The Outlet, we can create something and then actually put it in front of Douglas County. Visibility should not depend on one algorithm or one platform. Social media, web, video, community news, and radio all give us different ways to help local stories reach people.
By our own numbers, we have north of 23,000 combined followers and audience across those channels, and our content reaches far more people than that each month, with individual videos regularly landing somewhere between 5,000 and 20,000 views organically. For a small business here, that can mean being put in front of thousands of local people who otherwise might never have known it existed.
The other thing that makes us different is how the work gets paid for. The businesses that most need visibility are usually the least able to write a big marketing check. So rather than just cutting our prices, we changed who pays. Larger businesses sponsor visibility for smaller ones. The sponsor earns real community association and exposure, the smaller business gets professional marketing at little or no cost, and we get paid to make the work. Addcox Heating Center and Mistletoe Construction were early believers in that model. It is the part of this business I am proudest of, because it means helping one local business can directly fund helping another one.
We are also more technical than people might expect from a local marketing company. We build local business directories, discovery tools, and AI assisted systems so that businesses here are easier to find in the first place, not just easier to advertise.
Day to day, that looks like a monthly content partnership with Roseburg School District, recruitment and culture video for L & M Custom Builders, websites for Stuff N Things in Myrtle Creek, advertising strategy for Shaw Exterior Solutions, ongoing media work for Ridgecrest Racing, banquet video for Lone Rock Resources, and a roster that has grown past ten recurring local businesses. In February 2026 we opened our first downtown office and production studio at 537 SE Main Street, which for a business that started with nothing still does not quite feel real. In August 2026, The Roseburg Plug placed third at the Umpqua Growth Talks Pitch Night and received $500 to reinvest into growing our capacity, which felt like real validation of where this is headed.
We’re building the ability to create more stories, distribute them through more channels, and help more businesses without losing the relationships that made this work in the first place.
Brand wise, the belief underneath all of it is simple. If they cannot see you, they cannot support you. I do not just support local. I build it.
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
What I like best is that Roseburg is small enough that the work actually lands on people you know. This is a relationship town. You are never more than one or two connections away from anybody, and when this community decides to show up for something, it shows up. I have watched a single video about a struggling local shop change what that shop’s week looked like. You do not get that in a big market. In a city of millions a good story disappears. Here it travels.
I also like that Douglas County is bigger than Roseburg. Winston, Sutherlin, Myrtle Creek, Riddle, Oakland, Glide, Canyonville. All of them have people running real businesses on real main streets, and most of them have never had anyone tell their story properly. That is a lot of untold stories sitting within thirty minutes of my office.
What I like least is how easily good work goes unseen here. There are businesses in this county that are genuinely excellent and quietly struggling, not because the product is bad or the owner is lazy, but because not enough people know they exist. Meanwhile a lot of local money still drives to Eugene or goes straight online. That gap is the entire reason The Roseburg Plug exists.
The other thing I would change is the habit we sometimes have of talking down about our own town. There is more happening in Douglas County than we give ourselves credit for. A good part of my job is just proving that over and over.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.theroseburgplug.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theroseburgplug/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Roseburg-Plug/61575211770386/
- Other: theroseburgplug@gmail.com
