Collaboration as Currency: Linda Claire Puig on Building Your Audience Your Way

Linda's central thesis is that course creators do not need social media to build a thriving audience. Having built her own business with less than 2% of her efforts on social media, she teaches a framework organized around two "buckets" of audience attraction: social media and other people's networks. Her data consistently shows that the second bucket -- guest appearances on other people's podcasts, blogs, and email lists -- delivers more reliable results. "Collaboration is a currency," she explains. "When you start looking into ways that you can collaborate with people to somehow get in front of their audiences, the people who know and trust them... that's the best way to look for the most that you can get out of the energy and time that you put in." For students who feel pressured to maintain a social media presence, this reframe is liberating: they can choose approaches that match their personality rather than forcing themselves onto platforms that drain them.

With 80+ students at different skill levels, Linda relies on an extremely step-by-step approach combined with constant signposting. At the beginning and end of each training module, she reminds students where they are in the overall process, how today's lesson connects to everything else, and what comes next. "I'm always reminding them at the beginning and at the end of each module of where they are in the process, and how what they learned today ties into everything else," she says. Past students have consistently highlighted this clarity as one of the most valuable aspects of the program. She also personally reviews each student's homework on audience identification at the start to ensure their foundation is solid before they build on it -- a labor-intensive but critical quality check.

Linda's most popular course feature is the "Get It Done" implementation day, built into the end of each of the five major steps in her program. The format is simple: a morning check-in where everyone commits to a specific goal for the next few hours, then they work independently, regroup at midday to share progress and set afternoon goals, and close with a celebration call. Some participants catch up on lessons, others implement what they have learned, and some work on unrelated tasks -- the key is the structured accountability container. Danny noted in the debrief that this is a low-tech intervention anyone can add: "You just set up a Zoom call, people show up, you talk to them every hour or two, and people work. And yet it's a very powerful intervention." For longer programs like Linda's 16-week course, these implementation days help prevent the momentum loss that typically leads to dropout.