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
🎙️ The Bigger Stage — conversations with founders and builders. Subscribe wherever you listen.

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.

Bobby Umar has done TEDx five times. In this episode, he breaks down how to actually get accepted, what makes a talk land, and the leverage move almost nobody makes after the applause dies down — plus the night he walked off the TEDx stage mid-talk and why he did it on purpose.

SHOW NOTES:

He walked off the TEDx stage mid-talk — slides broken, screen blank, audience watching. Then he went back out and delivered the talk that became one of his best.

Bobby Umar has stood on the TEDx stage five times, coached founders and executives on how to turn their story into stage-ready authority, and built a 25-year speaking career out of four careers that didn't fit. In this episode, he walks through what actually gets a TEDx application accepted, why most pitches get rejected, how to mine your own life story for the idea worth pitching, and the three-part framework almost no one completes: land it, deliver it, leverage it.

You'll hear:

• What separates a TEDx idea that gets accepted from one that gets ignored
• How to turn your life story into a pitch-ready TEDx concept
• Why the application itself is where most people lose the opportunity
• The full story of the night Bobby walked off a TEDx stage — and why
• How to build buzz around a talk before it's even live
• Where founders should be putting their energy beyond TEDx in 2026

Bobby Umar is a 5x TEDx speaker, Inc. Magazine Top 100 Leadership Speaker, and two-time LinkedIn Top Voice with 1,000+ keynotes across four continents.

Connect with Bobby Umar:
Website: https://raeallan.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbyumar/
Substack: https://substack.com/@bobbyumar

From tech lawyer to Warner, Meta, and CEO of Merlin — now Chief Commercial Officer at Suno. Jeremy Sirota on never being the smartest person in the room, the book he'd never talked about, and why AI can't help you if you've got nothing to say.

FULL DESCRIPTION

"I've never been the smartest person in the room. So I've always had to pull at something else."

Jeremy Sirota has a career that refuses to sit on a straight line. Tech lawyer at Morrison & Foerster. Record exec at Warner Music. Global licensing deals at Meta. CEO of Merlin, where he took annual revenue from $900M to $1.8B. Now Chief Commercial Officer at Suno, one of the most-watched generative AI music companies on the planet.

But he didn't talk his way in — he worked his way in. The through-line was never the title. It was a way of operating: build the room where genius happens instead of trying to be the genius in it. It took his ten-year-old daughter cutting him off mid-lecture — "Dad, no more TED Talks today" — to make that click.

In this conversation, Jeremy gets into the class that nearly ended his law career, the book he'd never talked about publicly until now, why he keeps a "captain's log" of half-formed ideas, the "make this worse" game he uses to break a room open, and the one thing AI can't do for you: have something to say.

For founders, operators, and builders working the move from operator to authority to icon — this one's worth your time.

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Guest: Jeremy Sirota, Chief Commercial Officer at Suno Host: Matt Stone

Millions of people drive, deliver, and hustle to power the American economy — and most of them are invisible to the financial system that's supposed to serve them.

Ricky Michel Presbot, co-founder and CEO of Ualett, decided to do something about it.

In this episode, Ricky shares how a failed early venture, a cab ride from JFK, and a chance encounter at a funeral led to the creation of a bilingual fintech platform now serving gig workers across the United States — with a $150 million credit facility to grow nationwide.

We go deep on the idea of the "multi-hustler economy," why niche is the X factor for any business, what Ricky learned driving Uber for three months before building his product, and why the company's central value isn't "believe in us" — it's "we believe in you."

This is a story about trust, dignity, and building something for people who've been left behind.

Topics covered:

• The cab ride from JFK that revealed a $150M opportunity
• Why the gig economy is everyone's economy
• The "multi-hustler" — a new category beyond the gig worker
• How Ualett works (and why it's not a predatory cash advance)
• The funeral pitch that started everything
• Building company values from a mentor relationship
• Why going to the field is non-negotiable before building a product
• What "we believe in you" actually means as a business model

Connect with Ricky: Ualett — https://ualett.com LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricky-michel-presbot-14964472

What do you do when the most important problem you can solve is also the least glamorous one?

Duncan Barrigan spent 8 years helping build GoCardless into a global payments unicorn — then walked away to tackle something most founders walk right past: getting businesses paid. Not sexy. Not shiny. Just a $100 trillion problem that's been solved the same way, by humans, for 6,000 years.

In this conversation, Duncan breaks down why accounts receivable is actually a communication and negotiation problem (not a payments problem), how he brought a real cowboy and horse to lasso the Wall Street Bull for Lunos' launch, and what it really means to build a company around three values: curious, courageous, and relentless.

We also get into the identity shift that hit when he left a CXO role at a billion-dollar company, moved to New York in January, and had to rediscover who he was before Lunos existed.

If you're a founder choosing between the bold idea and the safe one — this one's for you.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 — Cold open: the horse that got stopped at the Manhattan border
0:23 — Introducing Duncan Barrigan & Lunos
1:48 — Lunos or Lunos? The definitive answer
3:05 — The $100 trillion problem hiding in plain sight
5:03 — The epiphany: it's not a payments problem
6:20 — Moving continent, quitting his job, and starting in January
8:29 — London vs New York startup culture
12:33 — The stifled entrepreneur: Pokémon cards & astronaut dreams
14:17 — Space cowboys & bright pink: building the Lunos brand
17:35 — The Wall Street Bull stunt (and the Guardian article)
21:57 — Curious, courageous, relentless: the three values
29:33 — Good mistakes vs bad mistakes (poker & Napoleon)
32:15 — The identity crisis before Lunos existed
33:49 — What kind of company does he want to build?
38:03 — Building self-awareness as a founder
40:53 — What's coming next: the agent-to-agent network
43:36 — Flying planes, barrel rolls & personal challenges
46:29 — Who should work with Lunos?

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CONNECT WITH DUNCAN
Lunos: lunos.ai

CONNECT WITH MATT STONE & THE BIGGER STAGE
Website: thebiggerstage.com
YouTube: youtube.com/@thebiggerstage

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The Bigger Stage is for founders whose reputation is stronger than their messaging. New episodes drop every other Saturday.

Pat Miller spent 20 years on the radio under a name that wasn't his.

He went on the air as "J Pat". He was forced to cheer for the Green Bay Packers
while his actual loyalty stayed with the Chicago Bears and Cubs. He
programmed a country station he didn't connect with. And the whole
time, he was getting really good at being someone else.

In 2018 he walked away. No six-month runway. No clients lined up.
Just a hunch that life was too short to build someone else's dream —
the line that later became his TEDx talk.

Two years later, on March 18, 2020, the world shut down. The next
day, Pat went live on LinkedIn and hosted a show he called Small
Business Rally Point. 90 days later, it was a community. Today,
the Small Business Owners Community (SBOC) is a membership, an
annual conference that's drawn Mel Robbins, Mike Michalowicz, and
Sahil Bloom, and a daily show called Businessing with Pat Miller.

This conversation is about what it actually takes — on the inside —
to step out of a professional identity you spent two decades
constructing. About how a strength becomes a hindrance. About
"chiseling your way out" toward who you actually are. And about
excavating the room you wish you could walk into when you realize
founding a business is the loneliest job in the world.

If you're building on your own, this one will land.

CONNECT WITH PAT
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jpatmiller/
SBOC: https://smallbusinesscommunity.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BusinessingShow

THE BIGGER STAGE
Conversations with founders excavating the story underneath what
they've already built. The shift from operator to authority to icon,
captured on camera. Hosted by Matt Stone.

Watch the video version: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiggerstage
Learn more: https://thebiggerstage.com