Elsie Escobar: Find Your Podcast Process

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
The sound off podcast. The show about podcast and broadcast starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:12  
Elsie Escobar has been podcasting since the early 2000s back then, it was quite the process to get a podcast going. It involves some knowledge of putting together an RSS feed with some script writing. Wasn't long after that though, that companies like Lipson made that process a little simpler. Today you're going to hear how Elsie commandeered those early podcast days, and with a little karmatic assistance, wound up working with Lipson, where she is today, as their content and creative director. Elsie was the first Latina ever inducted into the Academy of podcasters, Hall of Fame, recognized for her contributions to the podcast industry. She's been doing this for over 18 years. I first met Elsie in Chicago in 2016 when she and Jessica Cooperman co founded she podcasts, which grew into the largest online community for women and non binary podcasters on Facebook with over 20,000 members. She's the co host of lipsons the feed, along with Rob Walsh, and that show is going to solve a lot of your podcast problems and give you ideas on how you can navigate your podcast best practices. All this to say, I'm always excited when a Hall of Famer comes on the show. And now Elsie Escobar joins me from Asheville, North Carolina. Elsie, what was your first podcast? Elsie, yoga class, and that was in 2006

Elsie Escobar  1:36  
six. July is when I published my first episode. July 30, I think 2006

Matt Cundill  1:43  
and you've often referred to that pivot into podcasting as being quite monumental and life changing nearly, absolutely,

Elsie Escobar  1:51  
yeah, literally gave me a voice. You know, it just literally gave me a voice. I I know that at that time I was creatively stumped. I was what I would see back now in a little bit of a depression, because I felt powerless. I felt like I had no outlet. I felt unseen, I felt tokenized, and I didn't know all of this. I didn't have language around this. I just knew that I was very sad because I was doing, you know, the acting thing in Hollywood during that time, and you are very much tokenized, at least at that time. I don't know what's happening now, but it feels to me, maybe there's been about this much transition, but usually it's, you know, you have to fit into a mold. And when you don't, Hollywood doesn't have the vision to see talent and have this talent be different things. And so I was put in a specific place, and that wasn't who I am or was. And it was very, very challenging for me to live into the roles that were coming my way for me to audition for and I was very sad about that. I was, you know, I was working, doing waitressing and things like that, which is, was not bad. It's where I met some of my best friends. It's where I created community, and we still are close to this day. So in that respect, it was a wonderful time, but I was really in a deep anxiety, kind of sad depression, and when podcasting came in, or I became aware of what podcasting was, and I listened to a podcast for the first time, and I thought, I can do this. I can do this. And that's how I started. I started because, weirdly, as we are speaking right now, seeing each other. The reason that I loved podcasting so much is because I didn't lead with what I looked like, which was what acting and Hollywood really zeroed in on, is you look this way, you fit in this mold, and therefore you do these things, you cannot do all of these other things. That's not who you are because of what you look like. And so being behind the microphone, I was able to lead with my voice, and that was astoundingly empowering for me. And look at us now behind the camera again.

Matt Cundill  4:24  
Yes, it's kind of a full circle moment with the inclusion of video. And if you're not really sure about casting and everything that goes into it, I have a background doing it because I'm a voice actor. But just take a look at Elsie IMDb, and you can see the roles are all very similar. The type of show is all very similar. And I sort of applaud you for this opportunity to cast yourself in a podcast starring you and doing yoga.

