Steven Bartlett Interview Highlights: How He Built The Diary of a CEO

Steven Bartlett talks about his podcast the way a founder talks about a company. Ask him how The Diary of a CEO got big and he answers with principles: bet on what’s scarce, spend ahead of revenue, run more experiments than anyone else and reward the people who fail.

This post is for creators studying how a long-form interview show grew, brands weighing a show like his, and curious listeners. It covers his start, methods, advice, brands, criticism and plans as of October 2026.

Who is Steven Bartlett?

Steven Bartlett is a British entrepreneur, investor and podcaster, born in Botswana in 1992, who hosts The Diary of a CEO and has been an investor on the BBC’s Dragons’ Den since 2021.

He was born in Gaborone to an English father and a Nigerian mother and moved with his family to Plymouth, England, at age two, according to Wikipedia. He co-founded the marketing agency Social Chain in 2014, started The Diary of a CEO in 2017, and in 2021, at 28, he became the youngest Dragon in the BBC show’s history up to then.

How did Steven Bartlett get started?

“I learned that if I was to have anything, it wasn’t going to be left for me under the Christmas tree, it was going to be a direct consequence of my own actions.”

— Steven Bartlett, The Guardian, January 2022

At school he brokered deals with vending machine companies and took a cut, The Guardian reported; he was expelled in sixth form and let back in, he has said, because he was making the school money. He left a business management course at Manchester Metropolitan University after one lecture, having “realised this wasn’t going to take me to where I needed to go”. Diagnosed with ADHD in 2023, he told The Observer he focuses intensely on what engages him and struggles with everything else: “That was the story of my education. I lasted one lecture at university and deferred. I’m still deferred now.”

He co-founded Social Chain in Manchester with Dominic McGregor in 2014; it merged with the German retailer Lumaland in 2019, and both founders left in 2020, according to Wikipedia.

He built an audience in writing first. For about six years, he told KIND founder Daniel Lubetzky in 2026, he wrote a tweet every evening at 7pm distilling one lesson from his day, a habit he says took him to about a million followers.

How did Steven Bartlett build The Diary of a CEO?

“So in a world that’s speeding towards shallow and algorithmic, what is the very opposite of that? Where can I find depth and decentralized?”

— Steven Bartlett, Build or Break with Daniel Lubetzky (transcript), September 2026

In 2017, he said, media was racing toward short video on platforms whose algorithms could change at any moment, so he chose long-form audio distributed by RSS, the open feed format that sends one upload to Apple, Spotify and other apps at once.

“The first 10 episodes are just me just reading my own personal diary out. And I got 40 downloads and one of my best friends who’s very honest with me was like, ‘That was good. When are you going to do another one?’”

— Steven Bartlett, Build or Break with Daniel Lubetzky (transcript), September 2026

In 2020, after stepping down as co-CEO of his group during the pandemic, he went all in. A freelancer quoted 5,000 pounds to film at his kitchen table; Bartlett asked for a bigger plan, which came to about 40,000 for nine cameras. There were no sponsors. “I’ve always invested ahead of the revenue,” he said.

“We went video-first. We didn’t realise there was another way. This is one of the great privileges of naivety … In hindsight that was a pivotal moment.”

— Steven Bartlett, BusinessCloud, October 2025

In 2025 Spotify ranked the show second globally, behind only The Joe Rogan Experience. Our list of top business podcasts covers where to start. Two choices did most of the work: a scarce format, and distribution no single platform controlled. Ask the same two questions about your niche.

How does Steven Bartlett make an episode?

“We usually say two hours minimum. And if someone won’t give us two hours, then I won’t accept the interview.”

— Steven Bartlett, Build or Break with Daniel Lubetzky (transcript), September 2026

On his set, he said, host and guest face each other, nine cameras run, and nobody else is in the room, because he wants the kind of conversation you would have at 2 a.m. with a parent. “With time, I’ve realized not to fill the silence,” he said.

Length creates a retention problem:

“I know that 60% of people leave this interview in the first two minutes, so I need a hook … I’ll often ask my guest, I’ll say to them, I’ve probably said this in 20 episodes, ‘For the person that’s just clicked to watch this episode now, why should they stay and listen for the next two hours?’”

— Steven Bartlett, Build or Break with Daniel Lubetzky (transcript), September 2026

Retention is the share of viewers still watching at each moment. Colin and Samir’s summary of his 2025 talk at their Press Publish event says his team tests it before publishing, showing episodes to thousands of viewers, tracking eye movement and cutting based on the data. Your version can be simpler: tell new viewers why to stay within the first minute. Our guide to how the YouTube algorithm works explains why that matters.

Why does Steven Bartlett have a head of failure?

“We have a head of failure who leads that team … and her primary objective is to increase the rate of failure … You have to be less romantic about being right, and more romantic about winning.”

