this week we're going to do something

different on this podcast this podcast

is about this podcast so many of you

have asked me questions about this

podcast how it works how big the team is

how we pick and find guests how we make

a successful podcast how you can build a

successful social media channel or

personal brand and also

how much money you can make from a

podcast at the end of the day i just sit

here and talk i get to have interesting

conversations with people i genuinely

find interesting so i think people

typically assume that having a podcast

is just a labor of love now that is true

i don't do this for the money i'm

fortunate enough to have made a lot of

money from the first company that i

founded i do this because i love it of

all the things of all the revenue

streams i have in my life podcasting is

my lowest financial return on the amount

of time it takes me

however this podcast will make millions

this year so this week i'm going to tell

you the truth about everything after all

this podcast was founded on truth and

honesty and i've not seen any other

podcasters tell you the things that i'm

about to tell you about this business

about this medium and about this

industry i'm going to show you exactly

how much money i make from this podcast

how i do it how i did it and how anyone

else can do it too with

six or seven simple pieces of advice i'm

also going to tell you all

the non-financial reasons you should

start podcasting even if it never makes

you a penny and some of these things are

things that i came to learn over time

some of the things i never ever expected

and some of the things some of the

upsides and benefits non-financial of

starting a podcast have quite honestly

changed my life so without further ado

i'm stephen bartlett and this is the

diary of a ceo i hope nobody's listening

but if you are then please keep this to

yourself

[Music]

