The headline on Steven Bartlett's profile reads "Founder: Steven.com The Creator Economy Company, home to FlightStory & FlightCast," and with about 3.2 million followers, the account is one of the biggest on LinkedIn.
At MagicPost, we analyzed 580 of Bartlett's LinkedIn posts from the last two years: what they say, when they go out, who they are for, and what they earn.
The most liked post is a marriage proposal, yet among the biggest posts, the ones people forward are job ads. And Bartlett's writing mechanics sit almost exactly on the platform average, so the reach comes from somewhere else.
Steven Bartlett's story, in first-person posts
Bartlett tells the biography in scenes, and the same few keep coming back.
The family. "My nigerian mum raised 4 of us without being able to read or write herself, having left school when she was a child in Nigeria," reads a 2026 post. Another line places Bartlett among the "kids like me from Botswana / Plymouth in the UK."
The dropout. "By 18 I was a university dropout with a start-up." The cost sits in another post: "My mum told me that if I dropped out of university to start a business she wouldn't talk to me again... she wasn't joking." The two "didn't speak properly for 2 years."
The call centre Christmas. "Several years ago," Bartlett wrote in December 2025, the job was "working in a call centre in Manchester on Christmas Day for a company called LateRooms.com." Dinner was "powdered oats into lukewarm water." The lesson: "Life happens in seasons."
The podcast nobody heard. "in 2017, I started a podcast in my bedroom that nobody listened to, that decision became the most consequential I've ever made." The Diary Of A CEO later passed 13 million YouTube subscribers, by Bartlett's count, and grew into "a media company called FLIGHTSTORY."
The Den, then the Tank. "5 years ago today, at 27 years old the BBC called me and asked: 'Do you want to become a Dragon on Dragon's Den'," a 2025 post recalls. In July 2026: "SOME NEWS 🚨 this year I'm joining Shark Tank!!!"
The posts also log a Best International Podcast award, a place on TIME's "TIME100 top influential digital voices" list, and an ambassador role with Prince William's Homewards initiative.
Bartlett's origin stories run in rotation, rewritten each time.
The mum-and-dropout story ran in January 2026 (21,536 likes) and again, rebuilt from scratch, in November 2026 (11,509 likes), with a new closing test: "it's worth asking whether they're describing your situation or their own."
The scene of pausing the TV as a child to judge the Dragons appears in 2025 and again in 2026. "Quitting is a skill" ran twice in 2024, a month apart. And one October 2026 thank-you post went out three times in three days, at roughly 20,000 likes each.
What does Steven Bartlett post about?
Entrepreneurship is the biggest topic (95 tagged posts), ahead of coaching (83), psychology (72) and leadership (68). Against an overall median of 4,353 likes:
Coaching over-performs hardest (7,720): life advice from a founder travels furthest.
Wellness (6,916) and content marketing (6,323) also beat the median, on far fewer posts.
Psychology (3,340) and healthcare (2,513) trail, although psychology is the most characteristic theme.
By register, the largest bucket is sharing a podcast clip or video (117 posts), ahead of punchy advice (72) and explanation (57). Only 17 posts sell through value. The feed works as the show's distribution channel far more than as a sales page.
Who Steven Bartlett writes for
The reader shows up in Bartlett's own lines: the person "reading this right now who know deep inside them they could do their best work," writing "especially for 1st generation immigrant families," or "To everyone facing their own Dragon's Den moment."
That is the ambitious outsider, short on credentials and long on drive. The job posts address the same reader directly: "we do not care about university degrees."
Steven Bartlett's best posts of 2026
The three biggest posts of 2026 so far, reproduced from our data (click through to the originals, or browse 2M+ posts like these in MagicPost):
70,579 likes. A three-word hook ("She said yes"), then the nerves, the plan, and a self-mocking reveal from "behind an air conditioning unit." It drew 4,010 comments but only 96 reposts: people congratulate a proposal, they do not forward it.
32,050 likes. An all-caps hook, a job ad written as a manifesto, and an explicit ask to tag "the person you think deserves / wants a bigger opportunity." Result: 1,428 reposts, about 15 times the proposal's.
21,536 likes. The signature origin story, opened on its most painful sentence and closed on a rule: "ask people who've been where you're going, not people who are where you're from."
The November 2025 hiring post ran the same play: 32,352 likes and 1,718 reposts, the most of any post quoted here. The love posts collect the likes; the job posts collect the shares.
Is Steven Bartlett still growing on LinkedIn?
Bartlett's median post went from 5,217 likes in 2024 to 4,416 in 2025 and 3,599 in 2026, while volume rose (220 posts, then 300). Most large creators in our data have drawn the same curve since 2024: a bigger audience, each post spread thinner.
Even compressed, the numbers still top our 2026 rankings. Where Bartlett places:
#1: UK, psychology, wellness, content marketing, thought leadership, healthcare, entrepreneurship
#3: founders and leadership
#4: AI
#8: worldwide
These are engagement figures; follower history is outside our data.
Where do these charts come from? Everything on this page runs on MagicPost's LinkedIn analytics, and it works on your profile too: your best posts, your audience, your benchmark, even a side-by-side with creators like Steven Bartlett.
