Transcription
Wrong. Worked. Weird.
Anyways, angry. Problem stamina. Bad. Nope. Extinction.
Diary of the CEO is a weird show. The thumbnails are often pretty trashy. They're lying. They want us to be sick. If a nuke drops, here's what happens. A lemon will fix your erections. But the interviews are actually very sophisticated, even life-changing. The topics are all over the place: financial advice, societal collapse, foot health, sugar consumption, celebrities. But they consistently bring in millions of views, not just once a week, but twice a week. To get over 14 million subscribers and a billion views on YouTube alone, Diary of the CEO has to be doing a lot of things right.
So many people copy our thumbnails now, for example, cuz they think that must be it. So many people copy the trailers, they think that must be it. But it's not that.
Question is, what is it then?
[music]
For the last month, I went down a rabbit hole to try to answer that question and break down the invisible machine behind the show.
[music]
And what I discovered is that what makes this podcast one of the best in the world isn't what you see, it's what you don't. A lot of people think Diary of the CEO succeeded because Steven Bartlett was rich and he was famous. Cuz I mean, he was rich and he was pretty famous. Founder of a marketing empire that's become one of the world's most influential social media companies is the den's youngest ever dragon, Steven Bartlett.
But then I found something that pretty much proved this wrong. Kim Kardashian launched a new criminal justice reform podcast this week.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have joined forces with Spotify.
Addison Rage launched a podcast exclusively on Spotify.
Former President Barack Obama teaming up with one of America's biggest rock stars for a new podcast.
From 2018 to 2021, Spotify bet the farm on the idea that famous people equals successful podcasters. They poured hundreds of millions of dollars into deals with celebrities. But that bet did not pay off.
Harry and Megan's estimated $25 million podcast deal canceled after less than a year.
The Obama's production company is moving to Audible after a three-year run with Spotify. So, while being rich and famous helps with I mean it helps with everything, it doesn't explain how Steven was able to rise to the top of the podcast mountain. So, I decided to go back to the very beginning to the fall of 2017 when Steven records his first ever podcast.
The first five episodes weren't really the show you hear today.
"Every Sunday, I'm going to share my personal diary with you, and I want to give you an insight into what it's like behind the scenes being an entrepreneur."
But that didn't last long. Around six, Steven started interviewing people. And so I went back and I actually listened to those early stripped-down episodes before he had the fancy gear and famous guests and huge team. And what I found surprised me because even back then, Steven was actually a pretty good interviewer. He didn't commit any of the usual mistakes that beginners make, like talking too much about himself or asking questions just to sound smart. But there was one thing that he got way better at. First though, let's look at what kind of interviewer Steven actually is. Roughly speaking, there are three types of interviewers.
"Hey there. Welcome to Conor O'Brien Needs a Friend."
"Welcome. Welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dax Shepard."
"Yeah."
The friend interviewer puts their guest at ease and it feels like a hangout. Then you have the second type.
"Bradley Pets. Thanks for joining me."
"It's my pleasure."
"I'm quite picky, so I wouldn't have asked you if I wasn't in love with you. Here we are at Neptune Records waiting for Tyler the Creator."
The weirdo interviewer cuts through the usual boring celebrity talking points. It's hard to act normal when the person interviewing you isn't normal. In both cases, the interviewer is part of the show. The friend talks a lot. Joe Rogan will jump in with:
"I don't remember what happened, but she started throwing punches at me and I'm like, what the..."
With the weirdo interviewer, the guest can be almost boring because the interviewer is the entertainment. "I feel like there's quite fiery energy between us."
[laughter]
"Oh no, don't get..."
But Steven Bartlett doesn't belong to either category. He falls into a third type. Part of a long tradition of interviewers like Larry King or James Lipton, the invisible interviewer.
"How did that happen? Why do they hang around?"
"Okay, that's a pretty good question. I guess..."
"When the spaceship lands, how do they communicate?"
"That's a very good question. I like that."
This type of interviewer is a magic trick. When it's done really well, all you see is the guest. Under the surface, though, there's a lot going on. So, let's get into that.
When you listen to Steven's interviews with celebrities these days, his opening is almost always the same.
"Louie, to understand you, what is the earliest context that I need? Trevor, what are the most important things that I need to understand about your earliest years? For you to be the way that you are, there must be some kind of early context."
So, this doesn't seem that remarkable. It's a pretty obvious starting point, but look at how he used to ask this question. This is the transcript from one of Steven's early interviews before he was even on YouTube. Look at how long it takes him to ask the first question.
"Tom, thank you so much for inviting us into your content as well is hugely inspiring. Inspiration and knowledge. So, my question, I guess it, where did you come from?"
It takes him 44 seconds just to get that question out. Now, it only takes him five seconds. But that's not the only difference. If you ever listen to some of the great invisible interviewers, it's not just how tight their questions are, it's also the focus. Remember the question Stephen asked?
"Where did you come from?"