Elsie Escobar  4:49  
You know, it was one of those things where, when I started to do it, I did it because I wanted to know how to do it. I very much like to learn by doing. And I very much. Like to prepare. So I like to read about the things before I get really into it. I like to form my own opinions. I don't particularly like to follow thought leadership sometimes, or when people are saying things, I kind of sit back, take notes, and then I test it out, and I do my own research, and that's kind of how what I did with podcasting. Now podcasting is at least when I first started. Since I was totally non techie, like zero, like nothing. I barely even had just gotten my first computer, and I was afraid I was gonna break it, so I had zero understanding. I thought AOL was the internet. I didn't know anything about it, so I started listening to podcasts, and they were saying all of these words that I didn't understand. So I would write notes for myself. I have to find out what this means, what this means, and I would just write them down. And then I would go into borders at the time bookstore, and I would go look for podcasting books there. So I actually purchased, I think, three podcasting books at that time, and I read them cover to cover, plus listening to podcasts until I was able to understand what RSS meant. Because that was the hardest everybody was talking about RSS. I'm like, I have no idea. And they would go like, RSS, Real Simple Syndication. And I was like, I still don't know what that means. So I would, I read all the books, and I looked at all the stuff, and I figured out how to do our at least start to understand it, right? And there was another, I don't know if you remember this at all. What were they called? They used to make commonplace books or commonplace videos. It was a YouTube channel that had walkthroughs of what complicated things were online or like technical stuff. And they would do it with pieces of paper. And so they would create a little, like a little image, and it was all videoed, and they would go, like RSS, and then they would put, like a TV, and then they would go, have little lines sticking out, and it goes like this, and it goes like this. And then when I watched that video, I thought, Oh, wow. So the visual of this really simple explanation of things, plus all the reading that I had done, it started to sink in. So I did that for about six months, and became friends with podcasters. I asked questions about recording stuff, and I started to create a show in my head. And I thought, well, I don't have my show ready, my idea what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it, because I still had a lot of questions about how to do what I wanted to do. I thought, how can I practice podcasting doing something I'm already doing so I don't have to add more work to my life. And I thought, well, I am earning a living as a yoga teacher. I'm teaching 13 classes a week. I can record my classes and put that out, and that's how I started. So to me, it was like a testing ground, and that's why the name is so creative, LCS yoga class, because it was very so I'm not going to come up with a name for it. You know, it's just like, I'm just going to call it this, and it's going to be super basic. I'm going to record my class, put it out, and the rest is history. And in 2006

Matt Cundill  8:38  
once you put together your RSS feed. I mean, I'm trying to get the landscape back then because I didn't have my head completely around podcasting then. I mean, Lipson was around. How did you get your RSS feed together? And then where did you put it? Because I think there was iTunes, and where else did it go?

Elsie Escobar  8:56  
Oh, all of the podcast directories. Oh, my gosh, it was so fun back then. But first, let me answer the question. Of course, one of the first podcasts that I listened to was podcast 411 with my co host for the feed, Rob Walsh, and that was one of the very first it was his podcast that sort of opened my eyes or ears into that I could do it, that I could do this because he was interviewing a lot of those podcasters that were from all over the world doing random things, really neat ideas. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is such a creative medium. You could basically do anything. And he would always open the show with, what was your first computer and what is your microphone? Right? And so I started to learn about tech and about computers and language based on the exposure of people talking about it and how they were using it. So it was like a workflow thing for me. And he had the Lipson guys on, and he was constantly talking about Libsyn as the place where you put your podcast make. Was everywhere. So when I started, I just, I got my RSS feed from Lipson. I opened up a Lipson account, right? That's what everybody was doing at that time. There was really no other choice. I had not come to know blueberry at that time. And so I just did Lipson because Rob had the lips and guys on his show, and I kind of liked listening to them, and I thought, wow, this is really cool. And I also asked for help from who I consider my podcasting. Yoda. His name is Victor Cahill. He's no I don't think he's podcasting anymore, but he used to have a show called The typical PC user, and I used to listen to that show to learn about how to use my own computer, because at that time, I had a PC. And he would always say, like, hey, email the show if you have any questions. And I was the person who had all the questions, like, I don't know how to work this, or what should I do about this? And so I did. And then he suggested, because we got to talk to each other via email a lot, and we kind of became friends. And he suggested you should start a podcast. That was, like, the catalyst, right where he was, like, You should do this. And I'm like, I don't know what to do. He's like, I'll tell you what to get. So he just told me the things to get, and I started to do it. The thing is that what he kept me to get was, like, a, you know, a stand in a mic. What I needed was to go record in the class. So I kind of, I don't even know if I did it myself, but I ended up going into either Sam Goody or one of those stores, right? And I got myself a Sony lavalier mic. It was $50 at that time, and I put it on my lapel, and I purchased the eye River, which is what everybody was using at that time, which is a little mp three player that had amazing recording quality to it is from what I remember, because it's been so long. And the eye River was supposed to be an mp three player for your music, so that you could work out it was this tiny little thing, right? Was like a, like a candy bar, size really, really small. And it came with a little arm band that you could put the eye River in, because it was meant for you to go run and listen to music. And so what I was doing is I was recording my class with the eye river around my arm, and I would stick, you know, the Sony lavalier microphone, I think it's still out there, and I put it on my thing, and I would just record straight into the eye river. And that's kind of how I started with it. The I River, I think was 30 bucks at that time, and that's the only piece of gear that I wish I could I don't know where it is like in my transition from LA to Pittsburgh, which happened later, it was somewhere, and then it was nowhere. And I remember I kind of didn't care at that time, because I was no longer using a PC. I was on a Mac, and I couldn't sync with it anymore because the drivers, like, all this kind of weird stuff happened and and there I had classes in there. I recorded, like, a bunch of classes that were never released and or I never even put them on my computer, and they were lost

