How to Niche Down What Your New Podcast Will Be About

Hey Friend!

Before we get into this coaching session, did you know that I offer a Bootcamp where I show you visually why podcasting is my absolute favorite way to grow an online business? Imagine growing a business that didn’t run your life, that you didn’t have to post and create content around constantly. All you had to do was show up for your podcast once or twice a week. Then, do a few simple things strategically (like niche down) to allow your podcast to grow for you over time, bringing and generating people who will listen to your show and then eventually buy from you.

Podcasting can be the vessel you use to create a highly converting audience excited to spend money with you as their coach or course creator. My Bootcamp helps you understand how podcasting is the number one driver of success for me and how it can be the same for you.

If you’ve been wanting my course Podcast Pro University, where I teach you how to start a podcast, or you want to join Podcast to Profit, my six-month group mastermind coaching program for podcasters to learn how to build, sell, and scale an offer—head over to the Stefanie Gass School and learn how we can work together.

How to Niche Down a Podcast Plan

Stef: Today, I’ve got a super fun treat for you. I’m going to do a 15-minute power coaching call with Carrie. We’ll review a question and guidance Carrie needs on her brand clarity. So you guys lean in and listen. Carrie has actually gone through some of my courses before. It’s fantastic that she wanted to submit a question because so many people are watching now.

The biggest question you had was, “What would my podcast even be about? I don’t know how to get started and I’m not clear on what that might look like.” I think this coaching call will help you cast some vision around the questions we ask ourselves when trying to get clear on what that might be. Okay, Carrie. Tell everybody a little bit about the brand you’re building and what question(s) you have for us today.

Go with what God puts in front of you

Carrie: Okay, well, first, I can say I can totally relate to trying to figure out where you’re going. It’s been a journey. But somebody said it helps to go with what God is putting in front of you. And so who has been in front of me are a lot of those people who come into their adulthood. And, you know, you kind of feel like I’ve got this. I’ve handled my:

• Marriage
• Kids
• Family
• Home

And then they find out not so much. There are some struggles with the practicality of that. Whether they’re coming in with some generational baggage or they’re just coming in from something else? Some things you thought you had down from:

• Communicating
• Your faith
• Your finances

All of those elements. We go to church and we do the Bible Studies and we’re trying to learn what it is that God wants of us. And you know, we get a lot of really good and encouraging verses, but not a lot of practicality. So that’s what I’m trying to bring, some actual, tactical, practicality of how we apply that. What that looks like. How we can communicate better and just manage our everyday lives and families?

Dig Deeper in Order to Niche Down

Stef: I love the mission, but it’s big, right? What you want to do, Carrie, is look at this big umbrella upside-down. An umbrella that is full of little things that you’ve placed inside. So far, we’ve got:

• Struggles in Adulthood
• Generational Baggage
• Church Trauma
• And Whatnot

Maybe you have communication issues, like you said, finances. All these things are inside. You have to dig a little bit deeper underneath all of those things, Carrie, to find out what the root is. Why all of these things are happening? Or what is the outcome when you get control of all these things that are in the umbrella? What happens then?

I want you to think about where you sit right now and not where you want to go. I want you to go back to when you were this avatar. Talk to me about what is causing all of these things that are in the umbrella right now.

Generational Baggage?

Carrie: I think for me, it was a lot of generational baggage.

Stef: Can you explain that?

Carrie: I think a lot of it was learning things the wrong way, especially relationally. It was more of fighting to win rather than building relationships with somebody. So, I think that weighed in. I also came from a super legalistic background when it came to faith. My image of God, where you’re kind of earning that approval.

I feel like that played into a lot of it. When I raised my kids, I wanted it to look different at the other end. I still wanted those Mama phone calls, and they wanted to come hang out. I wanted a relationship with my husband that withstood all of life’s ups and downs. That was kind of my mission point going in.

Niche Down to the Root Cause

Stef: So you come into this, and you’re married, and you’re a Mom. And you’re realizing you’re starting to have an awakening process to the realization that what you believe to be true about God in your faith, you have questions about. You’re starting to wonder, and you’re starting to rewire yourself, and that’s okay. You’re going through the unlearning and all this stuff so that you can grow in your faith. What caused you to realize this? Then, give me the top 3 practical things you did to undo it.

