➡ The Anton Daniel channel is growing rapidly, with 21 million views and 31,000 new subscribers each month. The channel’s creator values his freedom to produce content as he pleases, even if it’s controversial. He’s considering renegotiating his partnership with Teach Henley, but is wary of losing his independence. Despite lucrative offers from major networks, he believes he can be more successful on his own.

➡ Bartlett, a podcaster, used data analytics and constant testing to grow his show from 2017. His breakthrough came in 2023 with an episode featuring a former Google executive, which became the most shared episode in his region. Despite not having a large following, Bartlett learned that the value a podcast provides is more important than the number of followers. He turned down a $100 million offer, believing in the potential of his brand and preferring to bet on himself rather than taking guaranteed money.

Stephen Bartlett and we are here at Flight Story HQ in Central London. I’m an investor, I’m an entrepreneur and I’m the host of the Diarrheseo Podcast. I didn’t skip your Super Chat, Messi. Did I skip your Super Chat? I don’t, I didn’t skip your Super Chat. I didn’t skip your Super Chat. I read it! I read your Super Chat, Messi. I never skipped it. You must have missed me reading it. Gemini Slim, you got to get a profile picture in order for me to address you. I didn’t skip your Super Chat. I didn’t skip your Super Chat.

I didn’t skip your Super Chat. Somebody says, talk about the officer they just killed in Chicago last night on the South Side. You’re late to the show. I’ve already talked about it and they got mad at me for talking about it because they wanted me to go straight into Trump. I already did that. All right, Kendrick? Come on, man. Y’all, I got to get on it. Anton, are you up on Chris Weber? And Doug, Christy, wife, I don’t know if that’s true. That all sounds like rumor. And so I’m going to go off today.

All right. Y’all got to catch up. Y’all got to catch up. Two of the most used phrases in our company. This media model has helped elevate Bartlett and Flight Story to the upper echelon of new media, whose peers include those like Alex Cooper and Mr. Beast. But Bartlett is taking his venture in a different direction. While many podcasters like Alex Cooper, Joe Rogan, and the Kelsey brothers have signed hundred million dollar deals with streamers like Sirius XM, Spotify, and Amazon, Bartlett has turned down the offers he’s received. He set on building independently because it offers some flexibility to share his content cross platform and experiment with what works.

It’s working so far. And as Georgie said, it wasn’t through gut instinct, but rather in data science that Bartlett has cracked the code to building an empire on his own in this new media landscape. I tend to think in terms of principles because a strategy is useful, but it like decays its ephemeral. So a strategy is like me giving you a fish. But if I give you a principle, it’s like me giving you the fishing rod so you can fish for yourself forever. And one of the principles is that in the world we live in today, where the correct answer is changing faster and faster and faster, the correct answer and technology is accelerating, which means the correct answer to anything, to how to shoot an interview, to how to make a podcast, to which platform to use, to where to put the meme bar on the video, what the title should be, what the color should be.

If you just understand that as like a principle, then the way to find the correct answer before everybody else is to increase your rate of experimentation. So here we have a full time failure and experimentation team so that we can… Failure and experimentation team used to be called research and development. It’s just another fancy way to say research and development. Somebody said there’s a shorter one on Forbes. This is Forbes. Oh, you want me to go to this one? I’ll go to this one. Y’all saying today, explain it a little bit clearer and shorter.

Give me a second, y’all. Let me pull this back up. All right, let me re-share my screen real quick. $100 million deal to build a podcast empire. It’s a Monday morning in March and Stephen Bartlett sits in his studio in London’s hip Shoreditch neighborhood to record the latest episode of his hit podcast, The Diary of a CEO. With more than 10 million YouTube subscribers and 25 million social media followers, the interview show is one of the most popular in the world. Only Joe Rogan has more listeners when it comes to hosted podcasts. On this particular day in March, Bartlett is recording a debate between economics influencer Gary Stevenson and entrepreneur Daniel Priestley, where they’ll argue whether entrepreneurship can save the middle class.