so here's the thing i started doing this

podcast three or four years ago with a

90 pound microphone that i bought in

apple that i plugged into my laptop i

put a duvet over my head 3am in the

morning i went downstairs into the

quietest part of my house

there was no script no plan no team i

edited it myself i um engineered the

audio myself recorded it myself on my

own and i sat there and just spoke into

a microphone about my life and in that

first episode episode one it was a total

one-off experiment in my mind i never

actually thought it would become

multiple episodes or a season and that

renowned line that people in the comment

section often ask about that i just said

i hope nobody's listening but if you are

keep this to yourself was totally random

i didn't plan to say that i said it

because i was about to share my diary

for the first time and i was unsure how

being so vulnerable open and honest

would be received so i jokingly asked

anyone listening to keep it to

themselves and obviously

you guys didn't do that and here we are

three years and 10 months later and the

podcast is done very well it's now the

most listened to business podcast in

europe it's sat at number one in the

charts almost consecutively for 40 weeks

straight and as i said it's become a

multi-million dollar business since

since i founded it

but

and here is my first piece of advice if

you're thinking about getting into the

podcast game

and this piece of advice i guess applies

not just to starting a podcast but also

to all facets of your professional and

probably personal life i published my

first podcast episode three years and 10

months ago but for the first three years

i was never ever consistent with my

podcast when i started one month i might

release an episode and then there might

be a gap of like two months or three

months or a couple of weeks then i'd pop

up with another episode and then there'd

be a huge gap again and so on and so on

and so on and whenever i was consistent

and managed to publish predictably every

monday for several weeks in a row the

podcast audience would grow and grow and

grow and you could see on the graph that

the podcast growth was compounding

if i then took a month off

it was almost like i was back to square

one again you could see on the data when

i had come back from my little hiatus

less people were there to listen so i

realized very quickly that if this

podcast was going to really work and

reach its full potential then i had to

figure out how to be consistent so 10

months ago i made the decision that no

matter what we would publish an episode

on monday every single monday and from

that point onwards the growth absolutely

exploded if you're watching this on

youtube here's the actual graph of

listeners from the minute i started

being consistent with publishing the

podcast every single monday um the

growth exploded by 10x 10 times higher

and as i said this is not a lesson on

podcasting it's a lesson on all facets

of life whether it's building a business

getting millions of followers on

instagram or

even getting into the best shape of your

life figuring out a way to reach that

point of sustainable consistency was the

key to explosive growth and progress

that is a fundamental lesson of my

entire life one that it genuinely took

me 27 years to appreciate

the value of being consistent at almost

anything consistency unlocks everything

it teaches you faster than everybody

else it compounds growth and as it

relates to content and building

audiences it helps to establish a

cadence which keeps them coming back for

more if your podcast is once in a while

or even broken down into seasons that

have these sort of large gaps between

them

i seriously believe you're going to have

a really difficult time growing your

audience especially organically because

people move on and they forget about you

and you fall out of their routine we

publish every monday morning at 7am

because i know 50 roughly 50 of podcast

listeners listen in transit which means

on their way to work on a flight on a

train on a walk or even like on a

running machine at the gym so i want my

audience to know that on monday morning

before you start your week or as you're

getting ready for the week ahead or

during your monday morning commute you

can count on me to be there every week

right here and that predictability for

your audience allows them to fit you

into their habits and we are all

creatures of

habit my second piece of advice is also

a tip about how to grow a podcast and

how i grew this podcast when this

podcast started it was me alone in my

bedroom always in the early hours of the

morning stumbling around with a wire my

laptop in this cheap little microphone

and i loved that i'm so happy that's

where this podcast started it was great

but me talking about myself to my

existing audience was never going to

grow this podcast significantly in an

organic way in order to grow this

podcast i had to find a way to reach new

audiences and to pull them in so i

opened up this podcast to other

entrepreneurs to successful people to

the guests you've seen to come here and

share their diary in the way that i did

when i started this podcast and those

guests bring their audience with them

and the podcast started to grow faster

and faster and faster faster than ever

before it turns out i actually also

enjoyed that a lot more because i got to

meet amazing people learn from them and

be inspired by their stories but it also

saved me tons of time when i did it on

my own i would honestly spend seven or

eight hours planning and writing each

episode i had to do bullet points and

figure out how i'd move from one bullet

point to the next and then if i wasn't

happy i'd re-record the bullet point to

try and nail it it took a lot of time

having a guest means i could just walk

in sit down ask them the things i'm

interested in and have a great

conversation which now takes me just two

hours to record and as i said i find it

significantly more enjoyable because i

