How Steven Bartlett Built a Content Machine That Makes $25M/Year

this is Steven Bartlett he's the host of Diary of a CEO one of the fastest growing podcasts in the world in 2019 he recorded his first episode on a $90 mic in his closet with a blanket over his head today just 5 years later that podcast makes over $2 million a month that's 25 million a year Steven's entire media machine boils down to one social media Playbook that allows him to engineer virality and essentially hack the social media algorithms in his favor now I have the full Playbook he uses and the good news is you

can use the exact same formula to Kickstart building your own 8 figureure media business now if you've tried to build a media company on your own you probably have the same problem Stephen did he wanted to build a massive podcast because he knew long form shows are the easiest way to build a cult audience but podcasts are notoriously super hard to grow and this is because of the distribution problem audio platforms like apple and Spotify have zero baked in Discovery there is no for you feed for podcasts which makes it very hard for a stranger

to stumble upon your show this is why anybody starting a podcast today also starts with video but video podcasts on YouTube are also super hard to grow because to get somebody to spend 60 minutes trying out a show they've never seen is a massive ask and we all know it takes years to build critical mass on YouTube Stephen also knew this but he found a way around the distribution problem and that way is short form video now I know what you're thinking I have a show I've tried making short it doesn't work it's junk food

views the views don't convert to the show yada yada I've heard all of that but the truth is there is a Formula that that works so well all the big podcasts are using it and once you understand it your shorts and your show will grow so much faster I've studied Steven and a bunch of the other top podcasts and they all use the same five-step approach to short form video now the first piece is making sure your video hooks are native to shorts because the truth is 99% of podcasters do not speak in a way

that's optimized for short form video you want fast clear Punchy straight to the point because you basically want to compress speed to Value the problem is with most people they grab their Clips straight from the long form they chop them a little bit and then upload them but they're not Punchy enough they're not crisp enough to actually work on short form those clips end up being average and Fade Away Into The Ether now I'm going to give you a bunch of tips I'm going to show you what stevenh does I'm going to show you a

bunch of examples from him and then I'm going to help you understand how to extract that learning to apply it to yourself so the first thing is decide are you going to have the guest start out as the hook or are you going to have the host either way it needs to be super Punchy watch this clip from Steven every single marriage ends in death or divorce but it ends but the majority of them and because now this one started out as the guest you don't know that guest nobody knows that guest it's a lawyer

we're going to talk about that later that was super Punchy they edited Down super crisply so that you got in and out of the hook as fast as possible I want to show you another one where Steven is the one delivering the hook the story of iron herandez is widely known but for those that don't know it could you give me a summary of so he do you hear how fast he delivered that how crisp he delivered that the secret is he knows that he's optimizing the whole show for shorts and that's the whole thing

he is speaking so concisely and so crisply because he knows it has to be that way for shorts a hack though that a lot of podcasts could use but don't you can actually just re-record native hooks after the fact if he had a really great body of a clip but there wasn't a natural hook that was Punchy and crisp he can wearing the same clothes record a much faster clip after the fact that can go as a hook and then play the rest of the short this is a way to get around you not talking

in crisp tones now Steven is trained he knows that shorts are the best way to grow his podcast so he has learned how to speak in Punchy concise sentences but if you don't do that that you can always record those hooks after it has to be optimized for short form I want to show you a couple of other examples that aren't from Steven but things I found and how they're delivering the hook so quickly so here's something that blew my mind just like that that's all you have to do she is talking in short Punchy

sentences because she knows this is going to be clipped later here's another one what's something about Steph Curry that would surprise people there's a ruin now this is an example where I actually think he might have recorded that after the fact it's rare for someone in a conversation to talk that fast I could easily see him sitting in the studio alone let's see if you can see the other person's leg you can't see the other person's leg he is a producer in here I could see him reading this off the computer after the fact because

he knew there was a good Steph Curry story so he wanted to tee this up super quickly about Steph Curry that would surprise people there's a rule and then he just chops to the guest you would never know with an untrained eye that he recorded that after the fact and I bet he did so that's a way to show you can record these Punchy short form native hooks they need to cut through be as concise as possible be delivered with a good Pace Steven is is rare and that he knows he needs to do this

and so it's in the back of his mind but for most shows you can hack this by recording it after the fact now you can do everything you want on the hooks but if you don't do this second thing right the hooks don't matter and that second thing sounds obvious but the clips need to actually be interesting to your ILP your ideal listener profile now this doesn't mean every clip needs to be gen po this doesn't mean every clip needs to be about celebrities or something that a lot of people understand if you make a

