How to Make Your Podcast Totally Unique

This is Grow the Show, and in today's episode, I'm going to share with you a way to make it way easier for you to get more specific with your podcast. Specificity is something that I talk about a lot here on Grow the Show if this is your first episode. Trust me, you're going to hear it from me time and time again. But overall, it is my belief that the more specific your podcast is, the better chance it will have of growing and being monetized because it will have a better chance of deeply, deeply resonating with your audience. Our initial instinct as podcasters is to define our show in really broad terms, and we do that so that we can reach the biggest audience possible, and we do that so that hopefully the show will appeal to as many people while the show might lightly appeal to everybody, it doesn't deeply resonate with anybody. And people only listen to podcasts that they deeply resonate with. Every podcast listener has six to eight shows that they listen to regularly, and so in order for your show to be one of them, it must be insanely relevant and personal to them. And if it is yet another show about entrepreneurship or yet another show about leadership or yet another show about mental health or yet another show about empowerment or sharing stories or all these broad things, it is not going to stand out and resonate deeply with anybody and so nobody is going to listen to it. And so if you're someone who is struggling at the 50 to 60 to 70 to 80 downloads for episode mark, it's because your show is too broad likely, it could be a number of things, but usually it's because your show is so broad, it is not specific. And those 70 to 50 to 80 people are just your friends and family who are trying to support you and make you not feel bad. And the reason why your show is not growing is because there is not a show to grow. There is not a unique premise. And so this quick episode is here to help you quickly reinvent your podcast in a way that will give it a really unique and resonant premise so that it will resonate with listeners incredibly and so that they will be raving fans before they even press play because they read the title, they read the description and they're like, oh my goodness, I can't believe this exists. This is perfect. I am in. And so the way that you do that is by creating what I call a cat one premise, C-A-T-1 premise. And what that is short for is category of one. And what I mean by that is you want to make it so that your podcast is in a category of one. It is the only podcast on the planet that blank, that something. It is literally one in three million. And I know what you're thinking, Kevin, how on earth can I make my show one in three million? It's actually not that hard because everyone else is not making their show specific. So two and a half million of those shows are totally broad and are all trying to be each other. And so if you just get more specific with your show premise, you will win. And let me tell you a story that illustrates that. There is a very, very famous YouTube show that has blossomed into a media empire. And that show was started by two independent filmmakers in California. Those two independent filmmakers decided that they wanted to do a celebrity interview show. But there's a problem. There are a lot of celebrity interview shows, right? There's six of them on national TV every single weeknight. There are countless, countless podcasts that interview celebrities. And even more YouTube shows and channels that interview celebrities as well. Not to even mention the daytime talk shows, the radio shows you name it. And so I'm willing to bet that you have heard a show that interviews celebrities about what they're currently doing, right? What are they promoting? What movie are they in? Whatever it is. They're a million of them. And so these two independent filmmakers who did not have much of an audience decided they want to create a celebrity interview show. Now normally, I think that would be an absolutely terrible idea because if you decide that you want to create a celebrity interview show, that means that you are deciding to compete with ABC and CBS and TBS in every single TV station and every single radio station and every single celebrity who's already interviewing other celebrities. If you're somebody without an audience, even if you're already a celebrity, it's an absolute bloodbath trying to do the same interview that other people are doing. And so how do you defeat that challenge? You create what I call a cat one premise, a category of one where it is the only show on the planet that blank. And so that's exactly what these two independent filmmakers did. And there's a good chance that you have probably heard of the show. It's called hot ones, very famous YouTube channel. It has blossomed literally into a media empire. I believe they've gotten deals, you know, they have a foot production company. They've had shows on TV. They now have a complete line of hot sauces and their unique cat one premise is this. It is the only celebrity interview show, whereas the celebrities are being interviewed. They have to eat progressively hotter hot wings. Now I'm willing to bet that your experience finding out about that show was very similar to mine, which was this somebody said, Oh, have you watched hot ones? And I'm like, no, and they said, Oh, you got to watch. It's this show where celebrities get interviewed. And as they get interviewed, they have to eat progressively hotter wings. I was like, Oh my God, that's hilarious. I'm watching it category of one premise. It's the only show on the planet that I've heard of anyway that does that. The premise alone got me to watch the host who I had never heard of. And if it was just, Oh, somebody you've never heard of interviews, celebrities. I would not tune in, but because of that category of one premise, I was like, Oh my God, I'm in. Now, that show has now made 17 seasons. They are hits. They are famous. They are rich. They have everything that you want to have and that I want to have. And they did so two independent filmmakers doing a celebrity interview show, but because they had a unique and compelling cat one premise, they were able to make it happen. Now what's cool about that show and really impressive is that when you watch that show, it is some of the most in depth interviews you will ever hear or watch in your life. And it just so turns out that Sean Evans, the host of that show is one of the best interviewers alive in my opinion. The show is incredibly well researched and his questions are fantastic. If they did not have the gimmick, the cat one premise, we wouldn't be talking about him here today, even though maybe we would with his level of talent, but odds are, in my opinion, we would not know that Sean Evans is such a great interviewer. Even with that level of skill and talent, they probably would have lost if they tried to take on all these other celebrity interviews shows without that unique premise. Now I'm not saying that you need some sort of stick that says gimmicky as eating hot wings. You don't need that. You can do that. And it'll work. The challenge to you is to come up with a premise, is to come up with something that puts your show in a category of one. So you might ask me next, okay, Kevin, what's grow the show's cat one premise? Well to you, I say it is the only podcast growth show on the planet that interviews its guests and tells its stories in a narrative fashion. Another way I can say it is the only podcast growth show on the planet where every single episode, even the ones where there's an interview, is me talking to you. The interviews are not me talking to someone else and you getting to be a fly on the wall. It's me presenting the interview content to you and guiding you through it. And so I would argue that the way that we do it here at Grow the Show, it is the only podcast growth show on the planet that does it this way. And the same thing was true for my original show way back when, when I first started it as a podcaster, my show was called Filly Who and it told the story of impressive Philadelphia's. And I was lucky and then I, you know, made the show really unique. I didn't know then what I am articulating to you now, but what I did was I told Philadelphia stories in the style of how I built this with Guy Ross. And what I mean by that is instead of, again, instead of just having a conversation and publishing it and letting the listener be a fly on the wall, I made that show really narrative. I put music and scoring underneath the episodes, I edited it heavily and made it so that it was the only podcast on the planet that told Philadelphia stories in a really cinematic, almost documentary style way. And because it was so unique, people spread the word and the show grew past six figures. And through that, I learned many, many, many lessons, which I share with you now via the Grow the Show podcast. And so my challenge for you, dear Grow the Show listener, is to put your show in a category of one. For some of you, it's going to mean completely reinventing your show. If your show is super, super broad, if your show is super, super broad, you know, you can grow it. That's not to say that you literally can't do it. You can't be a podcast that has a show that's similar to others. But in my opinion, having a category of one just makes it all so much easier and so much more fun. It's going to make it so that you have the quickest and easiest and most frictionless path to having a thriving, growing podcast audience and a profitable podcast business. So please put your show in a category of one. If you have to completely reinvent it, do that. Even if it's just a couple of tweaks, make them so that you can truly say, my podcast is the only podcast on the planet that blank and make it true. And so that is it for this quick hit episode of Grow the Show. I challenge you to join the Grow the Show Facebook group and let us know what puts your show in a category of one. And we will put you to the test and let you know if it's true. My name is Kevin Schmidland. This has been Grow the Show. Thank you so much. And I will see you in the next episode.