Matt Cundill  13:07  
in the most natural transitions. Though, spending all this time working on discovering RSS and then doing your podcast and getting 4 million downloads with it, you wind up at Libsyn. Was that the transition to Pittsburgh? Yeah,

Elsie Escobar  13:20  
it was very strange. It was a very strange thing because, yeah, so I was doing the whole podcasting thing, and I was very much welcomed by the podcasting community in LA, and I learned about through podcast 411, because Rob used to always talk about all the different places that he was going and or any kind of meetups that were going around in the podcasting almost anywhere, right? It wasn't just, he didn't usually just talk about the ones that he was going to he would talk about, if people would email the show, he would mention them all over the world. And the portable New Media Expo came into the scene. And so I happened to have been asked by Rob to be interviewed on podcast 411 which is kind of like making it in podcasting. At that time, it was like, I'm gonna be on podcast 411 I'm literally famous. Now I am famous in the podcasting industry. So he interviewed me there, and as I was recording, I kind of told him, You know what I'm doing, some transitions. I'm transitioning in my life. I really was transitioning. I was about to let go of some things that were going on in LA I was considering moving, and I was starting a new relationship, and I was offered a job outside of to do acting stuff outside. And so I told Rob, outside of Los Angeles, I told Rob, I'm in transition. I'm here. If anything comes up that you would that would come up for you, just let me know. Reach out. I'm happy to help you. And he goes, let's talk at the portable New Media Expo. And I said, Okay, so right after that, I went to the portable New Media Expo, and we sat down, and he offered me a job. He had just been hired at Libsyn, and he wanted me to come in and work for Libsyn. And at that time, I was doing podcaster relations. So I was, he was doing, well, he was doing the main stuff, and then I would be in support of what he was doing, which was the podcasting relations part. I still don't know what that job actually was, but I was hired. And so it was so weird because he said, When can you start? And I said, Well, I have to go. I was going to Arizona to do a show, a theater show, so I'm going, I have to be going to Arizona for the month of October. It was like a five that was like a two month stint there, and I said to him, and then I'm actually moving out of LA and I'm moving to Pittsburgh because my new man lived in Pittsburgh, and I was moving to Pittsburgh, and then he goes, shut up. And I said, why? And he goes, because Lipson headquarters is in Pittsburgh. And I was like, get out of town. I was gonna do remote. I was gonna do remote. And I was like, what? Get out so it was the most synergistic magical thing,

Matt Cundill  16:26  
yeah, and one of the things that I love, and you and Rob have a hand in guiding me through the podcast space, you know, Hall of Famers, and the community mindedness that you have, that you know, the two of you came together with the, I think the feed started July 2013 now I did not start my listening to that, but I did start about a year later. What sort of special superpowers do you need to have to constantly be helping people do this every week? Since you started doing it in 2006 like you've been doing nothing but help people the whole time.

