Former ‘Diary of a CEO’ Trailer Whiz: Secret To Great Podcast Promos Is Emotion.

After helping produce more than 450 trailers that generated an estimated 1.5 billion YouTube views for the “Diary of a CEO” podcast, which is said to be on the cusp of becoming the most consumed podcast in the world, former Director of Trailers Anthony Smith says the biggest lesson he hopes other podcasters take away isn’t how to copy the show’s cinematic trailers — it’s why they worked in the first place.

Speaking on the “Building the Brand” podcast following his departure from “Diary of a CEO,” Smith argues too many creators focus on reproducing the show’s dramatic editing, music and sound design instead of understanding the mindset behind every creative decision.

“It’s not the style that needs to be done. It’s the mindsets behind it,” Smith says. “What you can take from the ‘DOAC’ trailers are certain mindsets and certain techniques that you can evolve into anything.”

His advice boils down to three principles for other podcast promotions. It includes understanding what a show is trying to make people feel, building trailers around a brand rather than someone else’s blueprint, and thinking more like a documentary filmmaker than a podcast editor.

Smith says one of the most common mistakes he sees is podcasters trying to recreate the “Diary of a CEO” formula regardless of what their own show is about.

“I always find it really crazy because people are always quite shocked when I tell them don’t, don’t do a ‘DOAC’ trailer,” he says. “A ‘DOAC’ trailer is great for a show like ‘DOAC.’ It’s not going to work for every other show, and it shouldn’t work for every other show.”

He recalled reviewing a trailer for a gardening podcast that borrowed the show’s dramatic sound design.

“You don’t need the boom sound effects. You don’t need a boom for this,” Smith says, arguing that too many creators imitate production techniques without understanding why they were used in the first place. Instead, Smith says producers should begin by asking what their own podcast stands for and what emotions they want potential viewers and listeners to experience before they ever press play.

When he joined “Diary of a CEO,” he said he wasn’t trying to invent a signature editing style. He began by asking how the show made people feel.

“I just was asking myself questions of how ‘DOAC’ was making me feel, how it was making other people feel, the topics they were talking about,” Smith recalls. He concluded the show was “a place for people to be completely open, to have uncomfortable conversations” where audiences could both be entertained and learn something valuable. Those answers dictated every creative decision that followed.

“If I want people to feel the weight of this seriousness, everything I do in the trailer has to reflect that,” he says. Smith believes that’s where many podcasters go wrong. Rather than building from their own identity, they begin with someone else’s successful format.

“They know they want to create a podcast about flowers because they’re so passionate about flowers,” he says. “But then they neglect all those first principles — and they go, ‘Well, this podcast has 18 million subscribers. They’re obviously doing something right. Let’s do this. Copy that.’” He argues that approach may copy the appearance of success, but it rarely captures the underlying reasons audiences connect with a show.

That philosophy also shaped how Smith approached editing itself. Despite helping redefine podcast trailers, he admits he wasn’t even a regular podcast listener when he joined “Diary of a CEO.” Instead, his background was in film.

“I loved documentaries,” Smith said. Watching one of his first recordings, he realized the show’s long-form conversations shared the same objective as documentary filmmaking. “The end goal for a documentary is the exact same end goal with a podcast,” he says. “That is uncovering topics that people may or may not know that they’re interested in.” Sitting behind the camera during his first recordings, he realized, “This is no different to a documentary.”

That perspective led him to stop thinking of trailers as highlight reels and instead as condensed stories designed to create emotion and curiosity. Looking back at his earliest work, Smith says he eventually realized it was little more than “a clip and another clip and another clip” until he developed what he calls “bridges” to connect moments into a narrative that flowed.

Even seemingly minor production choices, he remembers, were driven by psychology rather than aesthetics. He points to one metallic riser sound effect that became closely associated with “Diary of a CEO.” He says it wasn’t chosen because it sounded dramatic, but because it was designed to make viewers feel uncomfortable. “We used it so intentionally,” Smith says. Eventually, the team abandoned the sound because other creators began using it indiscriminately and outside its intended context.

Looking ahead, Smith thinks podcasting’s future won't be determined by who creates the next “Diary of a CEO” clone. It will depend on whether creators are willing to experiment instead of chasing proven formulas.

“The future entirely depends on the type of people that we have in this industry,” he says. “We need people in the industry who have the appetite of risk — let’s try something different, because otherwise the future will start plateauing.” If creators simply continue copying successful formats, he warns, “You’re just going to end up with the flat line.”