Episode 29

Timothy Dooner

How to Build a Niche Content Platform from Scratch

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In this episode, Adam and Carlton are joined by Timothy Dooner, host of the What the Truck podcast, Director of Audio at Freightwaves, and Creative Director of Back the Truck Up. Dooner talks about what he’s building with Back the Truck Up, the opportunities he sees for driver-focused content, the challenges in launching a brand new platform, and how podcasting factored into his journey to sobriety.

Highlights from the conversation:

  • Becoming the barstool of freight and logistics (8:32)
  • Why truck drivers are overlooked in the content world (11:56)
  • The operational steps of validating a new content platform (14:27)
  • How hiring has been going (17:03)
  • How Dooner got into such a unique career (21:05)
  • What drew Dooner to podcasting (25:10)
  • From 10 episodes to the Director of Marketing (26:32)
  • What’s got us excited about podcasting (32:26)

 

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Transcription

Transcription generated by Otter.ai

Adam Vazquez 0:06
On today’s episode, we have Timothy Dooner! Dooner is the Host of the ever-popular What the Truck podcast. He’s also the Director of Audio for Freightwaves and, as he shares in our interview, he is now the Creative Director for the brand new content platform Back the Truck Up, which he describes as Barstool Sports for the Trucking Industry.

During the conversation we got to talk to Dooner about what he’s building with Back the Truck Up, the opportunities he sees for driver-focused content, the challenges in launching a brand new platform, and how podcasting factored into his journey to sobriety.

This was a really fun episode to record. Dooner is obviously a professional and did an incredible job sharing his experience & offering stories that can guide all of us as well. Let’s get into with Timothy Dooner from Back the Truck Up.

Adam Vazquez 1:13
Alright, we’re back. We are here. I’m very excited for this intro because Carlton said he’s prepared but would not let me in on what he’s gonna say.

Carlton Riffel 1:25
Gotta keep the element of surprise.

Adam Vazquez 1:27
Yeah, I’m mainly excited to hear about you, but we had Timothy Dooner on the show. Carlton, you heard the episode. I have thoughts based on the things that you and I had talked about two episodes ago, but I’ve been building up anticipation. What do you have to say?

Carlton Riffel 1:43
Yeah, it really was perfect timing. And just the fact that we talked about this conversation a couple of weeks ago. And it was very interesting, especially around his thoughts and what he’s doing in the industry right now. So I won’t spoil his thunder. Is that is that even right? Spoil their thunder?

Adam Vazquez 2:01
No. For sure not. Spoil his thunder

Carlton Riffel 2:08
Something.

Adam Vazquez 2:10
We need that on a t-shirt. Spoil his thunder, Content Is for Closers.

Carlton Riffel 2:13
Yeah, so early on he was talking about audience building an audience. And it really is one of the hardest things about a podcast, there are lots of people that want to start a podcast. And he said something that like that is super, super accurate, it’s the barrier to entry to start a podcast that is non-existent. But it’s huge for staying in it and stay and keep playing the game, to keep playing the game, just the consistency of the time and really trying to make that habit that you do every single week. So that was really good. And then also, he was talking about how with his new company, they’re kind of approaching a different audience. And it’s not necessarily that they’re doing entirely new content. It’s they’re just, they’re framing it in a different way. They’re taking a different approach. And so there’s the idea of repackaging content, but then there’s also the idea of bringing people who repackage content together to have another approach.

Adam Vazquez 3:16
Yeah, and putting a different lens over, whether it be existing or new content, a lot of their stuff is news-based. So there’ll be times where it’s a lot of not new content, fresh content, but the themes or the execution might stay similar to what he’d been doing with what the truck but if you’re not familiar with it, essentially what Dooner had been doing, I think he explains this a little bit, is he’d been running content for freight waves, which is targeted more towards logistics and supply chain professionals, I would say shippers and carriers, anyone who’s a part of that world. And now he’s transitioning with the new show, or the new platform to be more focused on the driver themselves, as well as the broker, the person who is booking the loads. And we had just spent time Two episodes ago, you can go listen to it, talking about the need for content to be specifically tailored to those people. And to what you’re saying. I think it’s a lot of the same themes. It’s a lot of the same information, but it’s drawn through a different lens that is tailored to that audience. So it’s really cool. I’m really excited to hear about it.

Carlton Riffel 4:25
When you’re building an audience, I don’t think you can discount the value of entertainment. And when you have entertainment and something’s like interesting, not just informational, but it’s interesting to listen to and it’s enjoyable to listen to. That brings a whole new audience as well. He mentioned a little bit that they’re going to be doing a little bit more hot takes. You can see this trend, even in cable news and stuff like that, where it’s not just enough to bring the news. People want to hear the hot takes.

Adam Vazquez 4:57
Particularly when it’s— And I think again, that goes to who the audience is. That’s probably one of the big takeaways and I think people will enjoy hearing how he crafts that message for his audience. But his audience is sitting in a truck for 10 to 12 hours, it’s boring. And the broker is sitting at a desk for eight to 10 hours and is also probably somewhat mundane and repetitive. So for them specifically, entertainment is of is a particular value. I totally agree.

One of the things I would mention is we are going to link as much as we can in the show notes. Some of those links won’t go live for probably another week or so when the platform actually launches. And so what you can do in the meantime— You know what I’m going to say.

Carlton Riffel 5:44
Uh-oh.

Adam Vazquez 5:44
You can go give Content Is for Closers a review. That’s right. You can go right now, go in your podcast app, go on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, whatever it might be, give us a five-star review. Let us know your feedback. And I will read those on-air and I promised that I was going to do this before so we just need to read we’ve got three that have come in that’s right. We need to give a quick shout out to a few of these that have come in and by the way I’ve these are the three that I could for sure tell came in I had a few other people who mentioned that they had also given reviews but I don’t know if you didn’t write anything or what happened but I didn’t see those so screenshot it, email it to me at adam@strafire.com if I didn’t get it and I will read those next week.

Alright, the first one comes from Vivott and it says, “Stellar podcast. Five-star review. Incredible guests on this podcast. Lots of great insights on marketing and scaling your business. Thanks y’all.” Very nice, very kind. Thank you, Vivott. The second is from Jonny “Game Time” Gamet. Can’t guess who that is.

Carlton Riffel 6:52
I feel like I’ve heard that name before.

Adam Vazquez 6:54
“Great content always. Five-star review. I always learn something listening to this show. Great insights for anyone who wants to learn.” Appreciate that, Jonny. And the last is from Seth Cornholio who also gave a five-star review and said, “Great pod. Fantastic content about marketing your business and gaining new customers. Great guests. Highly recommend.”

Listen, if I missed your review or if you haven’t given one yet, go give one right now. You’re going to want to because this episode with Dooner was particularly fun and particularly well done, if I do say so myself. So listen to it. Give us a review. Let’s get into it with Timothy Dooner.

All right, we have the world-famous—or at least the freight famous—Dooner here on the show. Thanks for joining the show, Dooner.

Timothy Dooner 7:48
Adam, thanks for having me on the show. I’m excited to be on here for the first time.

Adam Vazquez 7:50
Yeah, I know we’ve crossed paths a number of times. I think some of our clients— Gulf Relay, some of these clients that we work with have interacted with your shows. And all of that was in relation to what the truck and the freight cast network which I know you’re still doing. But the reason I wanted to get you on today and the things that I wanted to hear about, were kind of around what you’re doing next. And I know you’ve sort of alluded to and talked about building this new media company back the truck up, I’ve seen you refer to it as the barstool of freight and logistics. So first of all, would just love to hear what that even means and kind of like the roadmap to get there.

Timothy Dooner 8:30
Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned what the truck and with what the truck, we’ve been very successful with that content. And with my unique viewpoint and the dude’s unique viewpoint and being a little bit more energetic, and aggressive and visual and casual with a lot of this information, it’s resonated really well. And we’ve been thinking for a while of ways to expand this content, expand the brand and how to do that. And recently, our CEO and founder Craig fuller reached out to me and he was like, hey, what would you think about being the creative director and helping us launch this site, taking the lead on this site, that we want to address the driver in the seat, the broker behind the desk and more down to earth, look at freight waves, we do a really awesome job at addressing like the C suite and addressing the market. But I think that sometimes outside of like, maybe shows like what the truck and we could go even further there, we’re missing. We’re missing a lot of targets there. And I think the biggest one is something I key on quite frequently, which is people and now it’s putting that lens in that focus, especially to start is really on the driver and having a platform for them. And if you look at trucking media right now, there are a lot of different like influencers who are very successful on TikTok and YouTube, but it’s all very sort of disjointed, it hasn’t really been brought together in one community. And that’s what we want this platform to be. We want it to be a little bit edgier, a little bit louder, a little bit more aggressive, a little bit more opinionated than Freightwaves with the voice be Adding to that driver to that broker, and really delivering upon that in new and unique ways. What’s really inspiring to me too is like those influencers I mentioned, people are doing amazing jobs of translating from the cab, this industry, to their peer group who really understand and resonate with them. And we’re taking that same philosophy from day one, my first three hires on the site are all veteran truck drivers who are going to be bringing this content to you. It’s not a bunch of posers, it’s not a bunch of pretenders. I’m the only pretender who hasn’t been in a truck at Back the Truck Up.

Adam Vazquez 10:34
Right, right. We will get to your background. I think you’ve spent enough time in this space to qualify, but I am curious, when you talk about the driver experience and wanting to sort of support and surround this audience member, we just and I interacted with you on Twitter about it. But we just came back from the Mid-America Trucking Show a couple weeks ago, great experience, 50,000 truckers just very unique event, I would say for the entire industry. But the one thing that we walked away from was like, even with all of the— obviously, there’s a ton of emphasis on recruiting and selling whatever to drivers, but even with all of that, there was just very little content in general that was actually targeted to drivers. There was a lot of content talking to the folks who might employ drivers, or to trucking companies or whatever. But the drivers themselves, I think got overlooked in a lot of areas. And then they talked about that, like that was one of the frequent themes of the show was just like we’re being overloaded. So there’s this weird imbalance because at the same time, they’re getting paid more than they’ve ever gotten paid before. So why do you think that is? Why is it that this specific segment—and I’m sure that somewhat relates as well, to the brokerage side—that’s been historically overlooked to this point?

Timothy Dooner 11:55
I think that there’s sometimes a perception about drivers that it’s more of this menial labor, it is not this highly skilled profession, and they don’t have the influence or maybe the buying power that the mega carriers do. So that’s why I think a lot of content has been sent to him. And if you think about it, it’s because a lot of the content wants advertisements from these carriers. But I think what a lot of people have been missing out on is like, they’ll go out and we’ll make a recruiting show to recruit driver. Why would like why, why would I listen to a recruiting show, if I was looking for a job, like I just wouldn’t do that other recruiters would like you would make that content for other recruiters. What I think you want to do, if you want to have a place that recruiters could consider valuable is make a site for drivers that is making them that content, I mean, that’s the pathway to that kind of thing. Not that we’re just like targeting recruiters or something, I think that there’s high value in here in just doing something that is not being done. And that’s something that I’ve always liked to because I always see a lot of runway here in freight, I saw it when I decided to get in podcasting in 2016. And, and execute on that and join up with freeways and build that freight cast network. And now I think that we see that opportunity, Craig and I do that we can create this brand new platform that’s different from freeways when we saw some of the infrastructure and some of the support that we do from that we still have things like freight waves TV to get messaging out there. But we have this brand new platform is a bit firewalled off from that market and more corporate-speak of the Freightways. And just having this more down-to-earth, in-your-face platform that really actually speaks to the concerns and issues of drivers. And as we grow, I think the broker and that more behind the desk, too, is going to expand in that. But just to target right off the bat. It’s like, Hey, this is for drivers by drivers. And it’s got that barstool vibe for instead of breaking news, it’s commentary on that breaking news. It’s hot takes. It’s the hottest takes and freight.

Adam Vazquez 13:49
That’s so funny you said that. I had as a note to myself “FUBU” as one of the sub-points of what you’re doing, because it just reminds me so much of that “for drivers,” “by drivers,” “previously for us,” “by us.” Our audience is content creators, marketers who are looking to try to grow their brand, try to grow a business, whatever. Take us into the operational steps of you have this idea, Craig has this idea, okay great. But I mean, it’s a whole new content platform in a lot of ways. How do you go about validating it? What was the process of going from there, and that I think you’re still going through, up to launch?

Timothy Dooner 14:25
I think that the great thing about sort of Freightways there was when we have these great catalystic ideas, and especially when Craig sort of brings them to you and he finds that you’re receptive to wanting to launch it, he will give you a ton of freedom to go and do that. He just wants to make sure you understand the concept that he’s putting out unfortunately on something like this. It’s something that we had been thinking about anyway, and for me, I was just overjoyed to finally get to go ahead and go and expand what we’re doing with what the trucking bring it’s even more of a trucking audience through back the truck up and doing that through a site and also exploiting things that even if freeways I don’t think we go deep enough in which is like Tiktok, and Instagram and, and getting a YouTube channel that’s really that really works well with truckers and you can see a lot of those different channels and avenues really resonate through the content creators that are really doing with them. And those are the people that we want to partner with. We really want those trusted voices there, those people who are hitting well, so initially, when he brings it to me, that’s the first thing I really look towards was like, who’s doing really well in the space who’s communicating well to drivers and, like anything, when you’re building a company, you’ve got to figure out what your resources is, our internally what my budget is to hire people for this, who that’s already on, staff can help out and fit in what my role and everyone else’s role is. But once we got all sort of that budget in line, the jobs were posted, and we got all the wheels greased, it’s been moving really fast. I mean, you got to worry about the other stuff, like the logos and those particulars. Fortunately, my wife who’s a graphic designer, so whenever I need some like that done, I can just sit right next to her which is, which is such a luxury because when I’ve worked with other graphic designers, it’s cool. But like, it seems like they get frustrated with you when you want to make a lot of changes, right? Like I really want their hands, but I need you to see my vision kind of thing. And some of the things get a little frustrated. So having my wife, she already knows how annoying I can be and she tolerates it. So it’s super beneficial because I get really into that part of it too. I get a little anal about in particular about stuff. And it’s cool to be able to work with people who sort of understand that and understand the direction you’re coming from it. It’s made this whole thing a lot more, a lot more seamless.

Adam Vazquez 16:31
There’s a big part in the industry right now, where there are so many tools, there’s so many “do it yourself” tools, or no-code tools, or whatever so people are doing their best they’re trying to but, at the end of the day, when you’re able to connect one to one with a person and just be like, this is what’s in my brain, can you help me make that happened? That’s there’s just something still about that that I think is invaluable. Aside from maybe that (which sounds like you resolved that), any challenges or unexpected bumps that you’ve experienced? How’s hiring been? Has that been?

Timothy Dooner 17:03
It’s interesting, and I think it was because these rules were pretty unique. No one else is really offering roles to build this new site. So we got a ton of resumes. And a lot of them were people who are just out of college and they had journalistic degrees, and they had marketing degrees, which is fine. But I don’t really care that much about degrees, I care about experience, and especially in freight and especially a site like this, where I need front-facing people to communicate with drivers, and translate freight and understand the issues and empathize with the issues. To me, it was incredibly important to get that from drivers. So that’s really what I started getting into when I saw a few resumes from drivers start to come in. And I started to interview them and see the reason behind wanting the role. And they all had great ones. They all had great ones for needing to get out of the cab. It wasn’t like some kind of attitude thing. They were sick of their dispatcher. Or they’re sick of the industry. No, it was more family-related, just had a child they didn’t want to be over the road for the kids life. And another the other gentleman that I hired— His mom is sick. His parents are getting older and he doesn’t want to be so far away. It’s a lot of anxiety being out there on the road.

