AP 0154: How Do I Differentiate Myself in an Already Crowded Niche?

AskPat 154 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, hey what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 154 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm in a great mood right now, I hope you are, too. As always, I'm here to help you buy answering your online business questions five days a week.

We have a great question today from Skip O'Brien, but before we get to that, I do want to thank today's sponsor which is 99designs.com. As always, without the sponsors I actually wouldn't be able to do this show. There's two components: Your questions and the sponsors, because they help pay for the awesome assistant, Mindy, we have, who puts this show together. Mindy, love you. And love all the sponsors, too. Today's sponsor is 99designs.com. If you go to 99designs.com/pat you can actually get a $99 Power Pack of services for free today, which you could use for your next design inquiry. It's really cool: You put your job description of what you want, many designers will come and design what they believe you will like and you can pick the best one. You can have your friends and family vote, your audience vote on the best design. You'll have a design you love within seven days. Again. 99designs.com/pat. Go ahead and check it out.

Now let's get to today's question from Skip.

Skip: Hi Pat, this is Skip O'Brien. First of all, I love everything that you do and I really respect what you've been able to accomplish and all of the folks that you help. My question, really briefly, is I want to launch a podcast and I'd like to interview entrepreneurs, but it seems to me that everybody and his brother is interviewing entrepreneurs. I don't know how mine can be distinctly different, or why anybody would want to listen to mine as opposed to somebody else's and so on. So it's just kind of an internal challenge I'm having. I'm still going to do it; I think there's some niche out there for me. I want to highlight people that are making a difference in the world. Anyway, I really would appreciate any feedback, thank you. Thank you, Pat. Thanks again.

Pat Flynn: Skip, thank you so much for your question today. As far as your assessment of what people are doing out there in the podcasting world, you're absolutely right. Quite a bit of people are actually jumping on board and interviewing other entrepreneurs. It sort of makes sense because a lot of people have done that before and are very successful with it. But also, entrepreneurs are some people who are the most easiest to get ahold of and contact an interview, because they want to promote their stuff. They want to be online, they want to be on a podcast. So it's fairly easy to get entrepreneurs to come on and talk about their stuff. People love to talk about their own stuff. If you give them the platform to do that, they will do that.

But, will all that, it becomes a competition because there's a lot of people doing it now. So the question is, how do we stand out from the crowd when we're doing something like other people? Now there are a number of other ways to do that and let's take a look at some people who are doing it already and what is actually helping them stand out.

Let's take John Lee Dumas, for example, from Entrepreneur on Fire. Definitely not the first person in the world to interview other entrepreneurs, but within a year and a half his business has exploded and it's because he knows what his unique selling proposition is. He knows what he can do that nobody else can, or do at well at least, and that is the daily entrepreneur show. That was the show that was not in existence yet that he filled in and did. There was no daily show interviewing entrepreneurs extensively until he came on. Because he knew that he needed a unique position and he found it and he's owned it. And still he's owned it and he's done very well with it. There are other people, like I said, who have interviewed people before, but not like John did. Or not as often as he did. Now I say that John is working a lot of hours to make that happen, but he needs to do that in order to stand out in this space. It's obviously helping him in terms of not only number of downloads, but just people know what they're going to get and when they're going to get it and the quality is always good coming from John. That's John's position.

Let's take Andrew Warner from Mixergy.com. Andrew Warner from Mixergy has done a number of episodes in the past. He doesn't do a daily show like John, but when he does a show, it's always freaking awesome. It's so good because A) a lot of the people he has on the show aren't people that are on other shows. So he has these connections in the industry, primarily through just talking with a ton of people and people knowing people, you know, his whole network has expanded as a result. But, he gets some amazing people on the show and he asks incredible questions; questions that aren't asked anywhere else. I know he does a lot of research because I was on his show before and before his episode, before we recorded the episode where he was interviewing me, I actually had a pre-interview interview with his assistant, or producer. Jeremy was his name. That was a great interview and that was almost like a regular podcast interview, but it was just set up for Jeremy to get to know me and pass on that information and find the best stories that Andrew can then pull out in the actual interview. I've got to tell you, Andrew pulled out some amazing questions with me. Tough questions. So if you haven't listened that episode, you should. That's Andrew's, sort of, position.

Now for me, I feel like I have started to interview people more who aren't necessarily the big names in the industry. I like to connect with people, like you may have heard in the recent Episode 122, with Shane & Jocelyn Sams who are teachers who are just killing it right now. I highly recommend you listen to that show. SmartPassiveIncome.com/session122. Just incredibly inspiring, but people that my audience can moreso relate to. I've had Tim Ferriss on the show, I've had Gary Vaynerchuk and other big names. But people seem to resonate more with the shows where they can relate to those people. They don't know who they are, they're just doing their thing and I give them the platform to talk on.

So all this to say, you need to figure out what your unique selling proposition is. What your niche is. What your position is in this industry. The fact that other people are doing it means that it's working, that it's validated, that this works. But, if you just do what other people are doing you're going to get lost in the crowd. And there are a lot of podcasts out there, podcasts where people are interviewing other entrepreneurs and they are getting lost in the crowd. They might have a little surge on day one, and you might see them at the top of the rankings. But then what happens? They fall down; they fall off. I think if you bring a unique position, a unique angle to your show, something that people can look forward to and they know exactly what they're going to get, then they're going to be more likely to subscribe and help you out, rate and leave reviews and do all of the things you need to do to stay higher on the rankings.

There's another show that came out called ConversionCast from our friends over at Leadpages, and that was a very, very specific show. They interviewed one company or person from a company that did a split test. They just talked about the results of one split test. Incredibly niched, incredibly specific, but also incredibly valuable to everybody who listens to that show as well. If you haven't listened to ConversionCast, it's fantastic.

So, finding your niche, finding your specific space within a bigger space and also your position, or using whatever you have to your advantage that nobody else can use. Use that. Definitely milk whatever advantage you have and do it.

Beyond that, you also need to make sure that you ask great questions on your interviews. That you keep it interesting. You keep it flowing. You know all the normal things that keep people listening to a show. Keep it interesting. Have people tell stories, don't interrupt your interviewee all the time. Just all of those normal things that we do. But what's going to give you the most bang for your buck is having a great show with great audio, of course. But also making sure that people know that it's something different that they can't get anywhere else.

So, what is your unique advantage? What is that position you're going to take in that existing space that's going to help you stand out and make people say, “Wow, that's different and I like it.” So that's my advice to you, Skip. That's advice for everybody, not just people entering podcasts in this space; not just for people entering podcasts in any space, but people building a business. People building a platform where they want to be found, where they want to be heard, where they want to be an authority. You need to stand out and you need to know what your position is and milk it. Milk it. Own it.

Thanks, Skip, for your question. I really appreciate it. I hope everybody else out there found some use from this question and the answer. Skip, an AskPat teeshirt is going to be headed your way. I appreciate your question.

For everybody out there, thank you for listening. If you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. As always, I want to thank today's sponsor, which is 99designs.com. You can get exciting, fast, and affordable design results. So if you need a design solution for anything, from your logo, to your website, to a banner ad, to a teeshirt, to a wrap for a car—you know when you can put graphics on a car—any of that stuff . . . If you don't have the resources to hire somebody to do one-on-one, because sometimes that costs a lot of money, sometimes it costs a lot of time: If you want fast, affordable results, head on over to 99designs.com/pat and you'll get a $99 Power Pack of services for free.

Now, as always, I end with a quote. Today's quote is from William B. Sprague. And that quote is: “Do not wait to strike 'til the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.” Peace, and I'll see you on the next episode of AskPat.