B2B marketing podcast and you picture a marketer on the other side is the clip you're sharing actually going to be interesting to the marketer or are you just pumping filler because you think having more shorts is better when it's just volume that's a big mistake people make they take 1our podcast they cut out 10 or 15 clips and 90% of those are just nonsense low value filler those don't do well and so your overall average hit rate goes down and your growth is stalled the clip has to actually be interesting for your ideal listener and

the reason for this is because people are trained to tune out noise now Steven pumps out dozens of Clips but he will not put a clip out unless he knows it's compelling how does he know it's compelling he has a full team who's gut checking it but the way for you if you're starting your show out you don't have a full team the way for you to assess this is what I call the share test send the clip to a friend who is in the ideal customer profile the ideal listener profile and see if they

would send it to their friend who's also in the ideal listener profile if it's a marketing podcast send it to a fellow marketer and see if they would share it with another marketer if they do it passes the share test and at least you know directionally it's kind of interesting the seed of the video is there if they wouldn't and they think it's kind of driil or they think it's fil that tells you that it's not interesting enough to that ideal listener now here's what's interesting Steven does two really unique things to try to shortcut

the process to find these moments of interest in his podcast the first thing is he actually has a button hidden on the desk underneath his side so whenever he's talking he's in the middle of conversation if he feels that tingly feeling or those Goosebumps when somebody's saying something he'll press the button which is connected to the producer Bay behind the guest that signals that they should Mark the time stamp down because there was something that made even feel like he was interested or leaning in now you don't have to have this complex technology and a

button underneath but as you're doing your interviews either have a little notepad or if you're doing them remote have your dock up and anytime you feel this pull like oh that was interesting write down the Tim stamp you can obviously go back and do this after the fact but what I find is when you write that down it shortcuts that searching process because if you don't write these moments down when you're in the thick of things you're going to hunt back for that episode and try to find 5 to 10 interesting clips and that's going

to lower your standard for what's actually interesting and you're going to end up pumping out filler the second thing he does that's really really smart and this goes to why he's such an advanced interviewer is he is looking to prompt for clippable moments he knows to our point before around the native hooks he needs to ask Punchy questions so what he does is he asks broad Punchy short questions which leaves it open for the guest the guest will take one lane or the other and then he will prompt with how did that make you feel

just like a therapist would and by doing that he usually gets a second and third crack at the answer the best most interesting stories come from the second and third follow-ups he does this intentionally but he knows he can stitch those clips together having his tea up having the first answer for context and then having the depth from the second or third or fourth follow-up he does this on purpose most people think it's all an accident he's just talented no he is engineering clippable moments that he can share on shorts which Drive the growth flywheel

of the whole thing so the Tactical takeaway is when you're interviewing someone and you feel that moment that leanin moment something interesting is happening abandon the script abandon the notes abandon the pre-approved questions and go straight for the follow-ups ask them more dig deeper pull that thread more that's where the interesting clip is going to come from so those are the first two most important things the hooks of the video have to be short form native and second the clips overall have to be interesting now if you do those two things but you don't do

this third thing nothing else matters either and that's pacing tone and delivery of the rest of the clip we talked about the overall body we talked about the hook now the pacing tone and delivery of the rest needs to be energized and you can solve for this two ways one guest selection I think so many podcasts so many shows will take any guess they can get because they're trying to hit this delivery Cadence when you take a guest that has low energy and doesn't deliver emotional responses the clip is going to be boring when they're

monotone the clip will be boring so you should use guest selection as a filter to understand who is going to deliver in an energized way so that you can get clips that are worth watching it sounds TR but guest selection is such an important part of the process that's why Stephen show has grown so fast it's not that he only chooses famous guest is that he chooses guests that are compelling to listen to that are good at speaking I want to show you two clips now this first one is from Trevor Noah obviously Trevor Noah

is a celebrity he's trained to speak but you can hear the emotion in his storytelling the emotion in his voice I would sit there and be like wow you really hate me I've done nothing to you but you hate me but then I realized no you hate the idea of me you mention the way he delivers is just so much more interesting to watch than an average person now you may be saying hey well I can't get Trevor Noah he's obviously famous I get that look at this guy this is the divorce lawyer that we

talked about earlier when you watch this afford a lawyer and he's going to win because he can afford a lawyer that knows how to put a document into evidence was there ever a a particular case that guy is not a trained podcaster that is not a trained interviewer he has now become this media guy because that clip got 25 million views on this he's emotional he's interesting he's delivering with passion and Pace you want to find guests that have interesting emotional resonance to the things they say if you don't the clips will be that less

