It is officially 2026 and the podcasting landscape
is changing. For one example, I have heard time
and time again that a pre -recorded intro on
a podcast, it just ain't it these days. You want
to get to the content as quickly as possible.
And that makes perfect sense, right? There are
so many things that are vying for our attention.
that we have so little time to capture people
and convince them that what we are doing is worth
listening to. Hey everybody, welcome to the Streamlined
Podcast. My name is Joe Casabona. I'm a podcast
and systems coach as well as the evangelist for
rss .com. And I have been thinking a lot about
a series I want to create in 2026 called How
to Start a Podcast in 2026. But as I recorded
take one of this episode, this is take two, I
came to the realization that based on the trends
and things I'm seeing and the advice that I'm
getting, this might not be the best series for
me to do. So today I want to talk about the two
things that I think podcasters should focus on
to have a good process in 2026 and what that
could mean for the future of this show. So I
went to PodFest earlier this year. I gave a talk
called Don't Let AI Steal Your Podcast Soul.
But also on behalf of RSS .com, I went around
and asked a handful of podcasters what we should
be focusing on for growth in 2026. And I will
link the video. I would strongly recommend you
watch that to get the full effect. But far and
away. The most common answer I got was to focus
on authenticity. And this warmed my heart. Because
as I just mentioned, the talk I gave was about
not letting AI steal your podcast soul. I think
that over the past few years, we have used...
AI, and when I say AI, I mean large language
models. This is what AI means colloquially, right?
There is no intelligence in what these things
are doing. They are a glorified word association
machine. But we've been using them for too much,
from writing the scripts for us to generating
audio for us and video. to coming up with ideas.
And if you are trying to be authentic in 2026,
you should not be using AI for those things.
Because even if you do something that seems benign,
like use AI to come up with 10 episode ideas,
those are not your episode ideas. Those are other
people's episode ideas. You need to tell your
story because that is how you are going to stand
out. Telling other people's stories or making
other people's ideas come to life is not the
way that you are going to make yourself show
up for people and stand out. And this is coupled
with another piece of advice I keep hearing.
I heard it at PodFest and I heard it in a recent
training we did at RSS .com as well. And this
was to do a solo show. So Colin Gray mentioned
this during our RSS .com training. He is over
at the founder, creator of Alitu and thepodcasthost
.com. And he mentioned this. And then during
a panel discussion. at Podfest that I went to
with lots of smart people on it, right? It was
my friend Seth Silver's panel. He asked great
questions to three people, Ellie Puckett, Rox
Codes, and John Lee Dumas. John Lee Dumas, of
course, the host of Entrepreneurs on Fire, one
of the most popular business interview podcasts.
And this is important because he said if he was
starting a podcast in 2026, he would not do an
interview podcast those are a dime a dozen these
days those don't help you stand out to there's
too many of these podcasts he would pick a problem
that he was best at solving and make a solo podcast
about that and this is really important it can't
just be a problem you want to solve it needs
to be the problem that you are the best at solving
because there are so many things vying for our
attention in 2026 and i mentioned this because
one time hearing something once is an opinion
hearing it multiple times could be a trend and
i've been thinking about this for a long time
how i want to do more solo shows if you listen
to my other podcast i mean this is a solo show
but then if you listen to my other podcast streamline
solopreneur which was an interview podcast, it
is slowly becoming more and more of a solo podcast.
And then Colin mentions it and John Lee Dumas
mentions it. There are more people coming to
me about wanting to do a solo show. My friend
Becky has a great voice notes podcast. My friend
Kat is repurposing and formatting her live streams
in such a way that gives her a good 15 minute
or less solo podcast show. And I love this for
a couple of reasons. It goes really well with
authenticity, right? Solo show plus authenticity
is like a potent combination. Because you are
crafting a narrative to help solve a problem.
And that's what's going to help you stand out.
And I've also seen this trend of shorter content
doing well. And this is not. I'm going to say
something that I don't think a lot of people,
especially my age, I'm 40, I'm an elder millennial.
I don't think a lot of people my age feel this
way. I don't think our attention spans are getting
worse. I think there's a lot of things competing
for our attention. But I think that if you create
something good to keep people's attention. then
you have you have lengthened their attention
span if you create garbage then people are just
going to churn right but shorter content that's
really helpful has a lot of versatility if you
saw that this episode was 40 minutes you would
then have to think about can you commit to listening
to this episode for 40 minutes but i'm going
to keep it under 10 And now you think, well,
that's shorter than a commute. Or I can do that
while I'm doing my morning routine, while I'm
drinking my coffee. And I'm giving you something
tangible to take away. So I think that this short
solo episode focused on solving a problem is
a great way to go with podcasting in 2026. Now,
how does this relate to what I said earlier?
about me maybe doing a series on launching a
podcast in 2026. Well, if I want to be really
good at solving a problem, launching a podcast
in 2026 is just something that so many people,
every podcast hosting company is going to do
this. Every podcast coach is going to do this.
This is not a thing I am uniquely qualified to
solve. While I have opinions, everyone has an
opinion. So what am I going to do for this show,
Streamlined Podcaster, to make it hyper -focused,
hyper -niched? This is the other thing that I
didn't mention, right? If you're going to be
really good at solving a problem in a solo show
that's 10 minutes or less, you want to be really
niche, niche, niched, niche. You want to be really
niche about it. You want to pick a problem and
solve it well. And so for me, that is going to
be... Building automations for solo podcasters
so that they can actually focus on creating great
content. Building automations. There are a lot
of ways I can do this. It doesn't just have to
be like here's the Zapier of the week or the
Zap of the week. It could be that. But it could
be around tools and systems and emerging technologies
to help you solve that problem. So this is what
I'm thinking about. for 2026 for The Streamlined
Podcaster. I'd love to hear what you think. Head
over to streamlinedfeedback .com and leave a
message or a voice note. If you liked this episode,
be sure to share it. And I definitely want to
hear from you. I want to solve real problems.
But that's it for this episode of The Streamlined
Podcaster. Thanks so much for listening. And
until next time, I hope you find some space in
your week.