Steven Bartlett has built one of the world’s biggest podcasts on the idea that the right people, obsessively managed, make the machine. Now four of those people have walked out the door. The star host of “The Diary of a CEO” has lost four core staffers in five months, Business Insider reported.
The exits are not junior. One is Jack Sylvester, who calls himself a co-founder of the show and built its YouTube presence to more than 18 million subscribers. Also gone: executive producer Jem Erith, trailers director Anthony Smith, and Grace Miller, whose job title was “head of failure and experimentation.”
Former colleagues did not undersell them. One described Sylvester and Erith as the “inner circle” behind the “heavy lifting” of the podcast. “They’re the reason it gets delivered twice a week,” another said of the four.
A friendly framing, and a bigger picture
Everyone is being nice about it. Bartlett’s company, FlightStory, said the departures were planned over almost a year and that the staff left on good terms. All four posted warm goodbyes. “I owe Steve more than I could ever put into words,” Sylvester wrote, while admitting he did not know what was next.
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Bartlett returned the compliment, saying nobody had a bigger impact on the show. Sylvester told Business Insider he was looking for his next move after the podcast left its early growth phase. Turnover is normal at fast-growing startups, and Bartlett’s previous company, Social Chain, spun off plenty of founders.
The empire is going west
The timing is the story. The nine-year-old show is pushing hard into the US just as its longtime team thins out. Bartlett has moved to Los Angeles and opened a studio there. He is closing on Joe Rogan in YouTube subscribers, and regularly beats him on views.
Around the podcast, he is building a media company. FlightStory has about 150 staff and took in roughly $47m last year, and recently raised an eight-figure round. It now runs a speakers arm and a distribution unit for other creators. It is also exploring a paid membership to squeeze more from its superfans.
Bartlett is also a self-styled operating guru. He is known for obsessing over details, down to the carbon-monoxide level in the studio. He also screens hires with a “Culture Test” that scores how they would handle workplace scenarios. Losing four people who aced that test, all at once, is a curious look for a leadership brand.
The part the goodbye posts skip
There is a harder edge to the DOAC story, too. A BBC World Service investigation found a problem, according to reporting on the probe. Many of the show’s health episodes carried claims that ran against the scientific evidence.
It examined 23 health-related episodes and flagged an average of 14 harmful claims across most of them.
Bartlett has since added fact-check labels to some YouTube episodes where guests make contentious claims. The tension is the interesting bit. He has moved from interviewing chief executives to platforming wellness and self-help voices, the format that drives the biggest numbers and the loudest criticism.
None of that is slowing the growth. Like the wider creator economy, DOAC is a business built on one person’s name, scaling faster than the team around it.
The departures raise a real question. Can a show defined by its inner circle keep its edge once that circle is gone? Like so many media empires before it, DOAC now has to prove the brand outlasts the moment.