Carrie: So the realization of it was just constant tension. I didn’t want that. Seeing the result of that and having that tension still in the relationship, you know, with my family. So, I didn’t want that to repeat. Especially after having kids, I didn’t want that to be my story. So, the top 3 things I did:

• Understood the differences in personalities
• Processed the things that made us communicate differently
• Letting go of being right

A lot of it stemmed from that.

Ask Yourself, How Does This Apply to Me?

Stef: When I’m coaching, I want you to ask yourself this question so you can get clear on your niche. How does this apply to me? When you go back and watch the replay, think about answering all these questions for yourself and the brand you’re trying to build. Or the brand that you have and see what comes out. So, Carrie, when you say I had to let go of my ego, how did you do it?

Carrie: Honestly, the pivotal moment was a sermon that was titled, “It’s Not About Me.”

Stef: So you were putting yourself in a different type of faith learning environment, right? What else happened? You talked about personality differences. So how did you discover that? What were the tools that you used?

Carrie: Okay. So I say that it’s like a Holy Spirit Mentor. I think I was praying for somebody to come alongside me, but I didn’t have somebody in that physical sense, and I started becoming very aware. So, you know, in grocery stores, I would see a mom reprimanding her kids, “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t!”

And it hit me in that moment. I would hear that voice going, “Okay, but what is right? What is the thing they should do?” And so that would pivot my parenting to you know what? My job is to teach what’s supposed to happen and not just tell what’s not supposed to happen.

Keep Asking Questions to Niche Down

Stef: So, again, this almost also touches on that faith-led learning. As we talked, you put yourself in a faith-led learning environment because you were listening to sermons. You had a posture of learning, but you also have a learning mindset around what is not working.

You were willing to inventory instead of being told the way you should parent and communicate. So you started exploring, researching, and educating yourself on how God wanted you to parent and communicate. This is getting more clear—fantastic!

Now talk to me a little bit about finances and practical solutions. Is there anything else I can touch or feel that’s a tactical thing that got you to the place of walking through the freedom of generational baggage?

Carrie: I guess you could kind of tie this back to the same thing. There was a lot of growth and awareness learning. The ways that we approach it differently. I’m now kind of coaching some other people on doing what seems to be making an impact. So that was something I tied in because it’s been relevant to the people that I’m around.

Focus On the Power of One to Niche Down

Stef: Good. So, do you already have an idea of what your podcast would be called and what you would be talking about?

Carrie: So for my pillars, I have Faithful Living, Healthy Relationships, and Managing Your Home.

Stef: When you’re new to building a podcasting brand, you want to focus on the power of one to niche down. You want one person or one couple. It depends on who you’re going to talk to. And then you want the one core problem you’re going to solve and the one way you solve it.

When you get clear on this, there will be a lot of supplemental, incredible content. But all of the content and all of the pillars you’ll create will tie into:

• Lift up the One
• The Power of the One
• One Person
• One Problem
• One Solution

When we look at these different pillars, we have faith, we have relationships, and then we have home management. But is that really it? When you’re really looking at this brand, Carrie, you’re teaching people how to rewire their faith, you’re teaching them to find the truth to experience God in a way that they’ve never experienced Him. And because they are seeking a connection with God, it permeates and penetrates their relationship.

What Are You Actually Doing?

Stef: Does that make sense? It’s not home management. What are you actually doing with these people? Does that resonate? You’re not going to talk about finances. You’ll ask them why they believe they’re not worthy of whatever, making money as a couple or building wealth as a couple.

So, where does that belief stem from a Biblical perspective? You want to root back and niche down into the faith aspect here, build a brand on that, and let go of some other things. I know you can touch on them, so it seems like that’s the right thing to do, like finances. But really, what are you doing to help couples? Are you helping just the husband, or is it just the wife?

Carrie: I mean, I guess at this point, I have focused specifically on just women. So those are the people that I’ve kind of interacted with personally but I guess it could be both. I don’t know. I didn’t even consider that.

Who Do You Have In Mind?

