Star podcaster Steven Bartlett better watch his back.
“I tell Steven all the time, I’m coming for you, because I think the most valuable consumer in the world is a female consumer,” Maggie Sellers Reum, Bartlett’s podcast protégé and the host of “Hot Smart Rich,” told Business Insider. “So be ready.”
Bartlett is looking to turn his “Diary of a CEO” podcast into a multifaceted media empire. One piece: signing and nurturing other talent. His first big test case is Sellers Reum, who he recently invested seven figures in through his media company, FlightStory.
Sellers Reum described how Bartlett is applying his playbook to “Hot Smart Rich” — and why she thinks her show, while it’s a fraction of the size of Bartlett’s today, can match him. She’s even willing to put a timeframe on it, saying she believes that milestone is 12 to 18 months away.
That may sound ambitious. His show is the No. 1 business podcast on Spotify in the US, and has 17 million subscribers on YouTube. She’s sitting at No. 13 in business on Spotify, with about 33,000 YouTube subscribers.
Sellers Reum’s argument is that she has a large potential audience among women, who control the majority of consumer spending and are key decision-makers at home and at work.
Bartlett’s bet on Sellers Reum is part of a trend of superstar creators — including Alex Cooper and Dude Perfect — bringing on other talent to form a network. Results have been mixed overall. Cooper’s Unwell Network has had growing pains, notably splitting with Alix Earle last year. Theorist, meanwhile, outlasted its founders, who sold to a startup, and Mythical Entertainment has spawned multiple shows that live under its umbrella.
Jocelyn Florence, a consultant on creators for the management company Soft Shock, said operational support is key to this model working because the creator-founder is busy making their own content. It’s also important for the creator to have a well-defined brand that extends to the people they bring into their network.
“It’s easier to sell a brand on a more unified vision,” she said.
FlightStory has five shows featuring creators, in addition to “DOAC,” including Davina McCall, who speaks to the midlife experience, and relationships podcaster Paul Brunson. Its “Hot Smart Rich” deal is the only one structured as an equity investment, with Sellers Reum being the majority owner.
Mat Hayward/Getty Images for iHeartPodcasts
Applying the Bartlett playbook
Bartlett’s company has been applying its operational blueprint to grow Sellers Reum’s show, honing guest selection and amplifying the podcast through social media clips. FlightStory helped expand her guest list beyond her immediate network to include broader cultural figures such as entrepreneur Codie Sanchez and tech educator CatGPT.
There are some key differences between how “DOAC” and “Hot Smart Rich” operate, though.
One is the trailers. Instead of emphasizing the “hero’s journey” as Bartlett does with “DOAC,” “Hot Smart Rich” trailers focus on why the audience should care about the guest and what they’ll learn from the episode.
Sellers Reum also adapted Bartlett’s intensive pre-show research process for her female audience, but instead of calling the resulting 18-page document a “research brief,” she calls it a “gossip thread.”
“We’re trying to reclaim what it means to gossip for women,” she said. “Like, let’s gossip about things that make us hotter, smarter, and richer, not about other people. And so we call it a gossip thread. He calls it a research brief. For Maggie and ‘Hot Smart Rich,’ it’s a gossip thread.”
She’s also retained her interview style. Sellers Reum said while Bartlett’s are “expert-driven,” she positions herself as more conversational. She conducts her interviews from a comfy chair, legs folded, and always hits on the same five topics of money, power, relationships, business, and femininity.
“This is just more my gut; I feel that female voices in media are preferred by the female listener to be conversational,” she said. “If you look at ‘Giggly Squad,’ Amy Poehler, ‘Call Her Daddy,’ it’s actually like the viewer or the listener wants to hear the host’s opinion a lot more than what I’ve seen in male-dominated podcasts.”
When FlightStory proposed she do a Q&A-style show telling people how to solve their business problems, Sellers Reum pushed back.
“I said, ‘I can’t do that,’ because I’m not better than anyone that listens to me. I was investing $2,500 checks,” she said. “I wasn’t a billion-dollar founder.”
In the near term, she envisions launching a behind-the-scenes YouTube show. Long term, the plan is to expand “Hot Smart Rich” beyond the podcast and its WhatsApp community of fans whom Sellers Reum calls “angels,” potentially to books, TV shows, or products.
For now, the priority is growing the long-form podcast. She’d love to have guests like Alix Earle (who’s done a “phenomenal job” taking equity ownership in companies) or Reese Witherspoon (whose book club was “very underestimated”).
“There’s just such a big opportunity, but we have to earn the right to grow,” she said.
