Podcast agency offers 90-day launch guarantee as 42% of new shows die
Podcast Launch Lab is selling done-for-you and done-with-you launch programmes into a market where, on Podchaser's 2026 figures, only one show in fifteen still publishes. The pitch: build the show for clients, not downloads.
Podcast Launch Lab has put two new programmes on sale, one done-for-you and one done-with-you, both carrying a guarantee to take a client from nothing to a live show in 90 days or less.
The Coral Gables, Florida agency was founded in 2016 by Sebastian Rusk. It sells to entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants and professional-service owners.
The timing rests on a split in the market. Podchaser tracks more than six million podcasts ever made, of which roughly 407,000 — about one in fifteen — still actively publish.
On the same data, 42% of shows launched in the first half of 2026 were inactive within six months, and new launches are down 14% year on year, roughly 80% below the 2020 peak.
The average podcast stops at 14 episodes.
Listening runs the other way. Some 130 million Americans, 45% of everyone aged 12 and over, listened in the past week — the highest weekly figure on record — in a US industry the kit puts at $8.4bn. YouTube counts a billion monthly podcast users.
The company's argument is that shows die because they were built as media businesses chasing downloads and sponsors, when a business owner's show should be built as business development.
In that model the audience that matters is the person in the guest chair: a dream client, a referral partner, an industry peer. The programmes bundle strategy, branding, equipment guidance, production, editing and distribution, plus calls to action and guest follow-up templates.
The scale argument is that fame was never available anyway. The kit cites 1,381 shows with multi-million-download audiences, and says a five-figure audience already puts a show in the top 7%.
Rusk reports having helped more than 1,000 entrepreneurs launch, and spent a decade running the social agency SocialBuzzTV before starting the Lab. He wrote a book called Podcasts SUCK! (If You Don't Have One).
Named clients include Richard Barbara, chief executive of Coral Gables Title & Escrow, who the company says credits his show with rebuilding how the firm creates content and relationships. Pricing for either programme has not been published.
For a founder, the useful number is not the failure rate but the 14 episodes. That is roughly a quarter's worth of recording, which is the period in which a show either produces a conversation worth having with a buyer or produces nothing.
A 90-day launch guarantee covers getting to episode one. Nothing in the offer covers what happens at episode 15, and that is where the graveyard statistics say the money goes.
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