Cee Cee Huffman: yes.

Jason Gillikin: How’s it going, man?

Javier Leiva: Oh, it’s going great. Jason and Cee Cee. I’m just glad to be taking a break from work to jump on another video chat call.

Cee Cee Huffman: Right.

Jason Gillikin: Sorry, Javier. But it’s great to see you. So, tell the audience really quick. Before we get to our topic, which is 10 things they don’t teach you in podcasting school, tell our audience really quick, how things are going with your podcasts.

Javier Leiva: Oh, it’s going. It’s nuts. You know, I started a new podcast last year called Criminal Conduct and it’s a serialized podcast and that actually had the unfortunate timing of premiering in March of 2020 when nobody cared anything about podcasting and everybody’s life was upside down. Despite all that I felt like season one was pretty successful.

Now, March 2021, we are doing it again. And hopefully things will be a little bit different this time. And so, we’re doing season two of Criminal Conduct and it’s a whole different case.  Just a different feel altogether, learning from the mistakes that we made last time. And I’m still doing Pretend which is my original podcast, which is more of a serialized, more episodic podcast about con artists and people pretending to be other people. Deception.

Jason Gillikin: Yup.  Awesome, and you just put out an episode on, how to pass a lie detector test. Is that right?

Cee Cee Huffman: Love that.

Javier Leiva: Yeah. I want to teach everyone how to beat the polygraph. 

Jason Gillikin: Okay. And before that you had an episode as a follow up to the word of faith fellowship church, which is, you know, I’ll call it a cult. I don’t know that you want to call it a cult, but I’ll call it a cult in Western North Carolina. I mean, just fascinating. You’ve done probably like 20 episodes on them now and just amazing content there.

Javier Leiva: Hey, it’s nuts because it was one of my first episodes when I started Pretend. It was actually the first episode, and I decided, you know, in season three to circle back and do a whole season on it. So, I did 11 episodes plus a 12th episode that never aired because I chose not to air it. It was the finale.

 You know, it’s been a couple years since I’ve talked to anybody from the church. Actually, I’ve been talking with people, keeping up with them, but I haven’t told anybody what was going on and people have been asking. So, I did a follow-up episode and I felt like I had to cover a lot of ground there, but it was definitely interesting.

Jason Gillikin: anybody who’s listening, go check that out. Pretend podcast, amazing stuff. All right. So, this episode, like I mentioned, is called the 10 things they don’t teach you in podcasting school. And you know, none of us went to podcasting school, so it was kind of tongue in cheek, but still, I probably now Cee Cee would know better than we do.

Cee Cee Huffman: Yeah. I learned a lot about audio. I had some practice with podcasts, but definitely don’t use anything that I really learned there and learned a lot more afterwards.

Jason Gillikin: Oh, that’s good.

Javier Leiva: I went to school in the early 2000’s, you know, to college and I remember, you I was part of journalism. That’s what, that was my and you had to pi ck, you’re going to be broadcast or you’re going to be print, radio? And I remember looking at the people who chose radio and I’m thinking. What is wrong with them? That is a dying medium, you know, nobody what are you doing radio for? That’s crazy. And then look at us now.

Cee Cee Huffman: Yep. That’s quite literally exactly what happened to me. And that was just last year.

Jason Gillikin: Just totally rebranded radio.

Javier Leiva: Yeah. But this was before podcasting, so I had no idea. 

Jason Gillikin: Yep. All right. So, 10 things, they don’t teach you in podcasting school and Javier, you are the guests. So, what’s the number one thing they don’t teach you in podcasting school?

Javier Leiva: Probably the number one thing is that I didn’t realize that I would become this expert at making fancy book reports. You know, that’s what I feel like that’s what every episode feels like. It takes me, sometimes it takes me a year, you know, like that word of faith episode, that follow-up, took me a year. I started it in March of 2020, and I aired it in March of 2021, but most of my episodes take six months of research and I’m putting all this stuff together, structuring the five-paragraph paper. I mean, it’s just like being in school except I’m doing it for very little money and it’s sucking up all my free time.

Jason Gillikin: yeah, if you’re doing it in a year, the semester is over twice.  You are late on turning in that paper.