How Steven Bartlett writes
Metric (per post) | Steven Bartlett | Average creator* |
Words | 237 | 184 |
Words in the hook | 13 | 11 |
Words per paragraph | 15 | 13 |
Words per sentence | 10 | 10 |
Emojis | 1 | 2 |
Exclamation marks | 1 | 1 |
Posts with hashtags | 0% | 0% |
Hooks built on numbers | 17% | 22% |
*Median across the 3,471 creators we analyzed.
Bartlett's sentences are exactly average at ten words; the paragraphs run slightly longer, and number-led hooks are rarer than most. Nothing in the body copy stands out.
Two things do. The posts run about 29% longer (237 words against 184), the room a story needs. And the hook is longer than average (13 words against 11), because the news comes first: "SOME NEWS 🚨," "I'M HIRING... ANYONE...".
More than a third of the hooks carry a question (36%), and our system sums up Bartlett's style in one word: narrative.
The "AI tells" in Steven Bartlett's style (read this the right way)
Bartlett once opened a post with "Here's my non-AI-slop advice for every creator," which makes the fingerprint below worth a close look:
The most frequent device is the two-beat contrast formula (deny one reading, assert another), in 13% of the posts we profiled. It carries the reframe behind the Den anniversary post: "Imposter syndrome isn't about incapability. It's about inexperience."
Hidden-cause reveals and a closing question follow (10% each), and a how-to reveal opener shows up in a single post of the 30.
AI writes like Bartlett: generic models trained on creators of that generation, then stack every move in every post. Bartlett's posts use one at a time, and no device reaches even one post in seven.
The filler is missing too: none of the 30 sampled posts opens a line with "Moreover" or closes on a reflex sign-off.
When a postscript appears, it is a joke: "who would win in a fight, a shark 🦈 or a dragon 🐉 ???". (More: how to spot AI writing on LinkedIn.)
When does Steven Bartlett post on LinkedIn?
Bartlett publishes about 5.6 times a week, favorite slot Thursday 8 AM London time, with half the posts in the morning and only 8% on weekends. That front-loaded workday rhythm matches what our UK timing data found about the British morning.
The pace sits inside the range our posting-frequency study measured, and Bartlett's posts draw a median of 461 comments. To reply while a thread is still young, an engagement feed surfaces each new post the day it goes out.
What to steal from Steven Bartlett
Write the job ad people forward. Two hiring posts, 1,428 and 1,718 reposts, each asking readers to "tag someone."
Re-tell your origin story with a new lesson. The mum-and-dropout story ran twice in 2026, rebuilt around a new ending.
Feed the timeline from long-form work. Clips and videos lead the registers (117 posts): the show supplies, LinkedIn distributes.
Put the news in the hook. The 13-word hooks announce ("SOME NEWS 🚨"), then the body settles into ten-word sentences.
Write about life, not just business. Coaching posts: 7,720 median likes against 4,353 overall. The top 2026 post: a proposal.
Study Bartlett, then study yourself. With MagicPost you can dig into Steven Bartlett's numbers the way we just did, analyze your own LinkedIn analytics with the same depth, and write in the spirit of that style, in your own voice. The data on this page is the product.
The posts behind this profile
Every quote above comes from one of Steven Bartlett's own public LinkedIn posts. The ones that carry the story:
The biggest and most shared posts:
Where this data comes from
Everything in this article is MagicPost's own research. MagicPost analyzed 580 Steven Bartlett posts from the last two years (728 across 2024 to 2026 for the yearly medians): timing, engagement, topics, writing metrics, and the AI-pattern profile from a 30-post style sample.
Every biographical claim is quoted from one of Bartlett's own public LinkedIn posts, listed above. Steven Bartlett is not affiliated with MagicPost; the Bartlett style is one of those we track most closely.
FAQ
Who is Steven Bartlett?
Steven Bartlett is the founder of Steven.com, "The Creator Economy Company, home to FlightStory & FlightCast" in the LinkedIn headline, and the host of the podcast The Diary Of A CEO. A Dragon on BBC's Dragons' Den, Bartlett has about 3.2 million LinkedIn followers.
How does Steven Bartlett make money?
Steven Bartlett makes money through a media business, according to Bartlett's own posts: The Diary Of A CEO sits inside FLIGHTSTORY, a company described in 2025 as nearly 100 full-time people.
One podcast deal meant "at least 300% more ads," and Bartlett turned it down, preferring "Equity partnerships, long-term integrations and creating your own products."
How often does Steven Bartlett post on LinkedIn?
Steven Bartlett posts about 5.6 times a week in our data, most often on Thursday at 8 AM London time, with half the posts in the morning and 8% on weekends.
Does Steven Bartlett write with AI?
Steven Bartlett's style is built on first-hand family and career scenes.
AI models learned from creators like Bartlett, which is why 13% of the posts carry the contrast formula people now mistake for an AI tell. The posts use one device at a time and skip the filler.
Is Steven Bartlett still growing on LinkedIn?
Steven Bartlett's median likes per post eased from 5,217 (2024) to 4,416 (2025) to 3,599 (2026), the reach-compression shape common to large creators. Bartlett still ranks #1 in seven of our 2026 rankings, including the UK.
Can I write like Steven Bartlett?
You can learn the mechanics: MagicPost learns a creator's writing style (length, rhythm, hooks, signature moves) and helps you write in that spirit, in your own voice.