— Steven Bartlett, at Press Publish NYC on The Colin and Samir Show, as quoted by BusinessCloud, September 2025

It’s a team judged on how many experiments it runs. “There should be nothing too small for an experiment,” he said, and according to Colin and Samir’s summary of the talk, he credited one small change to the wording asking viewers to subscribe with a 300% rise in subscribers.

“I didn’t say I reward success. I didn’t say I reward the output. I said I reward them trying.”

— Steven Bartlett, at Amsterdam Business Forum, as quoted in the organisers’ recap, September 2026

His company hands a trophy every Friday to the person who failed the most, the organisers reported. Small fixes count, he argued, because competitors think they’re beneath them: “Nothing is too petty.”

His biggest recent bet:

“Only about 10% of the world speak fluent English. We’re currently publishing in English. So there’s this other 90% of the world which don’t even know we exist … And we did that for 18 months and it failed.”

— Steven Bartlett, Build or Break with Daniel Lubetzky (transcript), September 2026

The team kept going, he said, until Spanish listeners stayed longer than English ones; AI agents now translate every episode into 20 languages, down to the title, thumbnail and the guest’s own voice. He estimated that about 30 million of the roughly 120 million people watching or downloading full episodes that month did so in another language.

To borrow the idea, log every test with a hypothesis and a result, and judge your week by how many you ran. Our MrBeast interview covers another creator who treats every video as a test.

What mistakes does Steven Bartlett say he made early on?

“I look back on my performance in my early episodes … and I can’t believe how terrible I was as an interviewer … It just goes to show that progress is not evident in the moment. You don’t realise you’re progressing at something.”

— Steven Bartlett, BusinessCloud, October 2025

He was as blunt with Lubetzky about his first post online: “It’s so cliche and jargony.” He has also changed how he interviews, he said, from pulling guests toward his questions to following the clues they drop.

If your early work embarrasses you, that’s evidence you’ve improved. Our Ali Abdaal interview makes the same point: he expected his first 100 videos to be bad.

What advice does Steven Bartlett give new creators?

“Whether you know it or not, professionally as a creator you are being disrupted right now. The only outstanding question is whether it’s you disrupting yourself or someone else.”

— Steven Bartlett, at Press Publish NYC on The Colin and Samir Show, as quoted by BusinessCloud, September 2025

His second piece of advice, from the Lubetzky interview, is a test for every decision: “If you just start to ask yourself, ‘What would have to be true for me to take part in this game of podcasting for 50 years?’ It completely changes your decisions.” He would turn down a celebrity with 150 million followers he had no interest in, he said, because a calendar full of such guests would make him resent the job.

He also warns against judging early work by numbers. “Money is a lagging indicator,” he said. A lagging indicator is a number that moves only after the work behind it, like views or revenue. What kept him going at 40 downloads was a couple of honest friends, so pick two or three honest people as your early yardstick.

What does Steven Bartlett say about working with brands?

“In terms of the offer that we received, I think we can beat it on our own and without putting 12 ads into the podcast. We can beat it by putting two ads into the podcast with our own in-house commercial team.”

— Steven Bartlett, at Press Publish NYC on The Colin and Samir Show, as quoted by BusinessCloud, September 2025

He was explaining, BusinessCloud reported, why he had turned down offers including one worth $100 million. His studio earns half its revenue from direct advertising such as sponsorships, and FlightStory had $20 million in revenue in 2024, Business Insider reported in 2025. His test for whether a brand means the values it advertises, he told Lubetzky: “You have to look at what they’re willing to give up in the near term.”

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ruled against ads involving him. In August 2022 it found that a Huel ad he read on the podcast wasn’t obviously identifiable as an ad; he told the regulator he had believed it complied and had amended the ad. In August 2024 it banned Facebook ads for Huel and Zoe that didn’t make clear he was a Huel director and Zoe investor; both companies argued customers would know of their commercial relationship with him, BBC News reported. In May 2025 it banned a Zoe supplement ad quoting him over the brand’s claims about ultra-processed ingredients, City AM reported.

The lesson for every creator: label an ad before it starts, and disclose any stake in a product you praise. Our guide to disclosing affiliate links and sponsorships covers the rules.

How has Steven Bartlett responded to criticism of the show?

In December 2024 a BBC World Service investigation found that 15 health-related episodes from that year each contained an average of 14 harmful health claims against extensive scientific evidence, such as that cancer can be treated with a keto diet, with little or no challenge from the host. Ending a July 2024 episode in which a guest called the Covid vaccine a net negative for society, he said he aimed to “present some of the other side” because “the truth is usually somewhere in the middle”, the BBC reported.

A spokesperson for Flight Studio, his production company, said guests were offered “freedom of expression” and were “thoroughly researched”, and called reporting that focused on fewer than 4% of episodes “disappointing, misleading and frankly, disingenuous”, The Guardian reported.