The biggest surprise was it hasn’t been a challenge so far. It’s been rewarding in the sense that we are building this thing with the strong messaging for truckers and we’re living it as well by creating opportunities for people through employment, but also to get their message out through that site. And to hear the reception from that from drivers and from other people, the industry like yourself or like white Yeah, why doesn’t this exist in a more cohesive and mainstream and larger, larger fashions that have been so fragmented? I think that’s the real cool part. Because there’s already a lot of gravity here, I think the biggest challenge is probably just going to be myself.

I’ve worked alone a lot producing things like What the Truck and all that kind of stuff. And now I have to work with a team and I have to be a little bit more open to a team’s ideas and their creativity. And I have to help coach and create other content creators out of the people who are on my team now. I’m looking forward to it but I know it’s going to be a challenge. And I’m only going to learn by failing a little bit during this process. I apologize for everyone who’s just joined the team. Bear with me. But I think that we’re going to do a great job. And I think over the past few years, we’ve written a lot of this playbook at Freightways. So we’ve written a lot of it. And now it’s just putting it into a new container, a new jar and presenting it in a new lens to people who need it, who need this translated hat way even things like sonar or when I look at sonar or data platform, the way we translate information about that is super market-based. But I think sometimes in all our acronyms we can sometimes maybe lose the driver who is just like, I love the data. I want to know what’s happened in the market, but I really just want to know where to run my trucks to. So I think that’s a great opportunity to take things like sonar and then take something like TikTok and make these like really easy to understand super relatable two-minute-long, minute-long sort of sonar chunks that hit you in the head and give you that data you need and we’re going to be doing that with the news stories and everything as well. So it won’t just be written commentary. It’s also going to have a Very modern slant to it and looking at what other creators are doing successfully in our own ideas as well and executing them across multiple platforms.

Adam Vazquez 20:08
Awesome. I can’t wait to see it. I’m excited to check it out. Do we know when it’s launching?

Timothy Dooner 20:13
Middle of the month. Some of my team starts next week. So the staging is happening behind the scenes. Right now we’re bringing some of the content that is already on Freightwaves Look, some of the What the Truck stuff. There’s another show on there by veteran driver, Ingrid Brown, American 18 Wheels, that’s going to fit a little bit better over and back the truck up. So we’re bringing that over there and her articles then the two new guys that I hired, they will be on next year, we’re gonna get them up and running, put him through content boot camp. And then hopefully that following week, when you type in “Back the Truck Up,” the site pops up.

Adam Vazquez 20:16
Let’s go. All right, we will be on the lookout for it. Obviously, you’ve had a ton of success and been able to launch What the Truck and really spearhead what’s going on with Freightwaves, but take us back. This is such a fringe unique career that you’re in, you know what I mean? How did that happen?

