The Audience Is Listening: A Little Guide to Building a Big Podcast

We need to give our listeners specific language—who the show is for and why it’s perfect for them—so that they can use that language and carry forth our message to the outside world.

a podcast stops growing because people stop recommending it.

when people are asked how they discover new podcasts, the number one answer is recommendations from friends and family.

Andrew picks a vertical (like “travel” or “municipal government”) and immerses himself in every nuance of that industry for a year—he talks to the professionals, learns about their problems, and tries to put himself into their shoes as best he can. After he does this, he devotes himself to booking talks in just that industry.

If your job is to sell someone new to the medium, have a look at the top shows in podcasting and see if you can’t recommend just one of those, at least to start with.

As long as Rogan is speaking to that one listener, and producing content that polarizes people into camps of “love” and “hate,” he’s going to print money.

Rogan’s audience, I see a group of disenfranchised, young (mostly) men who do not feel completely in control of the narrative of their own lives and cannot shake the feeling that the system is rigged against them, because older guys like me continue to hang on to our jobs and aren’t sharing the American dream with them. They distrust authority beca

hotelier Ian Schrager calls it “one plus one equals three.” You build something most people will hate but a few people love—and love enough to tell their friends about. For a podcast, that means having as clear a picture about your topic area, point of view, and ideal listener (yes, listener—singular) as you possibly can, and making the podcast tha

sometimes you have to lose an existing audience to make these kinds of creative choices. That’s tough to take, especially when downloads go down and unhappy emails roll in. It requires some bravery, a strong stomach, and, most importantly, the knowledge that there is a “there” there with the audience segment you are ultimately trying to attract.