369: Lou Bortone - Mastering Podcast Video: Tech-Savvy Approach

Lou Bortone 00:00:00:

I always tell folks, if you can do a video version or an interview or you on camera, I think, you know, your face on camera is your most powerful marketing asset as well as your voice. But, you know, the more you can give them, you, especially in this world of avatars and bots, the better off you're going to be.

Harry Duran 00:00:17:

So. Lou Bortone, host of oh, Shit, I'm Dead. And various other projects I'm sure we'll get into. Thank you so much for joining me on Podcast Junkies.

Lou Bortone 00:00:24:

Thanks, Harry. It's good to see you.

Harry Duran 00:00:26:

Yeah, good to see. Can you recall the first time we ever got connected? We were just chatting about that.

Lou Bortone 00:00:31:

It's one of those, you know, I think a friend of a friend, maybe Liz Scully, maybe Matthew Kimberly.

Harry Duran 00:00:36:

Matthew Kimberly comes to mind.

Lou Bortone 00:00:37:

Great. Because, you know, it's sort of. These folks sort of come in and out of our lives at different times, which I think is awesome. And I saw you recently at podfest.

Harry Duran 00:00:45:

Yes. What's the first podcast conference you attended?

Lou Bortone 00:00:50:

Oh, God. Honestly?

Harry Duran 00:00:52:

Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:00:52:

Podfest podcast.

Harry Duran 00:00:54:

Okay. Yeah. That's a good one.

Lou Bortone 00:00:55:

Yeah. Yep.

Harry Duran 00:00:56:

And then have you been to all the others at this point?

Lou Bortone 00:00:58:

No, honestly. Because to be honest, I was going to podcast things and doing all that because I was a podcast producer and editor. I was, as you are, and I was editing clients podcasts, and I thought, you know, if I'm doing all these podcasts and I know how to do it and I do it quickly, I should really do my own. So I started with a passion project that was called Take the Cannoli. The Godfather podcast.

Harry Duran 00:01:23:

Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:01:23:

I got through what I call a season or 12 episodes of that, and then I was exhausted because they were taking like three or four days each.

Harry Duran 00:01:30:

Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:01:30:

And then this past January, when I knew I was going to PodFest again. And speaking of PodFest, I'm like, I can't go to PodFest without a podcast. So I started it really quickly, and I'd been doing a lot about legacy branding, so I decided to do a podcast called, oh, Shit, I'm Dead. The Legacy Podcast.

Harry Duran 00:01:47:

That's funny. And how many episodes have recorded of that one?

Lou Bortone 00:01:50:

I think I'm up to 14. So.

Harry Duran 00:01:52:

Okay.

Lou Bortone 00:01:53:

Every week since. Pretty much every week since January.

Harry Duran 00:01:56:

Is that interview based?

Lou Bortone 00:01:58:

Yes, yes, they're interviews. So I've been, you know, going back to friends and colleagues and trying to get them to talk about how they want to be remembered when they're gone, you know, we keep it kind of light. We say, you know, what do you want your walk off song to be at your memorial service and things like that. It's been fun just to really, as a way to just reconnect more deeply with folks, a lot of our mutual friends and things like that. So it's been fun.

Harry Duran 00:02:21:

So when you think of a concept like that, you know, obviously people probably think more about that as they get older. You know, we're not thinking about that when we're in our 20s, 30s, even 40s. But what was happening in your life that kind of brought that front of mind for you again?

Lou Bortone 00:02:36:

Wow. Well, I'd been doing some stuff on Ancestry.com okay. I go to Italy pretty much every year, and I finally decided, you know, I'm going to Italy and I'm on vacation doing this and that I have to go back to where my grandparents were born in southern Italy. And just thinking about the legacy and ancestry and stuff like that, I thought, you know, it'd be kind of fun to talk about how people want to be remembered while they're still here, because you can't ask them afterwards.

Harry Duran 00:03:01:

Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:03:02:

And it's gone all over the place. It's been everything from. I've had past life regressionists on, oh, wow. And you know, people telling me, oh, yeah, yeah, you were big in the Roman Empire. I'm like, okay, maybe. But yeah, it's not in a lot of fun directions. And oftentimes we get, you know, like, I get people saying, I've never told anyone this before, but. Which I love.

Harry Duran 00:03:23:

Yeah. And so when you think about the. The people that you bring on, do you have a structure for questions you ask? Are you sometimes surprised by, like, what people are talking about?

Lou Bortone 00:03:32:

I don't. I kind of let it go. And then sometimes it's a surprise. And sometimes those are the best clips, you know, sort of like some. Somebody went to someplace they'd never been before, or they told me that something they'd never told anyone else before.

Harry Duran 00:03:43:

Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:03:44:

So it's fun and it gets people to think. I've also had folks who've had sort of, you know, near death experiences and things like that. And I said, you know, is there anything you do differently now that you've survived three bouts of cancer? And, like, no, not really. Sometimes it's totally different. So they're full of surprises.

Harry Duran 00:04:01:

Yeah. And when you started the first show on the Godfather, like, that was the first podcast you had done your own.

Lou Bortone 00:04:07:

Yes. Yep.

Harry Duran 00:04:08:

Yeah. And what made you want to pick? Obviously, you've got the Italian heritage. Is that the primary reason?

Lou Bortone 00:04:13:

Yeah, I've been kind of obsessed with the Godfather for. And at the time, it was the 50th anniversary. Oh, my God, I feel old. And there were some, a lot of things happening around the Godfather. Paramount did a show called the Offer, which is about the making of the Godfather. And, you know, it was obviously, it was pretty accurate, but I was seeing a lot of like, oh, no, that didn't happen. This didn't happen. So I was going in and finding old interviews and, oh, wow, you know, things like people who had auditioned, like Martin Sheen had auditioned for Michael. So I'd find all this stuff and then basically build an episode. But I was using, you know, clips and B roll and interviews, and they were taking like, you know, two or three days because I, you know, I almost thought like, all right, this is only a, a 12 minute podcast, but it's taken like 20 hours to produce.

Harry Duran 00:04:58:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:04:59:

So I much prefer the interview format that I'm doing now because it's kind of like show up and talk. So, I mean, I suppose research and things, but it's a little less heavy lifting than the little mini documentaries were.

Harry Duran 00:05:11:

Yeah, I mean, hats off to folks that do that sort of content because it's like, like you said, it's just. You're just outlining how much work it takes. And I think I started this show in 2014, and then it's been basically driven by the guests that come on the show. I think Maybe in the 11 years I've been doing the show, I maybe did two or three that have been solo, just, you know, bonus episodes. But it's nice to have the guests provide the content for you. And we don't do a lot of heavy lifting on the edits as well, because I think thankfully with shows like Joe Rogan, people are used to now just three hour conversations and people know when to pause a show. And I think in the past people would be worried about, like, my show is too long or I'm providing too much. And I think, like, podcast listeners have matured in terms of, like, understanding how to consume shows and how to use podcast apps. So I think, you know, whatever the show is, I think people will find a place to listen to it, whether it's walking the dog or making dinner. Yeah, you don't have to worry about that too much.

