A former ABC News correspondent explains why AI didn't kill earned media — it made it the asset most founders are ignoring. T.J. Winick on how ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity now decide how you're described, the reporter's playbook for getting covered, and how to turn a crisis around in a single news cycle.

SHOW NOTES

For twenty years, T.J. Winick built stories from the inside — six of them as a correspondent for ABC News. Now he helps founders survive the same machine he used to run.

His argument in this episode cuts against the grain: AI didn't make earned media less important. It made it the asset most founders are ignoring at exactly the wrong moment. For decades, being found meant ranking on Google — SEO, a clean website, owned channels, with press coverage treated as a bonus on top. That's flipped. The people you want are now asking ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity the questions they used to type into a search bar, and those tools don't crawl your website or read your press release. They synthesize answers from published, credible, third-party coverage — which is earned media, and it's now the raw material AI uses to describe you to the world. T.J. calls it GEO: generative engine optimization.

From there, he opens the reporter's playbook from the other side of the desk — why a story that can't answer "why should anyone care?" in the first ten seconds dies on the spot, how to build a hook reporters can't ignore, and why authenticity beats polish every time. We get into the crisis case study at the heart of his book — the employee fired for using a weapon against a robber — and what it takes to turn a story like that around without spinning. We close on how any founder can become a genuine thought leader, and exactly how to vet and hire the right PR partner.

In this episode:

• Why AI search made earned media more valuable, not less (GEO explained)
• The client who moved a $20K/month Google Ads budget into PR — and why
• How reporters actually choose stories in the 10 a.m. editorial meeting
• The hook: timeliness, tension, data, and finding a "real person"
• The rule of seven and building an omni-channel narrative
• Newsjacking with a contrarian take to get picked up fast
• A crisis case study on empathy, truth, and the one-news-cycle goal
• How to find, vet, and hire the right PR partner

About the guest: T.J. Winick is the founder of Essex Strategies, a Boston-based strategic and crisis communications firm, and the author of Reputation Capital: How to Navigate Crises and Protect Your Greatest Asset (Berrett-Koehler), winner of a 2023 Independent Publisher Book Award. Before crossing over, he spent two decades in broadcast news, including as a correspondent for ABC News across Nightline, World News, and Good Morning America.

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📘 Reputation Capital: https://a.co/d/0dTRDwvl
🌐 essexstrategies.com
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tjwinick/
📱 TikTok @tjwinick · Instagram @essexstrategies
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Jacqueline Wales stopped believing in "fearless" a long time ago. After a financial collapse at 54 wiped out the life she'd built, she excavated a different idea — fear isn't something to kill or outrun, it's data. In this conversation she breaks down Fear Intelligence, the F.E.A.R. framework, the TEDx talk that nearly broke her, and the one question she puts to CEOs that nobody else asks. For any founder staring down a bigger stage, this is about making the fear the thing that moves you forward.
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Jacqueline Wales built a career on a move most people never learn: don't kill the fear, read it.

At 54, she watched the life she'd built vanish in the 2008 crash — fortune gone, four kids still looking to her. Most people would call that the end. She called it research. What she excavated became Fear Intelligence, the work she now brings to founders, CEOs, and executive teams worldwide.

In this episode, Jacqueline and Matt get into the difference between being fearless and being fear smart, and why she now calls the first one a fantasy. She walks through her F.E.A.R. framework — Face, Explore, Act, Rise — and the idea underneath all of it: fear is data, not disaster. Read it, and it becomes the sharpest signal you have.

We also get into:

- The TEDx talk ("Unleash the Power of Fear") that nearly broke her — the dress-rehearsal that fell apart, and what she did the morning of
- Why "what other people are thinking is none of your business"
- The four fears every founder carries: inadequacy, rejection, uncertainty, and loss
- The question she puts to CEOs that stops them cold: what decision are you avoiding right now?
- The 90-second rule for catching yourself before fear runs the show
- Why the world feels more afraid now — and where to point your attention instead
- Black belt at 49, CrossFit at 63, and the driver behind all of it

Her closing message is the whole episode in one line: analyze the fear, notice the fear, and do it anyway.

— CHAPTERS —
00:00 Cold Open
00:00 Welcome to The Bigger Stage
02:47 The Signature Red
03:23 Fearless Is a Fantasy
04:16 Fear as Data — The F.E.A.R. Framework
06:40 You Weren't Born Afraid
11:21 The TEDx Talk That Nearly Broke Her
19:20 The Physical Tells of Fear
29:14 Black Belt at 49, CrossFit at 63
30:30 The Question CEOs Never Get Asked
36:32 The 90-Second Rule
40:07 Why the World Feels More Afraid Now
46:18 Where to Find Jacqueline
51:00 Analyze the Fear. Do It Anyway.

— ABOUT JACQUELINE WALES —
Four-time author, TEDx speaker, and a black belt who earned it at 49. She teaches Fear Intelligence not from theory, but from the floor she had to climb up off of.

Website & free Fear Intelligence Assessment: https://fearintelligence.co
Daily Insights email: sign up at https://fearintelligence.co
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacquelinewales/

— ABOUT THE SHOW —
The Bigger Stage is a show for founders, operators, and builders — conversations about the moves that get them to bigger stages. Hosted by Matt Stone.

New episodes on a rolling basis. Follow the show so you don't miss one.

A 20-year banker walked away from a senior VP title to buy a 33-year-old mom-and-pop HVAC company that wasn't even for sale. Eric Light on calculated risk, a brutal first year, and the rule he's built two careers on.

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Eric Light spent nearly two decades in banking, working his way up to senior vice president, embedded in the Chester County, PA business community — exactly where he was supposed to stay. Then he bought an HVAC company.

It wasn't a detour. Eric took everything he'd built — the relationships, the trust, the front-row view of how hundreds of businesses actually work — and bet it all on Precision Air Heating & Cooling, a 33-year-old shop in West Chester that technically wasn't for sale. In his words: "One day I was a banker, and the next morning I woke up president of this company."

He and Matt get into the calculated-risk framework Eric used to coach owners for years and now lives himself, the brutal first 90 days, why he still gets out of bed "a little bit scared" four years in, and the rule he's built two careers on since 2008: chase honest, passionate, successful people, and the business follows.

If you're a founder sitting on a leap you haven't taken yet, start here.

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CONNECT WITH ERIC
Email: elight@precisionairhc.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericlight/
Precision Air: https://precisionairhc.com

ABOUT THE SHOW
The Bigger Stage is the show for founders, operators, and builders chasing a bigger vision. Follow in your podcast app so new episodes land automatically.