By Claire Grunewald, Journalism senior

Throughout Matt Gilhooly’s life, he chose the paths with the most resistance. So when he enrolled in the online master’s program, he signed up for classes that would push him to his limits, which eventually led him to founding The Life Shift podcast.

Gilhooly graduated from the University of Central Florida with a master’s in business in 2003. During the pandemic, he decided to pursue a degree he genuinely wanted to learn and grow from.  He began the online master’s program with a concentration in public relations in 2020. One of his elective courses led to him discovering his passion for storytelling.

He took “The Art of Podcasting” with adjunct lecturer Heidi Kirby in spring 2022 because he knew the class would push him out of his comfort zone and challenge him. “Anytime I had to choose an elective, I chose something that scared me,” Gilhooly said.

“The class offered what most indie podcasters in the industry miss – the research,” Gilhooly said. “The value in the course was the leg work that we had to do before recording our assignment episodes. I valued the exercises of listening to other shows, researching target audiences, creating audience personas (mine still align with the show statistics), and the in-depth brainstorming for show names. I also appreciated the examples for intake forms and one-sheets for show pitching.”

The idea for his podcast took inspiration from when his own life shifted with the death of his mother when he was 8 years old. “My life journey has taken me to this point, to want to do The Life Shift [podcast] because it’s based on my own personal experiences,” Gilhooly said. “When I was doing the assignments and doing the interviews, I really leaned into that, and didn’t realize what kind of fulfillment it gave me when I had these conversations with people.”

However, he realized he didn’t want his podcast to only focus on tragic events, but the events that changed the trajectory of his guests’ lives, positive or negative. “I really wanted to talk about grief because that’s what I know, that’s my journey, but then going through the research I was like, ‘do I want to do that long term,’” Gilhooly said.

His  podcast began to focus on the central moments of people’s lives and when they realized there had been a shift.

After graduating from the UFCJC online master’s program in 2022, Gilhooly split his time between teaching courses in personal branding, portfolio development and leadership at Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida, and focusing on growing his podcast.

With over 80 episodes, the podcast has garnered nearly 15,000 downloads from its thousands of listeners. It highlights life-altering moments and humanizes the struggles and triumphs through them all.

Gilhooly even talked to Kirby, his Art of Podcasting instructor, for an episode about the moment her life shifted.

For the first 15 episodes, he asked friends and people he knew to be guests on the show. Since then, cold pitches and referrals are the main source of guests. “At this moment, I have my guests booked through the end of 2023 and into the first week of 2024, all through referrals and pitches,” he said. “I have not sought out a guest since last summer. I am very grateful for this journey and how it is unfolding.”

The conversations Gilhooly has on his podcast have even created life-shifting moments. One woman talked about the struggles of her fertility journey on the podcast, which led to many listeners sending her positive messages relating to her struggles. The podcast and these messages created a new-found confidence that led her to negotiate a $20,000 raise at her job.

“She felt the power in her own story by getting it out of her head and sharing it publicly,” Gilhooly said. “There’s a strong power in storytelling for not only the listener, but also the person telling it.”

He currently uses social media to network with others in the industry, build his brand and share video clips, static images, stories, etc. “This is the necessary evil portion of podcasting, but I’ve immersed myself in the podcasting community so more opportunities are opening up,” Gilhooly said. “For instance, based on the video part of my podcast, another show reached out for help launching the videos for their show on YouTube, so I am helping them with this now. I have not ventured into any paid advertisement, but I do have some other people writing about the show.”

Gilhooly credits the success of his podcast to the information he gained from the class and learning how to actively listen. “I think developing active listening skills was key to having these harder conversations,” Gilhooly said.

“My goal is to continue telling stories because at the end of the day, my true goal is that each episode finds the ears that needed to hear that story.”

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