Lou Bortone 00:06:09:

Right. The other reason I initially started my podcast because I was, you know, obviously doing video. I do video for folks and video marketing. And I'd seen the statistic, and this was a little While back that YouTube was really, you know, becoming a Pretty major player in terms of podcasts. So I was taking my clients audio only podcasts and, and turning them into video either with B roll or whatever. And just going into Descript and like between having Descript, which changed the way I edit, and YouTube, which gave us a new audience, I said, this is it. This is, you know, got to do it.

Harry Duran 00:06:41:

Yeah, for sure. So let's rewind the clock back a little bit. How did you get started in video production?

Lou Bortone 00:06:46: I grew up in the TV industry. My dad worked at the NBC affiliate in Boston and I spent many weekend there. So I knew when I went to college that all I wanted to do was be involved in tv. I didn't want to be on camera.

Harry Duran 00:07:00:

Okay.

Lou Bortone 00:07:00:

I kind of got into the marketing and promotion side of things and branding. So I was never on camera, I was never doing production. I was always on the marketing side. So I worked in radio and tv.

Harry Duran 00:07:10:

Okay.

Lou Bortone 00:07:11:

And cable in Los Angeles and then eventually came back to the Boston area about going 20ish years ago. And I've been doing my own stuff ever since.

Harry Duran 00:07:24:

What was your time in radio like?

Lou Bortone 00:07:25:

It was fun because in radio promotion you do a little bit of everything.

Harry Duran 00:07:30:

Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:07:31:

So you really get a sense of how broadcasting works and how the station works. And when I say you do a little bit of everything as the promotion manager, that also means that if the sponsor of a parade doesn't show up, who happen to be daily pickles, then guess who wears the pickle outfit in the parade.

Harry Duran 00:07:48:

That's funny.

Lou Bortone 00:07:50:

That was my. I think that was my. Either my highest point or my lowest point in radio was marching in the pickle parade. And unfortunately it was, you know, I'd never. It was very top heavy pickle, Captain Pickle. And I was walking behind, you know, a car. So I'm breathing this exhaust the whole time. By the end of the parade, the pickle was going like. So radio's a great training ground because, you know, you'll learn to do a lot of stuff.

Harry Duran 00:08:14:

Yeah. What were the different roles you had there in radio?

Lou Bortone 00:08:18:

I was doing promotion and marketing, which is almost like an arm of sales. So I go on sales calls and basically the salespeople promise something ridiculous and then it's up to me as the promotion department to deliver it. So, yeah, we did a lot of fun stuff. And then when I went to Los Angeles, I moved into TV at E. Entertainment Television.

Harry Duran 00:08:39:

Oh, yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:08:40:

And sometimes the transition from radio to TV can be hard. But my boss had worked at a radio station.

Harry Duran 00:08:45:

Okay.

Lou Bortone 00:08:45:

The guy who hired me. So he knew. He's like, this guy can do anything.

Harry Duran 00:08:48:

Okay.

Lou Bortone 00:08:49:

So, yeah. And that's when I got more into the video and making behind the scenes footage. And back in the day, you know, when we edited on Avid, you needed an editing suite and three people. And now it's kind of like, oh, I can do this in two minutes.

Harry Duran 00:09:02:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what was the biggest change for you when you moved from radio to tv?

Lou Bortone 00:09:08:

I think it was honestly more about moving from Boston to Los Angeles because I was just this goofy kid with an accent and it's like one of those movies. My boss was like a real LA guy, pulled me in, he's like, here's a thousand bucks. Go to this store, get three suits and get a haircut and don't wear those shoes anymore.

Harry Duran 00:09:26:

That's hilarious.

Lou Bortone 00:09:27:

So it was almost more of a cultural shift, but really the transition from radio to TV from a business standpoint was really easy because I was doing a lot of the things and then it's like, okay, just add pictures. Yeah.

Harry Duran 00:09:39:

So, and what were your editing projects early on? On the video side, we did something.

Lou Bortone 00:09:43:

That I think we were one of the first companies to do this. When I was at E, we did pre theater commercials and interviews. Now it's like, you know, 20 minutes of crap before the movies. But back in the day, you know, we'd just go and say, okay, there's a movie coming out with Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, so we go interview them, which is really exciting.

Harry Duran 00:10:02:

Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:10:03:

And then we'd edit the interviews together and that would become sort of a two minute package that they'd played before the movie started and that, you know, nowadays, like, obviously I don't go to the movies that often, but I know that there's like 25 minutes of crap before the movies. Like just show the movie.

Harry Duran 00:10:21:

Do you have any good stories from interviewing someone that sort of caught you off guard?

Lou Bortone 00:10:25:

Yes, again. And it goes back to the Godfather. There was a movie, and this is going way back, I'm showing my age here, called Honeymoon in Vegas.

Harry Duran 00:10:32:

Oh, yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:10:33:

Nicholas Cage and James.

Harry Duran 00:10:34:

A great movie.

Lou Bortone 00:10:35:

Yeah. So I had to interview, not me personally, but I had to help with the production of the interview of James Caan. And I had to write what they were going to say, which is really like, oh, my God, I'm writing for Sonny on the Godfather. So he's like, you know, James Kahn's like, what is this crap? I'm not reading this. And so they bring it back to me. They're like, he doesn't like it. Can you rewrite it? And I changed like two things and I then I just said tell him that, you know, just, just read the damn thing. So he did. And they're like, oh my God, I just stood up to Sonny Corleone, you know, so. But you know, really fun, you know, good guys. They're just there to sort of promote their movie and do their thing. We had a few other things. I remember we interviewed William Shatner once, the Naked Gun thing. And some of them were a little bit more ego than others. But oftentimes it's just like, oh my God, I've got to do like 15 of these things. Let's just get it done.

Harry Duran 00:11:24:

Of course, yeah, they're in that mode. And it's probably like the artists that make the rounds on the radio stations and they just kind of show up and keep repeating. They just y can repeating the same like you said 15, 20 times and just in like rote mode.

Lou Bortone 00:11:38:

So you'd have to watch the movie before it came out or read the script and say, okay, what can we ask him? What can we pull this? What can we pull that? It's like, oh man, if I had chat GPT back then, I would have been a monster. But.

Harry Duran 00:11:49:

So when did you start moving into get doing your own production work?

Lou Bortone 00:11:52:

We had when I was living in Los Angeles, I was working at a company called Fox Family Worldwide. We own Fox Kids and the Family Network, Family channel, things like that. And my division was being sold to Disney and that just seemed like good timing. Like, I don't know if I want to work for Disney. I had twins who were 2 years old and we said, you know, let's go back east, let's go back home to where the family is in Boston area. And when I came back, honestly, I sort of had a certain amount of hubris. Like I'm from Los Angeles, I can get at whatever job I want in Boston. And as it turns out, I ended up being a promotion manager at a radio station. And I'm like, wait a minute, this is what I was doing 20 years ago.

