“Y’all buy that bulls**t, you’d better keep y’all receipt / Obama said chill, you going to get me impeached.” — Jay
Marc Maron hosts a podcast, “WTF With Marc Maron,” from his garage in Highland Park, California. Maron’s podcast garners more than 5 million downloads a month and averages 450,000 downloads per episode. Last week, he interviewed the President of United States, Barack Obama. I would bet that this is the only presidential podcast to ever be conducted in a garage. On Monday, the presidential interview was posted online. It was downloaded 735,063 times in the first 24 hours of availability, and more than 900,000 times in the first 36 hours.
As noted by National Public Radio, before Maron started his podcast in September 2009, “he was in a dark place: He was going through a divorce, his comedy career had hit a wall and — in his mid-40s — he didn’t have a Plan B.” Through the success of his show, he has been able to launch his career into a second act. Furthermore, it has often been therapeutic for him, his guests, and listeners. So what can we as law students and young lawyers learn from the surprising success of Maron and his popular podcast?
1. Adapt.
Maron was broke and fired from his radio gig for a second or third time before he entered the world of podcasting. He has since adapted and expanded his one-man comedian show to craft a literary memoir. He usually doesn’t do research or too much preparation for most of his interviews, but he made it a point to read “Dreams From My Father” in preparation for last week’s presidential podcast. Whether in his role as a stand-up comedian, radio host, writer, or podcaster, Maron has continuously adapted to the medium to resonate with his various audiences. He often works from outlines so he can adjust a comedy show or podcast interview on the fly. He has leveraged several platforms to express himself and perfect his craft. Back in 2009, he was already podcasting and tweeting. How many of us can say that?
Now, he is arguably the most successful and popular comedian podcasting today. And podcasting has gone from a fledgling internet medium to many peoples’ media of choice. It was only after some trials and tribulations that Maron discovered how to leverage a relatively new digital media to transform the culture and economics of comedy.
Does anyone believe the culture and economics of the legal profession will remain the same? Jack Welch has famously said that you should “change before you have to.” Does this apply to lawyers? Richard Susskind has asked, “should lawyers get directly involved in alternative sourcing or leave it to others?” and “to what extent will technology disrupt the legal market?” Nothing is permanent but change. As aspiring or young lawyers, we could have the greatest impact on modernizing our legal and justice systems. Regardless if we believe the profession is ripe for change, we must be ready for it when it does. There is no other option. Those who aren’t willing to evolve with the profession will be left behind.
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2. Reflect.
In a profile piece by Vulture, Maron states:
The bottom line is, people don’t talk about real things because they don’t think that other people have the capacity to carry their burden, but all that stuff is essentially what makes us human. We’re built to deal with death, disease, failure, struggle, sickness, problems. But we are too proud to reveal ourselves to each other anymore.
Whether Maron is chatting with Conan O’Brien or interviewing other people in his garage, he is constantly reflecting on his life and the lives of others. He refrains from using the “therapy” term to describe his interviewing style because that word is “thrown around a lot by people who are condescendingly contextualizing the active conversation about real shit.” But the beginning of the podcast itself was an act of desperate self-help. After two decades of self-laceration, onstage and off, Maron has reinvented himself on WTF as the comedy world’s been-there-done-that guidance counselor. His reflection process has helped his ratings, but more importantly it seems to be helping out all aspects of his life.
As Plato once wrote and Socrates reiterated, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Self-reflection keeps us honest. It lets us evaluate ourselves based on our own goals and vision. Meaningful reflection helps us to be more engaged, to understand the meaning and relevancy of our experiences, and to initiate further growth and change. Understanding the meaning of our experience is a defining condition of who we are. The quality of our professional and personal lives could be substantially better if we take the time to understand our experiences.
3. Reach Out.
During his first few years of hosting the podcast, most of his guests were people Maron knew already. Throughout his comedic career, Maron developed an expansive network of comedians and other like-minded individuals. When it came to establishing himself in the digital medium, he reached out to his network to help him succeed. In fact, some consider his two-part interview with his old friend Louis C.K. as the best podcast episode of all time. Ironically, they had a falling out well before the show and it was only after Maron reached out to Louis for the podcast were they were able to reconnect and ultimately bury the hatchet. Maron was able to interview the president because of the multiplier effect of his network. Someone on the president’s staff was a fan of WTF and effectively reached out to the president on behalf and unbeknownst to Maron. Whether he directly reached out to his guests or word of mouth did the job for him, the value of a strong network and the importance of leveraging it is undeniable.
It is often said that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. This may not be absolute, but I bet you know several people who have been afforded opportunities based on their network. The legal industry is a business of service and relationships. Maron is a perfect example of someone who was able to leverage his relationships to succeed in another medium. Most importantly, he reached out to and made use of his extensive network. At the end of the day, Maron had a sincere interest in others and because of it people have taken a sincere interest in him. Many things in the legal profession are bound to change, but the importance of service and relationships is here to stay.
Renwei Chung is a 2L at Southern Methodist University School of Law. He has an undergraduate degree from Michigan State University and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Golden Rule: How Income Inequality Will Ruin America (affiliate link). He has been randomly blogging about anything and everything at Live Your Truth since 2008. He was born in California, raised in Michigan, and lives in Texas. He has a yellow lab named Izza and enjoys old-school hip hop, the NBA and stand up paddleboarding (SUP). He is really interested in startups, entrepreneurship, and innovative technologies. You can contact Renwei by email at [email protected], follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn.