Explore every episode of the podcast Well Said
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How to Communicate Like a National Champion: 6 Rules From UCLA’s Coach Cori Close | 27 Oct 2026 | 00:48:30 | |
Cori Close is the head coach of UCLA women's basketball. In her 15th season, she led the Bruins to their first NCAA national championship with a 37-1 record, and six of her players are now in the WNBA. She learned how to lead from legendary UCLA coach John Wooden, and she still runs her program on his reminder that a coach is shaping people's hearts before their jump shots. What makes Cori such a natural fit for Well Said: she leads almost entirely through language. From the words her team picks to define a season to knowing when to stay quiet and let her players talk, nearly everything she does in a locker room carries over to a boardroom, a press briefing, or a crisis call. In this episode: • Why her players pick seven key indicators they can control at the start of every season • How Amazon's working backwards press release lines up with the way she builds a team's identity • Why winning is a byproduct, and the John Vallely story that shaped her mission • Why she skipped the big Ted Lasso speech and let her players talk first • Truth tellers, balcony people, and building psychological safety on a staff • "Talent is the floor and character is the ceiling": recruiting, the transfer portal, and a reload year • Her go-to team-building exercise: hero, highlight, hardship, hope Make sure you subscribe to Well Said everywhere you get your podcasts, so you never miss another episode. Thanks for listening! CHAPTER TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Intro 01:19 Welcome Coach Cori Close 02:13 Mindset work and seven "I am" statements 04:19 Amazon's working backwards press release 07:01 Why winning is a byproduct 10:49 The John Vallely story and Coach Wooden 14:57 Knowing when to be quiet 19:51 Truth tellers and balcony people 22:48 Clarity is kind: recruiting for character 25:24 Failing forward in the transfer portal era 28:18 Why women need to celebrate each other 39:05 Her dad on the greatest honor in life 40:47 Rapid fire 46:23 Hero, highlight, hardship, hope | |||
| How to Get an A on Your Next Crisis Statement | 20 Oct 2026 | 00:07:22 | |
Every brand crisis ends with a statement, and the internet grades it within hours. Pia and Kelly pulled real statements companies put out over the last few months and ranked them on a tier list, from S for supreme all the way down to F. Pia and Kelly are the co-founders of Cuore and spent years running communications at Amazon. Dollywood earned the only S with five words that sounded exactly like Dolly Parton. Target, Neutrogena, and FIFA landed a lot lower, and for each one they get into what the brand should have written instead, or whether it should have said anything at all. In this episode: • Why Dollywood’s “the show must go on” earned the only S on the list • Target’s costume apology, and why sorry stops working when the same mistake comes back every year • Neutrogena’s statement after Hayden Panettiere’s death, and why it may have been a no-win from the start • When saying nothing is the more respectful choice • What Neutrogena could have said about young people growing up in the spotlight • FIFA’s answer to the World Cup ticket backlash, and why Pia called it a big middle finger • The fan stories FIFA could have used to get real people into stadiums • Why a boring statement beats a bad one New episodes of Well Said every other Wednesday. Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Seen a statement you want us to grade? Drop it in the comments. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:01 Dollywood: “The show must go on” 01:42 Target’s costume apology 02:10 Neutrogena and Hayden Panettiere 03:23 What Neutrogena could have said 04:03 When saying nothing is the respectful choice 04:43 FIFA and World Cup ticket prices 05:10 “It’s like a big middle finger” 06:07 The fan stories FIFA missed 06:37 Why a boring statement would have worked 07:04 Send us a statement to grade | |||
| Award-Winning Journalist Reveals How To Get Anyone To Open Up | Erick Galindo | 13 Oct 2026 | 00:43:44 | |
At seven years old, Erick Galindo was translating for his parents at the bank, at the hospital, and in front of police and immigration officials. His Spanish wasn't great, so he had to take official language written for highly educated people and break it down into the simplest words he knew. He's been doing some version of that ever since. Erick has written for The New York Times, the LA Times and NPR, led L.A. Taco to a James Beard Award as its founding managing editor, and made Ídolo, a podcast that went to No. 1 in Mexico. Today he's the Community, Culture and Arts Editor at The LA Local, where reporters hold coffee hours in neighborhood shops and the newsroom's first question in a crisis is how to help the people living through it. Pia and Kelly ask him how he earns trust so fast. His answer starts with going first. He once got a guarded celebrity to open up about the time she lived in her car by telling her he'd lived in his car too. This episode is about trust, plain language, and showing up for people before you need something from them. It applies whether you're running a newsroom, a corporate comms team, or a thousand-person warehouse floor. In this episode: • What translating hospital bills and immigration paperwork as a kid taught him about plain language • The vulnerability move that gets guarded people talking • How his newsroom covered a toxic warehouse fire: moving beyond sensationalism by helping people first • Why local news is still the most trusted source, and what's lost as it disappears • Why "community" is the most overused word in comms right now • Getting laid off in a room full of people, and the one-on-one call every layoff deserves • What his dad told him at the kitchen table that became his superpower • His advice for young communicators in the age of AI: take a beat If you're an exec or communicator who wants people to actually trust what you say, this episode is for you. You can support Erick's work at The LA Local and find him on Instagram under his name, Erick Galindo. And make sure you subscribe to Well Said on all platforms to get new episodes every Wednesday. TIMESTAMPS 01:30 Welcome Erick Galindo 01:48 Translating for his parents as a kid 04:51 Living in two worlds at once 08:49 Dolly Parton and the coat of many colors 11:23 How a local newsroom covers a crisis 14:48 Know your people before the emergency 16:16 Why local news is the most trusted 19:23 What's lost when local news fades 22:27 Laid off in a room full of people 26:06 The one-on-one call every layoff deserves 29:34 Choosing convenience over being human 31:03 The beauty of a typo 32:15 What his dad told him at the kitchen table 39:03 Owning who you are 44:21 The most overused word in comms 45:14 Go first: the vulnerability move 46:08 The best communicator he knows 48:32 Advice for young communicators: take a beat 52:36 Where to find Erick | |||
| PR Pros Call Out the Brand Mistakes Everyone Fell For | Pia Arthur & Kelly Cheeseman | 06 Oct 2026 | 00:29:50 | |