In a 2025 BusinessCloud interview he did not comment directly on the BBC findings, but said criticism comes with the job:

“I accept everything that comes with the job I’ve chosen to do … As someone who has chosen to make content on the internet you’d be pretty dumb not to expect that and ultimately accept the good stuff and the not-so-good stuff.”

— Steven Bartlett, BusinessCloud, October 2025

His website says that since 2025 every health and wellness episode has been reviewed before publication by an independent medical PhD. In January 2026, after clips circulated from two episodes about falling birth rates and men who struggle to find partners, The Cut and Grazia covered criticism that the show had drifted toward the manosphere, the online network of men’s-rights and anti-feminist influencers. A spokesperson for the podcast told The Cut that “Steven Bartlett does not adopt the opinions of his guests, nor is the format intended to pass judgment on personal viewpoints”.

If you interview experts, your audience reads your platform as an endorsement. Decide how you’ll check claims before you publish.

What is Steven Bartlett working on now?

“The next generation of global media companies and consumer brands will be built around creators. But a global audience of millions is not yet a company, and it certainly should not be the ceiling of a creator’s potential.”

— Steven Bartlett, in the OBSN launch press release, as published by Podnews, September 2026

In September 2026 Steven.com and Authentic, a global brand and entertainment platform, launched OBSN; in the release Bartlett said his company aims to deploy up to $400 million in creator businesses over the coming years, with OBSN at the heart of that strategy. In an October 2025 company press release he had called his ultimate ambition “to build the Disney of the creator economy”.

He moved to Los Angeles in 2025 and that May became a co-owner of Stan Store, a platform that helps entrepreneurs launch their own online stores, City AM reported.

The show won Best Business & Finance Podcast at the iHeartPodcast Awards in March 2026, and in April he won a Webby Award for Individual Creator: Podcast. Forbes’ first list of the highest-paid podcasters placed him third, at an estimated $45 million, behind Joe Rogan and the hosts of TBPN, Net Influencer reported. For another host who turned a show into a company, see our Alex Cooper interview.

What creators can learn from Steven Bartlett

Sources

• How Steven Bartlett went from dropout to youngest ever Dragons’ Den investor, The Guardian, January 2022
• Huel Ltd (ruling), Advertising Standards Authority, August 2022
• Steven Bartlett: ‘Not feeling like I was enough became a driving force in my life’, The Observer, December 2023
• Steven Bartlett nutrition adverts banned for being misleading, BBC News, August 2024
• Steven Bartlett sharing harmful health misinformation on Diary of CEO podcast, BBC News, December 2024
• Steven Bartlett accused of amplifying dangerous health claims on his podcast, The Guardian, December 2024
• Steven Bartlett: Dragons’ Den star signs the ‘biggest deal of my life’, City AM, May 2025
• Diary of a CEO star Steven Bartlett is using AI to make new podcasts, Business Insider, July 2025
• How Diary of a CEO became YouTube’s #1 Show (episode summary), The Colin and Samir Show, 2025
• ‘Embrace failure’ – Diary of a CEO podcast secrets revealed, BusinessCloud, September 2025
• Steven Bartlett: ‘I’m less than 1% into my journey’, BusinessCloud, October 2025
• Steven Bartlett’s company steven.com hits $425mn valuation, Podnews (press release), October 2025
• Steven Bartlett hiring journalists for new tech news site, City AM, December 2025
• The Top Artists, Songs, Albums, Podcasts, and Audiobooks of 2025, Spotify, December 2025
• Did ‘Diary of a CEO’ Host Steven Bartlett Take the Red Pill?, The Cut, January 2026
• Why Steven Bartlett’s Podcast Has Been Called A ‘Trojan Horse For The Manosphere’, Grazia, January 2026
• iHeartPodcast Award Winners 2026 Full List, Variety, March 2026
• 30th Annual Webby Awards Announce 2026 Winners, The Webby Awards, April 2026
• Diary Of A CEO: First Podcast to Fact-Check Every Episode, StevenBartlett.com, July 2026
• Forbes’ Matt Craig On What The Top Podcast Earnings List Reveals, Net Influencer, August 2026
• Steven Bartlett and Authentic Launch ‘OBSN’, Podnews (press release), September 2026
• Steven Bartlett Interview: The Diary of a CEO Host, Build or Break, September 2026
• A trophy for failing: five insights from Steven Bartlett, Amsterdam Business Forum, September 2026
• The Diary Of A CEO Reaches 20 Million Subscribers, StevenBartlett.com, October 2026
• Steven Bartlett (businessman), Wikipedia, October 2026

What to do next

If Steven Bartlett’s rule about lagging indicators changes how you judge a creator, look at what their recent episodes actually do, not only at audience size. Our methodology explains how we check creators that way before we list them.

For other creators’ answers to the same questions, from YouTubers to fellow podcasters, browse more creator interviews, including our Mel Robbins interview.