Unless you’ve been living under a rock, chances are you’ve heard of Joe Rogan and have likely listened to his podcast too! JRE or the Joe Rogan Experience, is one of the most popular podcasts in the world and it’s just one of the many things that Joe does in his daily life with others including being an MMA commentator and a long-time stand up comic. If you’ve been following any news about Joe then you likely saw that in 2020, Joe signed a deal with Spotify worth more than $100M. Clearly, Joe knows how to make himself rich but what he doesn’t know, is that he was instrumental in helping me achieve my financial goals as well! In this article, I’m going to share with you exactly how Joe Rogan taught me to be rich!
Okay, so how did Joe Rogan, the chimp-loving, DMT using MMA commentator teach me to be rich? Well I’m about to tell you now! Admittedly, the lessons I’ve learned from being a long-time fan of Joe Rogan mainly stem from his wildly successful podcast. In fact, to say that I am a devout listener is putting it mildly. Here’s a screenshot of my YouTube progress bars in case you don’t believe me!
Through analyzing the history of his podcast, I have derived three primary principles that have all either opened my eyes to how true wealth is built or have literally made my net worth rise as a welcomed by-product.
The first principle I learned through JRE and Joe’s impressive rise to podcast fame is what it is called a First Mover advantage. If you’re not familiar with this term then let me share with you it’s definition. As per Investopedia, a First Mover is “a service or product that gains a competitive advantage by being the first to market with a product or service”. In the case of Joe and his podcast, he was one of the first major players in the space when he started his podcast in on Christmas Day of 2009 with friend and fellow comedian Brian Redban. While most people become aware of JRE through YouTube, he actually first uploaded his “video blogs” to a site called, UStream which I’m guessing you haven’t heard of before (not that you should have). Sure, he wasn’t a first mover on YouTube but he definitely was in the podcast space for which he was handsomely rewarded. In August of 2010, just nine months after launching his podcast, JRE was already in the Top 100 podcast list on iTunes, a list he would eventually top.
Staying on the topic of being a first mover, JRE definitely helped Joe rise to podcast stardom for a couple reasons. For one, being a first mover means that you have more time in the market than your predecessors which allows you to build up more brand recognition. The realization of this benefit is definitely visible as Joe’s orange head logo is known around the globe with many fans even committing to the brand further by tattooing it on their bodies.
However, Joe is definitely not the first brand to leverage the power of the first mover’s advantage to get head. Think of our good friend Jeff Bezos and what he’s been able to build with a couple books and a live internet connection. Having a vision for selling books online, Jeff Bezos has grown Amazon to a trillion dollar company and a lot of his success once again comes from the fact that he made the first move in the industry.
If you want one final example, look no further than Netflix. You can thank Reed Hastings for all those spicy “Netflix and Chill” sessions you’ve had which stem from him having started a DVD rental service in 1997. Luckily, Netflix moved away from DVDs into the video streaming market where Hastings and his company was able to grow a video empire watching its long-time counterpart Blockbuster spiral into oblivion. Sure, starting a streaming service was risky at the time however this is the cost of doing business when being a first mover and has proven to be fruitful. Netflix is now the second largest streaming service after YouTube and dwarfs its subsequent marker entrants like Hulu and Amazon Prime video.
Now, admittedly, I haven’t ever harnessed the power of being a first mover to gain financial ground. In fact, getting extensive post-secondary education and starting a YouTube channel in 2018 kind of makes me that guy that’s late to the party but it is a tool that I keep in my toolbox for future endeavors.
The second principle I learned from Joe Rogan when it comes to making money is the power of consistency. At the time of writing this article, Joe has published over 1500 episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience. Of course, it’s not that hard to publish this many episodes when you’ve been doing it for more than a decade however what’s truly amazing is how consistent he’s been. Joe seldom takes breaks from the show and when he admits to having gone on vacation, he ensures that he records extra episodes to ensure his loyal audience get their JRE fix.
So how did Joe’s uploading consistency teach me how to become rich? Simple, anything you do with money needs to be done regularly for it to pay off. Don’t believe me? Let me share a few examples to drive this point home.