Elsie Escobar  17:03  
I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. I think that that's really what it is. I can't not do it, dissemination of information, education, empowering people to make their own choices, helping people feel like they can. I think at the core, that's what it is for me, because what pulled me into podcasting so much was that people shared their information with me freely. There was nobody that said you're not ready to have a mic. Nobody said you can't do that. That is the dumbest idea, right? Nobody said that. Everybody was like, you're doing a yoga podcast. Cool. They would wonder like, well, how does that work? That's usually what would end up happening. And then the conversation would go around, how are you doing it? Versus, why are you doing it? Like, nowadays there's there's another thing, are you building a business on it? Like, do people like that? Like, there's a means to an end that people are always looking at the end game for that. And at the beginning of podcasting, it really was just to do the thing and to get such delight out of creating something and putting it out into the world and having people listen and in that realm, that's what I want, for people to to get the best information that they can, to feel that they can do it. But I think that the other lover that I really like to bring to that, and that the thing that's really driving me more is that you have to be ready for what this is now, not what it was then, but what it is now, which right now, it feels a lot more work than it used to feel, because before the creation of the podcast itself, was everything it was. It was everything it was. As soon as the show went out the consuming, for an audience perspective, and for you putting that episode out there, was everything. It had your voice in it. It had your creative juice in it. It had your show notes in it. It had all the information in the show notes. It had the funky, weird, you know, artwork that people would use all the time. It had the conversation started. It was everything. And so people would just go, did you listen to the podcast? Yes, I listened to the podcast. That was so great. And that's the only way we kept together. Whereas now there's so much like the podcast is just step one, right? You finished the podcast, and then, oh, my God, I have to do the show notes, and then I gotta put it on the website. And then I gotta put the link. Which link Am I gonna be sharing? Am I gonna do this 1am? I gonna put it on LinkedIn? What am I gonna say on LinkedIn versus threads? What am I gonna Am I gonna make a video on this? Maybe I should make a video on this. It just becomes this, like. Huge lift, and only for people to just not even listen, because that's the other part. It might not even be bringing people to your podcast. You might be still talking your mission. You might still say what you want to say and get that information out, which is what I started with. I want you to have the information. I want you to be educated. I want you to be empowered and be confident and know what you need to do. And I've had to continue with that and let go of my initial stance, which was, you'll get all of this in my podcast. Transcription

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  20:37  
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Matt Cundill  21:10  
So you've kind of been my therapist over the years. I'll tell you how sometimes there's information that gets floated out and about into the podcast sphere, but the type of microphone that you need the amount of money you need to spend, the number of downloads you need to have in order to be successful, the number of downloads you need to have in order to get advertising. What is monetization? Who qualifies for it? Who doesn't? There is so much stuff that goes out there, some of it wrong, some of it right, but the only way I sort of sometimes seem to land and find out is just by listen to your show and sort of disseminating what's real and what's fake. How does all that stuff get out there, and how have you managed to stay calm trying to swim? You know, sometimes what it feels like upstream on, you know, building a successful podcast?

Elsie Escobar  21:57  
Yeah, I think it's, it's the conversation that most people online are trying to figure out right now. And it's not a new thing. I don't know if you remember the whole new and noteworthy conversation was really big for people back in the day. I don't know if you've covered it on the show. If you have covered it on the show, send them to the podcast episode. If not, we could do a real quick

Matt Cundill  22:19  
it felt like a 2016 2017 thing whereby you had to launch a show and be part of new and noteworthy in order to really sort of feel that you qualified to have a good chance at a successful show.

