Elsie Escobar is, without question, one of the pioneers of podcasting.
All the way back in 2006, she started one of the original yoga podcasts: Elsie’s Yoga Class, which garnered 4 million downloads in its lifetime. She stuck with it until 2013, when she joined Libsyn, and she’s been co-hosting their official podcast The Feed ever since. She also happens to be the first Latina ever inducted into the Academy of Podcasters’ Hall of Fame.
That’s about as fruitful of a career as any podcaster could hope for, but like most of us, Elsie had another life before embracing the world of online audio. She pivoted from her Hollywood acting career after growing tired of feeling tokenized, thinking podcasting might finally let her stretch her creative legs – and boy, did it ever – but of course, not without a struggle. Getting into podcasting is hard enough today, even with the massive online infrastructure and endless number of tools & resources we have access to. Can you imagine how daunting it must have been in 2006? And yet, Elsie endured, and has an Everest-sized mountain of successes to show for it.
As someone who’s been around since the dawn of podcasting, and has seen just about every evolution the medium has gone through, Elsie brought an incredible (and very rare) perspective to the show. Between her thoughts on things like monetization, adapting to new platforms, adding a video component, the importance of promos, and the future of the industry, anyone looking to make a living in this business will no doubt find something incredibly valuable in this episode.
Elsie is also the co-founder and co-host of She Podcasts, the largest online community for women and non binary podcasters on Facebook with over 20,000 members. She continues to make the podcasting space safer and more connected every day, and even shares her future plans to create a better ecosystem for her audience.
A Transcript and video of the show is available on our network page.
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Matt Cundill works with radio groups on digital strategies and talent coaching. He recently started the Sound Off Podcast: The Podcast about Broadcast”
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