get to learn from this incredibly

diverse range of incredible inspiring

people from all walks of life and i

think

generally you guys enjoy that too i know

some of you guys still love the solo

episodes but i think generally it's

really enjoyable to get a really diverse

range of inspiration from unexpected

guests that a lot of the time you've

never heard of before

and i in that format i still get to

weave in my own thoughts and ideas into

every episode although it is centered on

the guest if you want to grow your own

podcast and you don't already have

millions of followers you need to figure

out where this growth is going to come

from where that organic growth is coming

from because spotify and apple podcast

stores and apps don't have any viral

discovery you can't just hit retweet or

share in spotify um and send it to all

your friends like you can on other

social platforms like instagram facebook

and twitter the vast majority i'd say

over 95 of the discovery of podcasts new

podcasts happens outside of the spotify

apple podcast store it happens on social

networks it happens in whatsapp group

chats it happens in

real life by sort of face-to-face word

of mouth recommendations so to grow your

podcast you need to figure out how your

podcast is going to reach a new audience

and do it often and for me this is

achieved in two ways as i said by

bringing guests in but also by having

the youtube channel there's a lot of

content discovery happening on youtube

every time you watch one video it

recommends another and sometimes that

video is going to be the diary of a ceo

so we get a lot of new listeners coming

in through the youtube channel and in

future they might decide to listen on

apple or spotify or to stay on youtube

okay my third piece of advice is

actually a bit controversial

it's really important in all aspects of

your professional life to find the right

balance of having consistency and

quality at the same time and if you know

me you'll know that i'm someone that is

an absolute stickler for quality if

you're one of the many thousands of

people that has worked in one of my

companies or alongside me or with me

over the last 10 years you will know

this to be true my job as a ceo or a

founder or marketeer or a creative is to

set a high standard for the quality of

work we produce as a team and to protect

that standard like a hungry guard dog

and honestly

if you think the standard is too high

for you or you don't like me because i'm

uncompromising about that standard then

that doesn't matter to me because i'm

not here to be liked first and foremost

i'm here to produce high quality work

with a high degree of integrity and work

that we can be proud of everything else

is a secondary bonus everything that is

why we are here that is our central

mission and i never confused that with

that said

on multiple occasions i've invited a

guest to this podcast recorded a full

episode with them and then i've deleted

the episode and never published the

episode because i didn't think it was a

valuable enough conversation to share

with you guys as my audience i genuinely

feel a deep sense of responsibility to

all of the people that listen to this

podcast because i know that you show up

every single monday and often give me

two hours of your time listening to

someone you've probably never heard of

before and you're trusting me to find

interesting people and have a valuable

conversation and to give you

that value on your monday morning so on

several occasions even on one occasion

when the guest was a mega star with tens

of millions of subscribers of their own

which obviously would have done wonders

for this podcast going back to the point

i just made about leveraging people's

audiences

i realized that the conversation was not

valuable enough to share it with all of

you and

that was because for a number of reasons

because it lacked insights because it

lacked inspiration it wasn't an

intelligent conversation it was boring

and it didn't meet my standard so i

deleted the episode told the guest why

and we moved on in fact that even

happened this week i tend to think my

listeners are somewhat like me

um

you must be because i ask questions i'm

interested in to guess and you're

clearly interested in those things too

so if i found the conversation with a

particular guest to lack value or to be

boring then i know you will too and

keeping that trust with you to me is so

unbelievably important

it's not nice for a guest to have their

episode of a podcast deleted and i'm

sure some of them have been a little bit

pissed off historically um because i

might have wasted their time i imagine

if i was in their position and i went on

a podcast i traveled to it and then i

found out that it had been deleted i

would be annoyed too

but as i said all of this stuff to me is

secondary to producing a piece of work

that me and my team can be really really

proud of and if we're not proud of it

then you won't ever see it um and that's

the standard that will always maintain

it's not happened a lot i've got to be

honest maybe three or four times um in

almost 100 episodes but it's an

important point and i think having a

standard drives all of the other work

you do up so even though we've only

deleted four it's definitely meant that

we've set a higher bar for ourselves as

a team because we know that it's

possible that episodes can get deleted

if they're bad

and and so we do a lot more work

beforehand to make sure the guest is

right and the themes and conversation

are going to be right too

my fourth point is probably the point

you guys want to know about the most

which is

money

okay so

as i said i only started doing this

podcast once a week 10 months ago that's

when we made the decision to take it

seriously and to be consistent before

then before 10 months ago the podcast

was basically just a hobby 10 months ago

when i realized i was going to do this

podcast once a week and launch this

youtube channel which meant videoing the

podcast for the first time and really