Most mornings, Pia and Kelly catch up over coffee and trade hot takes on whatever brand moment is blowing up online. This episode puts that conversation on camera. Each brought scenarios the other hadn't seen, and they react cold: Disney opening its IP to TikTok creators, the wave of nostalgia menus, a golf collab ad that went sideways, the "sold out in 15 seconds" drop, and Liquid Death asking fans to donate their pee to cool AI data centers. Pia and Kelly are the co-founders of Cuore and spent years as communications executives at Amazon. Their verdicts keep landing on the same line: the moves that work trust the audience, and the ones that backfire try to manage it. Along the way they get into what they'd actually say to a CEO in the room, and what a better apology would have sounded like. In this episode: • Why Disney handing its IP to creators is a lesson in knowing who already loves you • Nostalgia marketing, and when a throwback turns into a cheap trick • What Kelly would do if she ran comms for a fast food comeback item • Target, Delia's, and why a collaboration doubles your exposure and your risk • The Callaway x Good Good ad, and why "this doesn't reflect our values" fell flat • Manufactured scarcity, bots, and resellers, and why it erodes trust • What to say when a CEO wants to make only 500 so they sell out fast • Liquid Death's "We Want Your Pee" campaign: gross, or genius? New episodes of Well Said every other Wednesday. Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:50 Disney opens its IP to TikTok creators 04:41 "Hell hath no fury like a Disney adult" 06:53 The lesson: know who already cares about you 09:43 Nostalgia marketing: genius or cheap trick? 13:28 Why Kelly would rather see something new 17:19 How to run comms on a throwback launch 19:17 Target, Delia's, and the power of a collab 20:49 When a brand collaboration goes sideways 24:29 Why "this doesn't reflect our values" fell flat 28:11 The "sold out" drop brands keep pulling 31:30 What to tell a CEO who wants to make only 500 35:32 Liquid Death's "We Want Your Pee" 40:08 Turning a stunt into real action 41:54 Send us the next one to dissect | |||
| How to Talk to People Who Disagree With You | Professor Dr. Melina Abdullah | 29 Sep 2026 | 00:45:48 | |
Dr. Melina Abdullah grew up in Oakland, where her mother's front porch doubled as a classroom for the neighborhood. She's been organizing ever since, and she teaches, writes a weekly column, hosts a radio show and has spent two decades studying how people actually lead. She sits down with Kelly Cheeseman and Pia Arthur on the difference between leaderless and leader-full, why she quotes Ella Baker's line that strong people don't need strong leaders, and what she calls womanist leadership, which she wrote her dissertation on. Then the conversation goes somewhere else. What AI can't do, why she thinks spirit, love and art are the things that make us human, why she stopped being quiet about the voice that guides her work, and what she learned from her mother about talking to your kids for three hours at a time. In this episode: • Group-centered leadership instead of leader-centered groups, and where the idea comes from • Alice Walker's purple and lavender line, and why one image does more than a paragraph • Why she asks what her intention is before she agrees to speak to a hostile room • The oppositional student who emailed her four years after graduating • What she does when the work gets heavy, including the dominoes in her bag • How a story travels now, and why independent media and social changed who gets covered • Bullhorn, microphone or keyboard, and which one she'd pick New episodes of Well Said. Watch on YouTube, listen wherever you get your podcasts. Chapter Timestamps 00:00 Intro 00:54 The front porch classroom in East Oakland 02:34 Gary, Indiana and who gets news coverage 05:09 Ella Baker and group-centered leadership 06:17 Womanist leadership 08:27 Running for vice president with Dr. Cornel West 10:05 What the campaign showed her about the two-party system 12:48 What Dolly Parton meant to her 16:18 What AI can't do 18:16 Why she stopped hiding the voice that guides her 23:34 Staying grounded on planes and in airports 27:04 Parenting by talking to your kids 31:29 Love at the center of the work 37:23 The three things everyone can give 40:08 Rapid fire and speaking to a hostile room 44:12 Bullhorn, microphone or keyboard | |||
| The Emmy-Winning Composer Who Says All Sound Is Music | Amanda Jones | 22 Sep 2026 | 00:44:42 | |
A speech and a film score are built the same way. You hook early, you earn the emotional moment before you spend it, you let the silent parts stay silent, and you get one crescendo. Composer Amanda Jones spends her career making those decisions in sound, and this conversation is about what writers, speakers and communicators can take from the way she does it. There's also the problem she solves before writing a single note: figuring out what a director hears in their head. She gets one creative call, sometimes with months of silence after it, so she's built a method for getting inside someone's imagination fast. Jones is an Emmy-winning composer and the first African American woman nominated in the Primetime Emmy score category. Her recent work includes Apple TV+'s Murderbot, National Geographic's Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time, and Tyler Perry's The Gospel of Christmas. She sits down with Pia and Kelly to break down how she reads a story, builds a sound from scratch, and knows when to get out of the way. In this episode: • The question she asks every director to find their "cultural focal point" • Why she chose a temperamental 1970s synthesizer to play a sentient robot • How she scored Hurricane Katrina survivor interviews without crowding them • The easiest emotion to write music for, and the one that's actually hardest What temp music does to a composer's work, and why it's a trap • The organizational system she learned working under Hans Zimmer and John Powell • Her advice for composers coming up, including why perceived proximity decides who gets hired Subscribe to Well Said for conversations with the people shaping how stories get told. Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube. Find Amanda at amandajonescomposer.com and on Instagram @amandajonescomposer. Episode Timestamps 1:09 Scoring a script before anything has been filmed 2:40 The questions she asks a director to find their taste 4:14 "All sound is music," and why she doesn't get writer's block 5:09 How much of a movie is actually score 6:30 Temp music and the placeholder trap 8:28 Murderbot: building a sound for a sentient robot 10:11 Why a temperamental 1970s synth plays the machine 15:14 The movie that made her fall in love with score 18:40 The easiest emotion to write, and the hardest 20:03 Hurricane Katrina and the discipline of restraint 33:22 The organization system she learned in Hans Zimmer's world 35:05 Rapid fire 41:29 Advice for composers coming up 44:10 Where to find Amanda | |||
| Why "The Best PR Is Invisible" Just Stopped Being True, with Pia and Kelly | 15 Sep 2026 | 00:19:29 | |
The first PR firm Kelly ever worked for had a mantra: the best PR is invisible. Then, Pia and Kelly built a decade at Amazon on it. In this episode, they say it out loud one more time and come to the conclusion: it isn't true anymore. Pia and Kelly are the co-founders of Cuore and spent years as communications executives at Amazon, the people writing the words nobody sees. Now chief comms officers are reporting directly to CEOs, executives are expected to be digitally native, and the frontline employee has become the face of the brand. They walk through what that shift actually costs the people living it, and what it means if you're deciding when to bring a communications partner into your own business. They also answer the questions listeners keep sending them, including the one nobody warned them about: what changes in you when you start putting yourself on camera. In this episode: • When to bring in a comms partner for a crisis, and why "early, early, early" isn't a cliché • Why pulling comms into a product launch too soon can waste everyone's time • The "good judgment police" role Kelly's Amazon teams played, and the cost of playing it too well • What the WSJ's reporting on comms leaders in the C-suite gets right about the last twenty years • Why the Kardashians are a masterclass in being everywhere all at once, and what brands should take from it • The line almost every guest on this show has repeated, in different words • What Pia learned about her own limiting beliefs from a year of filming New episodes of Well Said every other Wednesday. Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:28 Two months into filming, and what they've learned 01:57 The executives who say they want a podcast 03:30 "A human having a human experience" 04:04 What Pia learned about her own limiting beliefs 04:56 When are you actually ready for a comms partner 05:37 Storytelling matters as much as the business plan 06:14 Crisis comms: early, early, early 06:59 When comms gets pulled in too early 07:15 "Go write a release," three weeks out 08:10 The WSJ piece on comms leaders reporting to CEOs 09:41 Digitally native CEOs and selling through social 10:54 The relationship economy and the trust economy 11:58 The good judgment police 13:57 Out of the shadows 14:10 "The best PR is invisible," and where it still holds 15:38 The Kardashians, everywhere all at once 18:22 The frontline employee as the face of the brand 19:02 The Amazon driver who danced to the door | |||
| Clothing Allows You to Communicate Before You Say a Word | Ryan Wood, Apparel Designer | 08 Sep 2026 | 00:34:09 | |
Ryan Wood spent sixteen years deciding what hangs on the rack at Urban Outfitters and The North Face, and he'll tell you plainly that a lot of it ended up in a landfill. He walked into the Well Said studio wearing a beat-up trucker hat. Ryan is an apparel designer and merchant, most recently the founding head of men's product at Quince, and he's in the early stages of building athletic wear that doesn't look like everyone else's. Kelly and Pia get him into the mechanics of clothing as communication: what a hidden zipper and a cheeky line on a care label actually do for a customer three months after the purchase, why he takes inherited military jackets apart and stitches them into something wearable, and how vintage became his grown-up version of hunting for buried treasure. The hat turns out to be his father's, from his years on the Blue Angels design team. It's one of the few fond memories he has of a complicated relationship, and it's the first of three things he'd grab in a fire. In this episode: - Why clothing is the front line, and what it says before your mouth opens - The Boston Red Sox hat test for anyone who insists they don't care about fashion - What he does with the clothing people inherit and can't wear or throw out - Why individuality disappears the second you walk into a gym - The case against polyester from someone who spent a career selling it - How Urban Outfitters stays relevant forever and why J.Crew couldn't - Where to start if you've never thought of getting dressed as communication New episodes of Well Said every week. Subscribe on YouTube, and follow on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Find Ryan on Instagram @ryyywood Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:16 The clothing people inherit and can’t wear or throw out 02:46 Remaking his mother’s shirt so she could wear it 03:26 What clothing conveys that words can’t 03:51 Clothing is the front line 05:29 What clothes do for connection 06:02 The story behind the hat 07:34 The hidden details nobody asked for 08:48 Designing for everyone and for the one who notices 10:05 Vintage as buried treasure 13:11 Why Urban Outfitters stays relevant and J.Crew didn’t 15:27 Merchandising as storytelling 17:05 Why everyone at the gym looks the same 19:08 Rather be uncomfortable than look like everyone else 19:30 The case against polyester 22:41 What his closet says about him 23:50 Microdosing the us-ness 24:47 Three things he’d grab in a fire 25:55 Where to start if you’ve never thought about it this way 27:51 Rapid fire round | |||
| The Checklist That Tells the Surgeon to Ask for Help | Dr. Robert Cho | 01 Sep 2026 | 00:48:33 | |
Dr. Robert Cho operates on children's spines with Pearl Jam playing. When the monitors show the electrical signals between a child's brain and spinal cord starting to drop, the first thing that happens is not medical. The music goes off. That is the signal to everyone in the room that a checklist is coming, read out loud, together, off the wall. And one of the steps on that checklist is for Cho, the most senior person present, to pick up a phone and admit he needs help. Cho is an orthopedic spine surgeon with offices in Beverly Hills and Brentwood who has done over a thousand scoliosis surgeries on kids and adults. His argument to Pia Arthur and Kelly Cheeseman is that calm under pressure is not a personality trait, it is something you script in advance, and that trust works the same way. He reads the t-shirt before he reads the chart. He gives every patient his cell phone number. He opens every operation by telling the room that anyone can stop him at any point, because he knows the story of the copilot who could not bring himself to tell the pilot they were flying into a mountain. In this episode: • Why the phone-a-friend step is the most valuable part of the checklist, and what an outside voice with a low heart rate can see that the room cannot • The ego burden of asking for help, and how putting it on paper removes it • Reading the t-shirt: earning a child's trust in the few moments you get • Why most patients he sees never get operated on, and how telling them so builds trust • The surgeon who threw a scalpel into the wall, and what that does to everyone else in the room • What actually happens in a parent's head the second they hear the word surgery • The one word he thinks should be banned from every doctor-patient relationship • Why a confidently wrong AI reminds him of an old-guard surgeon • What "well said" means in an operating room, and the pet peeve about reading the scan first Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:40 Welcome to Well Said 02:14 What a pediatric spine surgeon actually does 04:45 Getting the call from the OR in the middle of the day 07:39 The Alec Baldwin scene in Malice, and the surgeon god complex 09:32 What surgeons can learn from pilots 11:43 Projecting calm as a leader 15:13 The environment you create in the room 15:49 Earning a child's trust in the few moments you get 17:44 Why he doesn't sell surgery 20:16 Go home and think about it 20:44 What happens in a parent's head the second they hear surgery 21:56 The patient who saw seven surgeons before him 25:48 Why a confidently wrong AI reminds him of an old-guard surgeon 28:46 The note-taking tool that saves him two hours a day 30:16 Self-driving cars, robots, and what's next in the OR 31:26 The most accurate medical show on TV 35:42 How he tells a parent their child needs surgery 39:43 The demands on doctors, and why patients deserve more 42:54 What a scared patient needs from your first sentence Subscribe to Well Said for new conversations on connection as a human skill. Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. | |||
| How to Pitch Without Trying to Win the Room | Steve M. Cullen @ All Together Now | 25 Aug 2026 | 00:49:57 | |