Stef: To niche down, you don’t want it to be both if it doesn’t have to be. I’m glad that you do have someone in mind. You said the woman.

• She’s obviously married with a family because of so much of what you’re telling me about the coaching that you’re going to do.
• She’s writing her faith so she can show up in her family from a faith-led place.
• She’s writing or rewriting or rejuvenating or reconnecting with her faith so that she can do what?
• So that she can pour into her family and communicate more clearly?
• It’s really about her family and her communication.

There is generational baggage, but she doesn’t even know what that is. So you’re going to have a podcast episode on that and tell her, “This is what you’re dealing with.” It affects communication, but again, right now, she’s stuck and curious. She’s at the point of curiosity and learning. Carrie, you said:

• I started listening to sermons.
• I started looking at the people.
• I started googling things.

That’s what your woman is saying. When she Googles things, I want her to find Carrie and find this podcast that says, write your faith or find faith or rejuvenated faith because really what it is. You’re getting rid of the legalistic viewpoints that have shaped the way she sees relationships, and you’re going to rewrite that for her. It could even be Rewriting Faith and Relationships. That could be the title of your podcast.

Do Market Research to Get Tactical

Carrie: I think because I find a lot of things are very existential, they don’t really get tactical. I want to take it to something more tactical. And that’s where I think I’m stuck on messaging. I try to explain that this isn’t like we’re going to talk about some Bible verses and then you’ll feel all better. We’re going to actually do something specific. Do you see what I’m getting at? I don’t know what says tactical to that person who is looking.

Stef: Yeah, that’s where the market research will come in. If you end up doing Podcast to Profit (P2P), I have an entire month where you will understand how to niche down. What do you think you need? You are sitting with people. I have a whole framework for this to get the messaging out of your person. Because the messaging is not about what you think it is. It’s what they say it is.

What’s Your TSO?

Stef: Carrie, for you, it’s starting where you are with what you know to be true. Here are some practical solutions you could use in the TSO now. For example, Rewriting Faith or Rewriting Faith in Relationships. And feel free to play with that. Those are ideas after a 10-minute conversation. The TSO for everybody new here is a tactical, specific outcome. It’s ten words or less that tell people:

• What is this brand?
• What is this podcast so that I am not confused at all as a listener or as a consumer?
• I’m really clear on what this is.

So, Carrie, yours could be something like Practical Solutions to Grow Closer to God So You Can Grow Closer to Your Family. You put the phrasing in solutions because you know that’s something you will grow into in P2P. In the coming months, you’ll know what the language is. But it’s a placeholder, so you cannot be stuck in the launch process. How is this feeling?

Carrie: Good. That’s a different perspective, and I think it definitely gives me a little more momentum than I’ve been hitting with the brick walls.

What Problem Does Your Person Think They Have?

Stef: Perfect! Pray on it. Think about it. Typically, to get clear or niche down, you need to get to the root of what the person thinks the problem is. When I asked you what your problem was, you said, “I think my biggest thing was the generational package.”

So your job over the next coming months, because you’re going to launch and you’re going to move forward, is to take a step in order to take another step and get more clear. It will be to uncover what she is calling the generational package because she’s probably not calling it that. Do some research to figure that out. You’ll make some small tweaks, and you’ll keep pushing and pressing forward. Alright, go get it, girl!

Take the Next Step to Get Power Coaching Like This

Stef: Did you enjoy that? Do you want to get time in the hot seat just like this? When you become a student of Podcast Pro University or any of my other courses, you will join the student community. We have a monthly live Q&A where I answer questions like this and help you niche down your podcast.

Or when you move up into Podcast to Profit, as soon as you‘ve launched that podcast, I have roundtable coaching just like this every other week. Questions like this come up all the time. I’m able to map everything out beside you. What does your podcast look like?

We go into all the little details. I can audit your show. We talk about podcast SEO. I audit your offer and your course offers. I help you with your sales, your marketing, and your messaging. And I help you niche down like I just did for Carrie. All of that goes down inside my program Podcast to Profit. So those are the ways that you can get coaching just like this. Don’t wait. Get going.

I pray this blesses you!

APPLE PODCAST | SPOTIFY | YOUTUBE

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