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Steven Bartlett is the founder and host of The Diary of a CEO, an interview-style show with more than 10 million YouTube subscribers and 20 million social media followers. Also known by its acronym DOAC, the show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world. Only Joe Rogan has more listeners when it comes to hosted shows.

Launched in 2017 as a hobby to let Bartlett get inside the minds of other CEOs, the podcast has attracted more than 1 billion streams, including 50 million monthly listeners in December alone. Guests have ranged from comedian Trevor Noah and YouTube titan MrBeast to a mix of self-help experts including longevity gurus, nutritionists, and sex therapists. In 2024—thanks to his mix of compelling content and growth hacking—Bartlett says the franchise generated $20 million in revenue from Google AdSense, partnerships with brands like LinkedIn, Oracle, and Shopify, and hawking merch like hoodies and branded journals.

He’s out to make even more—and do it as a free agent. While other podcast royalty have signed mega deals with streaming networks (read: Alex Cooper’s $125 million partnership with Sirius XM; Joe Rogan’s $250 million deal with Spotify), Bartlett is building on his own. It’s not for lack of interest. Last October, Bartlett flew from London to New York City to meet with several of the world’s biggest media networks to discuss potential partnerships. Bartlett won’t say who or how much, but Forbes estimates that $100 million contracts were in play.

Why turn down frothy deals? For Bartlett, the choice is simple—he believes he can do it better solo. “We looked at what they did in terms of testing, experimentation, innovation, and I felt like I was looking at the past,” says Bartlett. “When I see what happens here, I'm looking at the future.”

Bartlett is now scaling his data-heavy strategy with more shows. In 2023, he partnered with podcast industry vets Georgie Holt and Christiana Brenton to launch a studio called Flight Story. Today, they produce five podcasts and are building commercial franchises around each host—spanning book deals, speaking engagements, investment opportunities, and merch.

0:00 Introducing Steven Bartlett
0:57 What is FlightStory?
4:29 Inside The FlightStory Ecosystem
6:13 FlightStory Investments
07:54 Why Bartlett Turned Down Millions
8:42 FlightStory's Success With Intentional Failure
11:24 FlightStory's Biggest Challenge
13:09 Bartlett's Entrepreneurial Journey
17:04 How FlightStory Is Capitalizing On AI
20:58 A Look At FlightStory's Future

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Transcript
00:00I'm Stephen Bartlett and we are here at Flight Story HQ in central London.
00:06I'm an investor, I'm an entrepreneur, and I'm the host of the Diary of a CEO podcast.
00:09Two of the most used phrases in our company and still to this day are the phrase one percent,
00:19which is an obsession about the tiniest details, and the second one is the word failure, which is
00:24our job is to increase the rate of failure, i.e. increase the number of experiments that we're
00:27doing. And if you just do those two things, and if you have so much passion as the sort
00:32of fuel in the engine, all you need is patience.
00:37And that's what we could see, we could see very early on that we were out carrying the
00:41competition on the tiniest little details, and we were willing to test more things.
00:47And you might think like, those are words, but if you understood the reality, you would
00:52think that I was a psychopath.
00:57Flight Story is a media and investment company that creates host-led podcasts and turns them
01:01into entire commercial ecosystems, ranging products, events, book deals, and investment
01:06opportunities perfect for each individual host.
01:10At the heart of it all is Stephen Bartlett, the host of the Diary of a CEO, which he began
01:15in 2017 as a way to get into the heads and the diaries of the world's most compelling people.
01:22It brought in 50 million monthly listeners at the end of 2024, becoming the second biggest
01:27host-led show in the world, following only the Joe Rogan experience.
01:33But Bartlett is in pursuit of that number one spot, and he's creating a data-driven blueprint
01:38at Flight Story to get there.
01:39When I started it, I was a CEO, and I asked myself, what would one find in the diary of
01:49a person in that position?
01:52One might think it's like P&Ls and scribbles about numbers and stuff like that, but actually
01:56you'd find a really human story.
01:57You'd find someone who's in an interesting role in a position, but struggling with all the
02:01same things that you're struggling with in your life.
02:04And so in the podcast I endeavour to go a little bit deeper with people to understand why it
02:09is that they do what they do, what's really behind the scenes, and ultimately I guess,
02:13what would be written in their diary if we were lucky enough to be able to see it.
02:18And that was about four years ago.
02:20Stephen posted on LinkedIn that he had ambitions of launching what he was calling at the time
02:28and network.