Harry Duran 00:12:28:

Back to radio.

Lou Bortone 00:12:29:

So after that I, you know, I kind of helped the radio station get back on track and I said, I'll.

Harry Duran 00:12:33:

Give you a year.

Lou Bortone 00:12:34:

And after that I just said, I don't want to do the same thing I was doing 20 years ago.

Harry Duran 00:12:37:

Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:12:38:

So I just started doing with non profits like shooting and editing video. And then I really got back into marketing, which is what I was doing anyway. So I don't even you know, shoot any video now. I do some editing and some things like that, but it's really more about the strategy. And podcasting is sort of obviously one marketing vehicle that a lot of my clients use.

Harry Duran 00:12:58:

So in the early days when you started the agency, what type of projects were you working on?

Lou Bortone 00:13:02:

A couple of non profits.

Harry Duran 00:13:04:

Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:13:04:

Which was very rewarding just because, you know, we're just helping people that were in that community. I live in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. So one was against sexual violence, another one was for college in the area. So those were kind of interesting because, you know, they had really tight budgets and we had to be really efficient and try to just kind of focus on what we needed to do. And the other thing that was changing at the time is, you know, my partner, who was the videographer, had a $15,000 camera. And this was about the time that the flip camera and iPhone started to come out. And we all just, you know, got rid of all the expensive equipment and started to shoot on flip cameras like that.

Harry Duran 00:13:42:

Yeah. And what is it about shooting for? Not for profits, because you're working with, you know, sometimes nowadays you think about podcasts. A lot of it is entertainment. You know, a lot of it is like, not exactly like the deepest conversations, but it's important to the creator and it's helpful. But was there something about working with not for profits, where you're dealing with people who are going through it life wise and there's really, like, tough topics to cover and wonder if that's.

Lou Bortone 00:14:08:

Yeah, some of that was. And sometimes if folks were a little antsy about being off camera, one of the things we'd do is on the old cameras, there was a red light called a tally light, which meant the camera was on and which is shut off. You can manually shut off the tally light and. And they'll say, let's just have a conversation before we start the cameras and blah, blah, blah. But the cameras are rolling the whole time.

Harry Duran 00:14:27:

Yeah, yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:14:27:

And oftentimes if they didn't know the camera was on, the conversation would be a lot more comfortable or engaging than if they're like, oh, my God, deer in the headlights.

Harry Duran 00:14:36:

Yeah, yeah. It's always the same. And it's funny how sometimes you get good clips from guests, even on a podcast interview, when you've, quote, unquote, like you've turned the record button off or something like that.

Lou Bortone 00:14:46:

Yeah, yeah.

Harry Duran 00:14:47:

You know, just. And sometimes I used to get into the habit of just letting things keep recording because sometimes you never know when you'd get a good sound. Bite.

Lou Bortone 00:14:54:

Yeah. So we do a lot of interviews and things like that. And it was oftentimes and this is less the case now, but, you know, the more you shoot and the more footage you have, the better the end product's going to be because then you have more to work from and more to edit from. And nowadays it's kind of like, you know, if I can't get this right in two takes, I'm not. Not doing.

Harry Duran 00:15:13:

Where did you hone your craft in terms of like, video? Like, who did you learn from? Or is there like a mentor that. That helped you along the way?

Lou Bortone 00:15:19:

I mean, a lot of marketing mentors once I moved online. But back in the day, it was really more just following the producers who had been there for a while and kind of knew what they were doing. And honestly, you know, there's just sitting in the room, sitting in the edit bay or sitting you and keeping your mouth shut looks, you know, amazing. So just like, the more you listen and that's the other thing, you have to come in with sort of a beginner's mind and say, there's a lot I don't know. So I'm just going to shut up and listen until I figure it out.

Harry Duran 00:15:46:

Yeah. It's so interesting, like the power of a good edit because, you know, I'm a big movie buff and a lot of times you've got the person directing it and the camera videographer, which gives you like, you know, the visual representation of the movie. But a lot of it comes down to, like, editing.

Lou Bortone 00:16:01:

Yeah.

Harry Duran 00:16:01:

And you know, and obviously a lot of the bigger name directors will be sitting in the editing booth as it's happening. But, you know, is that kind of where you cut your teeth and kind of learned how to. You could give two people the same footage and you could end up with completely different products.

Lou Bortone 00:16:15:

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I went to. When I was back in la, I went to the Motion Picture Museum because they had a Godfather exhibit. And you could see the editing machine that they actually edited on that was in this big glass case and it was huge. And I'm like, oh, my God, how do they even, you know, deal with this physical tape? But, yeah, I mean, it's just. And part of it's just, you know, obsessing about Mario Scorsese films and watching them 20 times and seeing a certain scene in Goodfellas, and I'm like, oh, I see what he's doing with the camera in there. The foreground is the same, but the background is moving in to make it Feel like the world's closing in on you. So all these little sort of directing techniques that you pick up after a while.

Harry Duran 00:16:54:

Yeah, it's interesting you watched that with a closer eye. I don't know if you've recently seen this new show on Netflix called Adolescence.

Lou Bortone 00:17:01:

No, but I've heard a lot about it. I gotta definitely check it out.

Harry Duran 00:17:04:

It's only four episodes and they're very emotional, incredibly well acted. Every episode is a single camera shot.

Lou Bortone 00:17:11:

Oh my gosh.

Harry Duran 00:17:13:

And it's 45 minutes to an hour. And it's like really? I mean, it's not in the beginning. Like you think this is gonna be a gimmick? You know, because I've seen it done before. But they've paired it with like a really good script, incredible actors, really good acting. So it's probably a reason why there's so much buzz around it. But yeah, it's. It's well worth the watch as well.

Lou Bortone 00:17:33:

That's wild. Yeah, I mean, I just learned various things like the tracking shot, like in Goodfellas when they're following Ray Liotta Y y to the Copa Club and all the halls. And then the other night I saw, you know, I think it was a family guy of all things. Like they did the scene shot when Peter was walking through them. So. Yeah, I just love stuff. It's almost like being on a joke that people don't know.

Harry Duran 00:17:56:

Yeah, yeah. It used to be like a one off thing. I think Birdman was single shot. Single kind of shot. And the new Seth Rogen show on Apple tv.

Lou Bortone 00:18:04:

Oh, right.

Harry Duran 00:18:05:

It's about. About the studio. Yeah, yeah. He's. There's several single camera shots in there, so.

Lou Bortone 00:18:10:

Yeah.

Harry Duran 00:18:10:

And that's a send up of the industry. Martin Scorsese makes a cameo in there, so you should watch that if you're a Scorsese fan.