Javier Leiva: It takes a while for things to cook and bubble up to the surface.

Jason Gillikin: Yeah. I mean, you joke about doing fancy book reports, but one thing that I’ve been thinking about is, when you’re doing an episode, if it’s a 30-minute episode, it is about 6,000 words and a 200-page book is about 60,000 words. 

Javier Leiva: That’s interesting. I never thought about it that way.

Jason Gillikin: That means when you have 10 episodes, and you got way more than 10 episodes of word of faith fellowship church. When you have 10 episodes, you’ve got a 200-page book. If you want to transcribe it

Cee Cee Huffman: Right. So, I’m waiting for the book series.

Javier Leiva: Yeah. I need to write a book is what I’m learning from this.

Jason Gillikin: You really could.  That is your next project because you have so much time that, that that is your next project. All right.

Javier Leiva: Hold on. I got descript pulled up. I just want to test your theory. Let’s see. So that word of faith episode was on, 18,378-word words. And how many words did you say?

Jason Gillikin: I said a 30-minute episode was about 6,000 and yours was like a 70-minute episode.

Javier Leiva: Yeah. Yeah, this was a long one. 

Cee Cee Huffman: Yeah, that’s a thick book right there.

 Jason Gillikin: All right.  So, get what that reporter, from Western North Carolina that you were talking to, the one that is totally in the pocket of the word of faith fellowship church, and see if, she’ll see if she’ll collaborate on the book

Javier Leiva: Co-write a book or something.

Jason Gillikin: Yeah, that’s right. Awesome. All right. Well, Cee Cee what’s number two, give us another one here.

Cee Cee Huffman: I think number two, for me, one of my biggest ones is sometimes you will forget to record an episode or you will just lose it completely. And that is something that is really difficult to deal with at first, because you feel like, well, I just did all of this work for nothing, or like you can really beat yourself up over it, but it’s a mistake that I think everybody makes at least once. And then after you make it the first time, you’re definitely a lot less likely to make it again, but it does happen and it sucks.

Jason Gillikin: All right. So, has that happened to you?

Cee Cee Huffman: Yes, it has, it definitely has. It’s definitely been one of those things where I went to go get an episode. For some reason, the download wasn’t there, searched everywhere, asked you, neither of us had it. And we were like, Oh, I guess we’re not going to put out an episode this week because we just don’t know where it is.

Javier Leiva: I remember this one time I made this old lady cry. It was like, it was the most emotional, I, you know, to make somebody cry, that’s such a, you know, intimate thing. And we had this hour-long conversation. And then after the interview I had checked the tape and I had totally forgot to record.

And I wrote her back and I said, Hey, I’m so sorry. Thank you for sharing that and pouring your heart out. But none of that recorded and she was nice enough to do it again the next night, but it wasn’t as emotional. It was a little, yeah. So.

Jason Gillikin:  That’s so nice that she was able to do it again or was willing to do it again.  But yeah, Cee Cee, when you told me about, you know, missing a recording, you know, just throw my hands up in the air because I we’ve done about 500 episodes or so. And like that stuff is going to happen.

And luckily it was for our own podcast and not one of our client’s podcasts. Right. So, who was it with? It was with the guy from Audrey. So, the guy from audrey.io, nice enough to give us his time and then, sorry, man. But oh well it happens.

All right. It looks like it’s my turn here. All right. I’m going to give a positive one. So

Cee Cee Huffman: I love that.

Jason Gillikin: Podcasting is amazing for your mental health. And here’s what I mean by that. So, you know, we all are busy people and we’re recording this 2:30 on a Wednesday.

There’s probably not a busier time in the week than 2:30 on a Wednesday. Javier has got a full-time job at Red Hat; he’s working two podcasts. He’s got a family he’s really busy. Cc’s is doing a million things for a million different podcasts. All of us could have canceled this. And yet, after this, we’re all going to be energized. After this, we’re all going to be like, Oh, that was cool. That was a lot of fun to do this podcast episode. And that’s what happens on these interviews is when you’re podcasting and you’re talking to somebody and you’re hearing their story or you’re getting educated by them.

