That doesn’t mean changing your topic, or your perspective, or your point of view on your subject matter—that is the podcast you want to make. But it does mean changing how you present that message and killing off everything that isn’t that.

ultimately creativity is fueled by decisions, not intentions. I happen to love the word “decide.” It’s from the Latin de cadere, which translates to “cut off.” The act of deciding isn’t just about choosing what to do. It’s also about cutting off that which doesn’t achieve the specific goal.

Part of doing the work of audience research, though, is to frame every audience positively. When I see 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 contin

The only way to get people to recommend your show is to have a recommendable show.

a podcast stops growing because people stop recommending it.

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.

The audience has always been in control. It is a fickle beast, but not an inscrutable one. You only need to spend some time with them, learning from them, and their secrets become a little less mysterious. It is this arcane knowledge that can turn your podcast, an audio enclosure delivered by RSS syndication, into a show, a thing people care about

the only way to maintain a competitive advantage in the media and entertainment business is to continue knowing more about your audience than the competition does.

The only path to getting more recommendations is to be recommendable. And the only path to “recommendability” is to know as much as possible about what the recommenders—your potential audience—are looking for, lacking, loving, and hating. And this, my friends, involves doing some decidedly unglamorous work: learning as much about your audience as y