STEVEN BARTLETT: FROM AVERAGE AGENCY OWNER TO VIRAL BUSINESSMAN

Morning!

It seems like people loved last week’s breakdown. I posted a shortened version on Twitter and it went viral, 650,000+ people read it - absolutely crazy!

But today, I wanted to take it one notch higher.

So, this week I spent 6+ hours (whilst on holiday) researching a man that has dominated all the business headlines in the UK over the last couple of years.

• He’s the most famous businessman in the UK right now

• He hosts Europe's most downloaded business podcast

• And has an estimated net worth of $96 million

His name is Steven Bartlett and this is how he went from unknown agency owner to viral businessman…

Hey! Remember there is now an audio version of these breakdowns on Spotify - listen here!

Breaking Down The Strategy

At 22 years old, Bartlett was far from a successful businessman. Instead, he was just starting his business management degree at Manchester Metropolitan.

There was no Oxford education or private school upbringing.

In fact, even his time at Manchester Met didn't last too long, as he dropped out after one lecture.

So it’s pretty safe to say that it wasn’t looking like Steven was going to have a prosperous career at this point.

But in 2014, everything changed for him when he founded Social Chain–a social media marketing agency–with Dom McGregor.

It was a hit.

Steven & Dom were approaching social media marketing in a way no one else had before. They were growing & acquiring social media accounts with millions of followers and chaining them together to create viral marketing campaigns.

This was Steven’s first business breakthrough. But it didn’t propel him to superstardom. All it did was give him a relatively successful marketing agency.

Even his now infamous podcast ‘Diary Of A CEO’ wasn’t a hit at first.

If you scroll back to Steven’s oldest podcast on YouTube you’ll see it was posted 2 years ago and only has 37k views.

That sounds like a lot.

But that first episode posted to YouTube was actually his 55th podcast episode - it had already been going for 4 years before this point.

So what did make Steven the viral sensation he is today?

How did he go from reasonably successful business owner & host of a bang-average podcast to the infamous businessman he is today?

That’s the burning question I had at the start of this week.

So, I spent 6+ hours this week researching exactly how Steven became the man he is today.

Turns out there are 3 key tactics that have helped Steven grow so big:

1) The Tate Model

The scale of Steven’s content distribution is insane.

On nearly every single platform he has top-notch content going out at a stupidly high frequency.

• TikTok

• Twitter

• LinkedIn

• YouTube

• Facebook

• Instagram

The guy is everywhere.

And he’s able to do this by using his podcast–The Diary Of A CEO–as the spine of his content.

Mr Beast calls this “The Tate Model”.

It’s essentially where you record a long-form podcast episode and use that as the spine of all your content.

For Steve, his DOAC episodes are repurposed into:

• Long-form videos on YouTube

• Short-form clips across socials

• Graphic quotes for socials

• And much much more

This is without even mentioning the clips that will be chopped and reshared by people outside of his team (fans, haters, etc).

The irony in this is that 90% of people who view the podcast, will never actually listen to the whole thing - they’ll just see the best bits elsewhere on the internet.

But this gives Steven a stupid amount of scale, with very little effort on his end.

And that scale doesn’t just amount to lots of views and likes.

Steven claims that he has never had to hire an outbound salesperson for ANY of his businesses.

How?

Because the sheer scale of his content does the selling.

2) Trailer First

The DOAC episodes are great, but the trailers are out of this world!

And that isn’t by mistake.

When most people create trailers for their podcasts they focus on solely showcasing a preview of what is to come.

But this isn’t the approach Steven and his team take.

Instead, they make their trailers intense cinematic masterpieces.

Just take a look at this one:

This is key for Steve for a couple of reasons:

A) Appearance Drives Perception - 10x more people will see the trailer than the podcast. If the trailer sucks, people will think Steven sucks.

Instead, every time you see these trailers you associate him with amazing conversations with high-level people.

B) To Hook - Bartlett says they usually lose 80% of viewers in the first 3 seconds. So if they can’t nail the first 3 seconds, there’s no point in publishing the next 2 hours.

So they use these trailers at the start of their videos to hook people in so they actually watch the whole of the podcasts.

3) Personal Brand

Steven is the epitome of a man who has used his personal brand to get 10 steps ahead in life.

Steve himself has said multiple times that his personal brand is his “spoken secret” that helped him get to where he is today.

“Everyone thinks personal branding is a popularity contest when actually it’s a reputation & social proofing exercise,” Steven said on his LinkedIn. “Business is about buying from people. It’s an old adage, but people buy from people.”

I feel like everyone understands the power of a personal brand nowadays.

But Steven is a prime example of what can come from doing it right.

He’s:

• Raised $300,000,000+ over the years

• Gained millions of followers online

• And got a bunch of deals because of it

None of that would be possible without Steve’s personal brand.

Despite some bad press in the last few months, Steven is someone that I think anyone trying to become a renowned UK businessman (or woman) should be studying.

But my favourite thing about Steven isn’t his ability to get millions of eyes on him, build one of the world’s largest business podcasts, or become a 9-figure entrepreneur.

It’s his ability to utilise his personal platform to create massive 8 & 9-figure businesses.

Many people can garner attention as Steven has done.

But few are able to leverage it to create companies like he has.

Right, that’s all for today.

Until next Sunday.

— Niall

If you’ve read this far, why not see how else I can help you:

• Follow me on Twitter for more marketing stuff:

• Connect with me on LinkedIn to follow my business journey:

• Want to work with me? Start HERE.

This has been a breakdown of Steven Bartlett’s marketing strategy. I hope you have learned something and can implement a similar strategy in your business!

Don’t forget to subscribe to get next week’s breakdown straight to your inbox!