All of a sudden, you’re like, Oh, that that filled my bucket. You know, this is something that’s. Different than the everyday meeting that I have.  And you know, we all love our jobs, but at the same time, it’s different. And, and you can value that difference, in doing a podcast like this, Javier, have you seen that as well?

Javier Leiva: Yeah. I’ve seen that too. That I’m always energized by the process, you know, because I always tell people that it’s, it’s a lot of work, but it’s slightly funnier, right? Just a little bit more fun. It’s not liked a lot more fun. It’s just enough that it keeps a masochist like us going and it does fill the bucket otherwise why would we do this for so many years? I’ve been doing it for four years now. Yeah. It’s like, I, I’ve given up on the hope of making it big, you know, like I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. So that used to motivate me at the beginning. Now it’s just. I don’t know, it’s fun. And I actually don’t even remember what I used to do on my free time. Like honestly, I have no idea what I used to do.

Jason Gillikin: So, is that, is that your why then? Like is your why because it’s fun or is it the creative process?

Javier Leiva: well, actually, if you don’t mind, that’ll lead me to one that I’m just going to improvise and add. I didn’t realize. So, this weekend I was watching Murder amongst Mormon or something on Netflix. It’s a documentary series. It was really good. And I mean, I was watching it and afterwards I was like, I’m going to email the executive producer.

And I just emailed the executive producer. He got back to me within an hour, and this is what I love about podcasts that they didn’t teach me in podcasting school is that if you’re curious about something, you have a platform, you can just ask, most people go about their days and they’re just curious about, and they have questions about stuff and they do nothing with that.

I contact people. And a lot of times they say yes, I mean, I get more yeses that I get nos. And that’s what I’ve learned is that if you ask, like this whole world opens up for you,

Jason Gillikin: that’s so true. And that’s all about networking too.  When you have a podcast, you can reach out to people and you have a reason to reach out to people and to say, Hey, do you want to come on my podcast? 

Javier Leiva: If you don’t have a podcast, you’re just kind of weird, you know, like, why are you contacting me?

Jason Gillikin: I don’t know about that, but there’s no reason behind it other than I’ve got a question for you, or I would love to have a phone call with you, you know, to pick your brain about something and it’s, like, I don’t know. I don’t know that I have time

Cee Cee Huffman: so much more purposeful whenever you have like a podcast to talk about it on. And especially as somebody who, you know, just graduated from college and graduated from college in a pandemic, like I was thinking, how am I going to network or meet people like when I’m just going to be at home for my first year, like actually working as an “adult”.   But like you, I’ve met so many people through this, like in even just silly stuff, like my LinkedIn connections, it’s like doubled in the last year. And I met so many people who are like really helpful and who like have said, if you ever have a question about this, like tell me, or like reach out to me. And that’s something that’s great, those connections that you can build.

Jason Gillikin: Yeah, and even if they’re clients and they’re paying and like, they want to be helpful to you in your career. They want to be helpful to you in your side hustle at it Looks Attached, right? Like they, they want to be helpful overall.

Cee Cee Huffman: Right. Or even like your friends, like we do a podcast called Quacks and Hypochondriacs it’s for the   CEO of Betr Health, which is a health company. and one of the people that we work with went to the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I found that out last week. That same night I was on Facebook, and I see that my friend from like elementary school is posting about how she’s going to go to the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. And I’m like, well, I know somebody who went there, let me send an email. And now I’ve helped this girl out, who I haven’t spoken to in 10 years with this person that I just met like two months ago, which is crazy.

Jason Gillikin: All right. I think we’ve done four so far. Cee Cee your turn. What’s the fifth thing they don’t teach you in podcasts in school?

Cee Cee Huffman: Okay. I’ve I really liked this one. And especially as an audio journalist, too, this is really terrible. Sometimes listening to your own voice sucks, and it’s just like really bad and you have to listen to it for hours at a time sometimes to make sure that the editing is right and the sound is good. But you’ll hear yourself talk and be like, I can’t believe I have friends. Like, why does anybody want to hear me? But it, I mean, it’s something that they definitely don’t warn you about.