The episode will later attract 3.6 million views and more than 46,000 comments on YouTube alone. The debate is fiery, but the buzzy content is only partly why millions tune in. Data plays a vital role, too. Bartlett, who launched two social media companies before hitting podcast fame, has already tested and optimized every aspect of the show. He’s calibrated each detail for maximum attention, the capital letters and exclamation points in the episode’s title, the lighting, the camera angles, even his raised eyebrows in the preview thumbnail photo. Each factor is part of Bartlett’s blueprint to attract viewers.

The 32-year-old Bartlett says, quote, I’ve not met a single podcast network, company, media conglomerate in the world, that can help you grow your podcast using the modern platforms in the way we can. And grow, he has. Launched in 2017 as a hobby to let Bartlett get inside the minds of other CEOs, the podcast has attracted more than one billion streams, including 50 million monthly listeners in December alone. Guests have ranged from comedian Trevor Noah and YouTube titan MrBeast to a mix of self-help experts, including longevity gurus, nutritionists, and sex therapists. How many, how many listeners, how many viewers does he get in a month? And grow, he has.

Launched in 2017 as a hobby to let Bartlett get inside the minds of other CEOs, the podcast has attracted more than one billion streams, including 50 million monthly listeners in December alone. Guests have ranged from comedian Trevor Noah and YouTube titan MrBeast to a mix of self-help experts, including longevity gurus, nutritionists, and sex therapists. In 2024, thanks to his mix of compelling content and growth hacking, Bartlett says the franchise generated $20 million in revenue from brand partnerships with brands like LinkedIn, Oracle, and Shopify, speaking engagements and hawking products like hoodies and branded journals.

So basically, he doesn’t make the majority of his money in revenue and shared revenue from advertising on YouTube or advertising on the platforms that he put it on. A lot of these people actually make the majority of their shared revenue or the majority of their revenue on outside sources, and that is normal. Most people, MrBeast gets sponsorship deals. Of course, he makes a bunch of money on YouTube and all that other stuff, right? But he gets sponsorship deals, and the sponsorships generate way more revenue, which is the thing that I am going to start pivoting into is that sponsorships, now that we have the numbers, now that we can go through and say, hey, listen, this is what our numbers are.

This is what we generated in revenue, or this is how many watch hours that we have. This is how much the audience stays with us. This is what we’re doing on the Anton Daniels channel versus other platforms and stuff like that. You can go in and you can say, hey, these are the numbers. This is what I’m generating, and this is what’s happening. Hey, we’re growing by this much every single month, whatever, so on and so forth. And so taking that completely different strategy will 100% change how you pitch yourself to people. The real game for a lot of people, and they don’t even understand this, is in sponsorships.

It’s in sponsorships. When you have the number, you can negotiate better deals. Now, some people negotiate deals based off of exclusivity. So there’s some people that say, hey, I want as many sponsorships as I can get. I want this over here. I want T-Mobile. I want DraftKings. I want all of that. And then there’s other people that say, okay, well, listen. The sponsor will come in and say, hey, I will pay you an egregious amount of money in order to have exclusivity and basically being the person that supports you throughout this process. We want to basically run an ad on at least half of the live streams or half of the videos or half of the things that you put out on the internet.

And we want to be the premier person that basically says, hey, I got you. You know what I’m saying? So the problem with that, in my opinion, is that you can create a platform for money or you can create a platform based off of authenticity and impact. Now, in both situations, you have to be great. You have to be able to generate a lot of views. You’ve got to generate a lot of visibility. You’ve got to do all of these things. On one side, though, is that if you are generating a lot of these views, but at the same time, you’re not being a part of the corporate structure, then you’re going to hamstring yourself.

Anton, what does that mean? That means that if you’re tackling subjects that are too controversial, that get too much visibility, you can pull it off if you’re not as big as a content creator, right? And I’m talking about like maybe a micro content creator. But once you get more visibility, people are going to start being bothered or brands are going to start paying attention to exactly how you say, how you brand yourself. Me in particular, just… On the Anton Daniel channel, we averaging over 21 million views a month. I’m averaging over 21 million views a month on the Anton Daniel channel now, right? And so that’s a big number.

21 million views a month. 1.3 million watch hours. And we’re growing at a rate of about 31,000 subscribers every single month. Just looking at my numbers right here, my content, my numbers and all of that. And we trending up. So when we then make our pitch deck, right, when our contract renewal comes up with, for example, teach Henley, then that means that we got to renegotiate the bag. Either we can get out of an exclusive deal. You can maintain a partnership with us. I don’t know what your marketing budget is. We’ve had a long-term, really good long-term partnership.