Elsie Escobar  22:30  
Yeah. And so everybody was like doing that. The other thing was, leave me a review on my show. Right? That was another thing that kept coming up also, the other thing that just barely started to shift now was iTunes versus Apple podcasts. And so those are all little bits of information that we've been trying to correct, meaning what new and Northy was new and noteworthy did not get you XYZ, which is what people were selling courses on right? I will help you to get into new and noteworthy, which, for whatever reason, that meant that you are now famous, and you had all the 1000 downloads, and you can make all the money in the world like that's the way it was positioned. People bought into that. People disseminated that information and kept just saying it over and over and over and over again without actually verifying it. Same thing with iTunes and Apple podcasts, where we're sitting like, no, it's Apple podcast. There's no more iTunes. Like it literally does not exist all of you people, you need to say Apple podcast, because it's not there anymore. ITunes is gone since 2018 it's been a long time. So now finally, right? All of these things and so all of those and the reviews, like the algorithms and the way that people say things like that, it's hard, because people want an easy answer and they want to get they grasp onto a bit of information, and they don't question it, because it either solves a problem that they immediately have, and They don't have time to actually do the research, or it confirms a bias that they have around something that they feel is right, and again, they don't go down the rabbit hole to research the realities nowadays. I think the challenge is that when we first started, it was just everybody had a podcast, and you were promoting your podcast, and you grew the podcast, whereas now everybody has a place where they shine in a platform where they shine. So let's say you have a podcast and you have an Instagram following of 250,000 followers on Instagram, and you are known for making short form videos about XYZ. For you, growing your podcast is the Instagram, right? That is like step one. There are some folks who have a podcast and they also have a News. Letter strategy, that's amazing. The path to growing the show could be this newsletter strategy, and they know how to market their podcast to their newsletter strategy, and maybe they have it embedded into their sales, within, you know, their their businesses, and they're able to do that cross marketing. Some people could be doing YouTube really well. Some people can be doing maybe, just maybe, they come from, like a historical legacy type media model. They have a lot of connections in the coasts. They are part of the sort of elite audio spaces that are well connected. And you happen to get a lot of visibility via PR and or via an open door to join a specific place, and you are creating good content, right? So all of this to say you have good content, let's not forget that your content is solid, but that sort of path to growing an audience may not be your path, and you can't replicate a lot of it with LCS yoga class. I don't know what I haven't been looking at any kind of stats for any of the current yoga podcast out there, but the reason that it still pops up, the beauty reason that I still keep getting daily downloads, even though I haven't touched that show since 2013 is because I was there in 2006 so the algorithm within Apple podcast, as is values, the legacy of the RSS feed in there, and the historical data and engagement that my RSS feed has gotten since 2006 that's not something you can easily replicate. And if somebody says, How are you doing that? I'm gonna go, I have no idea. I just, it's just there.

Matt Cundill  26:46  
You had this moment, I think, sometime last year, when you came to a level of resolve or peace with video integration into podcasting, because it's been so big, it's been, you know, it's been audio for so long. You've been there since 2006 and it's been Audio, Audio, Audio. And yes, you could do video, it felt like a bit of an option. And then came this pressure that you need to do it in order to get a little bit of search from YouTube, or you're not really podcasting unless you have video. And you know, again, it's one of these things where we're made to feel that we have to do something. But you came to this sort of level of, okay, I felt it was acceptance. How are you looking at video and podcasting today?

Elsie Escobar  27:28  
I feel that in some ways, it is, I can't say it's necessary. I think that there's some people, okay, let me think back at this, because I actually had to do, I did do a lot of thinking about this, and it was actually the fact that the people I'm all I'm a people person, meaning I'm here for the people. I'm here for those people that nobody looks at. I'm here for the overlooked. I'm here for the often just the ones that often don't get the limelight. And so the people are really good at creating content. They're amazingly good at creating video content and images and pictures. Why? Because of social so they know how to create amazing, edited pieces of media that are really creative, highly entertaining. They use audio. They steal audio. Well, steal in the sense that audio can also go viral. Right pieces of audio can go viral, and they can go underneath video. So those are skills that the general population has. They can pick up a phone, and they know how to edit. They know how to add overlays. They know how to work with audio beneath video. A lot of these tool sets have been created for the font. They do it real quick with their fingers, and there is an area for audio so they understand how to overlay music, overlay the, you know, voice and these things so they understand that stuff, audio production on its own, has yet to go to all the people, because you can't do it on the phone like even the easy I'm still trying to figure that out, and I haven't played with Boss jock studio, which is one of, I think, The strongest apps on iOS to create this incredible sort of show on your phone for a while. But that said, it's not as easy, like I can go into Instagram reels or Instagram you know, any of like Tiktok for sure. When people freaked out when Tiktok went away for a little bit, the reason that they were much more upset was because of CAP cut. Cap cut has fundamentally changed the Creator sphere, and we cannot deny that you cannot take a generation, and this is like, not even a, yeah, an entire generation, really, but that scopes all the way up to the older gender, all of their generations, right? And tell them you can't edit the way. You want to edit. We're gonna now take you all the way back to just being in front of your desktop, pulling an audio file, pulling it in the thing, and doing it this way. And then you have to do the compression and the equalizer and, like, what? Because they can all do it on the cap cut. It does it. They don't know what it's called. It just does the things. So that's what was like. Think the the thing for me was I cannot continue to not address the fact that these people are smart. They know how to do this stuff. They know how to put the stuff together, but we're getting stuck on the medium, and that's not what. Why should I cannot be stuck here with all these other people fighting we have things to take care of. We need people to produce content in their way.