02:29Myself and my co-founder and business partner, Georgie, we've worked in global podcasting
02:34together for many years, and at that stage had actually quit our exec roles in New York
02:39to launch our own podcast media agency, but then I like to say that fate intervened and
02:44we saw Stephen's LinkedIn post.
02:47We drafted an email together, I'm quite a long-term listener of the podcast, so framed
02:52it in language that I felt would hopefully catch his attention.
02:55To our dismay, he replied.
02:56We weren't expecting even anything to happen in response for an email, but we had an invite
03:02to join him on a meeting.
03:04And even at that point we weren't expecting to meet him, and there he was on the other
03:08side of the video call explaining to us all about the network.
03:12And I think in what he was saying, he said something so compelling and profound to me.
03:18He said that he was really haunted by the potential of what he had built with a diary of a CEO,
03:23and that he could use that methodology and that blueprint to accelerate what he thought
03:27were voices that could change the world.
03:30And it wasn't just through gut instinct, it was through data science that he was seeing
03:33these guests light up, these exceptional metrics on all of our channels that were really speaking
03:38to a content genre or a theme or an audience that he felt that by elevating their voices and
03:44creating new media around them that he could have a really important and, I guess, compelling
03:49impact on these people's lives and the audiences they intended to reach.
03:54We knew that we had to go on this journey.
03:55We knew that this was an opportunity to build something legacy, something generational, and
04:00something that we could really have a profound impact on the world.
04:06And I guess as they say, the rest is history because we soon pivoted to join Stephen.
04:10And myself and Georgie have spent almost the last year and a half signing our first five
04:15of creators and scaling their media brands with Stephen.
04:29Today, Flight Story Studio, the venture's podcast arm, includes five shows.
04:3350% of all revenue from the studio comes from advertising and brand partnerships with companies
04:39like LinkedIn and Oracle.
04:41But the other half comes from those additional bits of the ecosystem, including the book deals,
04:46events, and products.
04:50The diary of a CEO alone brought in $20 million in 2024 revenue, and it's on track for $30 million
04:57this year.
04:58We're building this ecosystem here at Flight Story Studio for our creators, and you can see
05:03the monetization potential across all the various streams.
05:09The first generation of product for podcast creators and influencers was mostly merchandise.
05:14You know, your t-shirts, your hats.
05:16And it was probably leveraging more of the fandom from a branding perspective.
05:20But certainly what we're seeing at Flight Story is that all of our consumers are now looking
05:24for that enablement loop.
05:25So if you think about the diary of a CEO, or we need to talk with Paul C. Brunson, or begin
05:30again with Davina McCall, all of the podcast episodes are ultimately trying to help people.
05:34And in fact, all the creators that we sign have to contribute to a happier, healthier, whole
05:37human experience.
05:39So then what we're seeing, and certainly through all of the data and analytics and the feedback
05:43loop from all of our audiences, is that they're looking for products that can help them implement
05:48the changes that they want to make in their life to help them live a happier, healthier,
05:52whole human experience.
05:55That really underpins everything that we choose to invest in.
05:57The host has to really believe in the product or service that they're endorsing.
06:00It's such an intimate relationship with the audience.
06:03And I know I keep saying the enablement loop, but we do think about it, be it our products,
06:08the type of shows that we create, and then the type of sponsors that we bring on board.
06:13Part of closing that engagement loop means bringing Bartlett's direct investments into
06:16the fold, literally.
06:18UK matcha brand Perfect Head is a perfect example.
06:21Bartlett met the founders through his time on investment show, Dragon's Den.
06:25Now, not only is he an investor, but Perfect Head is a sponsor of the Diary of the CEO, and
06:30the company is moving its offices to Flight Story HQ.
06:34This is the fastest growing, hashtag ad.
06:40This is the fastest growing tea brand in the UK.
06:44Is he here?
06:45Teddy.
06:46It's called Perfect Head.
06:47He's Teddy.
06:48So it's named after him, but it's-
06:49Very egotistical, right?
06:50No, but it's a great name.
06:52So yeah, I met these guys.
06:54They came into Dragon's Den, and after a bit of a competitive bid, we ended up doing
07:00a deal.
07:01And then the business went so well, so we ended up investing about a million more into
07:04the company.
07:05And since then, it's just been this straight line upwards.
07:09I really believe in the power of synchronous collaboration.
07:13And I think this has kind of been underestimated, especially in a post-pandemic world, where
07:17a lot of people are now working from home.
07:19But the value to them of being able to walk downstairs and say, what do you think about
07:24this, and get an immediate answer, and then be able to have an ad hoc brainstorm in a hallway
07:28about something quickly, and to accelerate the pace of decision-making in that regard,
07:32you will achieve in six months what it takes your competitors to achieve.