Lou Bortone 00:18:16:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Harry Duran 00:18:18:

So as you started working with clients and you know, you mentioned the technology evolving from like Avid desks required for editing to what we're where we're at now because we use Descript as well. What were some of the changes you had to incorporate into your own agency? Was it just requests from clients or just you just realized that this was a much smarter workflow?

Lou Bortone 00:18:37:

It was, yeah. It just was. So I'd been editing on Final Cut Pro for 20 plus years.

Harry Duran 00:18:42:

Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:18:43:

And when I was seeing some of the stuff I could do with the script, I almost felt guilty. Like, oh my gosh, this. How can I charge for this much for a podcast when it used to take an hour now it takes 15 minutes.

Harry Duran 00:18:54:

Yeah, yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:18:55:

But it's great because then you can do, you know, more and better content. You can slow down and really think about the message and the messaging and, you know, because initially, you know, I'm really a marketing guy at heart that just happens to know how to edit. So. Yeah, so it always comes back to that, really, the marketing and the messaging.

Harry Duran 00:19:12:

And so I think you do some training as well for Descript now on your head. Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:19:15:

Yeah.

Harry Duran 00:19:16:

It's interesting because when I got into video, I dabbled a couple times in Imovie, and that's like. Like not intuitive at all. And I didn't want to get into, like, the bigger programs like Final Cut. I come from, like, more on the audio side. So I was using Ableton, that did some electronic music production, so I was familiar with that. And now I use Hindenburg for the audio side. So I was the founding advisor to SquadCast, Rock and Zach. I met them at podcast movement in 2016, and I saw a lot of promise, and I said, you know, we just got to get the word out. And so they brought me on Advisor, and then obviously, they had a nice acquisition. Descript bought them as well. So that's when I started to become more familiar. And I had been using descript in the past, and I think when they came on the scene, I actually interviewed. I'm not sure about the timing, but I think what happened is that I interviewed Andrew Mason on the show on Podcast Junkies. The founder of Descript.

Lou Bortone 00:20:05:

Yeah.

Harry Duran 00:20:05:

Because his PR team had reached out, you know, as they are when they've got new launches.

Lou Bortone 00:20:11:

Yeah.

Harry Duran 00:20:11:

And I was like, wait, that's the former CEO of Groupon, Like, Andrew Mason. I was like, oh, I know that name. And he came on the show. So he came on Podcast Junkies and we talked because it was a new tool for podcasters, and it was nice. And then, like, six months or a month later, they acquired Lyrebird, I think, which was like, the dubbing tool.

Lou Bortone 00:20:30:

Yeah.

Harry Duran 00:20:30:

Which is now very common nowadays. And I was like, oh, you want to come back on? And then I was able to do that interview with Squadcast.

Lou Bortone 00:20:36:

Oh, cool. Circle moment.

Harry Duran 00:20:39:

So then I introduced him to the team, and then they stayed in contact, and so that ended up great for them, but that's how I started to become more and more familiar. And they haven't really slowed down because we think about, like, just even the studio sound upgrades on audio, it's been a game changer because they've also improved that. Handling Multi camera shots.

Lou Bortone 00:20:59:

Yeah.

Harry Duran 00:21:00:

You know, and just really sequencing them out. And then the clips creation tool is pretty, pretty wild. And the eye correction tool, if you're doing solo video. So, you know, there's so much to learn because they keep adding new features. But now I feel so comfortable like editing video nowadays, you know, because without having had any exposure to any of the earlier tools. But it's just very intuitive and user friendly. Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:21:22:

And I like teaching it because my whole thing is, you know, empowering people to get their message out. Obviously, I think the best video and podcasting, the best ways to do that. And the script just makes it just levels the playing field of people who wouldn't ever think of touching Final Cut Pro. Like, oh, okay, I get it. I can just edit this Word document. And they also realize that, you know, I've salvaged some not so great interviews and videos script because of taking out the ums and ahs and that kind of thing.

Harry Duran 00:21:53:

Yeah, I think you just have to be careful with the automated tools I coach. Like, you know, I let my students know who are moving into descript and the ones that want to do it themselves, because you make that mistake in the beginning and you say filter out all the ums and ahs and it goes through the entire video in a couple, you know, a minute and just, it'll remove them all. But it'll sound very robotic because, yeah, it takes out your breaths as well. And people don't, when they first get into editing, you know, they just see a space and they figure, cut it, cut it, cut it.

Lou Bortone 00:22:17:

Yeah.

Harry Duran 00:22:17:

And people, you know, when you. And when you play it back, you realize, oh, people need to breathe in between, in between words and in between thoughts and their thinking, you know, and sometimes it can affect a lot, like spacing.

Lou Bortone 00:22:27:

And I'm sure, I know you really have to go, you know, when I edit the podcast, I go through the whole thing and don't just do a, you know, a blanket edit because like, for instance, as a video person, I talk about know, like, and trust a lot.

Harry Duran 00:22:38:

Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:22:39:

Takes out all the likes and now it's just like, no blank trust. No, I wanted that.

Harry Duran 00:22:45:

Yeah, that's a good way to put it. And so as you started to work more, what type of kind of demographic is it for people that are looking to get. Do their own video? Like, is it just. Is it podcasters a lot or are you seeing people from other areas?

Lou Bortone 00:22:59:

Podcasters. But you know, really anyone that's in, especially the digital space, Online marketing. Um, you know, I have Everything from horse rescue to real estate to financial planning, you know, which is neat because it's kind of across the board. And a lot of those folks now realize, like, you know, this, I don't have to own a TV network or a radio station to be able to get my message out and do pretty much whatever they're doing.

Harry Duran 00:23:24:

So a lot of the noise nowadays in podcasting is what's happening with YouTube. Right. Ever since they've made their big splash and they've set up the podcast as its own playlists, and that's their signal to Anyone who's on YouTube that if you want to search for a podcast, you know, this is what we're going to serve you up. But it's a mixed bag because obviously there's content in there. And I know James Kridland at Pod News does a great job of reporting on this, but not everything that falls in that category is actually podcasts. People have to be a bit discerning. So how are you thinking about content nowadays, especially in the podcasting space, as it relates to YouTube? Because it's its own beast. I mean, it's, you know, you've got keywords, you've got, you know, YouTube shorts, you know, you've got descriptions. And how do you think about content now that people are thinking about that are coming from the audio space?

Lou Bortone 00:24:11:

Right.

Harry Duran 00:24:12:

They have to sort of rethink their strategy now for video.

Lou Bortone 00:24:16:

Yeah. I mean, I tell folks, like, if you're doing an interview podcast, why not record it on Squadcast or Zoom or wherever, just so that you got a visual. And folks that don't have the visuals. I try to, you know, I mean, the sort of default is like, okay, we'll put up a thumbnail and we'll put the, you know, waveform.

