On September 29, 2017, entrepreneur Steven Bartlett hosted his first podcast using a $100 microphone he set up in his spare bedroom. Less than 40 people tuned in, two of whom were his best friends, to hear him read from his diary.
Bartlett, now 34, was born in Botswana but grew up in England. He had already become a successful entrepreneur and social media pioneer by the time he got into podcasting. Several years earlier, he had dropped out of college after just one lecture, certain it would be a waste of time since he’d always struggled so much to pay attention in class, he told Forbes in 2025.
Broke and in debt, he started his first business at 18 — an online message board for college students called Wallpark. He told Virgin Start Up, “During this time I stumbled upon a Twitter page aimed at students run by a student at Edinburgh University; his name was Dominic McGregor. Dom was posting extremely funny and relatable student content that in turn attracted thousands of followers. I saw the opportunity to use these platforms to connect a brand with its audience.”
“If there was a way to weave a brand’s message seamlessly into the page,” Bartlett explained, “and engagement and following wouldn’t suffer, I wanted to create it. I got in touch with Dom and shared my vision, and soon enough he ended up ditching his studies too. Together we set up Social Chain.”
Social Chain became Europe’s fastest-growing marketing agency, helping major brands from Apple to McDonald’s connect with younger audiences via networks of social media pages, online communities, and influencers.
Their first client was an app called Tippy Tap, he told Virgin Start Up, with the goal of getting customers to download the app. They launched a campaign using the system they’d built, hoping for the best. The results, Bartlett said, were that “Tippy Tap sat at the top of the app store for weeks and even made BBC headlines. It was then we knew that we were onto something.”
Over the next two years, he said, they went from “sharing a one-bedroom flat in North London” to having swanky offices in cities around the world. Their headquarters in Manchester had “a slide, ball pit, fully stocked bar, table tennis and a puppy park.” The company eventually merged with Lumaland to form the publicly-held Social Chain AG, and Bartlett stepped down as co-CEO in August 2020.
‘Diary of a CEO’ is One of the World’s Most-Listened-To Podcasts
By then, Bartlett was already hosting his Diary of a CEO podcast, and decided to put his time and energy into growing it. A multi-millionaire by age 23, Bartlett had begun the show by reading his journals out loud on the podcast, recorded in the middle of the night, just figuring others might like to hear what his mindset was like as he was starting his companies.
“So when I started it, I was a CEO and I asked myself, what would one find in the diary of a person in that position?” he told Forbes. “And one might think it’s like P&Ls and scribbles about numbers and stuff like that, but actually you’d find a really human story. You’d find someone who’s in an interesting role in a position, but struggling with all the same things that you’re struggling with in your life. … I endeavor to go a little bit deeper with people to understand why it is that they do what they do, what’s really behind the scenes, and ultimately, I guess, what would be written in their diary if we were lucky enough to be able to see it.”
When he left Social Chain AG, Bartlett had made so much money he could have just retired, but decided to ask himself a big question: “If I could do anything, what would I do, irrespective of money? And the answer that was, like, loud and clear in my brain was, ‘That little podcast thing you started would be the thing because you enjoyed it the most. It’s the thing that made you feel like you were in like a state of flow.'”
Bartlett invested tens of thousands of dollars in a podcast studio and equipment, and then began inviting other CEOs in for reflective chats. In the last three years, the podcast has exploded, hitting 20 million subscribers and four million Instagram followers in late September.
View this post on InstagramAlong with his success has come some speed bumps he said he’s learned from. In 2024, for instance, the BBC investigated false health claims made on his show, which got him in hot water with advertisers and fans. Now, Bartlett told Fortune, he has a full-time medical PhD to review health episodes, and an independent review team fact-checks every episode (not just those focused on health) before it is uploaded to the web.
This year, the podcast — among the top 10 podcasts in the world — is expected to earn $60 million via “brand partnerships, products his business owns and manufactures, subscriptions, memberships, and events,” per Fortune. His holding company, Steven.com, will earn another $30 million, he projected.
According to the outlet, Diary of a CEO is now “on track to overtake Joe Rogan as the most-subscribed podcast on YouTube.”
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