Javier Leiva: I’ve heard that the scientific reason for it is that because you’re, when you listen to yourself and you’re hearing like the bones in your skull and your flesh and makes it sound different to you. But then when you hear it played back, it’s like, Whoa, that’s not what I hear. And so that’s one thing, but for me, I get bad reviews saying that I sound like a Valley girl or, well, what do they call that? Girls have to have like the, you know, they stretch words out or whatever. I get a lot of that. And also, I, Oh, I say like a lot, I’m trying to catch myself in real time and I don’t even notice it. It’s so funny. I can notice if you say like, but I can’t notice if I say like, which drives me nuts.

And then I say, you know, you know, after everything and I’m trying to edit myself live because it would, it, it would actually save me time and in post-production.

Jason Gillikin: But why? That’s conversational and your podcast, isn’t about being perfect in these interviews.

Javier Leiva: But now it’s in my head. It’s like, now I hear it. And I just want to make it better, you know, do you know, you know, you can see.

Jason Gillikin: I get it. And Cee Cee, you mentioned you don’t like hearing your voice and yet you’re like the voiceover star for three of our podcasts or something like that.

Cee Cee Huffman: Right, I mean, that’s something that’s important to remember too, just because you don’t like hearing it doesn’t mean that other people don’t like hearing it, like we’ve put, you know, people have picked my voice before, and that feels great. Like, oh my gosh, thinking you like me? That’s so nice.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that like it that much, but you have to get out of it of your own head too, and realize like, this is the voice that you have and that people hear, and you should just kind of get over it because it’s more about the content that you have in your voice. Most of the time.

Jason Gillikin: Yeah. And Javier, maybe at the end of this, you can read some of the funnier reviews of your podcast.

Javier Leiva: Yeah. Well, and that’s funny because I was just thinking about it. I only focus on the bad ones, but I have equal if not more compliments about my voice, but I only think and fixate about like, Like the vocal fry and a Valley girl comments. Those are the ones that they stab you in the gut. But yeah, we can read some fun ones. I have some fun ones.

Jason Gillikin: For you. That’s why podcasting is not good for your mental health, because of all the reviews.

Javier Leiva: Yeah, well, a good trick. Actually, this is another rule they don’t teach you in podcasting school is don’t read your reviews. It is not healthy. Because these people, they pay nothing to listen to your podcast. They’re not forced to listen to your podcasts, yet they feel compelled to give you a one-star for something stupid, like saying like, you know what I mean? They’ll just slaughter you in public for no reason, and then they just move on. And so don’t read reviews. If you’re a podcaster.

Jason Gillikin: Yep, that’s good advice. All right, I think it’s my turn. And I’m going to go with, you will have to lie about failing to record because the interview was no good. I’ve had this happen a few times where I just had to say to the host, like, listen, just blame me. I don’t want to use that interview.

You don’t want to use that interview. Just blame me and say that I forgot to record it. We had one which was a, you know, kind of a mini celebrity guest, but this person. Had like a smoke alarm going off and it was just totally unengaged, disengaged with everything. And it just wasn’t a good interview by any means and would have been embarrassing to share it.

And so, we just had to be like, sorry, we can’t do it.  The stupid producer he forgot to press record.

Cee Cee Huffman: That’s like, whenever you don’t want to go to your friend’s house and you say, Oh, my mom said, no.

Javier Leiva: I’ve never had to do this actually. That’s brilliant.

Jason Gillikin: Really?

Javier Leiva:  I never even thought about it. Yeah.

Jason Gillikin: Yeah. Well, so, okay. Well, you, you spend a lot of time with your guests for these shows and you probably do it over, you know, two, three, four or five calls, right, and recordings. I can imagine, like, you’ve already vetted all these, guests.

Javier Leiva: I think I know the difference now. There’s a difference between the podcast that you guys do because you’re doing podcasts for other businesses or, you know, that are not crime. Most people don’t want to be on my show. So, if I don’t even use it, they don’t care. You know what I mean? It’s like, I have to.

I have the opposite problem. So, this is how I start a conversation. So yesterday I just called somebody out of the blue and I had a whole conversation. They had no idea that it was an interview. At the end of the call I say, hey, by the way, do you mind if I use this in my reporting and I’m recording this call, and they’re like, they have that oh crap moment.

And then they say yes, I got it on tape, and we move on. But most of the time I’m kind of trying to fool them into an interview.