Then it’s easier for me to pitch it. The problem then becomes, if I decide to get out of the deal with them, because teach kind of let me do whatever it is that I want to do. And that’s part of the thing that I picked. I said, listen, my content, I might go off the rails and tell somebody to suck my dick. That’s what I do. I’m not a person that’s going to be censored. The other side of it is, if you look at some of these other platforms, they’re a lot more polished, you know? So it’s easier for them to be able to pitch something and say, okay, well, listen, this is what we do.

This is what we rock out like. And this is what we’re rolling with. What’s the gross profit on the YouTube channels? 90% plus. I don’t know what the 90% plus is, is what you’re saying. How do you feel about telling somebody to suck your dick? Well, it depends on who I’m telling it to. If I’m telling it to a woman that’s sitting in here in my place, I feel real good about it. If I’m telling it to somebody online that’s being a little bit incendiary, I would wish that they wouldn’t push me that far.

You know what I’m saying? But the point is that I’m liable to do anything. And that’s one of the things that make me a little bit more appealing is that you don’t know what I’m going to say when I’m going to say it. If gross profit is above 90%, I don’t have anything that… I don’t have a lot of overhead. I don’t have a lot of overhead. So gross revenue, it just depends. It depends on the channel. It depends on the watch hours. It depends on the type of content that you’re talking about. Y’all might have to jump into the Patreon in order to deep dive into that because I show all of my numbers and stuff like that on the Patreon.

But that’s correct, said Lap. Once you go corporate, they put the cuffs… And I don’t like to be controlled. I don’t like to be controlled. Good job, Gemini, getting the profile picture. I don’t like to be controlled. I want to do what I want to do. I think that when you neuter it, it lowers the watch value of it. You know what I’m saying? Hey, are you sure you’re not from NYC? I’m from Detroit, baby. The great vocabulary while throwing in, so it should be a masterclass. Yeah, y’all gonna have to get into the Patreon.

I deep dive into all of that. Now he’s out to make even more and do it as a free agent. While other podcast royalty have signed mega deals with streaming networks, like Alex Cooper’s $125 million partnership with SiriusXM and Joe Rogan’s 250… Somebody said, K Cooper says, so is this a good deal? It’s a phenomenal deal. See, this is what I’m saying. When we breaking this down, only thing I’m breaking to y’all down is the intricacies of the pros and the cons of what you do want versus what you don’t want. There are no bad deals.

Let’s be clear. Look, if you ever get to the point to where you can make over a million dollars and anything above that is all a good deal. I don’t care if you sign a deal for a hundred million or whatever. If you go to Spotify, you get an exclusive deal or whatever. There are no bad deals. You know what I’m saying? The question that you have to ask yourself, whether you stay independent or you go with more of a corporate thing, there is no bad deals, K Cooper. What I’m saying is you just have to determine how you want to work, what you want your requirements to be.

If you want to be able to say what you want to say, or if you want to have to be able to be more mindful of your sponsors, all of that. There are no deals. Whether the diary of a CEO podcast guy decided that he wanted to go with an exclusive deal or if he decided that he wanted to just stay independent so that he could be platform agnostic, meaning that he can do whatever it is he want to do on all of these platforms, then that’s fine. Rod says definitely such a thing is a bad deal.

No, it’s not, bro. Listen, listen. I know that we get caught up in the semantics of what this deal is and what that is. If you want to talk about contract terms, that’s a completely different conversation. I’m saying whether you stay independent or whether you go corporate. The real conversation is… Let me put it to you like this, Rod. Let me put it to you like this. We get so caught up in the fact that we not blessed. What I’m saying is I just did a review video of a police officer that got killed trying to arrest a suspect in Chicago in the deep of the night.

She’s 36 years old and she got a kid at home and she probably makes $60,000 to $70,000 a year as a four-year veteran on the Chicago Police Department that’s understaffed. I get paid to talk for a living. No such thing as a bad deal when you get paid to talk for a living and you can become a millionaire as a result of it. That’s what I’m saying. When you can get paid to talk for a living while some firefighter, which we are appreciative of because they keep us safe, is out here losing sleep and probably losing his marriage because he’s in a situation.

