Finding and Using Your Voice The Power of Podcasting
hi
i’m dooner and i’m an alcoholic but i’m
also a podcaster
for me these two stories are very
intertwined
this isn’t a session about how to
podcast or what a podcast is instead
we’ll talk about why podcast finding
your voice
and turning destructive negative energy
into positive creative flow
there’s 250 000 active podcasts but
that’s just a drop in the bucket
compared to the number of youtube
channels
facebook pages instagram sites etc
that means also there’s a lot of
opportunity even for individuals or
businesses
you may think it’s too late to start
you’ve heard about podcasting your
nephew has one
you may think about your budget oh does
it cost a lot of money to get started
well if marketing dollars
brought in audiences we’d all be
watching anna kendrick
befriended sex doll on cuibi now i can
litter the stage with facts about
podcasting and its growth
but instead maybe you can find your why
and your journey through mine the
gateway to my new life began on the
morning of november 5th
2016 and the clean hospital in belmont
massachusetts
that’s a dual diagnosis facility for
alcoholism and mental health
it’s also actually the place that girl
interrupted was filmed
and i’ll tell you when they admit you
there and you walk through it you
actually go through
those same catacombs that angelina jolie
was chasing wynonna ryder through
in that film talk about disconcerting
but this was one of the most important
and crucial days of my life walking
through the doors
of that facility because the story of
getting there started
probably when i was 18 when i first
realized or maybe didn’t realize but
first became
an alcoholic when i got to college and
started drinking every single day and
this is a problem
that persisted throughout my life the uh
the pints of beer became pints of vodka
those became handles
there was a eight-year stretch where i
drank nearly every single day except
when i had the flu
in 2016 i was working for a freight and
logistics company in boston
massachusetts
i got the dreaded email one day i was in
sales and i got the email that says
bring in your cell phone and your laptop
this was in october of 2016.
so i did i brought it in there and at
the time i was trying to pitch this
company on the idea of podcasting wow
this great trojan horse so i could go
and talk to other clients about their
business in a maybe natural way instead
of trying to pitch them on
on freight which is what my industry did
the company didn’t like that idea nor do
they like me and i didn’t like them that
much either
my wife was eight months pregnant at
this time i was deep
deep deep in the throes of alcoholism so
deep in fact that when i left that
meeting where i turned in my laptop
and my cell phone they handed me my last
check and my first thought when i got
behind the wheel wasn’t
wow what am i gonna do now no it was i’m
gonna go to the liquor store and think
of all the time i have to get freaking
hammered
and i did and i did that for over a week
and mind you as i just said my wife is
eight months pregnant where were my
priorities
then on the night or maybe i should say
the morning of november 5th
i had a realization i had to take
control of my journey
and i had to speak up for myself i had
to find my own voice and i did that by
telling on myself to my parents a mentor
of mine that i know who went through
same similar journey of sobriety and uh
and my wife and i said you know what if
i don’t go into rehab tomorrow
you have to you have to force me and for
me this was a life or death decision
right this is life or death i am
thinking
of just obliterating myself
so we did we walked through that
facility we walked through those
catacombs at mclean hospital
and i remember there i started
journaling and i wrote this journal the
happiest i’d never been
and i had a therapist there who was
really really getting in my head about
being where you are but also about the
power of these negative habits that we
develop
right and how we can rebuild and rewire
ourselves with a
sense of purpose now to me that seemed a
little farcical but
i knew one thing i knew one thing when i
walked through those doors that i could
do
two things when your life is spiraling
out of control you need to take control
and for me taking control was that
decision to take that ride there
but also to start podcasting that seems
a little bit silly right because i don’t
do a podcast about sobriety i don’t do
that at all
in fact i do i do a podcast similar to
what i wanted to do and i got fired
which is in freight which a lot of you
listening might be like that sounds like
the most boring thing i’ve ever heard in
my life why would i
listen to a podcast about freight but
for me it’s what i knew
and for me that was the challenge to
make that interesting
and for me that was a conduit that was
something that i could do
so when i got out of the facility i was
in there for six days
and here’s a little tip for you if you
don’t want to stay in a rehab facility
for six or seven days you want to just
stay for those five
check it on a monday don’t do it on a
saturday like i did it’s hard to get out
of there
but it was a powerful and a crucial
decision a lot of things didn’t work for
me i went to like aaa
and i went to all those meetings but for
me all i heard was people who
they didn’t sound happier right this
didn’t seem like an
easy road and for me i wanted to make
podcasting a part of my
recovery a part of my journey and a part
of that
rewiring so i started doing it in the
field that i knew best which was freight
and for me it was like
you know i have the kid i have the wife
but i’m so low on myself
you know that was rock bottom i was so
low on myself that having something
having something not just a child not
just a wife
not just a family but this other element
this other item i could build on and it
could be part of my recovery
that is the conduit that podcasting
is and was for me still is to this day
i remember getting home from rehab and