Matt Cundill  30:44  
Yeah, we need people to promote it too. And one of the things that I love about your show, and that's that you play promos, and you've been playing promos, and one of the things I didn't know, I thought, Oh, they're only promoting the Libsyn shows, but no anybody can send you a show promo and you're gonna play it on the feed, so that people get an opportunity to try out another podcast and discover other podcasts. And I've had Steve Goldstein on this show before, and we spent the whole time, you know, talking about this. And that's, you know, what makes a great promo. So for somebody who gets promos sent to them every week, who's heard so many, who's got three or four of them that will air on every show. What makes a great podcast promo?

Elsie Escobar  31:26  
Oh, gosh, when you get to the point, people seem to think they have to say all the things in order to get people to listen to their show. And I can tell you that the shorter and bitier, and the faster you get to the point, the better it is for the listener. And that means you write your script, whatever it is, however you want to promote your show, record it, and then start chopping it, chop and chop and chop. And what if I had to chop this? Like? What like? It is an unbelievably wonderful thing to just not fall in love with yourself, because I think that's what happens with a lot of podcasters, is like they think that they demand to take up so much more space, not to say that they don't deserve that space in people's ears, but not when you're promoting, and get to the point, especially for a promo, you could Do all of the long, random things on your podcast. That's fine. That's the medium for that. But for the promo, get to the point. What is it about? Oh, and here's another thing that's really interesting. Some people don't even say what the name of the podcast is. Call to Action, yeah, but just say the name and where can you get it, even if you say we are wherever you get your podcast. And I personally have to often say, and I still say, even though I don't think it's as important anymore, but actually I do think it is. If I say to you, you can find the feed wherever you get your podcast. Just search for L, i, b, S, Y, N, the feed, because there's so many other podcasts that are called the feed, and I don't want you to be like, I don't know which is the one that she said, right? And so I said, Libsyn is a very unique word, and it's generally not in the title of a podcast episode of a podcast show, right of a podcast itself? Yeah.

Matt Cundill  33:26  
Are you still using the Castro app after it went through a little bit of a problem and then it came back? Because I know you're a big fan of that app.