07:36So much of what we're doing around here is trying to accelerate the pace of decision-making
07:39and increase urgency, and proximity does that in a really helpful way.
07:55This media model has helped elevate Bartlett and Flight Story to the upper echelon of new
07:58media, whose peers include those like Alex Cooper and Mr. Beast.
08:03Bartlett is taking his venture in a different direction.
08:07While many podcasters like Alex Cooper, Joe Rogan, and the Kelsey brothers have signed
08:11$100 million deals with streamers like SiriusXM, Spotify, and Amazon, Bartlett has turned
08:16down the offers he's received.
08:20He's set on building independently because it offers him flexibility to share his content
08:25cross-platform and experiment with what works.
08:29It's working so far.
08:30And as Georgie said, it wasn't through gut instinct, but rather in data science that
08:34Bartlett has cracked the code to building an empire on his own in this new media landscape.
08:39I tend to think in terms of principles because a strategy is useful, but it like decays its
08:47ephemeral.
08:48So a strategy is like me giving you a fish.
08:50But if I give you a principle, it's like me giving you the fishing rod so you can fish
08:54for yourself forever.
08:56And one of the principles is that in the world we live in today, where the correct answer
09:00is changing faster and faster and faster, the correct answer in technology is accelerating,
09:04which means the correct answer to anything, to how to shoot an interview, to how to make
09:08a podcast, to which platform to use, to where to put the mean bar on the video, what the
09:13title should be, what the color should be.
09:15If you just understand that as like a principle, then the way to find the correct answer before
09:18everybody else is to increase your rate of experimentation.
09:21So here we have a full time failure and experimentation team so that we can fail faster because failure
09:27is feedback, feedback is knowledge and knowledge is power.
09:29So our rate of failure will correlate to our rate of success.
09:37This is the experimenter of the week trophy.
09:41This trophy every week goes to the person that has failed the most, conducted the most experiments,
09:46tried the most things, and this week it went to two of our exceptional colleagues who have
09:51just been basically experimenting every single day.
09:54And because of that, they've found all these incredible new ways to like scale.
09:57I think it was mainly TikTok they've done the experiments on.
10:00And so we have our little presentation every week to who has failed the most and you win
10:04this trophy.
10:05I think in terms of the speed, the urgency, the dedication to experimentation and testing,
10:14the commitments to the one percents, the pursuit of the goal, I think is something that energizes
10:20me in a way that I've never experienced before, that we're in a pursuit of something here.
10:26I think we can essentially kill the guessing now.
10:28So I don't think we need to necessarily make these long term strategic bets, but we look at
10:31what the data insight and data science is telling us today.
10:35And I almost think you can algorithmically edit now that we can think about how we structure
10:41content, what type of formats we utilize, what type of environments we show up in, how
10:45we decentralize the media that we're producing, how we essentially go wherever our audience
10:51is.
10:52It's kind of an old publishing saying, which is you create great content and go where your
10:55audience are.
10:56And I think that's probably what legacy media has lost as they get sort of caught up in
11:00their own ecosystems and business outcomes and platforms and serving investors and shareholders
11:07that perhaps they've lost sight of that really singular purpose, which is creating amazing
11:12content and going where your audience is.
11:18But we wanted to know the one thing that data could not solve, at least not completely.
11:24The number one challenge is recruitment.
11:26One of our biggest challenges is hiring.
11:28It all comes down to people really.
11:31I'm recruiting seven days a week till 3am at night every night and it's my absolute obsession.
11:37We do atypical things like we don't interview people in teams or in groups if we can help
11:42it because we don't want to bring group thinking to a meeting.
11:45We want independent assessment.
11:47We use tools and surveys to understand about a candidate's values and how they think about
11:53the world and their work.
11:54We now have a system through which we analyse our commitment to headhunting every single
11:58week and qualify that by the volume of hours we're taking.
12:01So all of our senior leaders and everyone in this team will tell us I've spent 8 hours,
12:0510 hours, 12 hours headhunting this week to try and find the best people in the world
12:09and that is definitely paying dividends.
12:11I realise that the game I'm actually playing, the first foundation of this whole thing called
12:18business is not how good I am.
12:20It is my ability to attract exceptional people to come and work here and then job two is to
12:26bind them with a culture that makes them do the best work of their life and job number
12:28three is to set them a vision that is important and worthwhile.
12:32And I think founders could save themselves so much hurt and pain and failure and anxiety
12:38and worry and confusion if they realise that they should be spending 20 times more hours
12:45per week on just meeting people and professional flirting.
12:51Essentially, Bartlett wants to find the people that might be equally obsessed with what the
12:57team is building and who have the ability to innovate and experiment the way he has.
13:02After all, his ability to be a disrupter is what's gotten him here in the first place.
13:09I struggled a lot in school because I find it difficult to pay attention, especially when
13:13I'm not interested in something.
13:14So although my headteachers and my teachers still say that I was kind and nice, I wouldn't
13:20do my homework and I wouldn't come to lessons.
13:22Ultimately, that meant I was expelled, then unexpelled, but the thing I always had in me was I was
13:27really interested in business.
13:28That was my curiosity, the thing that I could pay attention to.
13:31So I thought, well, the only way that I'm going to get to live a free life is if I create
13:35it myself.
13:36And this is also part of the reason why I dropped out of university, because I asked myself
13:39the question, who am I going to show this piece of paper to if I want to work for myself?
13:45I didn't know what the word entrepreneur was when I started my first business.
13:47I didn't know how hard it was.
13:49Maybe there was an element of necessary delusion in thinking that I could have an idea and then
13:54there was nothing between me and the realisation of that idea.
13:58The single most important trait I had wasn't like smarts or intelligence or didn't have
14:05parents that could give me any money or anything like that.
14:08The single trait I had was a healthy dose of delusion.
14:11And that delusion is sometimes also referred to as self-belief.
14:15So I started because I didn't have a plan B and I was desperate for maybe through shame
14:20or insecurity, which was the sort of like subtle background murmur of shame my whole childhood.
14:25And the way that I thought I could feel it was the validation from like doing something
14:30great with myself or getting the money that was always like the thing causing me awkwardness
14:34as a kid.
14:37Whatever the motivation was, whether I was being dragged or I was driven, I just never
14:42felt like I had a plan B.
14:49I started a company called Wallpark, which was a student notice board, and that led me
14:52to understand this thing called social media and the power of it at a time when I think
14:56people were quite contrarian and negative towards it, and we made a big bet on it.
15:01He quickly realized that social media was the best way to drive traffic to Wallpark.
15:07He went on to help other brands grow their social audiences and eventually launched social
15:11media startup Social Chain, which landed him a spot on the Forbes 30 under 30 Europe list
15:16in 2020.
15:17Really the most important thing from that period of my life was understanding this new attention
15:23economy of being able to cultivate and build a big audience on the internet through content
15:30and the sort of art form and psychology of creating content and marketing and how to build
15:35a business.
15:36And then an investor came along and invested more money.
15:39He became a majority shareholder.
15:41The business got to around 25 million in revenue between the UK team and the New York team.
15:47And then we merged with a company called Limmerland, making us a public company.
15:51I then became co-CEO's with the guy called Wania Oberhof.
15:54And for the next three to four years, we went on an acquisition spree, acquiring companies
15:58all over the world.
15:59In 2020, we were about to uplist again to another stock exchange called the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
16:07And right before then, I resigned because I had lost control of the company.
16:12So I could no longer make the decisions that I wanted to make.
16:18From there, he began investing in more companies, even joining UK's investment show Dragon's
16:23Den for two seasons.
16:25And he went all in on building the diary of a CEO, like going from irregular posts to twice
16:30weekly uploads and incorporating video with the episodes, which was the critical difference
16:35in the show from what existed at the time.
16:40My favorite quote ever, because it just like hit me like a ton of bricks many years later,
16:44is those that think they can and those that think they can't are both usually right.
16:48And people think, well, if you're capable, you believe you can.
16:51No, it's because belief itself is the escape velocity of any hell or prison that you're
16:57in.
16:58Throughout his entire career, Bartlett has stayed ahead of the curve.
17:06He was an early adopter of social media marketing, took on podcasting before it was
17:10cool.
17:11And now AI is top of mind.
17:13We started experiments here with our experimentation team and a team, a separate team that are
17:16called Flight X.
17:18So their job is to disrupt the main business, because if you don't disrupt yourself, then
17:23someone else is going to.
17:24That's what history tells us.
17:25They call it the innovators dilemma.
17:27So their job has been to build AI podcasts that are better received, better retaining in
17:33terms of retention than our current shows.
17:38So one of the things they did is they started a new show using me, although I didn't record
17:42it.
17:43I didn't write it.
17:44Even the artwork wasn't created by me, wasn't published by me.
17:47And it's live and it's doing very, very well.
17:51And again, you just play forward any expected rate of improvement.
17:55Let the writing part, the content writing part that AI did improve by 5% a year or 5% a month.
18:01It's really improving by about 10% a month.