Steve M. Cullen has presented roughly 200 times a year for two decades. He'll tell you privately that a pitch is warfare, that his mother's retirement is riding on it, that the fundamental job is to be the freshest person in the room. Then he walks in and refuses to pitch at all. Steve is a creative director and the founder of All Together Now, a studio whose entire tagline is "good ideas and sunny vibes." His work is turning companies into stories, which mostly means convincing people that something that doesn't exist yet should exist. Kelly and Pia get him into the mechanics of how that actually happens: the craft skills he built by taking apart campaigns and films line by line, the Eminem lyrical-construction exercise he ran on advertising for years, and why the difference between winners and almost-winners is that winners write it down. The back half turns inward. Steve talks about trigger journals, memento mori, the stoic virtues he actually uses, and the nightly 6pm debrief he gives his cat, which is how he discovered he'd been telling himself he'd failed 12 days in a row. In this episode: Why creative direction isn't salting the soup, it's deciding what to make with everything in the kitchen How Steve prepares a competitive pitch so the outcome is decided before he arrives The reason he runs a working session instead of a presentation What a trigger journal is, and how to start one this week• Why winners write their goals down The signature question he's asked clients for ten years, and where it came from The one word he's banned from his vocabulary New episodes of Well Said every week. Subscribe on YouTube, and follow on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Find Steve's studio, All Together Now, on Instagram. | |||
| The Mediator Who's Spent 30+ Years Finding the Real Fight Behind the Lawsuit | Angela Reddock-Wright | 18 Aug 2026 | 00:46:45 | |
For 30+ years, Angela Reddock-Wright has sat between people who cannot stand each other. First as an employment litigator, then as a workplace investigator during the reckoning that followed MeToo, and now as a full-time mediator. Her conclusion after thousands of cases: almost every workplace dispute is a communication failure wearing a legal costume. In this episode, Angela shows Pia and Kelly the work. Why a wage or employment complaint is rarely about wages or the employment, and almost always about "you don't value me." Why she barely mentions money in the first hours of a mediation. What separates an apology that resolves a case from one that blows it up. And how a picket line she was taken to as a seven-year-old in Birmingham, Alabama ended up defining a career spent bringing two sides to the same table. If your job involves the conversations people call for help with too late, this one's a working method. Chapters
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| The Secret Behind Writing a Newsletter to 15,000 People Every Day for 5 Years | Ryan Weiss | 11 Aug 2026 | 01:03:38 | |
Ryan Weiss learned the most important thing he knows about communication while dangling from a 40-foot rope in a monkey costume. He was a swing in Wicked, handed a track he'd had 45 minutes to learn. So before the curtain rose he told the entire cast the truth: I don't know what I'm doing. If you find me lost, grab me. The stage manager called it unprofessional. Ryan calls it the beginning of his real career. Seventeen years, a daily email to 15,000 strangers, and a new iHeart show later, he coaches founders, creatives and public figures through what he calls Emotional Fitness. His central claim is uncomfortable: most of us are experts at avoiding everything happening inside our own bodies, and that avoidance is what we've been calling anxiet. In this episode:
Subscribe to Well Said for new conversations on connection as a human skill. Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. | |||
| How to Make Anyone Feel Safe in the First 60 Seconds with Naz Perez | 04 Aug 2026 | 00:50:20 | |
For 14 years, Naz Perez has done the near-impossible: getting the most famous, most media-trained people on earth to drop the script. She landed Will Smith's first sit-down after the slap. She made Steven Spielberg laugh in ten seconds. She asked an NFL star a question no one had asked him in nine seasons. On Well Said, the person who interviews everyone gets interviewed, by two communications veterans who spent a decade building scripts at Amazon. Naz's craft is the opposite: safety, energy, and what she calls giving versus taking. A Forbes Trailblazer, cultural conversationalist, and Bachelor producer turned red-carpet host, she breaks down how real connection actually works and why the words you say matter far less than whether the other person feels seen. It's a masterclass in human connection from someone who does it for a living, with the highest-stakes humans alive. Highlights:
Follow Well Said with Pia Arthur and Kelly Cheeseman for conversations on communication, leadership, and connection. Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify and Apple. | |||
| Why Your "Safe" Corporate Job Is the Riskier Bet | A Q&A with Pia and Kelly | 28 Jul 2026 | 00:31:10 | |
For over a year, former colleagues have been sending Kelly and Pia the same questions. How did you actually start Cuore? How did you land your first client? How did you know it was time to leave a stable career and bet on yourself? In this Q&A episode, they turn the mic on themselves and answer all of it. What comes out is an honest look at the leap most people only think about. Kelly shares the "stop being half in" conversation with Dave Clark that pushed her to commit, and Pia retells the breakfast-taco talk with her dad, who called corporate stability "a false sense of security" and warned that the right partnership comes once. They get specific about the parts nobody warns you about too: the comp and HR expertise you undervalue until it's yours to build, learning taxes across two states, setting boundaries when the work never technically ends, and doing every single task yourself, right down to the printer paper. If you're a mid-career professional wondering "could I do this?", this is the episode that answers. You'll walk away with a clearer picture of what starting something actually looks like, why side quests matter more for achievers than they think, and what it means to raise the next generation to see more than one path. Listen now, and subscribe to Well Said so you don't miss what Kelly and Pia get into next. Timestamps: • 0:00 — Two years in: why old colleagues keep reaching out • 2:17 — Landing the first clients before you had any proof points • 5:22 — The "stop being half in" push from Dave Clark • 7:08 — Pia's dad, breakfast tacos, and "a false sense of security" • 9:33 — What nobody prepares you for: comp, equity, and HR • 13:27 — Running your own business means you do all the tasks • 16:11 — Learning to set boundaries when the work is yours • 19:02 — What their kids are learning from watching them bet on themselves • 21:26 — Side quests, and why drivers and achievers need them most • 25:24 — The gift of being naïve: Pia's one-way ticket to New York | |||
| How This Founder "Brainwashed" Himself Into Confidence | Shadi Bakour @ PATH | 21 Jul 2026 | 00:49:41 | |
Before Shadi Bakour ever framed a message for a customer, he engineered the one he told himself. Driving Uber and waiting tables through three years of making $0, he listened to Tony Robbins on every commute. "I looked at it like I was brainwashing myself." The message worked. Today PATH Water is in more than 75,000 locations and has eliminated over 700 million single-use plastic bottles. Shadi joins Pia and Kelly for a conversation that flips the show's premise inward. For a founder whose brand lives or dies on communication, the highest-stakes communication of his career happened in his own head: the nightly journaling, the "that's so easy" reframe, the decision to go looking for struggle on purpose. Along the way he unpacks why "follow your passion" is bad advice, how a $2,000 going-away party turned into his first funding round, and why people never really buy a product… they buy who it says they are. This is a masterclass in the story you tell yourself first. In this episode: - Why Shadi treated Tony Robbins like deliberate "brainwashing" and what it did to his confidence - The reframe that got PATH off the ground: why "that's so easy" beat every expert who said it wouldn't work - How "take every meeting" turned $2,000 and a party into a funding round, a board member, and Guy Fieri - Why he'd fire an advisor before he'd skip a meeting he "wasn't ready" for - The case against following your passion (and the photography experiment that proves it) - Why people buy identity, not products and the stranger who pitched Shadi his own company until he cried - "A company can only be as big as its leader": the bottleneck rule every founder should hear Follow Well Said for new conversations on connection as a human skill. Watch on YouTube, and listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. | |||