Timothy Dooner 21:04
I kind of had to make it up, right. I had sort of like make it up out of nothing. It didn’t exist, nobody was professionally getting paid and getting paid decently to, to podcast last time, people were getting maybe paid as part of content marketing in terms of a much larger marketing department and myself was to before I went to Freightwaves. But what initially happened was long ago, I started the music industry. Napster and file-sharing happen, that kind of road got cut off. So in 2005, I started operationally being an entry writer doing global ocean and air entries for FedEx trade networks, I learned duty drawback. I eventually got into sales, actually got fired in 2016. I was having some issues with alcoholism and with depression and it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me because it put me into rehab. And then when I was in rehab, I really want to start a podcast for a while and one of my counselors there was like, You should go do that, that will give you something to do while you’re looking for a job and you’re going to therapy and you’re getting yourself back together, you’re rebuilding and I took that to heart. And I was like, you know what? Worst thing that happens is this is a living resume. So in January of 2017, I started a show called The Shipping Pod and after about 10 episodes, a gentleman by the name of Steve a born from Freight+, he heard a couple of the shows, and then he decided to hire me to be their director of marketing. So I went over there launched a show called consulting logistics for them and which was fine, I had to do it. But it was only one day a week. The rest of the time I’m doing PowerPoints and stuff. The one cool thing educationally was great, plus a four PL. So I got to look a lot at trucking optimization right before I got to Freeway. So you are really staring deep into what was going on in different modes and trucking and optimization and getting that education. So when I interviewed Craig Fuller, he reached out to me almost immediately afterward on LinkedIn, he’s like, I love the interview, I love the energy, you need to come down to Chattanooga, if you ever want a job, there’s one for you. You know that feeling when something happens and you just have to do it? Like it didn’t really It didn’t matter what the salary was gonna be. All I knew is I had to plug into that amplifier at that point in time and 27. In 2019, we’re Freightways is going and where I needed to go that next breakthrough is clearly down in Chattanooga. So I took them up on the offer came down for an interview. And then and then from there started out with what the truck built that up went from one day to two days concurrently, they were building the freight waves TV network. And I’ve always worked very closely with freight waves TV, because a lot of our shows, we just take the audio out of that and use that with podcasts. And that’s how we’ve built a podcast network freight cast with over I think 20 different shows on it. Now, I think we’re over two to 3 million downloads now just on that feed alone. And the cool part about that feed is we already produce all of that stuff, like they’re already on their own feet. So all we’re doing is just taking all this stuff, I was content that already exists, making it easy for everybody by aggregating it all in one place. And then instead of having to subscribe to all your hosts favorite shows or 20 different Freightwaves shows. He’s subscribed to freight cast and every single one of them is just on that feed and it’s been a brilliant move for us I was in I was almost against it at first because when we want to take away from what the trucker this show, but it turned out that podcasting is such crappy discovery. Like it’s just terrible that this worked great because now our own shows are like the bigger shows or promoting the smaller shows and our shows may not really stand up on their own feed, especially some of the newer ones. They do really well on the straight casts feed though. So it doesn’t matter because we’re gonna bite from the burger on both sides.

Adam Vazquez 24:31
Right. Yeah, and people like me who you know, I’m not as into the day-to-day afraid I don’t run a freight company or anything like that. But I like keeping tabs, we have clients in that space, etc. It’s a really nice buffet of kind of like, what is going on different styles that I can chew on at different lengths. So yeah, Freightcast is a great idea and execution. I think just backing up I just want to pull on. You talked about a couple of things on that journey because I think it’s incredible.

So you talked to about not having a job, going through some of those things, what drew you to podcasting specifically, do you think?

Timothy Dooner 25:10
Your life is a composite of your journeys. And when I worked in LA in the record industry, I had a long commute to work. And I used to listen to FM talk radio all the time. And when I moved, I didn’t have that I moved to Boston, and I didn’t I one of the reasons I moved back to Boston was I could live in the city and I didn’t need a car. So I was walking all the time to FedEx. And FedEx was like three train stations away and a mile walk. So I listened to a lot of podcasts. And that’s when I really started getting into it (2008, 2009). So I listened to podcasts for seven years straight as a very avid listener. And along the way, I always thought about starting my own, I just didn’t know what to like, do I’m like, whoa, like about and how I present it. And it was, it’s like anything in life, once the rug or the floors removed, you kind of just go, alright, well, that’s a lever that I had there and it worked out.

Adam Vazquez 25:56
Yeah, that’s awesome. So then you did the 10 episodes. What about those 10? It’s not shocking to me, because I’ve seen in our own industry with our own company, we’ve had doors open for us, just because we have a podcast that we have no business really having. I don’t know that our company exists returning five this year without the podcast medium. So but for someone to just take you and hire you after 10 episodes to be the director of marketing is a little bit of a leap. What do you think you showed in there that was so attractive to that company?

