We delete about 20 episodes of The Diary Of A CEO every year. It's the worst and maybe most important part of my job...
A guest flies in. My team has spent weeks preparing. The guest has cleared their entire day, given us hours of their time...
And then the conversation happens and it's just not good enough.
When this happens, I assume it was my fault. I miscalculated something in the research or didn't get what I wanted from the guest.
Those conversations are some of the hardest we have.
You wasted the guest's time, my team's work, money and sometimes a relationship... As the host AND the leader of the team AND the person who approves every guest, I realise I am squarely responsible.
BUT. Last week a data scientist (who we were interviewing for a role) emailed my team. They'd been running numbers on our show vs other podcasts of our size and found a STRANGE finding...
Most shows they studied have wild variance. A famous guest spikes the numbers. An unknown guest craters them. The audience is cherry-picking episodes based on who's in the chair.
They said our data looked different - the episodes cluster tightly together. The audience shows up consistently almost regardless of the guest...
We've spent five years deleting bad episodes and talking internally about "Invisible Trust" - that when someone sees a guest they've never heard of and clicks anyway because it says Diary Of A CEO, they're trusting us with their time...
The promise we've made internally is that we will fight really really really hard to protect this (ask our guest booking team - honestly one of the hardest jobs in the company).
We said this for years with absolutely no way to measure it....so seeing it in the data was one of the most validating moments we've had.
I believe this is a powerful lesson for all brands...
Invisible trust quietly compounds when an audience learns you won't waste their time. You can't see it building. But you will see it in the data after years of choosing the painful option...
The narrative working against it are CONSTANT and VERY TEMPTING:
"Book this guest because they're famous"
"Book this guest for the optics."
"Land them and we'll get access to a bigger name later."
"We've got an empty slot - just get someone in."
Every one of those sentences - from voices outside are team - feels like it makes sense.. but notice none of them mention the listener who gives you two hours of their attention.
We have never buckled under that pressure and we never will.
The 20ยฑ episodes we throw away each year cost us time, money, relationships, even growth, but keeping them would cost us something worth more over the long term. Something invisible.
I think everyone reading this has their own version of the 20 deleted episodes.
The product you shipped because the quarter needed it. The hire you made because the seat was empty. The thing you put your name on that you knew, in your gut, wasn't great.
Protect your invisible trust at all costs!
A guest flies in. My team has spent weeks preparing. The guest has cleared their entire day, given us hours of their time...
And then the conversation happens and it's just not good enough.
When this happens, I assume it was my fault. I miscalculated something in the research or didn't get what I wanted from the guest.
Those conversations are some of the hardest we have.
You wasted the guest's time, my team's work, money and sometimes a relationship... As the host AND the leader of the team AND the person who approves every guest, I realise I am squarely responsible.
BUT. Last week a data scientist (who we were interviewing for a role) emailed my team. They'd been running numbers on our show vs other podcasts of our size and found a STRANGE finding...
Most shows they studied have wild variance. A famous guest spikes the numbers. An unknown guest craters them. The audience is cherry-picking episodes based on who's in the chair.
They said our data looked different - the episodes cluster tightly together. The audience shows up consistently almost regardless of the guest...
We've spent five years deleting bad episodes and talking internally about "Invisible Trust" - that when someone sees a guest they've never heard of and clicks anyway because it says Diary Of A CEO, they're trusting us with their time...
The promise we've made internally is that we will fight really really really hard to protect this (ask our guest booking team - honestly one of the hardest jobs in the company).
We said this for years with absolutely no way to measure it....so seeing it in the data was one of the most validating moments we've had.
I believe this is a powerful lesson for all brands...
Invisible trust quietly compounds when an audience learns you won't waste their time. You can't see it building. But you will see it in the data after years of choosing the painful option...
The narrative working against it are CONSTANT and VERY TEMPTING:
"Book this guest because they're famous"
"Book this guest for the optics."
"Land them and we'll get access to a bigger name later."
"We've got an empty slot - just get someone in."
Every one of those sentences - from voices outside are team - feels like it makes sense.. but notice none of them mention the listener who gives you two hours of their attention.
We have never buckled under that pressure and we never will.
The 20ยฑ episodes we throw away each year cost us time, money, relationships, even growth, but keeping them would cost us something worth more over the long term. Something invisible.
I think everyone reading this has their own version of the 20 deleted episodes.
The product you shipped because the quarter needed it. The hire you made because the seat was empty. The thing you put your name on that you knew, in your gut, wasn't great.
Protect your invisible trust at all costs!