The first example can be seen when embarking on your investing journey. Let’s take the example of two investors to illustrate this point. Let’s say that investor A invests $500 a month, every month, for 30 years. After 30 years, Investor A would have invested $180,000 of their money. Assuming they get a return of 10%, which I am using for illustration purposes only, they would end up with $1.3M. Now, let’s take investor B. To make things equal, let’s also assume this investor invests $180,000 over the course of 30 years and gets the same 10% return on his or her money. However, investor B invests haphazardly. He or she invests $5,000 in their first year of investing then forgets to invest for a little while, say until year 3 when they have an extra $20,000 to put into their investment account. Then, in year 10, 11 and 12, investor B strings three years of investing together, putting in $25,000 a year. Unfortunately, their consistent investing streak ends after these three years and their next investment comes in year 17 where they invest the final $80,000 after coming into a nice inheritance. Come year 30, do you think Investor B will be rewarded for his or her efforts as much as Investor A? Let’s find out. When you do the math of having $5,000 invested for 30 years, $20,000 for 27 years, $25,000 for 20, 19 and 18 years respectively and then finally $80,000 for 13 years, you end up with a grand total investment of $1,085,712. So, based on the same $180,000 invested, Investor A clears more than $200,000 extra in investment savings than their inconsistent counterpart.
But maybe this example isn’t enough for you. Well, then let’s try a sports example. Recently, Golden State Warrior Point Guard Steph Curry was recorded nailing 105 three point shots in a row at practice[A7] . A few weeks later, Curry dropped 62 points against The Portland Trailblazers, putting that practice to good use. Again, we see that consistency and practice leads to great results and might I mention that this consistency has made him the highest paid player for the 2020-2021 NBA season with a salary of just over $43M.
The final principle that Joe has taught me about becoming rich is that you must outwork your competition. It’s clear that Joe takes his podcast duties seriously as he is religious about uploading numerous episodes each and every week. Not only does he post more episodes than other top podcasts like Planet Money or the Tim Ferriss show but they usually end up being episodes spanning three plus hours. In fact, in one of his last episodes in California, he chatted with his friend Duncan Trussell for over 5 hours! When asked, Joe attributes his work ethic to his time as a young adult when he was practicing mixed martial arts for hours a day en route to becoming a state champion.
Now, I must admit that it’s no secret that working hard is important when it comes to achieving monetary success, or success in any form that is. Just listen to Gary Vee and you’ll soon realize that “you just gotta put in the work[A8] ”. For me personally, studying thousands of hours to get numerous degrees and multiple professional designations helped kickstart my money making journey. I then paired this with producing hundreds of animated videos on my other YouTube channel, Betterment Boss, which has now turned into a 6-figure business. Needless to say, Joe’s goal of outworking others has paid off and I can say it’s worked for me too but let’s be real, my success isn’t exactly exceptional so let’s look at another very popular figure that hangs his hat on how hard he can work.
Another example of someone with a crazy work ethic is Elon Musk. You may have heard of him before. Founder of Tesla, SpaceX and PayPal, Musk is known for being a magician as it somehow runs multiple billion dollars businesses at the same time. Sure, he’s got great time management skills but that’s simply not enough to allow him to do everything he does on a daily basis. The reality is that the man works a ton[A9] . Nowadays, he admits to working a “sustainable” 80-90 hours a week but in crunch times at Tesla and SpaceX he was pulling more than 120 hours in a 7 day period. Talk about work ethic! But this desire to grind didn’t just spawn from within him one day. Musk has been working this voraciously for years. In 2015, he was quoted as saying that “he wished he didn’t have to eat so he could carve out more time for work”. As someone who loves food, I am appalling by this statement however it truly shows that even the smartest people in the world need to put in the hours to see their financial dreams become a reality.
So, while on the surface, Joe Rogan appears to be a chimp-loving, martial arts practicing meathead, there’s no doubt that he practices many principles that have ultimately led to his financial success. But beyond the money, which of course is important, growing his platform has allowed him to interview[A10] hundreds of fascinating people and have opportunities that few people ever get.
Now, you may be reading this article and thinking to yourself that there’s no way you could ever achieve the same level of success as Joe has and maybe you’re right. However, even Joe admits that he isn’t the smartest guy around and that he has built his fortune through sweat equity and perseverance which are two means that you too can employ and that I personally have to achieve my own level of financial success!
And that my friends, is how Joe Rogan taught me to be rich!