| The Professor Who Learned Why Nouns vs. Verbs Can Reinvent How We Communicate | Christopher Bryan | 14 Jul 2026 | 00:38:22 | |
Christopher Bryan has spent his career proving something most communicators only sense intuitively: the words we choose don't just describe behavior, they build identity, and identity is what actually moves people. As a behavioral scientist at UT Austin's McCombs School of Business, Bryan has run randomized experiments on voters, cheaters, teenagers, and teachers, and the results keep pointing to the same conclusion. Calling someone "a voter" instead of asking them to "vote" can swing real turnout by double digits. Telling someone "don't be a cheater" eliminates dishonesty; telling them "don't cheat" does nothing at all. For Pia Arthur and Kelly Cheeseman, two communicators who spent over a decade inside one of the world's most disciplined corporate comms operations, Bryan is the guest who puts hard data behind what they've always felt: that framing isn't a soft skill, it's a lever. The conversation moves from the psychology of political slogans like "Morning Again in America" and "Audacity of Hope," to why most managers motivate their teams all wrong, to the one word every leader needs in their vocabulary. In this episode: - The coin-flip experiment that proved one word can eliminate cheating - Why "be a voter" outperforms "vote" by double-digit points at the polls - How a status crisis explains why certain political slogans land and others don't - Why your gym transformation video is quietly lying to you about motivation - The real reason talented employees disengage (it isn't laziness) - What separates persuasion that works from advice that gets ignored - The two words Bryan thinks every leader should adopt, and the one to drop Subscribe to Well Said for new conversations on the science and craft of communication. Find us on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Learn more about Christopher Bryan's research at McCombs School of Business, UT Austin. | |||
| How This Journalist Uncovers and Communicates the Story Nobody Else Is Telling with Sam Sanders | 07 Jul 2026 | 00:38:18 | |
Sam Sanders has spent two decades learning that the best conversations aren't the polished ones. After years at NPR cutting five seconds off a segment because "the clock doesn't play," the host of The Sam Sanders Show now does the opposite: improvised, imperfect, unfinished talk that he insists is "just vibes." On Well Said, Pia and Kelly get him to trace that philosophy all the way back to a pawnshop saxophone in a small-town Texas church, where he learned to play by ear and started hearing every conversation as a song. They go from how he prepped for months of Trump rallies (and why the voters there were often kinder than he expected) to the question he says ends any argument: do you want to be right, or do you want to win? It's a conversation about how to actually talk to people again, how we’re all yearning for community, when to go slow, and why letting things stay unfinished might be the most freeing thing you can do. In this episode:- Why Sam treats every conversation as music, and what playing saxophone by ear taught him about communication - How a decorated journalist made peace with being "background noise," and why that set him free from perfectionism - What months of covering Trump rallies taught him about listening to people you disagree with - The reframe he uses to defuse any argument: "Do you want to be right, or do you want to win?" - His practical, non-emotional system for breaking phone addiction (it starts with the back seat of his car) - The "be a duck" thesis for living in a world that moves too fast - Why he'd teach every American classroom how credit works New episodes of Well Said drop weekly. Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts so you never miss a conversation. | |||
| What Witnessing Thousands of Deaths Taught This Hospice CEO About Living a Good Life | Amy Sweet | 30 Jun 2026 | 00:55:59 | |
Most advice about communication is about control: managing a room, softening bad news, performing under pressure. Amy Sweet works where all of that falls away. As the founder and CEO of Halcyon Home, she has spent more than a decade at the bedside of people in their final days, and she has learned that the clearest, most honest communication of a person's whole life often happens in their last week. Amy grew up in a strict Seventh Day Adventist household and then fell into the orbit of her aunt, an Oscar-nominated actress who said whatever she wanted, however it landed. Six months before she died, her aunt wrote: "I demand my death be joyful." That sentence became the foundation of everything Amy built, from a company she started by stapling flyers around Austin to one of the largest woman-owned businesses in Texas. This conversation strips communication down to what survives when performance is impossible: saying what you actually want, asking what someone actually loves, and naming the thing you keep postponing. In this episode: - Why Amy says we should plan for death the way we plan for birth - The single question that can create the most meaningful day of someone's life - What her aunt taught her about saying the hard thing without fear - How honesty, not hope, gave one couple their trip to Costa Rica - Why "I don't want to be a burden" is the wrong place to start - How she trains nearly 1,000 caregivers to connect, not just to care - The Montessori school she's building next to elder care, and why Follow Well Said for more conversations about connection as a human skill. Listen on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. | |||
| Why Attention is the ONLY Currency That Matters (and How to Capture It) | 23 Jun 2026 | 00:31:08 | |
For twenty years, Pia Arthur and Kelly Cheeseman watched the single megaphone of mass media shatter into a million independent microphones. In this solo episode of Well Said, the Cuore co-founders and former Amazon PR executives make the case that the comms job flipped with it: you no longer control the narrative from the inside out, you manage a fragmented set of realities from the outside in. They trace the shift from the Oprah-era town square to a world where a Dairy Queen employee's TikTok is worth more than a press release, journalists are leaving mastheads to build their own audiences, and the people you trust most are curators you've never met. The throughline is a warning for any founder or exec still running the old "company to PR firm to journalist to audience" pipeline: that pipeline already broke. It's a candid, road-tested look at what two decades in the room taught them about the next two, and the one move every company should make now. In this episode: - Why attention is becoming the ultimate currency, and why people are paying to escape it - How "inside-out" narrative control gave way to "outside-in" reality management - Why your best brand ambassador might be an hourly employee with a phone - What the journalist-to-Substack migration means for who you should actually pitch - How fragmented realities (see: Tylenol) make crisis comms about belief, not facts - The new PR job: mapping the micro-trust ecosystems that can make or break you - Why old-school tactics like the press release are quietly making a comeback Follow Well Said for honest conversations on communications, reputation, and trust. Tune in on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. | |||
