Welcome

Here’s something most course creators miss: podcast listeners don’t just consume content — they trust the person delivering it.

According to IAB’s 2024 research, podcast hosts are perceived as 64% more trustworthy than other types of influencers. That’s not a small edge. That’s the difference between someone scrolling past your course link and someone pulling out their credit card.

The numbers back this up. There are now 505 million podcast listeners worldwide. And 76% of them finish most episodes they start. Think about that completion rate compared to online courses, blog posts, or YouTube videos. People stick around.

What This Course Is (and Isn’t)

Let me be direct. This isn’t a course about becoming a famous podcaster. You won’t learn how to land a sponsorship from Spotify or crack the top 100 charts.

This is about building a trust engine that feeds your course business.

I’ve spent my career in curriculum design. As a former college dean, I trained over 39,000 professionals. I know how to structure learning experiences that actually work. But I’ve never hosted a podcast — so I’m not going to pretend I have secret wisdom from my own show.

Instead, I’ve done the research. I’ve studied course creators who use podcasts as their primary student acquisition channel. I’ve analyzed what works and what doesn’t. And I’ve organized it into a system you can follow.

What You’ll Learn

Here’s the roadmap:

• Planning your show — Picking a format, naming, positioning, and making decisions you won’t regret three months in
• Interview mastery — How to prepare, how to guide conversations, and how to make guests sound brilliant (which makes you look brilliant by association)
• Growth — Getting your first listeners and growing from there without spending money on ads
• Monetization — Turning listeners into course students (the whole point)

What You Need Before Starting

Two things:

1. A course — either live or in progress. This course assumes you have something to sell.
2. A willingness to talk to people. If you want to do a solo show, that works too. But the fastest path to growth involves interviews.

Check out the “Before You Start” lesson next for the full list of prerequisites and recommended courses.

Let’s get to work.