interesting now the other way to do this if you can't get a celebrity guest I totally get it I've had podcast in the past it's really hard to book guess you're trying to hit this week Cadence you know you'll take whoever you can get if you find somebody who's monotone you need to coax it out of them coax the energy out of them the way you do that is by acting as a mirror when people feel your energy they feel your optimism your upbeat they will Elevate themsel if they feel your monotone and low they

won't and so if you don't have somebody that naturally has that Charisma and you should self- select for those people but if you don't naturally have that you need to pull it out of them if you don't the clips will be lame and if the clips are lame you won't be able to use it to grow and I there's so many podcasts that are average that want to grow and the host is putting all this effort in but they're not bringing energy to the conversation with the guest they're not getting shorts out and those shorts

aren't doing anything because the energy is so low you have to feel like you want to be there and watch it if you're a viewer and to do that the guest needs to be into it to make the guest seem into it you need to be into it it's all a flow around emotion and mirroring all right now the fourth piece is actually very very simple but it's so critical it's probably more important than those first three and this is the visual text hook so many people make this mistake if you want your videos to

10x just put a visual text hook on the video let me show you what I mean if you look at this clip from Stephen what's the first thing you see when this plays get it and I would never want to but the addiction is never you're not looking at the guest you're not looking at Steven's emotions you're looking right at that huge red thing the truth about addiction immediately you read that immediately every single person you're lying if you if you say you didn't look at that when you look at that you think the truth

about addiction do I want to watch this about addiction yes no you self- select in if you put text hooks on the screen it will help a user understand if it's for them or not and if your clips broadly applicable to your ideal listener profile they will be able to self- select in before it even gets to the point where they would get value that's why you want to put text hes on so many people don't do this Stephen does it you can tell by his formatting you don't need this to be super impressive super

crazy Graphic Design This is built directly out of the Tik Tok caption machine you just press caption and write this text that makes such a big difference forget the first three things make sure you do that now the fifth and final piece and this really has to go without saying you need high quality video and audio a lot of the reason why a lot of the big podcasts in person do so well is because they have Crystal Clear audio and super high quality video with multiple cameras if you're remote and you're not in person you

still can win but you have to have 4K video we now live in an era where so many people have seen so many Clips they don't tolerate lowquality video and Buzzy nonsense audio you have to have the quality above a certain bar now the good news is if you're remote if you're making a short you're going to punch in and so people can't really tell if you're remote or in person on a and that gives you an equal opportunity as the people in person way less cost way less difficulty logistically to try to coordinate if

you're recording a remote now there is one major hack that I've seen one Trend that is crushing and I'm going to tell you exactly what that is but before I do if you are trying to grow your business with content and you like these things these tips and tricks that most people don't see the unfair advantages this is all I think about and I write about this in content Department my newsletters over 11,000 creators entrepreneurs and marketers read this every single day and I share these kind of like tips and tricks and guides and playbooks

that I'm extracting from the people that are working the best it's called content Department the links content. game you can check it below all right now this is the thing that really shocked me this is the one hack that most people are not aware of they're not talking about and you can really move the needle and this is what I call fake podcasting I want you to watch this clip right here then in high school I was obsessed with this boy who was a year older than me and askfm was really big at the time

this clip is not real this is not a real podcast this girl rented a podcast studio and is either having a conversation with a friend who's not being recorded they're not recording the episode or there's nobody on the other side and she is faking the podcast conversation she rents the studio records a bunch of these clips fakes the podcast clips and puts them out this is a huge Trend that I'm seeing that not a lot of people know about how do I know this is real she tweeted directly new thing I've discovered to hack growth

recording fake podcasts why does this work this works because of something I call the fly on-the-wall effect when you're watching these inperson podcasts you're watching these shorts these clips the reason they work is because you feel like a fly on the wall that's getting access to watch a ation that you shouldn't be watching when you record remote most people think oh I can have my DSLR and look into it and that's actually a hack you actually don't want to do that because when you have the short it's not natural for you as the recorder talking

to someone else in the episode for me as the viewer to then see you eye to eye it doesn't make sense so the hack is if you're recording remotely you should be recording the episode off center and then clip it this way so you can simulate that kind of camera watching fly on thewall effect to go a step further you can actually just record a fake podcast now this works super well because again the fly on thewall effect it feels like people are getting access to something they shouldn't get access to now Lillian here this

girl is using this to drive leads and traffic to an app she's not actually using it to drive to a long form show obviously because it's fake if you're trying to grow a long form show using a fake podcast clip isn't going to work because there's not going to be an episode to drive to however you could record more clips than what you're getting so maybe every episode you only get two or three interesting Clips you could fake another three and double your output using that without having to book another guest that is a hack

that everyone should be aware of now Steven's obviously not recording fake podcast because he has so many Clips coming out that he doesn't need to but for you if you're trying to increase volume without decreasing quality which is what we've talked about already this is a really interesting hack one other thing I want to talk about is how Stephen actually connects the shorts to his long form show that's a big complaint people have with the short form of strategies they're like well I'm getting all these views maybe I'm monetizing from the cpms from the Tik

