- 1 hour 40 secondsLove Is Blind’s Kelly Chase Reveals the Altar Moment That Never Aired
You saw Kelly Chase say, "I don't." You saw the gasps. The tears. The headlines. What you didn't see is what happened moments before, when the officiant stopped everything and said: "I'm getting word from production." Years later, Kelly is finally telling her side. What really happened at that altar. Why the edit turned on her. The hate DMs telling her she'd "die alone." And the one part of the story the cameras caught… but never aired. But first, Kwame Christian makes her wait 26 minutes before even saying the words "Love Is Blind," because the woman you think you know is only one chapter of the story. Kelly opens up about the isolation nobody saw after filming wrapped, and why she's 41, single, and never married, by choice. Plus: the money belief keeping women small, the attachment style that attracts the wrong partner, why eating more helped her finally lose weight, and the one decision underneath all of it: choosing yourself first. Stay until the very end, when producer Simon reveals how one of Kelly's TikToks became a rule he lives by.
CONNECT WITH KELLY Work with Kelly (digital courses + 1:1 mentorship): chaselifewithkelly.com Instagram: @chaselifewithkelly
TikTok: @iamkellychase Podcast: Chase Life with Kelly
Connect with Kwame:
negotiateanything.com
@kwamenegotiates across all social platforms
19 October 2026, 9:00 am - 1 hour 2 minutesWhy High Achievers Never Feel Enough | Brooke Taylor
You’ve hit the goals, earned the promotions, and it still feels like it’s never enough. The problem isn’t your ambition. It’s where your ambition is coming from.
Former Googler Brooke Taylor, author of Healing the Success Wound, joins Kwame Christian to unpack the one addiction society applauds: the addiction to achievement. Brooke shares how a stack-ranked sales job at Google, her father’s terminal cancer diagnosis, staying silent about harassment to protect a promotion, and getting sober led her to identify the “success wound,” the pain of mistaking success, productivity, and achievement for self-worth.
Connect with Brooke Taylor:
Book: Healing the Success Wound (Amazon and wherever books are sold)
Coaching: brooketaylorcoaching.com
Instagram: @brookevtaylorConnect with Kwame:
negotiateanything.com
@kwamenegotiates across all social platforms
15 October 2026, 9:00 am - 54 minutes 58 secondsHow to Stay Idealistic Without Being Naive: Varun Sharma
Varun Sharma has spent years working in green energy and hydrogen. So why is he now taking on defense and oil & gas clients?
Kwame Christian welcomes Varun back to the show to unpack "pragmatic idealism": holding on to your ideals while staying honest about how power actually works. Drawing on a decade in Estonia on NATO's eastern edge, a father who served in the military, and his years in government, Varun explains why strength prevents conflict instead of inviting it, why doing nothing is still a choice with consequences, and why polarization is costing us the middle ground.
Kwame also asks the question he poses to audiences in his trainings: would you rather have every negotiation skill in the world, or all the power and leverage? Varun's answer reframes the whole question. Plus: China, batteries and the geopolitics of the energy transition, AI and job losses, and Varun's three-step process for making hard decisions when your values pull in different directions.
CONNECT WITH VARUN
Sapient Ventures: https://sapient.ventures
Varun's previous episode: Stop Talking: How to Use Silence to Win Any Deal
Connect with Kwame:
negotiateanything.com
@kwamenegotiates across all social platforms
#Negotiation #DecisionMaking #Geopolitics
12 October 2026, 9:00 am - 1 hour 49 minutesVanessa Van Edwards: How to Turn Small Talk Into Real Connection
Vanessa Van Edwards once lost a dream TV deal over small talk. After 20 years of research, she knows how to turn small talk into real connection.
On this episode, Kwame Christian sits down with Vanessa Van Edwards, behavioral researcher, founder of Science of People and bestselling author of Captivate and Cues, to unpack her new book, Conversation: How to Connect with Anyone & Make Every Interaction Count. A self-described "recovering awkward person," Vanessa shares the science-backed conversation skills that changed her life, from escaping conversation dead ends to asking the questions that build deeper relationships.
If you've ever run out of things to say, overthought what to say next, or left a networking event feeling like you never really connected, this episode is for you.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- Why questions like "What do you do?" lead to conversation dead ends, and how to escape them
- The 3 levels of conversation: putting people at ease, connecting deeply and creating meaning
- The memoir question that sparks deeper conversations with the people who matter
- How your self-story (redemption vs. contamination frames) shapes how you listen and talk
- Why naming social cues calms your nerves, plus the body language that signals confidence
- Why talking for more than 40 seconds can turn a conversation into a monologue
- How to disagree respectfully and handle difficult conversations, even with family
- How to turn nerves into "good nerves" before a negotiation or presentation
- Constructive vs. deconstructive language: how to be authentically assertive
- How AI, voice notes and podcasts are weakening our conversation muscles
Recorded in partnership with The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Students from the school's new podcast, [STUDENT PODCAST NAME], join the conversation with questions on code switching, speaking a second language, fear in negotiations, toxic positivity and more.
