Bartlett founded a social media agency in his early twenties, left it, and built a second career as an investor, author and host of The Diary of a CEO — a long-form interview show that has become one of the more widely heard business podcasts in the UK.
The reason it is worth your time is the format rather than the guest list. The interviews run long enough to get past the polished founder story into what actually happened: the money problems, the co-founder falling out, the decision that nearly ended it.
The show has moved well beyond business into health and psychology, and has drawn criticism for giving unchallenged airtime to contested health claims. Take the business episodes as the strong part and apply ordinary scepticism to the rest.
His interviews get somewhere because he does not move on when a guest gives the rehearsed line. The business use is the same: in a sales conversation or a supplier negotiation, the second question about the same thing is where you learn what is actually going on.
He talks openly about failures and mistakes, which is why the successes are believable. A business that only publishes wins is read as marketing; one that admits what went wrong is read as honest, and it costs nothing.
His first business was built on understanding how attention moves online, and the podcast is run the same way — clipped, repurposed and distributed relentlessly. Making the thing is half the job at most.
These links go to their own work. We summarise and point — we do not republish it.
Anyone who learns better from a long conversation than a textbook, and founders who want the unedited version of how businesses actually get built.
Episodes vary enormously in rigour. It is interviews, not research, and the health content in particular should not be taken as settled.
