Podcast 360 Episode 13
Podcast 360 Episode 13: Arielle Nissenblatt (EarBuds Podcast Collective) and Steph Colbourn (editaudio)
Host: Arielle Nissenblatt
Arielle Nissenblatt Hi, I'm Arielle Nissenblatt, founder of EarBuds Podcast Collective and community marketing manager at Descript. You may have heard me last week when I was interviewed by the Mash-Up Americans co-founder Amy Choi.
Steph Colburn Hi, I'm Steph Colburn, CEO and founder of editaudio, which is a full suite podcast production company entirely operated by women, trans and non-binary people. We operate out of the U.S., UK and Canada. We make branded content for people like Google News, Harper's Bazaar, StackOverflow, and we also make our own and audio originals, two of which just won signal awards.
Arielle Nissenblatt Steph, thank you so much for joining Podcast 360 as my guest. It is great to have you here. Thank you. We kick off every episode of Podcast 360 with a round of two truths and a lie where you provide us with three facts about yourself and I will guess which one is the lie. At the end of this conversation, you'll tell us the correct answer. Are you ready?
Steph Colburn I was born ready. Number one, I once had to battle a moose on a bridge for space. I was in the Yukon and I had to get home and the moose was blocking the bridge. I would like to just remind everyone that I am Canadian. Number two is that I have a black belt in martial arts, specifically taekwondo. And one time I throat punched someone at a bar and they went to the hospital and I had to go to court because it was like a weapon, you know, like when you have whatever. Number three is that Dan Levy from Schitt's Creek, a lovely human, one time I was flying home from Philadelphia and both his father, Eugene Levy, and his mom were on the plane. And I sat beside Dan Levy's mom and we talked about gay things. And I ended up making her cry on the plane talking about how beautiful queer representation is in Schitt's Creek.
Arielle Nissenblatt Those are awesome. I do have a guess. I'm going to make this guess, which is that I think that you are very talented at Taekwondo, but I don't think you have a black belt. I think you have the step down from that is, I don't think you made it all the way. And that's not because I don't believe in you. It's because I think the other two are extremely believable. And that's that's my guess. And I'm sticking with it. That's what I believe your lie is. And we'll find out the truth later. Okay. Steph, now that you just told us three anecdotes about your life, one of which I believe is a lie. We're going to get into some more about your life, but this is going to be more on the professional side. How does that sound?
Steph Colburn Lovely. That's why I'm here.
I know you speak a lot on social media about your core values. What makes your company, your company? So in 60 seconds can you tell us your core values that help you run your company in a way that you are proud to run your company?
Steph Colburn I can try. I went to school and I worked in audio production and I just saw that like all of the studio spaces and the podcast industry as a whole, we're not very welcoming for people that weren't just cis white men. So once I started getting the opportunity to hire people, I made it my number one goal to try to like hire people and bring them up into jobs, into my industry, our industry. So we are entirely owned and operated by women, trans and non-binary people. We try to do like a lot of mentoring stuff with people that are coming up in the industry that may feel othered. And we do a lot of community initiatives too, and our whole company is funded by our for profit work, so we don't have any investment funding or anything like that. We take the money from our for hire work and put that into making and audio originals with people that we think should be more represented in the podcasting space.
Arielle Nissenblatt Wow, perfect timing.
Steph Colburn Thank you.
Arielle Nissenblatt I love that. Steph, thank you so much for sharing
Can you briefly tell me about one of the originals that you've made and how the idea came about?
Steph Colburn Yeah, we have an original right now that just won a Signal award to signal World's Best LGBTQ show and then also the Listeners Choice Award in the same category. And it's called Rebound Revolution. It is a podcast that we make in collaboration with The Cube, which is an editions company. And we were just chatting one day about how amazing like women in sports are and how there seems to be at least a little bit with the NCAA championship last year and you know, Brittney Griner returning this like bigger push to like understand why we're not giving them the same standards that we give male professional athletes. So we made this podcast and I was just like really excited. And then because it's like a women's basketball podcast, it is like very inherently queer and very amazing and I love it. So that's one show. And we partnered with Anna on that, and then we also hired a host who's amazing. Her name's Dr. Money. She's like, Honestly, can school anyone in basketball knowledge but is also just like the most excitable, lovely human.
Arielle Nissenblatt Love that. Wow, That's great. Thank you for sharing a little bit more about that.
So I know that editaudio goes to a lot of events. You often have booths at a lot of those events. How do you decide which events are worth your time and how do you measure ROI, if at all?
Steph Colburn Oh my gosh, that's a great question. The answer is that we don't really measure ROI. So for the last few years we've been going to events just to get our name out there and have people recognize our branding and see us. And it's also an opportunity since our company is all distributed across three countries, for us to get together and different groups of us. I do think recently now that the industry is in a little bit of a financial. struggle. We've started to be like, okay, what's our goal going into this? Like, our goal is to get one community person's contact, like someone we could do a community event with or a future like organizational mission alignment type thing. And then the name of someone else that we could potentially do like a branded content work deal with. So those have been our two goals. I do not track them very closely because I totally cannot remember what happened. But also at the end of each conference we usually bring in a booth and record a bunch of questions with people who are attending the event. And then after we compile a few little mini episodes and a season around the event so that everyone can like hear each other's answers and that chat is called On the Road.
