Start a Podcast
Launch a niche audio show with under $200 of gear, and turn it into either a media business or a pipeline of guests, clients, and referral partners.
A podcast is the cheapest media business you can start, and also the most misunderstood. The gear costs less than a nice dinner, the software is free, and the distribution pipes (Apple, Spotify, and every other listening app) cost nothing to enter. What costs you is time: this is a business that pays in months, not days, and the money arrives through one of two doors. Door one is the media business, where sponsors pay you to reach your listeners. Door two is the relationship engine, where the show gives you a professional reason to spend an hour with exactly the people you want to know, and the pipeline of guests turns into clients, referrals, and opportunities. Most solo shows that make money are actually running door two and calling it door one.
This course walks the whole path: deciding which payoff you are building toward, designing a show a stranger can find, building a studio in a spare bedroom for under two hundred dollars, recording and editing without losing your weekends, getting listed in the directories, launching with momentum, and running the guest pipeline that grows both your audience and your network. Every money number here is sourced, including the uncomfortable ones. Nearly half of all podcasts stop before a fourth episode, only about a third ever reach episode ten (Amplifi Media's catalog study of roughly four million shows), and sponsor money at meaningful rates generally does not show up until thousands of people hear each episode. You will learn why that happens and how the guests-not-downloads model pays you long before the download chart does.
This course is not a video-first channel course. If what you really want is to be on camera and build a YouTube audience, the video-first course is where that belongs, and this course will point you there. It also does not teach the full multi-platform creator business (that is its own course), how to write a paid newsletter, or how to build and sell an online course. Those are neighboring buildings. This one is audio: a show, a feed, and a guest list that doubles as a contact list.
The Decision
Two Payoffs, One Microphone
What a podcast actually is as a business, the two ways it pays, and why the guest list matters more than the download chart.
The Money, Honestly
What a podcast costs to start and run, what sponsors actually pay and when, and the revenue timeline for each payoff lane.
Should You Host?
A fit check for podcasting: the stamina, consistency, and curiosity it actually takes, and the signals that you should pick a different business.
Designing the Show
Design a Show People Can Find
Choosing the niche, promise, name, and cover art so that a stranger who has never heard of you can find the show and know instantly what it is.
Format and Cadence You Can Survive
Choosing solo, interview, or hybrid format, episode length, and a publishing rhythm you can still keep in month six, plus the buffer that prevents podfade.
The Home Studio
The Studio Under $200
The microphone, headphones, boom arm, and room treatment that get you to broadcast-adjacent sound, and the upgrade path to postpone until episode fifty.
Record It Right
Recording software, levels, the double-ender method for remote guests, and the backup habits that keep one crashed app from erasing an hour you cannot re-record.
Edit Fast or Outsource
A podcast edit policy that protects your weekends, the loudness standard that makes episodes sound consistent, and the math on paying an editor.
Going Live
Hosting, RSS, and the Rules
How a host, an RSS feed, and the directories actually connect, what distribution costs, and the paperwork rules that keep your show legal and yours.
Launch Like It Matters
The three-episode launch, the trailer that primes the feed, and how to spend launch week so the directories and your first listeners both notice.
The Guest Pipeline
Guests Are the Engine
Building the dream list, the outreach that gets yeses from people out of your league, and the follow-up system that keeps a booking calendar full.
Interviews That Open Doors
Preparing and conducting interviews that flatter the guest, and the share kit and follow-up that turn a good conversation into a lasting relationship.
Growing Slow on Purpose
What actually moves downloads for a small show, what quietly wastes evenings, and why a compounding curve beats a launch spike.
The Long Haul
When Money Arrives
The four income lanes of a podcast in the order they realistically unlock, how to pitch sponsors directly, and the rate math to hold your ground with.
The Real Week
What a producing week actually looks like hour by hour, and the five failure modes that end shows, with the defense against each.
Your First 90 Days & Going Deeper
A week-by-week launch roadmap for the first ninety days, the checkpoints that tell you it is working, and where to go next when this course runs out.