Years ago, someone reached out to me about potentially working together on a podcast they wanted to launch. They had an idea they believed was really original. So original, in fact, that they didn’t want to tell me what it was.

Which made figuring out how I could actually help them… interesting.

They were incredibly protective of the concept and even wanted me to sign an NDA before they’d share the details because they were worried someone might take it. We never ended up working together and, as far as I know, that podcast never launched.

I still think about that sometimes because it’s probably the most extreme example I’ve seen of something that comes up in much smaller ways all the time. People put a lot of pressure on the podcast idea. It needs to be different enough, clever enough or something nobody else is doing. And if they search Spotify or Apple Podcasts and discover there are already hundreds of shows talking about their area of expertise, the excitement can disappear pretty quickly.

Why bother if someone else is already doing it?

The problem is, if your podcast is about business, health, parenting, leadership, mindset, marketing, relationships or pretty much any subject people care about, somebody else is already talking about it. Probably a lot of somebodies.

I don’t think that’s a reason not to make yours.

It’s not really a competition

I’ve had clients come to me with podcast ideas that make complete sense for them and their expertise, but they’re already comparing themselves to the shows that exist before they’ve recorded a single episode. They wonder how they’re going to stand out, why someone would listen to them instead and how they’re supposed to compete with all these established podcasts.

I get why your brain goes there. You open a podcast app, search your category and there they all are. Some have hundreds of episodes, thousands of reviews and hosts who have been doing this for years.

But that’s also important context. Some podcasts have been around for 10+ years. They’ve had a decade to build an audience, develop their voice, establish authority and become known for what they do. Comparing the podcast you’re thinking about starting to one that’s already 400 episodes deep isn’t particularly useful.

You’re looking at your starting line and comparing it to someone else’s middle.

And also, who said you need to beat them? Someone listening to another show in your space doesn’t suddenly become unavailable to you. I listen to multiple podcasts that cover similar subjects because I like different things about each of them. I like the hosts, how they think, the conversations they have or the way they explain things.

There isn’t one available spot for a business podcast and whoever gets the most downloads wins.

The topic isn’t the unique part. You are.

There are only so many broad subjects we can talk about. The difference is what each person brings to them.

Your experiences are different. Your knowledge is different. The things you’ve seen through your work are different. The questions you’re curious about are different. The stories you can tell, the opinions you’ve formed and the way you explain something all come from a combination of things nobody else has lived in exactly the same way.

That’s where I think people sometimes get stuck when they’re trying to come up with an original podcast concept. They’re looking for originality in the subject, when a lot of it actually comes from the person.

Two people can make an episode about exactly the same topic and create completely different episodes. One might give you the information while the other tells you about the time they got it completely wrong, what happened because of it and what they understand differently now. One might approach it through their professional expertise, someone else through their lived experience and another person might ask a question nobody else seems to be asking.

That’s the stuff people connect with.

And it’s also why I don’t think your job is to find information nobody has shared before. There’s a pretty good chance somebody has. Your job is to work out what you have to bring to it.

Trying too hard to be different can make things harder

There’s another side to all of this too. Sometimes we’re so determined to make a podcast sound unique that we make the concept unnecessarily complicated.

The title has to be clever. The format has to be something nobody has ever done. We need a special name for every segment. The premise needs three paragraphs to explain because we’re trying so hard not to sound like anything that already exists.

And somewhere along the way, we’ve made it harder for someone to understand what the bloody podcast is about.

There’s a reason keep it simple, stupid has stuck around.

Different doesn’t automatically mean better. Clever doesn’t automatically mean interesting. And original doesn’t automatically mean people will listen. Sometimes a simple idea, explored really well by someone who cares about it, is enough.

Your version can get more interesting as you go

When I’m helping someone explore a podcast idea, one of the things I’m looking for is that thread we talked about in the last article. Can this idea go somewhere?

If we start with the main subject, are there interesting branches coming off it? Can we take one idea and look at it from five different angles? Does the person light up when we start pulling on certain threads?

That last one tells me a lot. You can usually feel when somebody has landed on something they actually care about versus something they’ve chosen because they think it will perform well.

The purpose-driven stuff tends to have more behind it. There are experiences attached to it, opinions, questions, things they want to change and things they wish more people understood. You start talking about one episode and suddenly they’ve thought of another three.

That’s very different from choosing a podcast concept purely because it seems popular. Popularity might get you started. I’m not convinced it gives you enough to keep talking for the next hundred episodes.

What are you actually trying to get from your podcast?

This is where comparing your podcast to everyone else’s can become even less useful. You might not even be trying to achieve the same thing.

Let’s say you’re a fitness coach and the goal of your podcast is ultimately to bring more of the right people into your coaching business. You work with people locally or within a particular part of Australia. A massive fitness podcast in the US might have millions more downloads than you ever will.

Does that actually matter?

Their audience might not be able to work with you anyway. If your podcast brings 20 people into your world and five of them eventually become clients, that could be far more valuable to your business than thousands of downloads from people who were never going to take the next step.

But you can only see that if you’ve decided where your goal line is. If you haven’t, it’s incredibly easy to borrow somebody else’s. Their download numbers become the number you think you need. Their chart position becomes something you think you’re supposed to chase. Their audience size becomes the benchmark.

Suddenly you’re competing in a race you never actually needed to enter.

There’s inspiration and then there’s copying

Of course, none of this means you can find a successful podcast, copy its title, rewrite its description, recreate its episode structure and call it your unique perspective. That’s not inspiration. That’s copying.

And honestly, spending too much time looking at other podcasts in your space can make this whole problem worse. You start noticing how they title episodes, how they describe their show, what topics they cover, what their artwork looks like and which guests they interview. Then you get further and further into their podcast and further away from yours.

At some point, you have to stop looking around.

Get out of your head and out of someone else’s show for a minute. Come back to what you know, what you like and what you’re curious about. Think about what you’ve experienced, what you can help someone understand, what you have an opinion on and what you want to contribute.

That’s where your show starts becoming yours.

You might not see what makes it yours straight away

Maybe you still look at your idea and think, yeah, but mine doesn’t feel that different. That’s okay.

I don’t think you always know what makes your podcast your podcast before you’ve made any of it. Some of that becomes clearer through doing. You hear yourself explain something in a way you hadn’t thought about before. A guest takes a conversation somewhere unexpected. A listener responds to something you almost didn’t include. You find yourself coming back to a particular idea again and again and realise there’s more there than you thought.

And I think there’s a mindset piece to this too. At some point, you have to back yourself a little bit. You don’t need proof that your podcast is completely different to everything else out there before you decide what you have to say is still worth sharing.

That confidence will probably grow as the podcast does. You’ll get better at talking about the things you care about, you’ll see what people connect with and you’ll start trusting your own ideas more without checking what everyone else is doing first.

And the more you believe there’s value in what you have to contribute, the more confidently you tend to contribute it.

There will probably always be another podcast about your subject.

They still aren’t you.

Maybe that’s enough reason to stop worrying about whether your idea has been done before and start thinking about what you’re going to do with it.