Listen to how confused his guest is by that question.
[sighs]
"Where did I come from? Well, I grew up in Tacoma, Washington."
"Um, so..."
"Respectfully, nobody cares about that."
And so, Steven changed the question so that it nudges people into a more interesting answer. "What do I need to know about your earliest context to understand you now?"
[singing]
All right, so the questions got tighter. They got better. But there's another key to the invisible interviewer.
"Research, research, research, research, study, study, study, study."
Research has always been a huge part of any interview. The more you know about a person, the more interesting answers you get. Even Joe Rogan, who is probably one of the chillest interviewers, still does a lot of research. "If I have uh an important subject and I don't understand it too much, I'll read someone's book, watch documentary. I love things like the UFO subjects because I don't have to do any preparation."
But the king of research has to be...
"Guns Garcia."
"Yo, he know too much."
"Narwir, HOW..."
"HOW THE [ __ ] do you know that?"
"Wow. How the [ __ ] do you know about..."
"Yeah, how do you know?"
"You got a hell of a research, bro."
So, let's look at how Diary of a CEO does their research. One way to understand what makes the show special is to listen to other interviews their guests did. Take this mafia boss. He'd been interviewed dozens of times before he went on Diary of a CEO. His most popular interview was probably this one on BuzzFeed. And the most viral moment in that video...
"Never have I ever killed someone. Oh boy."
It was the most watched, most commented on. But the answer he gives is honestly pretty lame and generic.
"I will tell you this, that life is a very violent life. Murder in that life was taken very seriously."
I'm pretty sure we all know that murder is taken seriously in mob life. I mean, I've seen movies. So, people were interested in the topic, but the interview didn't really deliver. And so, when Steven interviews him, he makes sure to ask him three probing questions just to try to get him to talk as much as possible about that moment that he knows people are interested in.
"You've never talked about having to kill someone, have you?"
"No."
"Why is that?"
"It's just not a subject I care to get into. You know."
"When I, when I read that, I thought maybe it's because there's some, might be legal retribution, but I wondered why."
It's honestly totally worth watching. I mean, at one point he says...
"I don't have immunity for anything that I've done in the past."
I'm just going to say that definitely means he didn't not not do it. So, that's one way that Diary of a CEO makes sure their guest gives interesting answers by watching the other interviews and mining them for greatest hits.
"I was thinking about Lewis House and you had a conversation with him. Is something that I've heard you talk about before. I've heard you say before that the most important, the things I heard you talk about are, I heard you talk about this sort of..."
And that's the second technique Stephen uses as the invisible interviewer. I kind of think of it as the rock concert technique because he's basically figuring out what the guest's greatest hits are and then structuring the interview so they can play those answers. But even the best answers don't matter if people click away. And that's where retention comes in. There's a lot of complicated theories out there about retention, but if you just replace retention with attention, you'd understand more than 99% of people. What I noticed about Diary of a CEO is that even if I wasn't that interested in the topic or the guest, I'd pay attention to most of the two-hour long episode. But when I listened to a lot of other podcasts, sometimes I'd find myself zoning out. And it wasn't until I actually watched a Diary of a CEO episode that I understood what was going on. This is what the chapters look like for an average episode.
Probably doesn't look that significant until you compare it to what other podcasts look like. Lewis House averages five minutes per chapter. My First Million clocks in around four. Chris Williamson is averaging 10 minutes per chapter. But Diary of a CEO is averaging two minutes per idea. And that's the third technique Steven's using as an invisible interviewer. Without anyone realizing it, he's subtly moving people along the breadcrumb trail of ideas.
"Say I was trying to sell you something. What is it that you think you know that the average person doesn't know about? If you have a system or a framework..."
Two minutes per idea means that each section is close to the length of a YouTube Short. So, people aren't really watching a two-hour interview. They're watching a playlist of carefully chosen, carefully paced clips. Those are just some of the techniques that Steven Bartlett uses to make Diary of a CEO one of the most listened to podcasts in the world.
[music]
But here's the thing. As good as Steven's interviews are,
[music]
and they are really good, it doesn't matter if nobody knows about them. And that's when I stumbled upon one of the weirdest parts about Diary of the CEO. Over the years,
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Steven has had some pretty famous guests on.
"Oh boy."
"I know a scam when I see one."
"Fun question."
But one night, I started looking at their top 10 most popular episodes, and I realized something. Almost none of them are the famous guests. These videos all got tens of millions of views. Yet, it's one of the most random collections of people I've seen in a while. I mean, look at this guy. I've never heard of him before. Yet, he got more views than the world's biggest YouTube star, one of the most famous actors, and the highest-paid comedian all put together. So, the question is, how is Diary of a CEO convincing millions of people to click on someone they'd never heard of before? This is obviously pretty far down the rabbit hole, but if you're interested in it, I put together what I figured out about their thumbnails in a PDF below.
For something totally different, watch this. For something similar, click on this.