Most coaches who come to me about starting a podcast have already made a decision they don't realise is a problem. They know what the show is called. They know who they want to interview first. They have a rough idea of the topics — mindset, resilience, performance, success habits.
And that's exactly where things go wrong.
"I know a lot of interesting people."
This is one of the most common things I hear from coaches who want to start a podcast. And it sounds like an advantage. A full address book, a network of smart people, a ready-made guest list. What could go wrong?
The problem is that interesting people are not a podcast strategy. A guest who is a master of mindset, followed by a guest who is a master of productivity — that's not one show. That's two different podcasts sharing a feed. And the person who found you because of the mindset episode has no idea why they're being asked to care about productivity next week.
Your guest list is a reflection of who you know, not who your listener is. Those are two completely different things.
✕ The wrong starting point — "Who should I have on?" leads to a show about your network. It'll be interesting to you and confusing to everyone else.
✓ The right starting point — Come up with ten episode titles first. Then find a guest for each one. The title tells you who the show is for. The guest is just the vehicle.
Ten titles before you book a single guest
Here's a simple exercise that tells you almost everything about whether your podcast idea is ready. Before you think about guests, before you think about format, sit down and write ten episode titles. Real ones. Titles that a specific person would see and think: that's for me.
If you can't write ten, you don't know what the show is yet. If the ten titles you write are all over the place — one about mindset, one about morning routines, one about dealing with difficult clients — you have the same problem. You don't have a show. You have a collection of topics.
If you can write ten titles that all clearly belong to the same show, for the same listener, speaking to the same specific problem — now you have something worth building.
I looked at a coaching podcast recently — I won't name it, it's not the point — that had been running for a while. The episode list told the whole story. One week: motherhood and identity. The next: ending racism. Then financial debt. Then cancer. Then rugby. All with different guests. All on completely different topics. All named after the guest rather than the idea.
Nobody listening to the motherhood episode knew why they were being asked to care about rugby the following week. Because the show had no answer to that question. It had guests. It didn't have a reason.
Generic titles (the show is about everything):
✕ "[Guest Name]: Mothers deserve better"
✕ "[Guest Name]: Empower society to end racism"
✕ "[Guest Name]: From debt to financial empowerment"
Three episodes from the same show. Three completely different listeners. Nobody knows what this show is for or who it's speaking to.
Specific titles (the show is about one thing, for one person):
✓ "Why your first client always comes from your network — and why your tenth has to come from somewhere else"
✓ "The moment most new coaches drop their rate — and what to do instead"
✓ "How to price your first coaching package without underselling your expertise"
These three titles belong to the same show, for the same listener. You know exactly who this is for after reading one of them.
Narrower than you think
Almost every coach I speak to tells me their podcast will be about mindset. Sometimes resilience. Sometimes performance. Sometimes personal development. And I understand why — those things are what coaching is about. They're what you know. They feel like the natural territory for the show.
That same podcast I mentioned earlier — the one with the rugby episode and the racism episode — had a recurring segment called "Mindset Matters." It turned up between interviews. No clear angle. No specific person it was for. Just: mindset matters. Which is true. And also completely useless as a positioning statement for a show.
But mindset is not a podcast topic. It's a category. And it's a category so crowded that a new show entering it has almost no chance of finding a listener who wasn't already listening to someone else.
The question is not "what do I help people with?" You help people with mindset. Fine. The question is: what part of mindset, for what specific person, at what specific moment in their life?
The coach who helps women in their forties who left corporate careers and are rebuilding their confidence has a podcast. The coach who helps first-time managers who've never had leadership training has a podcast. The coach who works specifically with people recovering from burnout has a podcast.
The coach who helps people with mindset does not have a podcast yet. They have a topic. Those are not the same thing.
✕ Too broad — "A podcast about mindset and personal growth." Every coaching podcast is this. Nobody is searching for it specifically.
✓ Specific enough — "A podcast for first-time managers who feel out of their depth and haven't had any formal leadership training." One person. One problem. One reason to keep listening.
Someone starting out is not the same person as someone five years in
Here's another version of the same mistake. A coach decides to start a podcast for coaches. Fine. But which coaches? Someone who is thinking about leaving their job and starting a coaching practice is in a completely different place to someone who has been coaching for five years and is still struggling to fill their calendar. You cannot speak to both of them at the same time. They have different problems. They need to hear different things. And the coach who tries to serve both ends up serving neither.
The same is true across the whole spectrum. A new manager who has never led a team before needs something completely different to a CEO who has run companies for twenty years. And here's the part most coaches don't want to hear: if you've never been a CEO, you probably can't speak credibly to CEOs. Not because you're not good at what you do — but because you haven't lived where they are, and they'll know it within two minutes of listening.
The sweet spot is someone who is roughly five steps behind you on the same path you've already walked. Close enough that you remember exactly what that felt like. Far enough that you have something real to offer them. You know the terrain. You know the specific moments where people get stuck. You know what they need to hear because you needed to hear it yourself not that long ago.
Your guests work differently. They can be five steps ahead of you — someone who has already solved the problem your listener is just starting to face. That's what makes a guest worth booking. Not that they're impressive or well-known. That their story is where your listener is headed.
The coach who is five years in and helping a brand new coach — that works. The new coach recognises exactly where they are in the story. The host knows that terrain because they were just there. And the guest? Someone who has built what the new coach is trying to build. That's a show with a direction.
✕ Too far apart — A coach with two years' experience trying to speak to CEOs with twenty. The credibility gap is obvious. The listener can feel it.
✓ The right distance — A coach who just figured out how to get their first ten clients, speaking to someone who is still on their first two. Close enough to remember. Far enough to guide.
The questions you need answered before you press record
A podcast producer for a coach isn't there to edit the audio and send it back. That's the easy part. The harder part — the part that determines whether the show finds an audience or disappears after twelve episodes — is getting clear on the answers to a handful of questions before a single episode is recorded.
Who is the one person this show is for? Not a demographic. A specific human being with a specific problem at a specific point in their life. If you can describe that person in one sentence, the show has a direction.
What does that person need to hear that nobody else is saying to them? Not better versions of what every other coaching podcast says. The thing that's missing. The angle that's honest rather than optimistic. The episode that makes someone think: I didn't know anyone was allowed to say that.
Why does this podcast exist? Not "to build an audience." That's a goal, not a reason. The shows that last are the ones where the host has something to say — a point of view that's been earned through experience and that shapes every episode, every title, every guest choice.
Get those three things right and the rest — the format, the length, the frequency, the guests — becomes much easier to decide. Get them wrong and you can produce beautifully edited episodes that nobody listens to, because there was never a clear reason for a specific person to choose this show over the hundreds of others that looked the same.
The coaches who build podcasts that actually work are not the ones with the biggest networks or the most polished production. They're the ones who were willing to narrow down — to say "this show is not for everyone, it's for this specific person" — before they recorded anything.
That narrowing is uncomfortable. It feels like you're leaving people out. You are. And that's exactly why it works.
Ready to figure out what your podcast is actually for?
Bren Russell, Podlad
I work with coaches who want to build a podcast that does something specific — not just adds another show to an already crowded space. Before we talk about guests, formats or recording setups, we work out who the show is for and why that person should care.
A 20 minute call is usually enough to tell you whether you're ready to start recording or whether there's a question still worth answering first. Either way, you'll leave with something useful.
Book a free 20 minute intro call
No pitch, no pressure. We'll work out whether your podcast idea is ready — and what it needs if it isn't.