Harry Duran 00:24:33:

Yeah, yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:24:34:

And maybe captions, and that's okay. But I mean, if we have the time and resources, I'd rather go in and find B roll and just find something, you know, some pattern interrupts so that, yeah, they're not just watching a thumbnail. Although, I mean, I would still say that having that is better than not having anything at all. Because if you're now going to YouTube and before you only go into Spotify and itunes or whatever, you've got a huge new audience. And if there's, you know, if the stats, if you believe the stats, they say YouTube is now the number one place to discover podcasts.

Harry Duran 00:25:05:

So, yeah, I think they did a little fudging of the numbers there because I was reading some of the articles on There and they kind of like expand their definition.

Lou Bortone 00:25:14:

Yeah, I mean like podcast. Right. But oftentimes, you know, we'll do the clips from the podcast and script and use those as YouTube shorts and then use the short to promote the longer podcast.

Harry Duran 00:25:26:

Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:25:26:

So it's just a good tool in terms of being able to, you know, meet people where they are. It's like, well, if all of your listeners, slash viewers are on YouTube, then obviously you need to be there.

Harry Duran 00:25:37:

What are you doing now in terms of B roll? Because obviously that's something. If you've had access and you've been a videographer a while, you have access to B roll libraries and stuff like that. But I see some of these tools like Descript and some of these AI tools are providing like easier ways to create at least B roll. So it's one step beyond the thumbnail. And to your point, it is a valid channel because when I first got to YouTube, I just dumped all my stuff, my past episodes there with a thumbnail and two or three of the episodes got thousands of downloads and listened and it was just the thumbnail with the waveform. But that doesn't fly as much now because of people's attention. So.

Lou Bortone 00:26:11:

Yeah.

Harry Duran 00:26:12:

What are some like things that you've done now with B roll related that are helpful for. Especially for like solo casters are still doing it all themselves. Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:26:21:

I have a consultant client who does an audio only podcast and I've been taking either entire episodes or just clips from that episode and then I bring them into a different tool called Pictory.

Harry Duran 00:26:32:

Oh, I've heard of that. Yeah, yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:26:34:

And the nice thing about Pictory is if you put in the audio, it'll select clips and B roll for you.

Harry Duran 00:26:41:

Yeah, yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:26:42:

I find I still have to go back in and you know, say, no, I don't want this clip, I want that clip like she was talking about. She's a female owned business, she supports female owned businesses. And I think there's a bias in the stock footage that's like all these sort of mansplaining and I'd have to go in and say, no, I want a woman here. No, I want to. So you still have to. It's not a cut and paste situation, but it's a hell of a head start in terms of saying like, oh, look at that. I put in my audio. All the imagery is there as well. The images, you know, supposedly match the audio. So. And if not, you can tweak it a little bit. But at least now you've got a full Visual with you know, transitions and almost a little bit more of a video storytelling than just an audio with a waveform.

Harry Duran 00:27:24:

How do you feel about having captions on full videos? I see some people testing that out as well.

Lou Bortone 00:27:29:

Yeah, I do it if the client is posting on LinkedIn. Oh yeah, I find that, you know, and again I don't believe half these stats. Like they say that 80% of people on LinkedIn watch with the sound off. I don't know if that's true.

Harry Duran 00:27:42:

Well, yeah, yeah, well I think a lot of people most so I mean I using myself as an example but on social media I make sure everything is off by default because you never know when you're a public space or like if I watch some stuff sometimes I'll be like scrolling through stuff at night and my partner's like about to fall asleep and like something will blast loud on an Instagram feed. So I just by default now I think yeah, to your point, anything that's clips, we definitely do captions.

Lou Bortone 00:28:06:

Yeah. So I do captions again just like. Well, you know, again I'm trying to, you know, make it as easy for folks to consume the content as possible and if they are watching somewhere where you know, they don't want to disturb anyone, even if the captions on the account for 20% of the folks who are watching it that way it's still worth adding. And again the software like Descript or Pictory makes that a one click fix.

Harry Duran 00:28:28:

So if you've got an hour long interview that's audio only nowadays. How long was that taking you Additional production time wise on Pictory it's a.

Lou Bortone 00:28:36:

Little bit, takes a little bit more time than Descript because again I'm going in and trying to find the footage. But the nice thing about those platforms like Pictory or Descriptors, everything's there. I don't have to jump out to deposit photos, I don't have to go. So I can use those libraries and I'm using you know, sort of the premium versions of those. But again I have access to the music and the libraries and all the different bells and whistles without having to go search for that or without having to go, you know, back in the day that would cost just one piece of audio. Video footage would cost 60 bucks or something.

Harry Duran 00:29:08:

Yeah, yeah. It's interesting what's happening and I wonder if I guess companies like Pictory are making arrangements or partnering with like the deposit photos and the pixels. Yeah. And whoever is to just pull it in because it just makes, that's where people are going for this content.

Lou Bortone 00:29:23:

Yeah.

Harry Duran 00:29:23:

And the more robust their library is, the more people are going to stick there. So it behooves Pictory to build these relationships with people with all these stock video libraries.

Lou Bortone 00:29:32:

Right. And then the only other thing is that I do a lot with AI like Pictory and Descript, obviously, but use nowadays because it's so easy and so common, you can't just settle for the first clip they give you because that's the one everybody's using, you know.

Harry Duran 00:29:45:

Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:29:45:

So it's. It's like the AI voices, like in Notebook lm. It's only. They only have the two AI voices. They're really good. But yeah, you know, you don't have a lot of variety there.

Harry Duran 00:29:55:

Yeah. We've been using Wondercraft for another show. So I have that vertical farming podcast that I do, that second show that I do. But we've also. My partner in that business, he publishes a weekly email newsletter called the AgTech Digest. And so what I did is I took his feed, I mean, I took his summary of the AgTech Digest, just news what happens, all the companies that he mentioned. And then I started playing with the Wondercraft tool and I just dropped that in as a source material. And now I've written an sop. I've trained my team how to do that. So they produce an episode every week.

Lou Bortone 00:30:27:

Oh, cool.

Harry Duran 00:30:28:

And it's basically, it's almost like a. It's a female voice that does the recap of the news, but it's not just reading it, she interprets it. And she. It's almost like she's like giving her perspective on the news, but just using the content that's in the written format.

Lou Bortone 00:30:43:

Yeah.

Harry Duran 00:30:43:

And it takes them about, you know, probably 30 minutes to put it together. And it's like a 15 minute update. But now we can enhance what we do on the newsletter side. We're saying, hey, do you want to listen to this? And so now, without having to find a host, now you can just have another podcast that's being created. And I interviewed Oscar, the CEO of WonderCraft on this show because I'm always looking for opportunities like, hey, you're doing something podcast related. Come on the show. He was a great interview as well. So he told the story of how he met the founders, built that out. So I don't know if he was good at that tool as well.

Lou Bortone 00:31:11:

Yeah. And the, you know, like everything, the AI voices are getting a lot more.

Harry Duran 00:31:16:

Yeah, much better.