| How to Build Relationships in PR (So AI Will Never Replace You) with Elaine Garza @ Giant Noise | 16 Jun 2026 | 00:49:02 | |
Elaine Garza spent 12 years in New York running PR for Spin, Vibe, and Outside before she put a baby in the backseat, drove to Austin, and started a PR agency out of her garage with a Blackberry and one client. Twenty years later, Giant Noise is roughly 80 people across four Texas cities. And her competitive edge is the same thing it was on day one: she doesn't pitch The New York Times. She calls a friend who works there. AI can write the press release, build the media list, and draft the pitch faster than any junior staffer. Elaine's argument is that none of it touches the part that actually moves the needle: the relationship you built years before you ever needed anything. In this conversation with Pia and Kelly, she makes the case for the human in the loop, and gets honest about what it costs to keep betting on it. Inside the episode: - Why Elaine pitches stories she gets nothing from and why that's the strategy - How she rebuilt the entire agency when earned media alone wouldn't survive ten years - The instinct-over-spreadsheets philosophy behind never writing a business plan - What an account coordinator's quiet Slack post taught her about leading younger staff - The day a breaking war killed a client's Wall Street Journal story and what she told them - Her one rule she'll break on purpose: going off the record for a journalist she trusts - The morning-reading habit she says is non-negotiable in communications If you build things on relationships (in any field), this one will land. New episodes of Well Said drop weekly. Follow on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. | |||
| The James Beard-Winning Chef Who Says Your Price Is Your Most Powerful Communication Tool | JJ Johnson | 09 Jun 2026 | 00:47:30 | |
Chef JJ Johnson built a fast-casual rice bowl restaurant on an idea most investors called crazy: that a single grain of rice could carry the story of the entire African diaspora. He priced it at $10 using the same Carolina gold rice that fine dining charges $40 for, because the story of Black and Brown food shouldn't cost more just because a white chef wasn't cooking it. He's a James Beard Award winner, a six-season TV host, and a founder who donated 220,000 free meals during a pandemic. He calls himself the Rice God. But before all of that, JJ was cooking French and Italian cuisine… the food he was told to cook. Then a trip to Ghana changed everything. In this episode, JJ joins Pia and Kelly to unpack what happens when someone stops asking "what should I say?" and starts asking "what do I actually stand for?" and then builds an entire business from that answer. Highlights: - The three questions JJ asks before anything goes on a menu and why most brands skip all three - The pricing move that became a cultural statement: charging $10 for the same rice that fine dining charges $40 for - What Trader Joe's understands about representation that most corporate institutions still don't - The specific meal in Ghana that gave JJ what he calls "his marching orders" as a chef - Why JJ believes food media's storytelling blind spots reflect a much bigger cultural double standard - What 220,000 free meals actually communicates and why JJ says it was never about PR - What it means to own the table, not just a seat at it Follow Well Said on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. | |||
| What 40 Years as a Celebrity Trainer Taught Him About Honest Communication | David Kirsch | 02 Jun 2026 | 00:59:53 | |
David Kirsch passed the bar exam. Then he called his parents and told them he was going to be a fitness trainer. Dead silence. That call (and the 40 years that followed) are what this episode is really about. David trained J.Lo, Heidi Klum, Kate Upton, Gigi Hadid, and Naomi Campbell. Not by telling them what they wanted to hear, but by being the one person in the room who wouldn't. He's spent decades watching people fail to change and finally figured out why: the conversation in their head never shifted. Now the fitness director at The Core Club in New York, his philosophy is the same as it's always been: sound mind first, sound body second. The physical work is almost secondary. In this episode, David sits down with Pia and Kelly to talk about what it actually takes to communicate with someone who has made themselves completely vulnerable and why the trainers, leaders, and caregivers who do it best have always been in the people business, not the fitness business. Highlights: - Why David quit law and how his parents reacted - The moment a client burst into tears mid-ab work and what it changed about how he trains - Why 40 years of expertise is something AI cannot replicate, and what it actually feels like to be truly seen by a professional - How a conversation with Kate Upton helped his teenage daughter through body dysmorphia - His honest take on GLP-1s: when they work, when they don't, and the one thing people on Ozempic need to be doing more of - Why longevity has nothing to do with supplement stacks or biohacks (and the three things that actually matter) - What it means to be a single dad by choice and how nearly dying in 2006 clarified everythingIf you want to catch all future episodes, subscribe to Well Said by Cuore on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. | |||
| The Standup Comedian's Guide to Communicating In Any Room with Ben Gleib | 26 May 2026 | 00:46:38 | |
From ages four to twenty-two, Ben Gleib had a stutter and a vocal disfluency so severe that his chords would lock down mid-sentence. He'd sit in class dreading being called on to read aloud, convinced it was a kind of execution. And he wanted, more than anything, to be a comedian and a TV host. He became one. Twenty-five years of standup later, Ben has performed to arenas, hosted an Emmy-nominated game show (Idiotest, 210 episodes across Netflix and Game Show Network), appeared on Chelsea Lately, starred in a Showtime special now on Amazon, and is building the internet's first late night talk show (Goodnight with Ben Gleib) backed by Nikki Glaser and Scott Galloway. He also coaches executives on their TED Talks and wedding speeches. And yes, those are the same skill set. Pia first saw Ben perform at a comedy club in Austin. Pia was front row, not by choice, watching him navigate a guy in a cowboy hat who wouldn't sit down and kept trying to make himself the show. Ben didn't flinch. He made the cowboy the funniest part of the night. Watching it happen, Pia realized this is exactly what crisis communications looks like. This episode is a masterclass in owning a room, staying composed under real pressure, and saying things that actually land. It applies whether you're in a comedy club, a boardroom, a media interview, or an all-hands meeting where your whole team is watching to see how you show up. In this episode: - Why comedians have become the last honest voices in public life and how truth is baked into every real laugh - Crowd work as a communications framework: how Ben reads a room, finds the right people, and knows exactly how far to push - The math that proves speaking to a thousand people is less risky than speaking to one - What a childhood stutter that lasted eighteen years taught Ben about public speaking anxiety - Why silence is the single most underused communication tool in business - The coaching techniques Ben uses with executives on TED Talks and high-stakes presentations - How building a late night show from his house on YouTube became the perfect format for an attention economy that rewards real over polished - The idea-capture habit he shared with Chris Rock and has used for twenty-five years - Why the moments that go most wrong are often the ones that build the most trust If you’re an exec or founder looking to level up your communications skills, this episode is for you. Ben Gleib is launching his new weekly late night show ‘Good Night With Ben Gleib’ on YouTube on Thursday May 28 and every Thursday at 10 pm EST / 7 pm PST. People can join his interactive worldwide virtual audience the night before and every Wednesday by getting a ticket at makeitagoodnight.com. You can follow along on his socials on all platforms @makeitagoodnight. And make sure you subscribe to Well Said on all platforms to get new episodes every Wednesday. TIMESTAMPS 02:12 — Front row in Austin, cliffhanger compliments, and comedians vs. politicians 05:00 — What is crowd work and why it's a masterclass in real-time communication 07:45 — "Stay in the pocket" 10:00 — The math of crowds 13:30 — Self-deprecation + admitting mistakes 17:30 — A childhood stutter 20:00 — The power of silence 24:00 — Coaching executives: timing, motion to stillness, and how to make a moment land 29:40 — "Goodnight with Ben Gleib" 39:30 — When things go wrong: the DJ, the muted audience, and Scott Galloway's mic | |||
| How a Celebrity Hair Stylist Communicates Under Pressure | Alex Pardoe | 20 May 2026 | 00:46:28 | |
What does a celebrity hairstylist know about communication that most executives don't? More than you'd think. Alex Pardoe has done hair for Paris Hilton at 3am, worked red carpets and film sets with some of the most recognizable names in Hollywood, and built his LA career from scratch after leaving a successful salon in Michigan with no clients and a three-month trial period. He's worked with Lindsay Lohan, Camila Cabello, and a roster of A-listers he mostly can't talk about. Five years into his LA chapter, he's one of the most sought-after hairstylists in the industry and the founder of hair extension brand The Anti Co. But the reason we brought Alex on Well Said is because he thrives in high-stakes and fast moving communication environments. He just happens to work with hair. In this conversation, Alex breaks down the philosophy that's driven his entire career: that he's not in the hair business, he's in the relationship business. Everything flows from that. How he asks questions before he ever picks up the scissors. How he reads a room under pressure. How he shows up in one of the most intimate settings imaginable, someone's home, their most vulnerable state, and makes every single person feel like the only person in the room. There's more practical communication wisdom in this episode than in most leadership books we've read. In this episode: - Why the hair industry is really the relationship business, and what that means for anyone whose job involves people - The 50-question consultation method, and why Alex would rather spend 20 minutes asking than five minutes assuming - How to stay grounded and calm when everything around you is chaotic - What it means to walk into a room blind and still show up prepared - How Alex thinks about fame, access, and keeping perspective around people he genuinely admires - The transparency shift happening across beauty and media, and why the industry's dirty little secret is becoming a selling point - What betting on yourself actually looks like when you've left everything behind to do it - Why Alex believes nothing is really that serious, and how that belief makes him better at his job If this episode resonates, please subscribe and leave us a review. And share this one with someone who needs a reminder that communication is always, at its core, about making people feel seen. | |||
| How to Communicate Hard News from an ER Doctor Who’s Been to Nearly Every Country | Calvin Sun | 12 May 2026 | 00:50:15 | |
Dr. Calvin D. Sun is an emergency room physician, author of Monsoon Diaries (HarperCollins), and founder of the Monsoon Diaries travel community. He has visited every UN-recognized country in the world and is ranked among the ten most traveled Americans. During COVID, while most hospital doctors were silenced by media clauses, Calvin was working per diem across four New York City boroughs, free to speak to anyone who called. He did 10 to 20 interviews a day. What makes him a natural fit for Well Said: he has spent his career in the hardest communication situations that exist. Delivering devastating news. Deciding what to tell his partner after a brutal ER shift. Speaking truth to the public when his colleagues legally couldn't. He has thought harder than most about the difference between honesty and truth, when withholding protects the people you love, and what it actually means to read the room. In this episode: - Ubuntu: the philosophy that says a person is only a person through another person, and what that means for how we show up in every conversation - Why authenticity isn't a fixed trait but a relational one — who you are depends entirely on who you're talking to - How Calvin's father's journal, written for the wrong son, shaped his entire relationship to writing and vulnerability - Why changing your environment, whether that's a foreign country or a different cafe, is one of the most underrated communication tools there is - The three communication principles Calvin has lived by: read the room, show your cards with intention, and stay consistent Subscribe to Well Said everywhere you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode. Thanks for listening! | |||
| How to Have Hard Conversations Without Sounding Cold or Scripted | 05 May 2026 | 00:12:25 | |
Thank you for an incredible first month of Well Said. The questions, the feedback, and the support have meant everything to us. We (Kelly and Pia) are the co-founders of Cuore Communications and former Amazon PR executives with more than 20 combined years advising C-suite leaders, managing global communications teams, and guiding companies through some of the highest-stakes moments in business. In this episode, they sit down to answer the questions that came in most during Well Said's first month: the ones about trust, apologies, hard news, and finding your voice. In this episode: - How to start a trust-repair conversation without making it more awkward - What real apologies actually require, and the one step most people skip - How to deliver hard news with honesty - How to know when a message you keep rewriting is ready to send - What taking ownership for a team mistake looks like, step by step - The communication lesson Kelly learned outside of corporate life that changed how she leads through crisisMake sure you subscribe to Well Said on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube so you never miss an episode. And if you have a question for our next Q&A, send it our way. DMs are always open. | |||
| How to Talk to Anyone: Lessons from a Michelin Star Chef Who Does It 100 Times a Day | PJ Calapa | 28 Apr 2026 | 00:45:56 | |
PJ Calapa is the Brand Executive Chef of Marea, one of the most celebrated Italian seafood restaurants in American fine dining, with locations in New York, Beverly Hills, and Aspen. He got there through twenty years in New York's most demanding kitchens, including Bouley, Eleven Madison Park, and Nobu 57, a Michelin star and three NYT stars at Ai Fiori, two restaurants of his own, and one he lost during the pandemic. He came back. Marea's regulars include the Obamas, Beyoncé, and Lady Gaga. Anthony Bourdain called the pasta the best he'd ever tasted. PJ's entire career has been built in environments where communication isn't something you prepare. It's a reflex you build. That's why he's on Well Said. And: Pia has known him since high school in Brownsville. In fact, he was her prom date. In this episode: - The week at Bouley that became the foundation of his entire leadership philosophy - Why giving his team ownership of a dish produces higher standards than demanding them - How he keeps a team calm during the most chaotic service, even when he knows it's rough - His system for reading any table or entering any difficult conversation - What a Fortune 500 CEO would learn in one week of kitchen service - Why growing up bilingual on the Texas-Mexico border gave him a communication edge he still uses every day Subscribe to Well Said on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode. TIMESTAMPS00:00 — Growing up in Brownsville 08:00 — Landing at Bouley 13:00 — The week that almost broke him 17:00 — The conversation that changed how he leads 27:00 — Ai Fiori and earning the Michelin star 36:00 — Losing Scampi: "I'm a free agent, not a failure" 44:00 — Why lifting your team is the only leadership that works 52:00 — How a Michelin star chef reads a table 58:00 — Talking to a billionaire and a dishwasher in the same motion 1:04:00 — Where to find PJ | |||
| What a Sexologist Taught Us About Communication That Most Execs Never Learn | 21 Apr 2026 | 00:44:35 | |
Natassia Miller is a Brazilian-American sexologist (AASECT-certified), the founder of Wonderlust, a sexual wellness brand, and the writer behind the Lust in Translation newsletter on Substack. She studied political science at Columbia, worked in finance, and pivoted to sexual wellness after co-founding and exiting a prior wellness startup during COVID. In 2022, she launched Wonderlust with the Mindful Intimacy Card Deck after surveying 500+ couples and finding that communication was their #1 barrier to a better sex life. Her work has been featured in Cosmopolitan, Glamour, GQ, and NBC. What makes Natassia such a natural fit for Well Said: her entire career is built on teaching people how to say the thing they've been avoiding. And the skills she coaches couples on, asking for what you want, creating safety, being intentional, repairing when something breaks, are the same skills every great communicator and leader needs. In this episode: - Why communication, not chemistry, not compatibility, is the #1 barrier to a better intimate life, and how that maps directly onto leadership and teams - How to apply SMART goals to your relationship and sex life (and why it doesn't kill the mood, it builds the foundation) - Kelly's lesson from managing 100+ people across 17 countries: if you only have 30 minutes with someone who matters, show up with intention - The Wheel of Consent framework and how couples (and teams) can use it to negotiate what they actually need - Pia's 24-hour rule: take a breath, don't react, come back with your best self - Why bedroom confidence and boardroom confidence are built with the same muscles Make sure you subscribe to Well Said everywhere you get your podcasts, so you never miss another episode. Thanks for listening! CHAPTER TIMESTAMPS 00:00 — Meet Natassia Miller 00:02 — What a sexologist and two PR execs have in common 00:07 — SMART goals for your sex life 00:11 — Boundaries at work and at home 00:18 — The salty lemonade study 00:20 — Why new experiences keep relationships (and teams) alive 00:23 — Vulnerability as a communication superpower 00:28 — Planning sex doesn't kill the mood, it creates it 00:29 — Spontaneous vs. responsive desire 00:31 — The Wheel of Consent 00:33 — How to make someone comfortable talking about the hardest things 00:36 — Knowing what you want (and learning how to ask for it) 00:41 — Talking about sex makes talking about everything else easier 00:44 — Where to find Natassia and Wonderlust | |||
| Self-Care Is a PR Strategy: Lessons From Emmy Award-Winning Producer, Nyle Washington | 14 Apr 2026 | 00:42:19 | |
Nyle Washington has spent 20+ years in entertainment communications. She started as an intern in The Oprah Winfrey Show's publicity department, spent four years at an agency handling campaigns for artists including Usher, Ne-Yo, and Keyshia Cole, and then built a reputation as one of the sharpest publicity executives in the television industry across eight years at VH1, and later at HBO, Starz, and Netflix. At Starz, she ran press for Power, the show that became one of cable's biggest hits of the decade. At Netflix, she has led awards campaigns for The Crown, Squid Game, Stranger Things, and When They See Us. In 2025, she won a Primetime Emmy Award as a producer on a short-form Netflix documentary. What sets Nyle apart, beyond the resume, is what she cares about most. After two decades of red carpets, 24/7 crises, and all-night awards pushes, the topic she most wants to talk about is this: taking better care of yourself makes you a better communicator. In this episode of Well Said:
Subscribe to Well Said on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 — Kelly and Nyle's origin story 01:17 — How you spot a comms person from across a room 03:34 — Bringing humanity back to comms 06:04 — The monthly intention list 08:27 — Becoming a morning person on purpose 10:30 — Running the global Squid Game campaign 14:28 — The reporter spreadsheet Pia used to keep 16:17 — What the pandemic clarified about human connection 22:01 — Best red carpet moment 25:25 — The Emmy nomination 29:21 — What makes a great story: the heartstrings test 36:16 — The Oprah internship origin story 40:01 — "Persistence breaks resistance" | |||
| The Ghostwriter Behind Hinge and Duolingo: How the Best Founders Tell Their Story with Adam Delehanty | 07 Apr 2026 | 00:39:04 | |
Adam Delehanty has spent his career helping famous CEOs and investors find the language their ideas deserve. He's the founder of Ghost, a content agency that works with some of the most recognized companies in tech, including Hinge, Google, Duolingo, e.l.f. Beauty and dozens more. This is the launch episode of Well Said. We chose Adam as our first episode because he sits at the center of writing, communication, founder psychology, and culture. Everything this show is about. In this episode: • Why Adam calls ghostwriting "journalism times therapy" and how long-term relationships with founders become something closer to confidant than contractor • The “VGPS” framework for introducing yourself to new people in a way that helps them remember you, and generates curiosity (Vision, Gratitude, Profile, Service) • Why culture books are becoming essential tools for organizations to scale their culture and clarify their specific way of working • The AI "steroids" analogy and the gap between sloperators (publishing at scale with nothing to say) and hermits (deep expertise, zero output) - (check out https://ghostagency.substack.com/p/sloperators for more context) • Why he believes the founder should always write or speak the first draft, and what happens to a message that goes through too many layers of approval • Why quality of readers matters more than quantity, and how five inspired people can change a company more than going viral Make sure you subscribe to Well Said everywhere you get your podcasts, so you never miss another episode. Thanks for listening! CHAPTER TIMESTAMPS 00:00 — "The wrong people have the steering wheel of content creation" 02:49 — AI is steroids 09:06 — Ghostwriting = journalism × therapy 09:53 — How to tell the truth when you have lawyers and a board 13:47 — Companies are religions 18:28 — The origin story that separates funded founders from everyone else (Hinge + Duolingo) 20:19 — The VGPS method to introduce yourself 33:20 — LinkedIn do's and don'ts 38:00 — Rapid fire: Patrick Radden Keefe, the word "dude," and the worst advice in content | |||