165: {Sassy Solo} How to Pick a Podcast Niche

Friends, you asked and I'm here to deliver. Curious about starting a podcast, but don't know what niche it should be. This one is for you!

Transcript

Caroline Pennington (00:00.27)
All right. I put it out there to the internet and you guys responded. You guys had some great things to say that you want me to pop off about for my South East solos. So one of the responses I received was how do you pick your podcast niche? And here is the answer. Your podcast can be fluid and that's okay. Literally podcasting is the wild wild west.

Backstory about this podcast is when I first started this podcast almost three years ago, I was a recruiter, a professional headhunter. I had a corporate job doing that. And so I was used to interviewing people for a living. had done it for 15 years. At that time I was doing it at the absolute highest level, C-suite professionals. I was recruiting all throughout the country, all different types of industries, you name it. So I was used to interviewing people, right?

I was used to asking the hard questions, talking about money, why do you want to change jobs, like all the things. And so when I started this podcast, I wanted to talk about recruiting and hiring because I had to do with exactly what I was doing for my corporate job. So at that time I started interviewing people that I found were experts in that field, had expertise in company culture, had expertise in negotiating salaries.

had expertise in mental health in the workplace, you name it. And actually after about a year, so that was the theme, the podcast niche of mine at the time was recruiting and hiring. And the reality is I actually got really bored of talking, I got really bored talking about that. And so I pivoted my podcast. I really wanted to start interviewing female founders and learning their stories, like exactly how they did it. And I don't care whether or not you have a product-based business or a service-based business.

I wanted to interview these female founders and actually hear their story. I saw her questions like, okay, great. How did you actually do it? Because a lot of times from the outside is always sees the highlight reel. The, you know, Alison Ellsworth getting bought out by Pepsi with Poppy for, you know, $1.2 billion or whatever the number was. But really she started that business in her kitchen, like selling Poppy at farmers markets. So I really want to dig into like what.

Caroline Pennington (02:18.634)
How did you actually do it? Like what actions did you take? How did you overcome obstacles mentally? I've literally done the exact same thing too, with creating chilled vino, with creating this podcast. I literally had no clue how to create a product. I had no clue how to start a podcast. You guys, I just started doing it. And even if it was tiny action, I would take every single day. So if you have it on your heart that you want to start a podcast, do it.

Having and starting and hosting a podcast has been one of the absolute best things that I have done and I'm here to encourage you to do it too. And the only thing I would say to you if you're seriously considering a podcast is whatever it looks like in your life, we all are busy, we all have family, you you name it, fill in the blank. If you decide to start a podcast, start a cadence that works for you in your life.

Don't feel pressured to do episodes every day or twice a week or once a week even. If once a month or once every two weeks works for you, then start that way. And you can always build and increase your frequency or scale it back. Little insight for me here. I actually was doing, I started this podcast doing one interview a week. Then I went to two. I was doing one interview, actually interviewing someone else. And then I was doing a Thursday interview solo.

And that honestly got to be way too much for me. It overwhelmed me. I couldn't keep up with the cadence of it. So now I just do weekly podcast interviews every Tuesday. So if you're going to start a podcast, even if whatever ditch it is, you don't have to stay in that niche at the end of the day, it's your show, your name is on it. And so you can do whatever you want. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and share.