Build Beautiful

The Room Went From One Table to Global — Grace Miller on Four Years at The Diary of a CEO

Linda Habak Season 3 Episode 2

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0:00 | 46:04

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Every beautiful thing you've ever loved was iterated into existence. This week on Build Beautiful, we're joined by Grace Miller, Head of Failure & Experimentation at FlightStory, Steven Bartlett's media company behind The Diary of a CEO. She joined the team in January 2022, when it was just a handful of people around one table, and over four years helped grow it into a global operation followed by millions.

In This Episode, We Explore:

* What "Head of Failure & Experimentation" actually means

* The research behind failing well and psychological safety

* Why data sometimes overrides brand guidelines

* What it takes for a podcast to get backed by a major media company

* The mindset shift that came with leaving the Gold Coast for London

* Real lessons on ambition, sacrifice and self-doubt


Why This Conversation Matters

We rarely see the failed experiments behind a finished, polished brand. Grace's role exists to formalise something most industries avoid saying out loud: excellence is iterated into existence, and failing well is a craft worth taking seriously.


About Grace

Grace Miller is the girl who's paid to fail. She's Head of Failure & Experimentation at FlightStory, Steven Bartlett's media company behind The Diary of a CEO — a department she founded on a simple, uncomfortable idea: the fastest way to grow is to fail more often. Originally from the Gold Coast, Australia, she moved to London in 2022 as part of the founding team that grew Diary of a CEO to over 18 million subscribers in four years, alongside shows including We Need To Talk with Paul C. Brunson, Begin Again with Davina McCall, and Hot Smart Rich with Maggie Sellers Reum. She now leads innovation and testing across the entire FlightStory ecosystem.


With a background in marketing and social media in aviation, Grace moved into media and turned experimentation into a discipline — running more experiments, letting go of weak ideas quickly, and treating every failure as information. She's now one of the most distinctive voices on experimentation, failure, marketing and growth in the creator and podcasting world, with a LinkedIn community of over 27,000 people, and has spoken and advised organisations including YouTube, Red Bull, 1 Billion Followers Summit, SEMrush, and leading healthcare organisations.


Grace has since founded two businesses: Grace Experiments, her mission to shift how people and companies think toward an experimentation mindset through speaking, advisory work and content; and Experiment Media, where that thinking becomes action — helping people and companies test, learn, and grow.


🎧 Listen to the full episode now.

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