18:03Let the voice, the speech part get better by 5% every month.
18:08And eventually you have yourself in a place where it is incomparable and equal to me sat
18:14with nine cameras around me flying across the world to interview someone.
18:22No one in my comment section has ever said, by the way, Steve, can we have some AI podcasts?
18:25No one ever.
18:26None of my sponsors on the show have ever gone, we'd really love to sponsor some AI podcasts.
18:30So when I understand that and I have the full picture of how history plays out, I go, we've
18:35got to lean in early when it feels bizarre and we've got to start experimenting and messing
18:41around because Stephen Bartlett at 18 with that little social media thing was naive.
18:46He didn't know how the old world worked of marketing.
18:49So he leaned in and started messing around.
18:52And this is what I'd tell my kids if I had kids today, hopefully I'll have some soon.
18:56I will tell them, I'm really not that bothered about what you study or whatever, but the most
19:00important thing to own a rapidly accelerating future is to lean in to bizarre behaviour.
19:06When something makes you feel a bit weird, when it goes against what you think you know,
19:11lean in.
19:12And especially if there's lots of pessimists.
19:14Because pessimism correlates to disruption, i.e. the more people that are slightly pissed
19:20off and criticizing the thing probably relates to the amount of people who are experiencing
19:25the cognitive dissonance of, oh my god, I think this thing's going to kill my job.
19:30So there's probably a big opportunity for disruption there.
19:34And this is always the thing with innovation.
19:35You've got to realise that there's always a bulldozer coming for you.
19:37It's coming for you.
19:38It's coming for me.
19:39It's coming for everybody listening.
19:41And you have a choice, history shows us, to either be hit by the bulldozer or to drive
19:46the bulldozer and hold you over.
19:48So yes, I'm scared, but what do you do with that energy?
19:53Do you like ostrich in the sand it or do you do something about it?
20:11I think the next innovation based on what's happening in technology is we would technically
20:15only need one set like that, which is three digital screens to be able to shoot an endless
20:23amount of podcasts.
20:24So hopefully in a couple of months time, if you come back here, what you'll see is you'll
20:28see three digital screens there, three digital screens there, three digital screens there.
20:32And we'll be shooting 50 shows at once from this space.
20:36And how it works is you walk up, you click a button and that whole set changes to the diary
20:40of a CEO.
20:41And all you have to do is roll in the diary of a CEO chairs and table, which will be on
20:45a little rolling thing.
20:46So that's never been done before in podcasting, but we really think it's the future of this
20:50art form now that the technology and the screens have gotten so good that you genuinely can't
20:55tell.
20:56I think that the word podcast is certainly one that's up for debate at the moment.
21:04And I really think about what we're doing here is producing influential and compelling IP and
21:09then really energizing a global fandom around it.
21:12That transition from, I guess, legacy media brand to influential human IP is such an important
21:19and exciting conversation.
21:19conversation that's the one I'm most excited about versus sort of what a podcast is and
21:23what it might become in the future.
21:24There's two really interesting things that have happened in the world, I think, over the
21:31last couple of years, and it pertains to media and investing.
21:35So on the media side of things, once upon a time, media and attention was owned really by
21:40a couple of families.
21:41And these families had the microphone, the megaphone.
21:44And because of what happened with the internet and social media, everything became more decentralised
21:49to the point that both you and me right now are publishers, whether we realise it or not.
21:55And this is unheard of, and I don't think we realise how significant this change is for
22:00suddenly to be in a world where we all have a megaphone.
22:04And the thing that's not going out of fashion in a world of AI is human-to-human relationships.
22:09So I really, really believe that the future of media is human-led, human-hosted IP with
22:19an ecosystem built around it.
22:22The best founders of our time that are building exceptional B2C and B2B companies, they no
22:27longer want money from men in suits.
22:30They want something more.
22:32They want growth.
22:34And the path to growth is in this attention economy.
22:38And what Flight Story endeavours to do is to bring some of the best voices in the world
22:42who are aspiring to drive a healthier, happier humanity, together with some of the best founders
22:46in the world who are all building that happier, healthier future.
22:50And together, we believe that we can give them the tools to make 1 plus 1 equal 3.
23:04to be equal to 10 billionaires, as long as we can bring these.
23:06The next thing we don't necessarily have to do with the best models.
23:08We see.
23:12We are looking for the best models in the world.
23:15And all the best models in terms, of the best models, of the best models.
23:18And to train with being the best models we can bring them to avoid these versions of
23:22the best models of the world.
23:22And that they really can help us in a project of what they will be.
23:24But if that they can bring them back to the world, they can bring them back to the core of our

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