Elsie Escobar  33:34  
Oh, my God, I was so into that app. Listen, I actually broke up with the app. Actually, the app broke up with me because I could not be in a relationship that was so Rocky. Okay? Because listening to podcasts for me is an essential part of my day. It is something that I need to have when I want it, and it has to happen fast, because sometimes it's in transition. It's like, oh, I'm finished with work. I'm gonna go wash dishes and listen to a podcast, and I have a minute of transition to go one to the other. I just wanna open it up, tap whatever's on the queue, whatever's next, you know, I'm there. Or to be able to look at podcasts and go like this one today, right? That's what I want. I don't want a problem, and with Castro, that friction was becoming a thing where I would open it up and then it didn't load, and there were a lot of issues. By the way, you guys, Castro is doing fantastic right now. They are really pushing things forward. So I don't want to talk badly about it. It was just my relationship with it. And because of that, I did a lot of searching for podcast apps. I really tested a lot of different things, and I didn't go back to Castro. Where did you land overcast? So I'm now an overcast girly. He basically gave me the power overcasted gave me the power to create. My cue. So I built the experience that I had in Castro inside of overcast. So he made it customizable and cute and colorful for me, which are things that I like. So I was able to do that. And now I live off of that. I'm starting to get into the real realm with it. And I think now the other part that I'm really loving that Castro, I mean that overcast has added has been the history that it has in there. Now, when you are a premium subscriber, you can look at your history, and it shows you which podcast you listen to the most on your whatever month. Like, I just did it for the first time in January, and it was so great to see like, how many hours I spent listening to podcasts? Well, my top three, top six, top nine, were during that time. And I can also see, oh my gosh, because, you know, I don't know if you've done this in the past, where either somebody interrupts you, or you shut something down, or something happens, technically, with your own hand, with your own finger, where you delete a podcast that you were listening to, and you're like, oh, oh no, like you're in the middle of it, and you mess things up now, because he also has the stuff that you've listened to. So you can go back and you immediately can see I deleted this and this, and that I downloaded this, this, and that I listened to however it was. So I can look at that stuff. And I love quantifying my life, because it makes me feel like I'm living somehow. I love to look at the podcast. Oh yeah, on Tuesday, I was listening to this and this, and we were eating tacos, like I just, I love the triangulation of memory, memory, keeping through activities, and so anything that makes that easier for me, I'm a fan.

Matt Cundill  36:46  
Yeah, I love, by the way, when you said he it's Marco, I believe. And I love when he redid the entire app, put it out there, and then it came attached with a note to the entire industry, give me one week. Please do not bomb me with your feedback on day one. Give me a week or two to really work out whatever's in these bugs, and we'll, we'll get it updated as we go. And so thank you again. This is it serves as a great reminder for me to go back and give it another try. I use, I use Spotify here in the office. I use apple in the car. And I got away from overcast because I wasn't really it didn't feel like it was integrating properly with my car, but I'm not driving as much anymore, so this is definitely worth another visit.

Elsie Escobar  37:26  
Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. And you know, to your point there, we have to understand, and this is the other aspect of what a lot of things, nobody really talks about this, and I really want to drive this forth, is that media consumption overall, including podcasts, is very much based on context, and it's very much based on your needs, like when you are listening to Spotify here in the office, right, there's a reason why you're doing that. You're not doing it, because Spotify is the best experience of listening to podcasts. You're doing it because, as is my inference by the way, that you have a built in infrastructure as to the easiest way for you to consume what you want to consume, when you want to consume it has a least amount of

Matt Cundill  38:15  
friction. Yeah, I can toss the audio over to a smart speaker in the corner, or, if I go to the kitchen, I can move it down there.

Elsie Escobar  38:21  
Yeah, so right for me, that's not the case. I have no place to put that right, because I don't have smart speakers not to say that. That's the only reason. But that's what I'm saying. Your integration with the car, right for you, that might have been like a huge it is obviously it was a deal breaker for you, that it was having troubles. Because you also need Imagine going again just to our 15 minute drive to go get gas, and you immediately know, as soon as you get in there, you can just continue listening to your show. But if you're having trouble, and you have to, like, I

Matt Cundill  38:54  
know it's downloaded when it's apple, I know it's there, and I find it's not there on Spotify. And I don't have time for that sort of unreliable attitude that the app will give me in that moment.

Elsie Escobar  39:04  
How exactly so those are the things that we have to understand now. Somebody who doesn't care about that that's never gonna come up. It doesn't ever happen. And it's the same thing for actual content. Meaning I as much, as much as I have tried in the past, I can't. I don't listen to interview shows. I don't, I don't like them. I've tried. I also don't listen to non fiction books, audio books. I have tried, believe me, I have tried. I buy them. I have lots of them on Audible, because I know, but I listen to one or two chapters, and I am done. And I am an avid I read 52 books last year, audio books, all of them were fiction. I cannot. I've tried again. I keep trying, but I fail, so now I've just given up, and I'm like, I'm just not in. Non fiction reader. I love fiction books, period the end. And that doesn't mean that your non fiction book isn't valuable, but I'm just not your audience, and that's what we are with in terms of podcasts, right? I have a genre that I really love, which is co hosted shows. I love co hosted shows. I love to get to know the people. Interview shows, I will pick at meaning. If I'm looking for a very specific conversation around a very specific issue, I will go listen to that I want to know how they're doing whatever, or if I'm obsessed with a specific human that I want to learn more about, I will listen to them on every podcast because I want to know them more, but I'm not. I don't have any interview shows that I'm subscribed to that I listen to regularly. I just don't. I'm going to give everybody

Matt Cundill  40:50  
one last reason why we need to follow you, if you're a podcaster, and that's the disaster that happened in your part of the world last year, oh yes, there were floods in North Carolina, which is where you live, and the power goes out for days on end. And some of the preparation techniques that you did and that you did in order to kick out podcasts and to keep the business going, are some of the things that I already know how to do when I go to a zone where there's going to be no Wi Fi and no electricity. So I'm just off the top of my head. It was, it was things like, download all the audio onto your local computer so that you can edit it in a particular place. When you do find Wi Fi, you'll go back and, you know, upload it at that particular moment, keeping things charged low power mode. Yeah. And have you changed the way that you think in your home studio and in your office, in the way you work in just in case the power does go out for another three

Elsie Escobar  41:43  
days. I think that I would like to have more backups, more power backups outside. So right now I'm recording on a Mac Mini, so I would like to have a power bank, one of those kind of bigger ones here as a backup, so that if, for whatever reason, my power goes out, I'm still able to shut things down properly and or give me, like, a few more minutes of being able to say that, versus it just goes away and I lose everything. So I think that that here is very, very important for me to to have. And I think overall power is essential, period. Anything that powers a thing is essential, because without it, you cannot do it. It doesn't matter how fancy your stuff is, you won't be able to do it. Yeah,

Matt Cundill  42:32  
it's an uninterrupted power supply, which Todd Cochran encouraged me to get. And I'll give a quick example, by the way. 2019 we lost power, and there were trees, and the trees broke, and power would go out every week for three times a day for a month, and that really messed up my hard drives. I lost the computer. I lost a bunch of things just because of things snapping on and off all

Elsie Escobar  42:54  
the time. Yep, you know, my laptop obviously doesn't really have to deal with that. But in that respect. Just being able to have that back up here, I think, is absolutely important, and also having, I believe, the ability to quickly have people who can have access to your stuff, so things like one password is essential, and do it proactively, not going like, let me send you the podcast. You know the password to get to my thing, but to have a group of people, if you're collaborating with work and things like that, to be able to go like, Okay, this goes down, you need to access x, y, z. Here's the one password. Here's how you can get in there. Here's where the files are, so that you have that ability, that protocol set up ahead of time. Because

Matt Cundill  43:39  
Elsie, I'm going to wrap this up the same way you wrap up your show and that's where are you going to be in 2025

Elsie Escobar  43:46  
Oh, my God. So I'm actually building my own ecosystem a lot more. I'm going to give you a link that you can share in your show notes so people can keep connected with me. And I'm actually doing it two different ways. Every time I'm in a podcast, I'm going to share this link this whole year, and then I'm going to see if anybody goes there, if anybody follows me from there, if anybody signs up for an email list. I don't have I set email list versus newsletter, because I just have an email list, just capturing emails, not necessarily sending them out. But I'll give you that link, and then we'll see what happens at the end of the year, just because I've never done that, and I thought, you know, I'm seeing all the time, and people always ask me how I can connect and not you'll have all the information. You can connect with me however you want to connect with me once you go there. Elsie,

Matt Cundill  44:31  
thanks so much for doing this. Really appreciate you taking the time to do it. You

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  44:36  
bet. Thank you. The sound off podcast is written and hosted by Matt Kendall, produced by Evan serminsky, edited by Taylor MacLean, social media by Aiden glassy, another great creation from the sound off media company. There's always more at sound off podcast.com you.