really really go for it i realized i

would need camera equipment a location

to film it and a team to help me put

this whole thing together i've never

ever cared about making a profit from

this podcast this fits into the things i

do because i love it bucket in my life

and my goal as i said to the team at the

time was just to break even jack

sylvester who i produced this podcast

with made a shopping list of all the

equipment we would need to make a high

quality production and the total for all

that equipment came to roughly 4 000

pounds i saw that list and i said to

jack jack i want you to really go for it

i want to produce one of the best

podcasts in the world come back to me

with another list that is even more

ambitious a few days later jack came

back to me with an equipment list that

cost forty thousand pounds which is

about fifty five thousand dollars he

wanted seven cameras some some of them

are robots that move by themselves up

and down the room some of them are

sliders we've got gopros

state-of-the-art

audio software we've got the best

microphones the best lighting black

uplines you name it it's here and we and

we really obsessed about the small

details of this room the set and how it

would make you feel and how the feel of

the set would impact the content itself

additionally if we're going to publish

four podcasts a month across video and

audio and then promote these podcasts

across social media with video clips but

also find really high level guests we're

going to need a team so here's who i

hired jack who produces the podcast i

also have a full-time podcast booker

called harry who contacts potential

guests i have a full-time pr manager

emma berta who produces the video assets

and clips from this podcast and other

projects callum who produces more video

clips for the podcast grace who handles

the social media across all of my

channels don my manager who works with

sponsors and on brand deals and of

course sophie my long-standing assistant

who helps me organize my diary and

logistics across all areas of my life

so in total i have a team of eight

people that are involved in the

production of this podcast in various

ways it's not cheap especially if you

want to do it properly and you don't

have to do it on this scale podcasting

can be

remarkably cheap especially if you don't

want to video it you can start with what

the 100 microphone like i did as long as

you have a laptop and edit it yourself

and record it yourself you can do it

over zoom but because i wanted to do it

big i knew i needed to find a way to

make money from this podcast people had

historically told me that there is no

money in podcasting they'd shown me the

depressing numbers that you'll see if

you google the term how much money can

you make from a podcast and those

numbers work out the revenue potential

based on how many downloads or listeners

you're getting and then they offer you

some kind of dollar per download and i

read on google when i was starting out

with my podcast that you could make 25

to 50

per 1000 downloads which meant if you

got 100 000 downloads per episode i'd

make 2 500 to 5 000 somewhere in that

range

obviously this wasn't going to cut it

most podcasters make their money from

reading out adverts in the middle of a

podcast episode and most podcasters get

these advert deals from some kind of

podcast advertising company that acts as

a middleman between the podcaster and

the brand

and the brand is basically paying them

on a dollar per download basis the issue

with this right is that the middleman is

taking a big big cut and the brand is

paying a fixed fee per download

regardless of how good your show is who

you are or how valuable your audience is

the brands are basically handing the

middleman a bag of money and saying get

me podcast downloads as cheap as

possible and then they're coming to you

and offering you some reduced rate so

point number five is the approach that i

took i knew the typical way of

monetizing a podcast was never gonna be

enough to cover my costs so i cut out

the middleman here's what i did i made a

list of five companies that i genuinely

use every single day and have done for

years companies that have helped me in

various aspects of my life and all

companies that i really loved in terms

of their mission and values i made a

nice little presentation deck which was

just two and a half slides long showing

my audience the growth and i got hold of

the email address of the ceos of those

five companies i sent them all an email

explaining exactly why they should

sponsor this podcast my ambitious plans

for the future i told them that i was a

customer of their brand proved i was a

customer and i told those companies that

i would make this podcast the number one

business podcast in europe if they

backed me and i would do it within 12

months all five of those companies

replied one of them was the ceo of a

company called huel a guy called julian

hearn and he called me the next day

offering to support me this podcast he

knew i'd been a customer for three years

because i talked about hewlett all the

time anyway he knew every single word i

was going to say about huel would be the

truth and he's never ever ever told me

what to say how to say it what to

promote or anything like that at all he

simply believed in me he backed me he

liked the show and i guess because i'm a

genuine pure customer he knew i would be

a benefit to his brand and no i

am a huge customer i realize creators

and influencers say that a lot because

they have to that's what they're getting

paid to say but no i'm a super customer

i have two fuel fridges in this building

alone that i'm recording this podcast in

now six tubs of it over there on my

fridge um if you opened up the cupboards

you'd find heel products it is the

reason that i'm in the best shape of my

life it saves me huge amounts of time

which is the most scarce and important

thing in my life and it keeps me 10 out

of 10 healthy a few months after healed

back to the podcast i actually asked

