This is the show for creative entrepreneurs who have a message to share and want to live a life of freedom. Learn how to grow your network and net worth. Hear from exciting guests and more. My name is Dylan Schmidt and welcome to Digital Podcaster. One of the most common questions I get when it comes to podcasting is to niche or to not niche. And that's what I wanted to talk about in this super short episode. So whether or not you've started your podcast, you've probably asked yourself how, you know, detailed do I need to make my topics? And that's essentially what you should feel clear about by the end of this episode. I've spoken, spoke with a lot of podcasters who haven't started because they're not really sure about the topics they want to cover. And then I've also spoke with podcasters who have been going for a while and they're like, should I, I'm not seeing the traction I want. Should I niche down even more or what should I do? And I like to approach it one of two ways. First things first, I just want to recognize that a lot of podcasters, most likely yourself, I know for me, it's the case. I got into podcasting because of the freedom I wanted it to have. I didn't want to feel like I was bound by 30 or 60 seconds on social media. I didn't want to just treat it as short form content. And that's one of the great things about podcasting. So with that in mind, it was like, well, I'm not going to niche. But I will say this after doing digital podcaster and being a podcast host, being on other people's podcasts and then just talking it through with other podcasters, it makes life easier when you niche because it's it's easier to pitch your podcast to get other guests. Like for example, with digital podcaster, this is primarily a podcast about podcasters podcast thing. And when I pitch this podcast to guests that I want to have come on the show, it's really easy for me to say, when they say, "Who's your audience?" I can say, "Creative entrepreneurs, podcasters." That's it. And that's kind of all I need to say. I can say it in a sentence or less, a couple words. But if I wasn't really sure, I'd be like,"Well, some people are into this, some people are into that." That just makes it confusing for the person I'm pitching it to. that makes it confusing for me to go out and find guests because, you know, if I don't have like a narrow scope of like what I'm looking for, if I don't have a vision of what I'm looking for, then I just kind of allow anybody to possibly come on. And as a guest going on other people's podcasts that they don't have a clear kind of focus around their own podcast, it gets even confusing as a guest, because you're like, how do I frame what I'm talking about to add the most amount of value to the audience that is listening to this podcast. For example, if I'm on a podcast, that's like, you know, we just like sharing people's journeys. Like they just, we just like want to talk to interesting people as a guest. I'm like, that's awesome. But like, should I, what should I highlight in my journey? Like should I highlight the entrepreneur part? Should I highlight the podcasting part? Should I highlight, you know, what I had to overcome to get where I am today. Uh, And most of the time I found that when I'm on a podcast that doesn't have like a clear niche, a clear audience, clear target audience, clear vision, they don't really provide that information either. They might ask some questions before going on, but for the most part, it's just like, we just want to chat with you. And I can fly with that. But just think about like the guest experience and the audience's experience. And it's a harder sell for the audience. It's harder. It takes way longer. And I think people see these popular podcasts that have a lot of money backing them on big podcast networks or Spotify, Joe Rogan type things where they have all these different people on. You're like, "Well, they don't have a niche." Well, in a way, they don't really need one. They might have started out way narrower and it just takes way more time, especially if you're starting with a smaller audience. If you have a smaller audience, people don't have as much trust built up with you. You're not getting as much word of mouth traffic to your podcast. And so it's just really difficult. It's totally possible. It just, it's like, it's just going to be harder is what I'll say. If you want to have broad topics, I would just have those expectations of like, these people don't know who we are yet. So like dedicating an hour or two or three to listening to a podcast that has no clear direction is going to be a much tougher sell. Not saying that you shouldn't do it. you have your own reasons for doing it, but manage those expectations around why someone is coming to your podcast and what you can expect your download numbers to be. If you're starting with nothing, you're starting with nothing. Like if you're starting with nothing, being a zero audience, and then you are like expecting your download numbers to just take off. Think about like, why would they take off? Would they take off amongst a certain community? And if one episode takes off because you had a guest on your podcast, but if you you have so many different, very, you know, a variety of guests, like, how can you recreate that magic amongst the same audience? What if all of that audience, like, let's say you had me, for example, you had me on your podcast, and I spoke about, you know, the grief and trauma I've had my life on your podcast, but then like the next guest you have, and that say that like resonated, you made some clips, it brought in a bunch of new listeners. But then the next guest you have is like a dog trainer who specializes in like training dogs. Well, those audiences are going to be so different, right? So you're going to see a huge drop off for all the people that were like, Oh, this podcast is for me. I can't wait to hear the next episode. Uh, you're just going to see a huge drop off. Cause then once you have that dog episode, then be like, Oh, this is not what I thought it was. You're going to have some people stick around, but the drop off is going to be there. So that's something just to consider like the power of niches. It just makes things simpler. And a lot of times, like I mentioned at the beginning is when you're creative, you don't really want those restrictions because you're like, I want to be able to just talk about what I want to talk about. And that's okay. But when you're thinking through like a growth oriented lens of, I mean, I meet a lot of podcasters who are like, I want both. I want growth oriented and I want to be able to talk about whatever I want, you know, like those things are combating at each other and it's just going to be lot more difficult. So you niche because it's easier for your audience to find you. It's easier for you to find guests. It's easier for you to narrow in your vision for your podcast. And you don't niche if you're like, I'm not doing this to grow as quickly as I can. And I really care more about the conversations I'm having than audience downloads and things like that. Again, it's not like all or nothing, but that's how I've seen things after talking with so many podcasters and doing the podcast myself. Because if you go back to the early episodes of Digital Podcaster, I wasn't really talking about podcasting. And that made it confusing on myself because I'm like, what do I do? How do I do this? And when I finally was like, all right, let's just talk about podcasting. Primarily 90% of the time, things got things found fell into a groove. My download numbers started going up. I could frame my own podcast in a way that just made me feel more confident on the mic. I hope you found this helpful. If you did, let me know. I'll catch you in the next episode.