We can point to the semantics. We can go into the different deals and whether it’s a 360 and how they pay it back, having to do requirements, all of this stuff. Listen, bro. I get to talk shit on the internet from the comfort of whatever it is, whether I want to go to the studio or whether I want to go to the crib. And you can become a millionaire off this shit. That ain’t no bad. Ain’t no such thing as a bad deal. Whether I stay independent or I wanted to go and sell out and go corporate.

Ain’t no bad deal. What you talking about? Whenever I feel like crashing out, whenever I say, you know what? Oh, I’m frustrated at this. Man, I walk out of the room and I look at and I look at all of the little people, you know, all of the little stick figures from up here. And I say, you know, man, life is good as hell. Life is good. Life is incredible. Space is our radio super chat. So in the grand scheme of things, bro, we get paid to talk on the internet.

I’m very blessed, very, very, very blessed. And I don’t compare myself against other people when it comes to looking at my blessings. God looked out for me. He had my black in my back. The only thing that I have to do is continue to run it up and make the most out of it, bro. So I don’t think that I don’t think that there’s a wrong way or a right way for him to slice this. At all. You know what I’m saying? Whether he stayed independent or he signed that $100 million deal, I think that he’s winning either way, personally.

The million dollar deal with Spotify Bartlett is building on his own. It’s not for lack of interest. Last October Bartlett flew from London to New York City to meet with several of the world’s biggest media networks to discuss potential partnerships. Bartlett won’t say who or how much, but Forbes estimates that $100 million contracts were in play. Why turn down frothy deals? For Bartlett, the choice is simple. He believes he can do it better solo. He says, Rod says, maybe there’s a bad, maybe there’s no bad deals. Maybe the right word is unfair deal.

Correct. Now I would agree with you on that one. Because if the value that I add is disproportionate to the revenue that you’re paying me, then that’s when we have to start talking about whether or not the deal is an unfair deal or it’s a fair deal. Um, I think that, you know, the diary of a CEO is probably savvy enough to be able to do the calculations. He’s probably got people in his corner to help him put that together. I agree with that. As quote, we looked at what they did in terms of testing, experimentation, innovation, and I felt like I was looking at the past.

When I see what happens here, I’m looking at the future. Thank you for caring. The future was far from certain back in 2017 when Bartlett launched the podcast. Unknown in the social media sphere, and lacking a significant following, Bartlett leaned on data analytics and constant experimentation to grow. Soon, he was AB testing every aspect of the podcast. Keywords, captions, punctuation, even whether to smile in the preview photo. Looking serious usually worked best. But it was 2020 before he really began investing in the show. Bartlett says it was a 2023 episode with former Google exec Mo Gaudat.

It was a game changer for the podcast. Bartlett says, quote, Apple said it was the most shared podcast episode of 2023 in this part of the world. He adds, quote, that episode taught me that the most important thing in podcasting isn’t actually the amount of followers someone has or how famous they are. It’s ultimately about the value that it gives because people will share it. Yeah, for full coverage and I agree. And I actually got the article up right here. So yeah, I don’t I don’t have any problem with the fact that he turned it down.

I think that he understands his brand. He understands the impact that his brand will have. I think that he understands where his brand is going. And as long as he continues to do exactly what he’s doing to me, he’ll be fine. So I don’t have any problem with that. Turning down $100 million sound like a crazy number and it is a crazy number, but compared to what? You know what I’m saying? If you’re generating, for example, $25, $30 million a year in revenue just from what it is that you’re doing independently, are you really missing out on anything? The number seems big and so it could be guaranteed money.

That’s the thing. Do you want the guaranteed money or do you want to bet on yourself? Do you want the guaranteed money or do you want to bet on yourself? Because they got to recoup that. It’s just like a it’s just like a rap deal. It’s just like a singing deal. They got to recoup that. They paying you this money. They expect for you to go out and deliver every single day. They expect them for you to make that money. They expect them for you to do the drops. They expect them for you to do the sponsorships, all of that stuff.

They got to recoup that. [tr:trw].

See more of The Millionaire Morning Show w/ Anton Daniels on their Public Channel and the MPN The Millionaire Morning Show w/ Anton Daniels channel.