Jason Gillikin: So, what’s the rule then for you? Like, are you allowed to record them and then you just can’t use it unless there’s permission or what’s…?

Javier Leiva: It depends on the state. So, if I know the person is in Kentucky, that’s where most of my reporting is happening for season two of Criminal Conduct. That’s a one-party state. So, what that means is as long as one person in that conversation knows that it’s being recorded, that person being me, it’s fine. I could use it. So really at that point, I’m just telling them as a courtesy. I mean, you always run legal risks, right? I mean, people could sue you for anything. I mean, the most proper way of doing it would be sending a PDF with a release form, have them sign it and stuff like that. But that never happens.

I mean, come on. You’re lucky if they pick up the phone, so yeah. But in a two-party state I’m screwed, I can’t do that. Yeah. So, I think, I don’t know, probably California, Florida, or something like that. Yeah, they would have to know and agree.

Jason Gillikin: So, what about North Carolina then? It was because you’re North Carolina. So, because you know, and you’re calling from North Carolina. Does that mean?

Javier Leiva: I don’t know exactly how it works, but like I’m thinking if Kentucky is a one-party state and North Carolina is a one-party state…

Cee Cee Huffman: You’re good.

Jason Gillikin: Yeah, Cee Cee it sounds like you know the rules here.

Cee Cee Huffman: They make you take media law at UNC. And so, because I did report and audio reporting, I learned a lot about that.

Jason Gillikin: Good to know, in case we ever get into true crime.

Cee Cee Huffman: Right? Or you ever just need a comment from somebody? Hey, thank you so much, by the way, I’m going to use this, bye!

Jason Gillikin: Javier, we should get into true crime. I connected with somebody recently that runs a Spanish podcasting studio, and we need to turn all your Pretend podcasts into Spanish.

Javier Leiva: Oh my God, do it. Go for it. I get requests for this all the time, man. I just don’t have the bandwidth or, and my Spanish, even though I could speak fluently it’s not at the same level as my English. You know, even though it was my first language and I didn’t learn English until five or six now it’s kind of flipped. So yeah, I would love that.

Jason Gillikin: Oh, that’d be amazing. All right. We’re into true crime now. All right, Javier your turn? What’s number seven, the seventh thing they don’t teach you in podcasting school.

Javier Leiva:  I want to say, you’re going to say some dumb shit, you know? Yeah, because you’re thinking on the fly and right now, I actually have a YouTube channel too, and I’m doing a couple of live shows and I’ve caught myself, this for my new episode on Pretend about the lie detector. I said, what is the ethicacy of blah, blah, blah.

And the guy’s like, that’s not a word I’m like, yeah, but I’m just, I’m on the fly dude. You know what I mean? I mean the ethics of two different words, but you say something stupid shit sometimes because you’re trying to listen. Cause that’s the most important role of podcasting is that you have to be a better listener than you do a speaker, you know, so you have to listen, but at the same time, you want to keep the conversation going.

You have to have your next question queued up because you don’t want to be like, okay, hold on.  Let me look at my notes, and that kills momentum. So, it takes a dual bandwidth for you to be a podcaster. You have to always be listening and you always have to be one step ahead too. It’s just,

Jason Gillikin: Yeah, I feel like I black out when I’m doing podcast recordings, because I don’t quite remember what I said and everything. Yeah, except I’m like, did I screw that one part up? And I feel like I said some dumb shit there, I was doing a podcast, on diversity equity and inclusion yesterday.

And I’m like in my head now, like, did I say the wrong thing on, you know, like just the whole say this, not that type of situation. Am I saying the wrong thing?  Did the message come across the wrong way? And like, it’s just inevitable that you’re going to say some, some stupid things. You’re

Javier Leiva: Are you referring to the fear of being canceled?

Jason Gillikin: I don’t worry about that. It’s just like, that’s not exactly what I meant to say. Like I know I should’ve used a different word there, because I know better or I should have expressed it in a different way because I know better, but it’s just so hard to do that in the moment.

Javier Leiva: Yeah, it really is.

Cee Cee Huffman: Just thinking, like, let me just make sure I keep talking and get out kind of what I’m trying to say so that they can kind of get it and then they can take it from me for a second.

