The podcast Brain We Are has been on air since July 2020, has more than four hundred episodes behind it, and has an audience that will buy a book about dopamine from its authors, come to a summer camp, and pay for a six-month academy and corporate training. How many people follow the project is, in fact, the least interesting thing you can find out about it.
What brings a creator money is an audience willing to pay for their work. This is exactly the distinction now put into words by Dom Murray, who used to run talent at Steven Bartlett's show The Diary of a CEO. He wrote on LinkedIn that “your follower count is the least interesting thing about you”, adding that brands, event organisers and agencies are starting to realise this, while most creators are not yet.
Inside the second largest podcast on YouTube
When he joined the show, he says, it had around four thousand YouTube subscribers. When he left, it had passed sixteen million. According to The Irish Times, The Diary of a CEO, with 19.5 million subscribers, is now the second largest podcast on YouTube, and its monthly listens and views regularly exceed one hundred million.
In 2024, according to Murray, Bartlett's live show The Business & Life Speaking Tour sold out its dates in Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, and then in Asia. Everyone reportedly assumed the tour sold out because of a large following. “Everyone assumed the tour sold out because of a big follower number…It didn't,” writes Murray. He also says he has seen creators with even larger audiences struggle to fill a room of five hundred people.
The difference, in his view, was never reach. “The difference was never reach. It was trust, built slowly, one conversation at a time, long before we asked the audience to buy a ticket,” he wrote. The creators who win the best deals, book contracts and stages “usually aren't the loudest. They are the clearest.”
What decides who gets the deal, according to Murray
Murray stresses a point of view that can be put in one sentence. “If a booker can't explain why you're on the stage, you won't be,” he writes. Besides content, he wants to see proof beyond the posts, meaning a lived story and verifiable results. Content, he says, only opens the door; credibility is what takes you inside.
He puts consistency above viral reach. “One viral post gets you noticed. Two years of showing up gets you paid!” he adds. And last comes an audience that actually acts. “10,000 people who'd buy a ticket are worth more than a million who scroll past.”
For a brand hiring creators, there is a concrete takeaway. The number on a profile shows how many people pass by the content. It says nothing about how many of them will reach for a ticket, a book or a product. Brain We Are is an example of this on the Czech market, because its value is determined by the number of people who will pay for its work.
Murray ends his post with a message for anyone building a personal brand. “Stop optimising for the number. Optimise for the reason someone would pay to be in a room with you.”
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