Timothy Dooner 26:32
Well, first of all, freight marketing is not the most competitive field. So what was hard at first about it, that was I had no marketing experience. So every place I was I was applying to nobody wanted it. They’re like, well, we have a sales role for you. And I said, No, I, I just had got fired from two freight sales jobs in a row, it did not help with the depression or alcoholism or anxiety at all. So I knew that just from my heart, I couldn’t do it. So I was turning down a lot of sales jobs at the time, well, not making like like money. And when they asked me 10 episodes, they did hire me and I kind of ran through the story little bit originally, they hired me to write some blogs and to do a podcast with the men eventually turned into the full role. So it did take a little bit of them sort of trusting me to jump into that position. But you said something really interesting there. And I think anybody who’s making a b2b show should consider when they’re doing that is that it’s not the like, people get too hung up early on on the number of downloads and at first, you’re probably only gonna get 30 downloads if no one knows who you are. That’s what’s going to happen. And if you don’t become a really good social media marketer, you’re gonna have an even tougher time. However, it only takes like one person in your space to hear that or to see a competitor on there. And then it starts this sort of chain reaction, where all of sudden guests are coming to you and it starts growing and the messaging starts getting out there, and it becomes a lot more competitive. And then sponsors get interested. So it’s a lot of work. And there are a lot of routes to monetization. And I think that sometimes at first, especially in that year one— I’ve seen a number of logistics companies start and abandon podcasts. Like, they won’t even go five to 10 episodes, they’ll be like, okay, four episodes in. No one’s listening. This is a waste of time because there’s no barrier to entry to like get into podcasting, but there’s a huge one to staying in it.

Adam Vazquez 28:22
Yeah, it’s painful. I can’t remember the percentage now, but some insane percentage doesn’t get past episode seven. The Endurance just isn’t there. But I think, multiple things. One of the things that is super difficult is what you talked about earlier, the discoverability. Like if you have an existing audience elsewhere, you have this huge, massive unfair advantage, because you can just bring them over. And then you have a ready-made business, essentially, when it comes to podcasting for the 98% of people or hire who don’t have that. Yeah, it takes that whatever fortitude or just being able to put your gut into it and say, we’re going to commit to this for 18 months or something like that. But I think what’s an acknowledge you and think give you massive kudos, I think what’s even more impressive is not necessarily having that directional, like North Star and still because like you were not having didn’t have a job at the moment or etc. And we’re still like, I’m going to continue to prove produce, and even if it was 10 episodes, who cares? Like whatever it was, consistently produce and put out, and that’s what we talked about all the time, that just always begets good. It just can’t lead you into— No one’s ever been like, Ah, I produced two years of episodes and it turned out that I fell into a really terrible job situation as a result. It just doesn’t happen. It’s a beautiful thing.

Timothy Dooner 29:43
I just wanna say one thing, too. I think what people have to remember, too, is that we all started without an audience. And it took years to sort of build that and to build it into a big professional base, like something you could launch things behind that actually expect them to follow, and that takes a long time. I don’t care how good you are. That’s the investment. That’s the real investment in podcasting, it’s a time sink. In that first year, you’re gonna be putting a lot of time and the rewards may not always be there. But like in your industry in mind, for example, I was looking at the podcasts are out at the time, they were like stripped audio from webinars, there were there was not any competition like this, the stuff that was out there suck. Sorry to those initial trailblazers, but my Northstar was not being them. My Northstar was just taking more mainstream production ideas, that podcast that I like, are doing well and applying that to freight because companies weren’t, and now I’m seeing more people make free podcasts or a little bit more out there and with more personality, and that’s cool to see, too. I know I chopped through that jungle a little bit. And it’s cool to see that people are actually walking down that path.