Jason Gillikin: Yeah. Yeah. Or you’ve got like a great story that you wanted to tell. And then that story that you’ve told a million times just falls flat. Like what is going on here? I know how to tell this story. So yeah, that’s a great one. Javier, you are going to say some dumb shit when you’re doing podcasting.

Javier Leiva: And unlike you, I am afraid every time I drop an episode that I’m going to get canceled for some reason, because I, you know, I always feel like I’m going to upset somebody, you know, either I said this thing, one way, and that’s not the socially acceptable way of saying it. And I just didn’t know, you know, cause I there’s so many rules out there and I can’t be an expert at everything. And so yeah.

Jason Gillikin: Yeah, but it’s your own podcast though? Like, who’s going to cancel your podcast.

Javier Leiva: Well, and then the future-proofing too, because remember back in the nineties, Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Corolla had the girls on trampoline and the man show, and we all watched that and we thought it was funny. And then all of a sudden, now we think back on it and we’re like, Why the hell do we watch that?

Why was that even made? That is so wrong, but you know, what you create today? Will it stand the test of time for tomorrow? You know? And I think about that all the time. I want to be respectful. I want to be, you know, but not have so many restraints on myself when I, when I say things.

Cee Cee Huffman: It’s a difficult line to tow for sure.

Jason Gillikin: It really is. So, I’m curious to see, how do you look at that stuff that came out 20, 25 years ago? You know, when you were just born basically like the, the Jimmy Kimmel, Adam Corolla, like, are you familiar with this at all? 

Javier Leiva: I apologize for our generation.

Jason Gillikin: Yeah. It really like, I mean, you look at that. There there’s just so many shows out there…

Cee Cee Huffman: There are things 10 years ago that, or five years ago even, that people used to say that aren’t okay to say or do that aren’t necessarily okay to do.  and I think that it’s a really great point to start thinking about that now, because I think that now that we’ve realized that that can happen, it’s something where we can definitely think, well, maybe I could just be more respectful here, but that wasn’t necessarily what. Was on the forefront of everyone else’s mind in the past.

Jason Gillikin: Okay, but how do you look at that? Like, you know, from your own personal views, do you look at that as like, okay, these, these guys were morons, back then and like, they could be different people now, or like, I, I just totally disrespect them because of what they did 20 years ago.

Cee Cee Huffman: Oh, definitely. I’m fully against cancel culture. Like I think that canceling somebody doesn’t incentivize people to improve in any way, shape or form, which just because somebody made a mistake 20 years ago, it doesn’t mean that they’re a bad person today. And it doesn’t mean that they haven’t learned from the mistakes. Like if I got canceled for every mistake that I make, like I would just live in a hole for the rest of my life.

Javier Leiva: But there are some people that you can cancel. 

Cee Cee Huffman: I do agree with that.

Javier Leiva: Like cancel Bill Cosby, cancel Michael Jackson, even though I still listened to thriller on Halloween, but you know, it’s like, I used to love Michael Jackson but not he’s canceled in my book. It’s some people meet a certain threshold.

Cee Cee Huffman: There’s definitely a scale, right? 

Javier Leiva: But then like you can’t just equally cancel everybody, you know?

Cee Cee Huffman: Right. Like Cf somebody commits a crime, like there’s been a lot of stuff. I don’t even know the full story. So don’t ask me coming out about like Chris D’Elia. And so…

Javier Leiva: I don’t even know who that is. 

Jason Gillikin: Oh, comedian.

Cee Cee Huffman: Yeah. And so, it’s like him, you know, it probably should be canceled, Right. You know, maybe at that point it’s probably a step too far, but if somebody makes something or says something like, you know, as long as what they did, didn’t necessarily like physically hurt or harm anyone then like we can, I think we can kind of forgive them.

Javier Leiva: Yeah, I think you’ve got to judge people by who they are today. You know, I think if you asked Jimmy Kimmel if he would produce the girls on trampoline segment or the man show right now, I bet he probably wouldn’t and he would disagree with what he did, but you know, you can’t judge somebody from 20 years ago.

Jason Gillikin: Yeah. Cee Cee I think that’s a great point. You got to give people a chance to improve over the years. All right, I think we’re on number eight, Cee Cee. What do we have?