Lou Bortone 00:31:17:

A lot more human, really. So.

Harry Duran 00:31:19:

Yeah. And are you using the feature in Descript that allows you to kind of clone your voice. Like people get a lot very nervous about that as well. Yeah, you know what's going on?

Lou Bortone 00:31:27:

That's going to be just like just a few minutes ago, before we came on here, I recorded a video and I realized I recorded the wrong date. So I have my voice into script. I just crossed out the old date, typed in the new date and had my AI voice do it. And it's pretty seamless. It's like anything. I mean, you know, having come from broadcast, jump cuts were a cardinal sin. And that just took me a while to kind of get. It's like get over it, you know, greatest these days.

Harry Duran 00:31:54:

So I think people are more used to that. You see a lot of jump cuts in, in the clips right now because they just want to shorten them as much as possible and get the most important words out. Are tools like Pictoria. I think I tried it a couple of months ago. Do you see that they're making improvements and getting better and improving the AI and improving the UI as well?

Lou Bortone 00:32:10:

Absolutely. And again, where they don't, you know, they pictory. In that case, they use 11 labs voices. So.

Harry Duran 00:32:16:

Okay, yeah, so WonderCraft uses 11 labs as well.

Lou Bortone 00:32:19:

Yeah, yeah. So again, you know, without having to reinvent the wheel, they just say, you know, hey, we'll just do a deal with 11 labs and have to all their voices. But now I'm seeing, you know, things where much younger voices or really specific accents like, okay, is this speaker from India or Pakistan? Because it may sound the same for American, but you know, so these kind of nuances that started to finally come in and, and really get specific.

Harry Duran 00:32:46:

Are you seeing better B roll as well?

Lou Bortone 00:32:49:

Yes and no, because now I can create my own B roll. Okay, so I think I was using, I can't remember. I think it's Luna.com. there's so many apps that it's a little overwhelming, but I'd say, you know, I want a video of Lou Bortone riding scooter in Rome and I get it and it's great.

Harry Duran 00:33:08:

But it's like, wait, is that in Pictoria and Luma?

Lou Bortone 00:33:11:

No, no, that's Luma. Yeah.

Harry Duran 00:33:12:

So is it luma.com?

Lou Bortone 00:33:14:

Yeah, I believe so. Okay, so again, I can create my own B roll. And again, it may take a few tries. Like the first try it's like, you know, that's an 80 year old guy, maybe it's me in 20, 30 years. So I go back and say, you know, make them younger, but it's just. I mean, the stuff you could do now is just mind blowing.

Harry Duran 00:33:32:

How long do those clips? Yeah, Lumalabs. Lumalabs. AI. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so how long do these B roll clips? Like if you say Lou Bourton on a scooter in Rome, does it give you like 3 seconds or 30 seconds?

Lou Bortone 00:33:47:

Yeah, the initial ones are like 5 seconds and now you can get longer. But again, I'm often testing free versions of the software. It's like, okay, if I want a 22nd version, I'm going to have to pay 30 bucks a month or something. But even things like suno.com, which is music by prompt. So I'll say, when I was going to PodFest, I'd say do a rap song about PodFast and make sure you mention these three speakers. So that's the only prompt I gave it. And it spits out this amazing little rap, you know, all audio, which I played at the thing. And people like, oh my God, how did it know my name? So that kind of stuff is fun because I'll use that type of stuff as say, okay, I want a jingle or an intro for my podcast. I'm just going to go to suno.com and make my own original music.

Harry Duran 00:34:33:

It does music with vocals and also it'll do instrumental stuff as well.

Lou Bortone 00:34:38:

Yeah, instrumentals, vocals, any kind of, you know, genre. You can either put in your own lyrics, which once in a while I'll do, or you can let them go for it.

Harry Duran 00:34:50:

So, yeah, that'll be fun one to play around with. It's funny you mentioned that podcast movement. And years ago, Jared asked me if I wanted to rap the announcements. And so he got me on stage and I took old school, like hip hop songs like Rapper's Delight.

Lou Bortone 00:35:04:

Yeah.

Harry Duran 00:35:05:

And I basically reworded the words to kind of like, so they would play the instrumental and I was like rapping about like the events that were going to be happening like the next three days at the conference or something like that. So I had to actually rewrite the words myself. But it was interesting like that to take like familiar songs and rework them, which is going to be so much easier to do now.

Lou Bortone 00:35:22:

Oh, I know. I used to do like little song parodies and I'd take, you know, like a Dean Martin song called like that's Amore and I go to a karaoke thing and then just do that, then extract the vocals and put our new vocals in with the new lyrics. And now it's just nuts.

Harry Duran 00:35:38:

So from workflow Perspective. You go to something like a Luma Labs. You'll take the Luma Labs, you'll kind of find a good couple of clips, a couple of B roll clips that you like, and then you'll import them into Descript. Then.

Lou Bortone 00:35:50:

Yeah, bring them right into Descript. Assuming.

Harry Duran 00:35:53:

Would you import them into Pictory?

Lou Bortone 00:35:55:

It depends on, you know, which Pictory kind of. I feel like it has more control over each scene because you're looking at slides instead of text.

Harry Duran 00:36:03: Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:36:04:

So Pictory gives you a little bit more control. But if it's just something where I say, oh, I just need 5 seconds to cover up something here, then get into descript and add it as a scene.

Harry Duran 00:36:13:

Okay. So then that, that's like your workflow. And then as you start to think about what to post on YouTube, there's so many, like, people that have varying opinions about, like, some people say, don't worry about the title. Some people say the title is the most important thing. Some people say the keywords don't matter. Some people say if the field is there, then it's there for a reason. So they should probably populate it. So, you know, with all the things that keep changing about YouTube and the algorithm and how it's like, you know, the number two search engine, like, how do you think about what else you do once you've posted content on the site for a client?

Lou Bortone 00:36:47:

Yeah, I mean, I try to make sure that we've sort of covered all the bases. Like, okay, we've got a square version with captions for LinkedIn. We've got a YouTube short or maybe three YouTube shorts that when you upload a YouTube short, you can have it point back to a longer episode. So those point the regular episodes. So I want to make sure that they're there because if they're not there, they can't be found, obviously. But I don't know, I mean, it's YouTube. Seems like it changes, like every time you think you've got it figured out, everything changes. So it's a moving target. But I think the best practices, just in terms of marketing is like, you know, meet your folks where they are, make sure that, you know, I always tell folks if you can do a video version or an interview or you on camera, I think, you know, your face on camera is your most powerful marketing asset as well as your voice. But, you know, the more you can give them, you, especially in this world of avatars and bots, the better off you're going to be.

