It seems like the 2020s is the decade of the podcast. The guy you know from school has started one in his basement, a family friend has one, too, and your best friend has started one that nobody listens to, but he posts the link on social media twelve times a day. There’s less variety in how we consume our media these days and seek out our favorite topics of education, sports, and entertainment. Podcasts have hoovered up vast sections of the market to become one of the most dominant forms of global media.
Gone are the days when radio shows, TV stations, and newspapers were the exclusive proprietors of global must-see landmark interviews and news items. There’s still a market for traditional media, but it is being bulldozed out of the way for more conventional, slicker, and instant versions of the news. It is a vacuum filled by an incalculable level of content from YouTube “content creators” or TikTok “entertainers” to the thousands of podcasts about every topic you could imagine.
The world’s most popular podcast, using any conceivable barometer, is The Joe Rogan Experience, the most viewed, downloaded, and watched podcast on the planet. But how has Joe managed to rise to the very top of such a saturated industry, and what about his product and podcast that is so endearing to people from all walks of life? Well, let’s take a look and try and break it down.
Guest Variety
One of the critical things analysts have pointed out is that Joe Rogan has a mix of guests from across the world of film, science, sports, and comedy. One of the most notorious episodes was when he had the world’s richest man Elon Musk on as a guest and discussed various societal and economic topics. Rogan has also had a scope of other guests, from champion boxers and MMA fighters to several poker players. This includes notable poker players such as Dan Bilzerian and Isaac Haxton. Both players have reportedly won millions of dollars in tournaments over the last decade, including online poker games with a variety of options and land-based high-roller, televised games.
Joe enjoys playing poker, and this shines through when he’s talking to professional poker players on his smash-hit podcast. While Joe admittedly stated he doesn’t play much poker himself, the fact he has such a range of stars from the poker world shows the variety of guests he’s willing to have on his show to expand his opinion on topics he might not be as clued up on.
With over 10 million people regularly listening to each episode, the Joe Rogan Experience has a vast reach and completely engulfs the popularity of many mainstream TV and radio shows. The Elon Musk appearance we alluded to earlier resulted in the Tesla stock dropping by nearly 10%. If your podcast can wipe tens of millions of dollars from the stock market, this is when you know it’s a serious player and has a significant say in world affairs.
Consistency
Joe spotted a gap in the market for a podcast, and although he wasn’t the creator of the new media genre, he identified that it would become a massive avenue for creators in a mobile-centric, digital world. Ultimately, this is where the spine of the answer to today’s question lies. “Hard work often beats talent, when hard work doesn’t work hard” is a quote that has been driven into the ground by people who think they’re Richard Branson because they run a meme page on Instagram, but it does ring true from time to time, and Rogan embodies this.
He got into the market early, takes his work seriously, and there are over 2,000 individual episodes of his podcast that you can access online. When you couple this dedication with relative impartiality and a keen ability to allow his guests to talk as if they’re guests and not have them on to argue or shout over each other, like many other podcasts too, you end up with a well-balanced and informative product that people are drawn to.
Nowadays, the podcast has a regular core set of fans who will listen to every episode. The modern-day landscape of clipping podcast pieces, turning them into social media shorts, and uploading the videos to massive websites like YouTube are all parts of the business that Rogan perfected a lot earlier than many other people in the industry, leading to an enormous contract with Spotify.
It is this consistency, hard work, dedication to his craft, and thirst for deep, meaningful questions with an array of different notable figures that is a captivating cocktail of entertainment that led to him having such a solid fanbase, and while it certainly isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, Rogan has extensive, unwavering international core support.
Conclusion
Joe found what he was good at and became obsessed with his work. Regardless of your industry, this is what you need to do to succeed. We imagine Joe Rogan didn’t anticipate how big his podcast would become, but he knew he had a niche in the market, and he’s taken his opportunity with both hands.
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