Cee Cee Huffman: Yes. Now that I’ve given my moral lesson for today, let’s talk about something a little bit funnier as sometimes podcasting is not very glamorous. Like you have a vision of like, you know, an old timey kind of radio booth, or like a really fancy setup with a microphone. I’m sitting at my desk right now because this is a little bit less, lower stakes. But when I do like really, the things that need to be really high quality like intros, because that’s the first thing you hear, outros, things like that. I am recorded on my bed with my comforter on my head and that doesn’t look as great. But it sounds awesome. And so sometimes it’s not as bad, beautiful, or glamorous or as great as it might sound, but it sounds good, which is all that really matters.

Jason Gillikin: Definitely. 

Javier Leiva: I record my closet. Not now, this is my office, but you know, for voiceovers and stuff like that in my closet. And.

Cee Cee Huffman: Right. When you have to be seen it’s a little bit different, but if you don’t have to be seen it’s, I feel like either the closet or a blanket for sure.

Jason Gillikin: yeah, definitely closet, you know, same thing. You know, it just put the mic in the closet and that is amazing for sound because the clothes just muffle everything or, don’t let the sound jump around. Yup. That’s a good one. 

All right. I think it’s my turn here. So, number nine. You probably won’t listen to your own podcast. So, I’ve got so many hosts who say they have never listened to a podcast. So many hosts that I’ve, I’ve talked to say, they’ve never listened to a podcast like, Joe Bunn, who we interviewed. Back, I don’t know, 10 episodes ago or so he’s got over 200 episodes out of his podcast.

Never listened to a single one of those and actually never listened to a single podcast. So, um, you know, you won’t like listening to yourself, and you probably won’t listen. And so, you won’t, unless of course you’re like me and Cee Cee and Javier who are editing our own podcast and then you’re…

Javier Leiva: I don’t consider that listening to your podcast.

Cee Cee Huffman: No, because I don’t hear it Most of the time. I’m listening strictly for quality.

Javier Leiva: Right, and you’re looking at it in chunks too. Cause I never have one on big session where I just listened to it. You know, sometimes I do for QA, I walk around the neighborhood and sometimes I drive to hear how the car, changes the sound of it.

Like, you know, the bass of the card kind of kills certain frequencies, you know, but again, that is not listening. You’re listening for content. You’re listening for technical stuff. To go back into my catalog and listen to a podcast and try to enjoy it. I can’t do that. I just can’t.

Jason Gillikin: And it’s really painful to listen to some of the older ones. You won’t like how you sound and as an editor, you won’t like how you edited things as well. Um, so yeah, you probably won’t listen to your own podcast. All right, Cee Cee, take us home with number 10.

Cee Cee Huffman: Yes. So, you never know when a podcast is going to be a lead for your business or lead for your personal career, or maybe like I said earlier, a lead for somebody else, because they even said, actually we’re looking to hire coaches. So, I would love to talk to this person. Like you, you really never know everything is so connected and it’s just such a great tool to get into conversations with people and then have that lead somewhere else.

Jason Gillikin: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. You look at, we’ve done, like I said, about 500 episodes and it’s one of those things where every single one of those guests is a potential lead for us that might want their own podcast one day. And some of those have turned into clients for us. Right. So, yeah, you’re absolutely right on that one Cee Cee. Now for Javier.

Javier Leiva: Yeah, I can’t relate to that from a business standpoint, but it is true that other, some guests ended up being ricocheting into other guests, you know? So, a lot of people ask me, how do I find my stories? Well, sometimes you know, I did an episode on this blind artist from Mississippi, and it was a story about how she lost her eyesight.

And then she goes, Oh, and by the way, Hey, this awful thing happened to me, you know, 10 years or 20 years ago. And I got to tell you about it. So, I was able to do another story off of that. And one contact leads to another and yeah. Even when you start a story and you think it’s going to go one way, once you start getting deep into it, it starts going sideways in a good way, you know? I like to explore those tangents in my show.