julian the ceo if i could invest in the

company too and i ended up being a

pretty significant investor in the

business and i also now sit on the board

too so a really really amazing

relationship

and one that is based in authenticity

and that's all because i cut out the

middleman and i went directly to the

brand that i loved with a really

compelling pitch and a very ambitious

plan for the future

it's not often or typical that a creator

or an influencer goes and pitches

themself to a brand but i swear if you

have the gut skill effort and hard work

to do that you can get amazing deals and

deals that are authentic to you and for

me that was the most important thing

another company that replied to me was

fiverr the same thing they believed in

me i'd actually worked on a project with

them before i used their products i've

used fiverr across a whole host of um

portfolio companies that i'm involved in

i use it for everything from graphic

design to video to audio editing to

translations you name it i contacted the

global marketing director who i'd never

spoken to before found him on linkedin i

told him about this podcast i hopped on

a zoom call with him sent him some stats

around the podcast told him about my

plans and they said they'd sponsor the

podcast too again they've never told me

what to say how to say it they leave me

alone and that makes everything much

more authentic and and much more honest

and i think i think you guys can tell

lastly my third sponsor is my energy my

newest sponsor an absolute phenomenal

british success story co-founded by a

remarkable entrepreneur called jordan

brampton some of you will know i've been

a big advocate for sustainability ever

since i sold my range rover sport and

replaced it with an electric bicycle and

my energy are at the very forefront of

british renewable ecosmart technology in

my mind they are the british version of

tesla and so i reached out to jordan

because their values and missions are

completely aligned with mine i asked if

they would support the podcast and they

too after a zoom call and a few chats

said they would love to and my

relationship with my energy has got

closer and closer and closer and i'm now

involved in a lot of other things within

that business too i asked all of my

sponsors for a 12-month contract which

allows me to plan further ahead and to

forecast into higher and i genuinely

have such a amazing relaxed trust-based

relationship with all of them which

means i have that freedom to speak about

my relationship with their brand in my

own way in my own words and that as i

said is incredibly incredibly important

to me it also means that this podcast

has never felt like a job no one hands

me a script and tells me what to say i

do it in my way and that's integral the

psychology proves that's integral to

enjoying something the minute it starts

to feel like a job and you lose that

autonomy

typically that's when motivation

declines and this as i said at the start

of this podcast episode fits into the

bucket of my life that is called things

i do for fun i don't want to compromise

that

if if i ever feel that is compromised

then maybe the podcast would stop

outside of those key sponsors that i've

mentioned i have the odd brand

collaboration or opportunity maybe once

every other month which i might mention

on the show from time to time and my

three key sponsors and my other sponsors

pay varying fees depending on what i do

for them but all in all this year this

podcast will generate over 1.2 million

dollars which is just over 100 000

a month so it turns out the naysayers i

encountered when i started were wrong

and there is money in podcasting and you

can turn it into a really lucrative

business

my last point is a bit of a bonus point

and that's about why i wanted to do the

podcast in the first place and since

launching it the new reasons why i carry

on doing it um i started the podcast

because i believed in the medium of

podcasting to communicate ideas and to

tell stories and to connect with an

audience in a world now where everybody

is so obsessed with reach like 1 million

views 1 million impressions podcasts sat

alone as a different channel because it

offered depth when i started the podcast

i was also making videos on facebook

watch and i remember making four videos

that ranged between 3 million and 33

million views on average those four

videos did 10 million views each

the views were staggering huge view

numbers however the videos were like two

to three minute kind of viral

semi-forgettable highly relatable videos

that after watching most people never

really remembered ever again and one of

the sort of like real world measurements

that i have about how much the content i

make online is connecting with people is

when i meet people in the streets or on

a train or an event what they mention

and people never ever mentioned my

facebook videos and so for me that meant

that those facebook videos weren't

connecting with them at any real depth

when i started the podcast although at

the very very beginning i was getting

thousands of listeners i would get

stopped all the time

even though it was doing a hundred times

less the views as my facebook videos

were when i was getting stopped in the

streets it was getting a hundred times

more mentions and the essays i was i

would get in my dms the the the long

sort of anecdotal explanations about how

it impacted people meant way more to me

than getting a really big reach number

and so i made the decision that i found

the depth much more enjoyable um it was

having a greater impact and when i'm

producing content that i hope will help

people i think of it in terms of the

time it takes me versus the impact it

has and in that department podcasting

sits absolutely alone the audience is

smaller than the viral videos i used to

make but the impact is a hundred times

more profound none of you can remember

the last thing you saw on instagram you

can't remember the last photo you tapped

the last reel you watched but all of you