Harry Duran 00:37:41:

Yeah, so much is changing. I try to watch some of the clips of like these YouTube people who teach people how to do YouTube. Like and though there's like a ten step things. And so some of the things that I thought were interesting is one person was suggesting like you actually even the name of the video, when you upload it, you'll see the name of the video sits in YouTube and people like, well, that's a field and that's like, you know, that could be something. Are you okay there? Hopefully they even spill anything. Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:38:08:

Now the. The joys of live. Yeah. And I mean that's the thing. It's like YouTube tells you what's going to work.

Harry Duran 00:38:16:

Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:38:17:

Folks are like trying to figure out, you know, game the algorithm. It's like just go to YouTube, they'll tell you the title is really important. It should be 69 characters.

Harry Duran 00:38:25:

Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:38:25:

Your description is blah, blah, blah, your keywords. And they even say on there, because people like hammering me, oh, SEO this, SEO that. They those actual keywords, they say they don't matter unless you have a name that's hard to spell. Like, okay, give it your last name three different ways.

Harry Duran 00:38:40:

Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense too.

Lou Bortone 00:38:42:

Yeah, yeah.

Harry Duran 00:38:43:

And then the other thing that I've heard is something we're testing out is that you upload the video and you leave it as unlisted for like 24 hours. And apparently the algorithm is like in the background like analyzing the video and then you wait 24 hours and then you publish the video. So if the editing is done by Tuesday, you let it sit for Wednesday as unlisted and then on the Wednesday evening, you then schedule it with publishers on Thursday. So it's hard to see if then that's moved the needle. But with all these things, there's just little incremental things you can do, but you sort of have to do them all.

Lou Bortone 00:39:13:

Right. And you know, YouTube will tell you that the first 48 hours is kind of make or break in terms of if it's going to go anywhere. So we just try to make sure that we're coordinated in terms of our promos and everything's being promoted consistently at the same time. And when an episode released, we have, you know, a checklist or a workflow that we do this on LinkedIn and this on Facebook and this on, on YouTube and you know, create vertical versions so that there's just as much flexibility because now it's so easy to do that.

Harry Duran 00:39:44:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so when you're doing videos or people that are starting with video, I Know, some on the YouTube side, you know, if a lot of these creators are coming in that are starting on YouTube. Right. They think they don't even know about like the podcast world or like RSS fees are just like, I have a YouTube show and it's a podcast. And so it's, you know, other people are having that argument about whether that's true or not, but that's not right. But what they're doing, they understand the video format really well and a lot of them are starting off with clips. Like they'll take a, they'll edit another like 3 minute clip of like something juicy from the podcast interview. Are you doing that as well just to kick off videos as well, to get people.

Lou Bortone 00:40:21:

I mean, we try to, you know, typically, and I don't know, again, you'd probably know a lot more about the best practices. But I just try to do a short clip or tease at the beginning. Then if they have an intro, then do that and then get it right into the interview. Yeah, and I think a lot of folks too are. I know I am watching things on one and a half speed, just like, yeah, for sure. At this point I watch the replay or play the podcast on one and a half speed. But the thing I love about audio, pure audio podcasting is it comes back to way back when I was in radio. It's like, okay, it's theater to mind, but it's also totally mobile. So you can go anywhere and be listening to a podcast on the beach or in line at the store or whatever it may be. So which you still can't YouTube unless you're a very reckless driver.

Harry Duran 00:41:07:

I think I saw that YouTube because I follow pod news. I think they're releasing a YouTube light subscription because it's very cost prohibitive. I think it's $18 a month for YouTube Premium. YouTube Premium I think is the only one that you can have. Like you can minimize the video and it'll still play the audio, but you have to be signed up. So I think they're again, all these different companies, Spotify, Apple, YouTube, they're all converging on the podcast space. I think they're going to have a lite version that's a very cheaper subscription. It's like a YouTube premium light that'll probably allow you to like minimize the video but still hear it if you're on the go. And Spotify does this as well. Right. Though if you upload the video to Spotify and you play it, the YouTube from the video, I'm sorry, the audio from the video becomes the audio version.

Lou Bortone 00:41:51:

Yeah.

Harry Duran 00:41:51:

And you can toggle back and forth. And so are you having clients ask you to upload the video to YouTube as to Spotify as well now?

Lou Bortone 00:41:58:

Yeah, absolutely. So. Because now, you know, they're able to do the video piece, as you mentioned.

Harry Duran 00:42:02:

Yeah, yeah. And you already have the content, you know, you just might as well get it. Just share it on as many platforms as possible.

Lou Bortone 00:42:07:

Yep. The other thing that's interesting is, you know, I'm a old geezer, but like, I know my kids who are my 25 year old twins. To them, a screen is a screen is a screen. Like they watch YouTube on TV and they watch TV, they watch shows on YouTube on their phone, sometimes at the same time, which like that just makes my ADHD mind break. But they're not really, I mean, let that generation who was raised on iPhones, they're not making any distinction between screens. Where's my entertainment and where can I get it the quickest?

Harry Duran 00:42:39:

And I think that's something important for creators to realize. Like we have these preconceived notions of how people should be consuming the content. But to your point. Exactly. Like new generations of people are like, wherever the content is available, easier for them to consume. And sometimes they'll stream it to their TV or they're on their Roku or their Apple TV and they'll just have the Netflix button there or the YouTube button there. And I think it's also something to be aware of probably in terms of I don't know if podcasters ever thought their podcast episodes would be seen on a big screen, like a 52 inch, you know, flat screen. But that's what's happening nowadays. And I think it's. I'm always conscious of that as well, because you never know how people are consuming the content, so you just make it available in as many platforms as.

Lou Bortone 00:43:19:

Possible and assume they're distracted. So.

Harry Duran 00:43:21:

Yeah. Yeah, that's true too. So a couple of questions as we wrap up that I ask most guests. The first one is, what is something you've changed your mind about recently?

Lou Bortone 00:43:33:

Something I've changed my mind about. Wow.

Harry Duran 00:43:36:

And it could be anything across. It doesn't have to just be around video. Or it could be life choices as well.

Lou Bortone 00:43:41:

Yeah, honestly, it's. Lately it's just been, I can work from anywhere, so why the hell am I where? Why the hell am I here?

Harry Duran 00:43:47:

That's a good one.

Lou Bortone 00:43:49:

I spent a lot of time, I try to spend a lot of time in Italy. Other than the time difference Like, I can easily work from here.

Harry Duran 00:43:55:

Yeah, yeah, look into that. You should look into those towns. Some of them have age restrictions. But then I see all these times, these towns, these tiny, tiny towns that probably were manufacturing towns or they're. An older generation has moved out and they're enticing people to move there.

Lou Bortone 00:44:09:

Yeah. €1 houses. I saw an actual. Now I get. I'm flooded with them. Because as soon as you look at something on Facebook, that's all you see. There's an entire village for sale in Tuscany for a million bucks. It's abandoned. It's all, you know, but a village town. Let's buy this town for a million bucks and go over it.

Harry Duran 00:44:28:

So that would be a fun part. You could do a whole video series about that starting. Yeah. In Italy.