the first thing that i had to do was
my laptop got taken away by the company
that it just fired me so i fire up
amazon and granted i
don’t have much money i spent about half
that week’s paycheck on uh on vodka
so i had to get a used laptop off off
amazon i remember it was like 250
and the big the big thing for me was
that it had an ssd and if you guys are
into editing you know how important that
can be
the other thing i got was a 15 chinese
condenser mic
off amazon and an 89 mixer with a usb
i had no money but money’s not really a
barrier to entry
and what i did when i first started
doing those initial shows when i would
start reaching out and i was trying to
use it as a bit of a trojan horse like
hey i started this podcast now i have
this experience before maybe you also
you know would like to give me a job
didn’t happen that quickly
didn’t happen that quickly at all in
fact for the first three months i didn’t
make
any money you know well that’s kind of a
lie my dad was my one and only patreon
i made ten dollars a month for my dad
thank you dad god bless you
um the other challenge was
that when you’re not making money you
can’t pay people so my first co-host
that was with me
he ditched me and at the same time i’m
trying to get
interviews for jobs you know maybe i can
supplement this whole podcasting thing
by getting another job maybe in
marketing in freight
that didn’t work out in fact i went to a
number of large freight companies and
said the first thing you have to do
is stop that damn podcast it was
happening so often that i started a
secret podcast
reviewing snack food with a buddy of
mine that i knew from twitter but had
never met in my life who lives in idaho
and at the end of every episode i’d have
my three-year-old review uh some sort of
snack food on there
that was a good time and i’m really glad
that i didn’t listen to
a lot of those companies and you got to
remember there’s a lot of pressure on me
you know we had an infant at home
you have different companies in boston
area saying yeah you can come in but you
have to do that
i’m very happy and very fortunate that i
ignored all of those and i persisted for
even longer because
a local company out there just this
upstart company that really wanted to
get their message out
they started hearing my podcast and the
owner of that company reached out to me
reached out to me and he was like i’ll
give you a thousand dollars a month to
ghostwrite some blogs
and to make a podcast for us whoa
fantastic now
you know you do the math on that that’s
twelve thousand dollars a year it’s not
going to get you very far down the
street
especially with a couple kids car seats
to buy and baby food but
the fact of the matter is that it was my
chance it was my opportunity
and it put life back in this system and
i think if you talk to most founders
they have these crucial moments where
you’re about to
either give up hope or you’re about to
run out of money or you’re about to give
up on yourself
and i gotta say the easiest thing about
finding your voice is having other
people tell you to use it
that includes my wife and my parents and
i’m sure you can find those sort of
touchstones
within your life now what this afforded
me was
the opportunity to really really expand
the
the content marketing right content
marketing
within a freight ecosystem and this is
like a very old world just as boring as
a podcast on freight sounds so is the
marketing world of freight by and large
especially at this point
in time the company i work with now
freight waves wasn’t around yet we
hadn’t really flipped the script we
hadn’t changed the game
um and their income straight ways i mean
this is one of the most amazing things
about opportunity about talking to
people and about learning to use your
voice and being able to ask for stuff
is i’m working at this company for about
a year now
and i interviewed the ceo of this
upstart this upstart company just raised
24 30 million dollars this company
called freight waves in
chattanooga tennessee which for someone
like me who’s up in boston
i don’t know you know where the hell
that is i don’t know it from timbuk too
turns out it’s quite a great city great
city and a great place for
a tedx talk but that said
he reached out to me and he said
something very crucial and this is
something i wouldn’t have dreamed of
happened i was just trying to keep
myself alive
when i got out of rehab and try to be
there for my kids but he said to me
i want you to come out here to
chattanooga and i want you to build the
biggest freight podcasting network you
can think of
and i was afforded that opportunity
which is amazing to think of because
this
did not exist this did not exist on
november 4th this didn’t exist on
november 5th the day i walked into rehab
in 2016. so it’s amazing to be sitting
here
and it’s even more powerful and
impactful to be sitting here at a tedx
chattanooga to be recounting
this story of my time doing it one of
the biggest things i’ve learned so far
and i think it’s something we can all do
and i don’t think you have to do it
through podcasting right
i think you can do it in any avenue of
life but especially something creative
is using your energy and using your
belief and turning that negativity
into positivity and i know that sounds
superficial and that sounds like
that sounds like something
everybody would say
but i can tell you firsthand that that
really does work because believing in
yourself and having other people believe
in you
can be that guiding light can be that
touchstone
then from there what you’re really
looking to do is to find your audience
that’s what your voice comes in that’s
what your voice comes down to
bringing that confidence it was maya
angelou who said
we’ve learned that people will forget
what you said people will forget what
you did
but people will never forget how you
made them feel
redirecting that addictive energy to
positive platforms
reusing those bad habits converting them
into good ones now it’s your turn
find that voice and use it for me
it has saved my life