Tok Creator program but I'm not actually seeing flow through to the show so it's actually two separate things and it's junk food views what is Steph doing to actually flow this through you'd be surprised he's actually not trying to Drive individual Clips to convert at a huge level he's playing the rising tide lifts all boats game this is his account on Tik Tok all he does every single clip he has the name of the person Professor Scott Galloway there's no call to action there's no link this is just him trying to get the clip to

go as fast as possible and then he has the link to the show here host of the Diary of a CEO podcast here's the episode he's playing the game of if you like this clip you're going to find out who that guest is and you're going to want to go look up the episode you're going to go to YouTube he's not doing these cringey call to actions at the end of the clip he's literally op imizing the clip for shares and for virality which would be not having a call to action not slowing up the

value to try to drive people off he's just playing the volume game and trying to drive people down this is what I call the bread strategy this is the way you use short to long form you're not going to be able to Tribute one to one but if you do enough Clips with enough volume and you have flow through on the on the profiles you will see an uptick in the long form show now I've walked through the in-depth five-step framework for how Steph uses shorts we've covered that and I've tried my best to extract

every lesson and every tip that he does so that you can use it on your own but the question is how does he super charge this formula what does he do to really make this work and what he does is what the Best Brands the best podcasts are doing it's multiple accounts on Tik Tok I call it the echo effect I want you to look at this when you search for Diary of a CEO you see Steven's main account and he's obviously has it SEO in the bio like he should he's posting Clips but he

has all these other accounts doac podcast this is his this is their account as well 400,000 followers doac Clips this is their account as well doac podcast this is their account as well they have all these shows now some of these are Clippers that know the show is so big that they're creating an account dedicated just to Clips because they're monetizing on the Tik Tok Creator program but many of these are paid by him to create derivative accounts why are they doing this this allows him to test multiple short formats at the same time without

diluting or over volumizing an individual account if you posted 15 Clips on a single account it'd be too much for the Tik Tok algorithm to handle that actually cannibalize each other so what he's doing is he's creating four five 10 accounts and having an echo effect when any clip goes viral on any of those accounts he's feeding that information back to the others and then using that same clip in whatever Style on the other ones I want to show you if you click this main account he has these are the same kind of style every

single one is this high quality zoomed in talking head right so this is his main account let's go to this account this is a different style these are uploaded long form with text above and below let's go to a different account these are kind of the same as the first account but he's you can tell these are different guests right like these different guests different clips they're edited slightly different some are wider some aren't let's go to another account this one is not him this is 182 followers this is somebody else so they're doing this

black and white right so as you go down he has this is another account that's owned by them 25,000 official account here's the YouTube link this is a completely different approach he is using multiple different approaches to test what works and when he finds out what works he adapts it over this is the strategy that five-step framework to shorts with this Echo effect this is what works for all major podcasts and it absolutely prints this is how all these shows are growing any show you've seen that's growing super fast is using some version of this

strategy it's not that hard to execute if you follow the five steps I said to get high quality Clips with hooks that are native to short form they're energized people actually want to watch them if you do that and create this Echo you can win now if you don't have the resources to have five to 10 accounts you don't have to you can start with one hire an editor get them good at a style pump Clips 5 to 10 times a week get that working use that to upgrade the show sell ads on the upgrade

show reinvest that money in a second edit or second Channel that's what Stephen did he now has 10 channels that are absolutely spinning the crank 8 million subscribers or 7 million subscribers on YouTube he's probably making 30 to 50K just in AdSense alone on the channel and he's getting tons of brand deals as well so this is how you grow a media brand using modern-day social media algorithms this is the same strategy you're seeing with all the top podcasts it works 100% of the time you just have to be patient all right that's all I've

got for today if you like this video leave a comment let me know this was more of a case study breakdown of somebody in media who's used a framework we extracted the learnings we watched how they did it extracted the learnings tried to make it feasible so that you can apply that same thing for yourself at a smaller scale if you like that let me know and I'll do more videos like this if instead you like more of the psychology or you like more of the highle strategy let me know as well just looking for

feedback we'll see you guys on the next one peace