Adam Vazquez 30:47
Oh, for sure. That’s really exciting, and it’s only the beginning. We’re gonna continue to see that. And also, I wanted to touch on one thing you said, yeah, you can work and you need talent, you need hard at work, whatever, whatever. The other thing is audience size is this nebulous thing. And people put so much weight. But like, if you have 1000 people who are listening to your episode each week, and I know that’s not a ton and on really any other medium, that isn’t that is a significant number. That’s, that’s 1000 people. That’s more than a movie theater. A lot more who are coming to hear you essentially speak on a subject or talk to other people about a subject every that blows my mind, and so I think just recontextualizing. Now, is that gonna make you Joe Rogan in terms of money? No, but there are lots of different branches out there when it comes to that.

Timothy Dooner 31:38
That makes you easier to talk to. People hear the shows and they come up like they know you. The most important part I think of almost every show isn’t necessarily the industry content. It’s the personality, it’s letting people into your life. It’s an intimate thing, podcasting. It’s in people’s ears. They’re taking you to the gym, they’re taking you to the grocery store, they’re walking their dog with you. Take advantage of that. Realize you’re speaking in people’s ears. You’re not speaking from far away.

Adam Vazquez 32:02
Yeah, yeah. I love the energy and the passion you talk about it with. So kind of with that in mind, what has you excited in content, but specifically with podcasting? I don’t get to talk to a true podcast nut like you too often, so what’s exciting to you, whether it be something new that’s coming, or just like you did before a relearning of old ideas that can create something new anything like that top of mind.

Timothy Dooner 32:25
I’m so excited to work with a team and get inspired by the new creative directions and the creative things that people can do that I can’t see as well, the blinders that I can’t execute on, I’ve been doing podcasting for a long time, and not that I’m like, bored with the medium or anything. I love it. I’m an evangelist of it. But I don’t have to think about like the technical side of it. And I do like thinking tactically sometimes. So I’m excited to learn like just some new technical back-end skills from some of these newer people. Because like people like I’m not that good on TikTok. People doing gangbusters on TikTok. Truckers doing gangbusters. There’s no excuse for us not to be doing well on there. We just got to figure out, we’re going to crack the code, and that’s where the team is going to come in. And I think it’s not just gonna help enhance Back the Truck Up. I think it’s going to help enhance What the Truck I think it’s gonna help enhance what we’re doing. And ultimately, I think that runoff from that will also help enhance what Freightwaves does.

Adam Vazquez 33:15
Yeah, absolutely. Well, we will definitely be on the lookout for the launch. I think it’s gonna be an awesome new offering for drivers, brokers, but really, anyone who’s just curious in the content space, have to watch what you all are doing and building together. If folks want to keep up with you, or definitely with the new project. What’s the best way to keep tabs on all that?

Timothy Dooner 33:36
Yeah, I’m on Twitter all the time. You can find me @TimothyDooner. I’m on LinkedIn, Timothy Dooner. I’ll talk to anybody. I’m not pretentious about that kind of stuff. I actually love networking. I mean, I talk for a living. So you got a good story always come out to me or in media on my show. Not too tough. You’re doing charity, you’re doing something cool. Visually awesome. Reach out to me, I’ll see if I can get you on. Other than that, look up What the Truck wherever you get podcasts, and in about the middle of the month, backthetruckup.com. We’ll be alive and you’ll be able to experience it.

Adam Vazquez 34:07
Cool. And we’ll put all that of course in the show notes below. Dude, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for giving us your time and best of luck with the new launch.

Timothy Dooner 34:14
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Carlton Riffel 34:17
And that’s a wrap. Thank you for listening to this episode of Content Is for Closers. We hope you find this show really helpful as you grow your business with content. Maybe you know of other people who would find this show helpful as well. How about you send them our way? If you didn’t like this show and you want to tell us that, then you can head over to contentisforclosers.com where you can send us a message, give us some feedback, ask questions, or find detailed notes for every episode. Until next time, keep creating and keep closing.