Podcast Hosts Outpace Journalists on Trust as Mike Koenigs Urges Founders to Speak Up

Acast’s Podcast Pulse 2026 found 42% of fans trust brand recommendations from podcasters, up nine points in a year, while journalists and YouTubers trailed.

SAN DIEGO, CA, UNITED STATES, October 12, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Mike Koenigs, founder of The Superpower Accelerator and co-host of the Capability Amplifier podcast, is advising founders and business owners to become the public voice of their companies, following new research showing audience trust concentrating in individual podcast hosts.

The findings come from Podcast Pulse 2026, published Sept. 17 by podcast company Acast with research firm Differentology. The study surveyed 4,500 respondents across 13 markets, including the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia. Forty-two percent of podcast fans said they trust brand or product recommendations from their favorite podcaster, up nine percentage points from 2025. Trust in recommendations from journalists stood at 31%, YouTubers at 29%, and celebrities and social media influencers at 25% each.

The research found the relationship extends past the show itself. Eighty-eight percent of fans follow or interact with their favorite host outside the podcast, and 63% reported starting an episode in one format, audio or video, and finishing it in the other.

Koenigs co-hosts Capability Amplifier with Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach^®. Through The Superpower Accelerator, a three-day in-person intensive held in San Diego, he works with founders on a defined brand position, a core offer and the authority assets that support them. His team follows with weeks of production work, including a custom podcast episode distributed on Capability Amplifier. The program uses AI tools to produce content in each founder’s own voice at a volume a small team could not sustain by hand.

“Trust used to sit with the company and the brand, and this data shows it moving to the person people spend their commute listening to,” said Mike Koenigs, founder of The Superpower Accelerator. “Most founders I meet have 20 or 30 years of stories and hard-won lessons, which is exactly what builds that kind of trust. They’ve kept all of it locked inside the business, behind a logo and a company page.”

“AI is filling every feed with content nobody put their name on, and that makes a real human voice more valuable every month,” Koenigs said. “The founders I work with use AI to turn one recorded conversation into weeks of material that still sounds like them. The person stays at the center, and the technology handles the production.”

More information is available at https://superpoweraccelerator.com.

About The Superpower Accelerator
The Superpower Accelerator is a three-day, in-person business and brand intensive founded by Mike Koenigs and headquartered in San Diego. Sessions run in San Diego, followed by weeks of production work by the company’s team. The program serves founders planning a next act after an exit, service providers repositioning around a premium offer, and subject-matter experts building a public platform.

About Mike Koenigs
Mike Koenigs is a serial founder with five business exits and a 19-time bestselling author whose titles include “The Ai Accelerator” and “Your Next Act.” He has contributed to Entrepreneur, Fast Company and Forbes, co-hosts the podcast “Capability Amplifier,” and has presented on generative AI at Abundance360, MIT, Strategic Coach^® and Genius Network.

Mike Koenigs
mikekoenigs.com
+1 858-412-0858
Visit us on social media:
LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook
YouTube

Media gallery