can remember the last movie you watched

on netflix and i think that's the

perfect example of how reach can be

quite meaningless but depth can be

incredibly impactful it stays with you

and for me podcasting an hour long and

two hours long sometimes at real depth

on very emotional topics has a

tremendous amount of impact which makes

it all for me incredibly worthwhile and

the other really unintended consequence

of doing a podcast was it forced me to

to keep a diary to then sit down at the

end of the week and look at that diary

and to reflect and to take lessons from

my experiences we all go through life

experiencing things those that stop look

at what's happened pick it apart analyze

it and form conclusions on it will learn

more in the same amount of time because

they're taking more from their

experiences my diary keeping a diary

analyzing it and taking lessons from it

genuinely made me smart it genuinely

helped me understand myself it grew my

self-awareness and even if i didn't have

a podcast or an audience i would

recommend that everybody does that

journal have something where at the end

of the week or at the end of the day

whenever you want to do it you reflect

on the experiences you've had and you

extract the maximum amount of learnings

from them i never expected that but

being forced to produce content whether

it's on instagram or a podcast or on

youtube um really accelerates how much

you learn learn about the world learn

about the topics you're discussing but

most importantly learn about yourself

and the other really unintended

consequence of starting a podcast

especially one that's now videoed is

it's helped me sharpen my sword in terms

of my skills in terms of how i speak

communicate my ideas present on camera

and those are skills that are so

incredibly important in the day and age

we live in especially in the social

media era so i would deeply encourage

everybody to find some type of way

especially if you're young and you're

growing up in the social media era or if

you're someone that wants to improve

your confidence or get better at sales i

would find a way to create a pact with

yourself like a promise my promise is i

have to show up on monday and make this

for you create a pact where you have to

consistently produce content as i said

it improves your ideas it improves your

ability to speak and it also helps you

on camera which is an important skill in

an era where everything seems to be

recorded

and the other really unexpected upside

of having a podcast and inviting guests

on was you genuinely make

amazing potentially lifelong friends

there's this ted talk i watched probably

about four or five years ago and it's um

i think it's called like the 35

questions to fall in love with somebody

and it's basically this list of 35

questions that if you ask somebody and

then spend four minutes staring in their

eyes apparently you're supposed to fall

in love with them now of course that's

but there's real psychological

evidence to support why

that would help you connect with

somebody and the truth is as humans when

we open up to somebody else and they

open up to us it's been proven that it's

easier to connect with them so after

sitting here for two hours with a guest

that i've never met before talking about

their childhood and things they've been

through and their mental health problems

and their struggles and their dreams and

their ambitions

after the podcast finishes filming

honestly in like 90 percent of the time

i feel like they're my mate and they

genuinely 90 percent of the time will

say to me let's go for dinner let's go

for a you know and they genuinely mean

it and i genuinely do like you know i

had reggie yates on the podcast never

met him before a couple days later i'm

at his house and i'm having dinner at

his house liam payne never met him

before came on the podcast was at his

house two days ago and we're genuinely

really good friends now and it's the

same with all of my guests i go to their

birthday parties i go to their their

weddings sometimes we become really

really really good friends and it's

because we connected from a place of

vulnerability i never expected that and

for me that is reason enough to launch a

podcast it expanded my professional

network but it also expanded my

friendships and that's really what i

wanted this podcast today to be about i

wanted you to know that you can start

your own podcast and even if you don't

go for the full production studio like i

have you can make enough money to live

off think about it i get paid to sit and

chat with other people that i think are

amazing that is a

unbelievable privilege so what are my

plans for the future of this podcast if

you know me you probably already know

the answer to that question i want to

take it to another level as you may have

seen we launched the diary of a ceo live

which is our live event and we we sold

out manchester's albert hall we had

thousands of people there and it was

i think i'm safe to say totally

unexpected a big production it was

theatrical in its nature there was sort

of like special effects and stuff video

music it was all there and it was a

really really honestly one of the most

powerful evenings of my life over the

last five years maybe the most powerful

thing i've ever done

maybe and we're now going to tour that

across the rest of the uk coming to five

uk cities first and foremost which i'm

going to announce shortly

and in other elements of this podcast

we're going to continue to take it to

another level guests are going to get

even better production's going to get

even better and hopefully i'm going to

get even better too and most importantly

we're going to continue to be consistent

at something that we all very much love

doing

this was a very different episode this

week i hope you enjoyed it i wanted to

finally answer some of these key

questions around this podcast and just

be completely honest with you

and i'll see you again next week we've

got another great guest coming in and i

can't wait

[Music]

you