Jason Gillikin: Awesome. All right, so that was the 10 things they don’t teach you in podcasting school. I want to get to some of these reviews here, Javier of your Pretend podcast, but are we missing anything as far as things they don’t teach you in podcasting school? I think we got a good

Cee Cee Huffman: 1Yeah is there a bonus, like the 11th tip?

Javier Leiva: Oh gosh. There has to be like a hundred more.

Cee Cee Huffman: There’s so many.

Jason Gillikin: How about if you’re listening to this and you want to send us the 11th tip, the bonus tip, we’ll put it in the show notes afterwards. So, if you’re listening to this and you’ve got a thing that they don’t teach you in podcasting school, we’d love to hear from you send us an email to podcast@earfluence.com, And we’ll put that in the show notes. 

All right. Without further ado, let’s get to some of these reviews of Javier’s podcasts, because this is one of my, one of my favorite times just watching these. Cause I know it bugs Javier and meanwhile, he was like this amazing podcast or amazing storyteller.

Javier Leiva: them are really positive. Now that I’m looking at it. It’s just like the few that, you know, stand out. I only see one really bad one. That’s the one I was telling you about, which was – quickly deletable, one star, like just another like podcast trying to like save the world from like predators and like con artists. Like, you know what I mean? come on bro. You’re supposed to be a journalist?!?. You talk like a Valley girl and seem shocked every, let’s see, every day facts, by everyday facts that the rest of us have known our whole adult lives. I gave this one chance and listed it and listened to six or seven episodes, but this one’s got to go. Then why did you listen to so many?

Cee Cee Huffman: Why do you listen to so many, if you didn’t like it?

Javier Leiva: I know.

Cee Cee Huffman: I want to point out that this one says Javier is a great storyteller and has a voice that doesn’t get on my nerves.

Javier Leiva: You see? But if it does, I completely ignore it.

Jason Gillikin: Oh, here, here’s one of my favorites, Javier. Three stars. Well-written but might irk some, lots of good details and interviews and the stories, the journalist speaks like he’s talking directly to you, which I like. The problem that bothers me is that he smacks a lot and there’s a vocal fry. He’s a lazy speaker. You can hear the spit in his mouth and his tongue smacking. He’s smacking a lot. I mean like what in the world? Like respect how much…

Javier Leiva: they don’t even realize that I’m aware of this. And I actually go into Audition, which is where I edit it, and they have the spectral frequency thing. And I go with a paint brush and I paint out all the mouth noises. And I thought, I think I caught all of them, but boy, man they, they are so attuned to like these little things.

Jason Gillikin: Yeah. It, you know, you need to invoice all these people that are complaining and be like, Hey, you know what, if you’re going to complain, at least pay for it.

Javier Leiva: Yeah. Actually, I shouldn’t complain. I’m like scrolling through these and most of them are good, but, you

Jason Gillikin: They

Cee Cee Huffman: They are. It’s been really hard. I just found the first three star one that I could find. And this one says something irritates me about many of these types of podcasts. It’s a great concept, but all of these podcasts, some of the productions are so fake. This isn’t even about you. This is about the job as a whole.

Javier Leiva: Sometimes I get reviews that I think are for other shows, you know, I read it and I’m like, what? This doesn’t even make sense. Right.

Jason Gillikin: Anyway, Javier, there’s way more five-star reviews and way more positive.

Javier Leiva: I just don’t look at these, but when I do it just, that one bad one just sticks out. So, this is good. This, you guys made me feel better. This was nice. I thought this was going to be a shaming session, but it actually.

Cee Cee Huffman: Yeah, someone’s here says no one does it like Javier.

Javier Leiva: ah, well that this is good. I should read these more often then.

Jason Gillikin: That you are absolutely right. No one does it like Javier. You are the best Javier. I appreciate you coming on the show today.

Javier Leiva: best. I’m glad we got to hang out again. It’s been a while. So hopefully we should do this in person. It seems like it’s coming soon.

Jason Gillikin: Yeah, 

Javier Leiva: We should have an Earfluence party?

Jason Gillikin: Oh yeah, so Javier, thanks so much for coming on the show.

This has been another episode of the Earfluence podcast. If you’re looking for full-service podcast production, head on over to earfluence.com. For Cee Cee Huffman, I’m Jason Gillikin, and you’ve been listening to the Earfluence Podcast.