Lou Bortone 00:44:33:

So just the way I work, I've changed. I've recently changed my mind about that.

Harry Duran 00:44:37:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think the challenge. And I work remotely as well in Minnesota, so it's nice because we, like I said, we've got chickens, we've got our own. Well, we're planting food, you know, and it's these things you become aware of. Again, I'm a Northeastern. Like, you know, you grew up in New York. You know, you want food, you go to the grocery store. But, you know, I was there for Hurricane Sandy and like, you know, once you lose the opportunity to have food, you start to realize, like, where's my food coming from? And, you know, like, my partner's father's a hunter and he hunts venison and turkey. He's hunted turkey in the past and grouse. And so it's an interesting wake up call, you know, and then I think with all the stuff that's happening in the world, Covid, you know, you're like, maybe there's some skills that are important to learn.

Lou Bortone 00:45:19:

Yeah, it's good. It's good to have chickens now because with the price of eggs, we didn't.

Harry Duran 00:45:24:

Mean plan it that way, but it's like this was the first time that I went to the grocery store. It was like three weeks ago where I didn't buy eggs. So. And we've had the chickens. Today's their actually one year anniversary, so it's.

Lou Bortone 00:45:33:

Oh, wow.

Harry Duran 00:45:34:

That we've had them. We've got five chickens and they're all laying now. So we're getting five eggs. Anywhere from three to five eggs a day. So. And I eat like the eggs every day, so. But it's again, something things you think about. But to your point, about, like, working remotely. I think it's a different set of challenges because you have to, like, work harder to expand your network and build those relationships. And even as older, you know, I joined a men's circle last year, and for men, it's a big problem to, like, make new friends and just, like, make connections. And I think a lot of people don't talk about that as well. And it's like, you have to work harder to, like, be social. For women, it comes a little easier, and they've got their social groups, but. But for guys, it's like that are that have this, like, opportunity to work remotely. That's the good side. And then you gotta put more effort into the other side. Cause, you know, when I worked in an office, that was my social group. Like, we'd go out after work and we'd have the social groups. That's really thinking about how. How much life has changed.

Lou Bortone 00:46:26:

Yeah, I know. And we're. We both are in cold climates. So winter, it's like, I may not leave the house for three or four days at a time.

Harry Duran 00:46:33:

Yeah, it gets pretty brutal. So. Yeah, we recently went to Florida for a little bit. Went to Austin last year. So I think we're just building that in, like, every winter, we're going to go away. We found someone who's going to watch the chickens, so that's a big concern.

Lou Bortone 00:46:45:

Yeah.

Harry Duran 00:46:47:

So what is the most misunderstood thing about you?

Lou Bortone 00:46:49:

I'm very much an introvert.

Harry Duran 00:46:51:

Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:46:52:

And I think, you know, pretty low key. And I think when people meet me in person, they're like, you know, they're like, oh, you seem so quiet because there's onstage Lou, and then there's, like, every day.

Harry Duran 00:47:04:

Yeah. Yeah.

Lou Bortone 00:47:05:

So I think I'm always afraid that my shyness is going to be mistaken for arrogance. So. And if I'm standoffish, it's just because, like, that's just, you know, my combination of introvert and adhd. So.

Harry Duran 00:47:17:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I definitely, like, through the help of some therapy, I've realized I'm a bit neurodivergent myself and not ever, like, officially diagnosed, but there's aspects of it. I'm like, oh, yeah, that rings true.

Lou Bortone 00:47:28:

Totally made sense.

Harry Duran 00:47:29:

And on the pod and on the sort of the introversion side, it's like I've described myself as selectively extroverted or situationally extroverted. Yeah. I'll go to podcast movement. I'll be on stage, and I've even gone to karaoke with some of the crew after Late night. But then, you know, two or three days of that, and you just have to, like, retreat back into your cocoon.

Lou Bortone 00:47:49:

At the podfest. Like, I literally didn't leave the hotel for three days, and with all the people, 2,000 or so people there and socializing, speaking and dinners and. Yeah, you know, I come up and curl up in a ball and. Yeah, you know, I need that recovery time.

Harry Duran 00:48:03:

Do you usually, like, plan an extra couple of days in the hotel after the conference just to kind of wind down?

Lou Bortone 00:48:09:

It depends on the location. You know, I try to, but. But in this. In the case of PodFest in January, it would have been nice to spend a little bit longer, but I had to get back because I have two pugs that are a bit antsy if I'm not around.

Harry Duran 00:48:22:

Oh, that's fun. What are their names?

Lou Bortone 00:48:25:

Regina and Rocco.

Harry Duran 00:48:26:

Okay. I've had everything from dogs jumping into people's laps during these conversations. It's a reminder that's like, nothing perfect. Like, back in the day, you'd have to be on tv. Everything's polished nowadays, you know, you've got the delivery guy coming, the dryer running, the dogs jumping in.

Lou Bortone 00:48:42:

Yeah. That's why studio sound is a lifesaver, because, you know, yes. Never fails. As soon as I start a podcast, the dogs go nuts.

Harry Duran 00:48:48:

It's pretty wild how great studio sound is. I'm on interviews now where the sound is not that good, but I'm not worried that much anymore. And I used to be really, like, OCD about saying, hey, can you fix your sound? Can you, like, unplug your headset or something? I had someone with a Bluetooth mic. It was not the best, or they were in an echoey room, and I would just be worried about, like, man, how's this going to sound? And now it's funny how it. What it does to me as a host. I'm just more relaxed because I know what studio sound can. Can't do. And most of the time, it's an improvement over what's there, and it puts me more at ease and allows me to be more present with my guests, which is a plus.

Lou Bortone 00:49:26:

Yeah, because that's the thing. It's like, every time I tell folks when they're dealing with video and tech, every time you add something, another camera, another light, another piece of software, it gets exponentially more complicated. So now that you can just sort of let your guard down and say, you know, as we used to say in TV days, we'll fix it in post.

Harry Duran 00:49:44:

Yeah, exactly. Well, Lu, thanks for connecting. It's been fun to kind of, you know, run in the same circles for a while, especially at podcast conferences and through our mutual circles. And it's nice to get a deeper dive and learn a little bit more about you. And thanks for coming on and sharing your story and then what your journey has been like. I really appreciate it.

Lou Bortone 00:50:00:

Thanks Harry. I wish I had your radio voice by the way, too perfect for podcasting and radio.

Harry Duran 00:50:05:

Well, you can make a couple adjustments with studio sound nowadays, maybe make those fixes in post like they say. So where's the best place for folks to connect with you and learn more.

Lou Bortone 00:50:14:

About what you're working on at loubortone. Com and everything's there. Podcasts, video stuff, all the goodies.

Harry Duran 00:50:22:

Yeah, sounds good. We'll make sure all those links are in the show notes as well. Thanks for your time Lou. I really appreciate it.

Lou Bortone 00:50:26:

Thank you.