Website design Branding. How did you come up with all that for editaudio? What was the intentionality behind it? And where do you feel it is taking you? What vibe do you think it's giving off?
Steph Colburn Okay, so first of all, I do think I like kind of fuck myself by making the URL when I did I thought it was so clever. It's edit-aud-dot-io. So like if you zoom out it's just editaudio but like there’s just like all these weird making of it. So that was kind of an issue. But because of that I was like, Oh, I'm already trying to be like kind of cheeky, different, whatever. And I didn't want to put out an ugly website. I think there's so many ugly podcasting websites and I didn't want to do that. And I am very fortunate that one of my very good friends, Matthew Famularo, who's amazing, is a really good designer and we work together doing the website, figuring out what it needed to be content wise, what story it was telling, what kind of look that it would give. And I really liked this retro sort of feel about editing tape and like, sinking tape. It's gritty and stuff, but it's also, like, approachable and cute, I think. So that's the story behind that. He really helped that come to life.
Arielle Nissenblatt Well, Steph, thank you for answering those three questions for me. Thanks for giving us a little more insight into editaudio, edit-aud-dot-io.
Steph Colburn Thank you. Something that also is important to like our company mission is that the Equality In Audio Pact has come back and we're making it a more global initiative. And so I am heading the North American Division of the Equality In Audio Pact. So if you have quality questions about the industry moving forward, hit me up.
What is the Equality In Audio Pact? Where did it come from and what is behind the resurgence of it? The reinvigoration of it.
Steph Colburn So the Equality In Audio Pact happened during 2020. It was created by Rene Richardson, and it was just a way to sort of align people and companies in the industry to do better. We noticed that there's a huge gap, like there's huge pay gaps across genders, there's huge discrimination things happening in studios and people just are not only not getting hired but are also not advancing in certain roles. So there was a pact that was sent out to everyone. A lot of big companies signed on, like Spotify was on and Amazon and such. It ended up being a lot of work. And so I think things sort of fell apart after that. It started with five initiatives. The first is to pay interns so there's no longer unpaid interns. The second is to hire people of intersecting identities that are minorities. The third is that if you release gender pay gap reports to also release race pay gap data as the same thing. The fourth is to no longer speak at panels or on it at events that are not representative of the cities and spaces and industries that they are portraying. And then the fifth is to be transparent about who works for you in your company as well as their role in position. And if they're like full time, part time contract, whatever. So those were the five things. A bunch of companies signed on to that and ended up being a lot of work and sort of took a back seat for a bit and then it was taken up last year and steps have been made to make it more global. So we have heads in each continent right now and we've been meeting to just sort of reword some of those pact initiatives and do a few more things. So there'll be a lot of things that we want to do. But right now we're really focused on just aligning everyone and making sure that we have the support that we need to to make the changes happen. We've also reached out to every organization that signed to make sure they still want to be on it.
Arielle Nissenblatt And yeah, a little pressure is a good thing.
Steph Colburn We love pressure.
Arielle Nissenblatt If folks want to learn more about the Equality In Audio Pact, where should they go?
Steph Colburn You can go to www.equalityinaudio.com.
Two truths and a lie
Arielle Nissenblatt Steph, I believe it's time for you to reveal your lie to me. Let's recap your two truths and a lie. First was that you once vied for space on a bridge with a mouse. The second is that you throat punched somebody because you are a blackbelt in taekwondo and that person had to go to the hospital and you had to go to court. And the third is that why am I forgetting the third?
Steph Colburn I sat beside Dan Levy's mom and made her cry.
Arielle Nissenblatt Because I believe it so much. The third is that you sat beside Dan Levy's mom and you had a beautiful gay. Conversation. I believe that the lie is the second one. I believe that you are lying about having a black belt. Where do I stand?
Steph Colburn You are correct.
Arielle Nissenblatt Was I spot on?
Steph Colburn Well, no. So I. I do have a black belt in taekwondo, but I have never gone to. I've never made someone go to the hospital. I have punched a gentleman in the throat. For being ungentlemanly. There you go. Thank you for having me. This was so fun.
Arielle Nissenblatt Thank you for being a great guest. If you've enjoyed listening to Steph's insights, you will find her sitting in the host chair on next week's episode, where she will get the chance to interview another influencer. Steph, can you let our listeners know where they can find you in the meantime? Let us know any social handles, websites, or any shoutouts you'd like to give.
Steph Colburn Yes, you can find me by emailing me at Steph@editaud.io. You can find editaudio on every social platform at just @editaudio. Sometimes it's @editaud_io and shout out to all my amazing team and to anyone else who's working to make this industry a little bit better for us. I think you're cool.
Arielle Nissenblatt Thank you, Steph and thanks to the podcast 360 team for having me there.
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Podcast 360.
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