Connect with Vanessa
Get Conversation by Vanessa Van Edwards: https://www.scienceofpeople.com/conversation/
Vanessa's website: https://www.scienceofpeople.com/conversation/
Connect with Kwame:
negotiateanything.com
@kwamenegotiates across all social platforms
#VanessaVanEdwards #SmallTalk #CommunicationSkills
8 October 2026, 9:00 am - 1 hour 24 minutesWhy High Achievers Never Feel Successful | Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby
Kwame Christian sits down with psychologist, marriage and family therapist, and founder of Growing Self Counseling & Coaching, Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby, and it quickly turns into two high achievers comparing notes on the hidden cost of always chasing the next win. Kwame opens up about skipping the celebration of his own graduations, walking away from a national competition award because it wasn't the championship, and turning his marriage into a competition his wife never signed up for. Dr. Lisa Marie explains the psychology behind it (the hedonic treadmill) and why stepping off it doesn't kill your drive. It might actually give you more of it. From there, they get into how social media algorithms are quietly "diagnosing" our partners, the frame game that lets Kwame win a negotiation before it starts, the networking event that sent him hiding in the bathroom five times, and how Dr. Lisa Marie turned the loss of her cousin on 9/11 into her life's work.
CONNECT WITH DR. LISA MARIE BOBBY Love, Happiness & Success podcast Connect with Kwame:
negotiateanything.com
@kwamenegotiates across all social platforms
5 October 2026, 9:00 am - 1 hour 7 minutesStop Grinding: Do Less, Protect Your Energy, and Perform Better With DJ Vanas
If you've been pushing hard but feeling empty, this episode will challenge everything you believe about high performance. DJ Vanas — Air Force veteran, member of the Ottawa Nation, and author of The Warrior Within (Penguin Random House) — brings centuries of tribal wisdom into a single, urgent message: you cannot be of service to anyone when you are falling apart.
DJ has spoken at Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and Yakima Tribal Jail in the same week. His work spans 574 federally recognized tribes, healthcare systems, military organizations, and Fortune-level business teams. He doesn't teach cutting-edge frameworks — he teaches ancient ones that have been proven under the worst conditions in human history.
Connect with DJ Vanas
Buy the Book: The Warrior Within
Contact ANI
negotiateanything.com
1 October 2026, 9:00 am - 1 hour 13 minutesStop Giving Advice Nobody Asked For | Nidhi Tewari
Nidhi explains why the biggest mistake leaders make is rushing from empathy into problem-solving, and why she never gives advice unless someone asks for it. She also asks a question worth sitting with: when we fix, share our own stories, or offer platitudes, whose comfort are we really prioritizing?
If you want to connect more deeply with the people in your life and at work, this one's for you.
Connect with Nidhi Tewari
Connect with Kwame:
negotiateanything.com
@kwamenegotiates across all social platforms
28 September 2026, 9:00 am - 53 minutes 28 secondsHow to ACTUALLY Avoid Burnout with Marie-Hélène Pelletier
You already know resilience matters. But what if everything you think about it is incomplete?
In this episode, Kwame Christian sits down with Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier — psychologist, executive coach, and author of The Resilience Plan — to break down why resilience isn't just a trait you either have or don't, and it's not just a muscle you build through grit alone. It's a strategy. One you can actually sit down and plan.
Marie-Hélène opens with a harrowing story from an 8-day mountain traverse in the Canadian Rockies — a river crossing gone wrong that nearly swept her away — and uses it to unpack a truth most high performers miss: we're great on "day one," when we're fresh and energized. The real risk shows up on "day eight," when we're depleted, still making decisions like we're at full strength.
If you're someone chasing big goals and refusing to slow down, this episode will change how you think about what's sustainable — and give you a real framework to build on.
Connect with Marie-Hélène
LinkedIn: Marie-Hélène Pelletier, PhD, MBA
Connect with Kwame:
negotiateanything.com
@kwamenegotiates across all social platforms
24 September 2026, 9:00 am - 52 minutes 13 secondsHeather Monahan: Fire the Villains in Your Life and Build Unshakable Confidence
Fired at 43 with an 18-month non-compete, Heather Monahan had to rebuild her career from scratch — and it led her to her real purpose. In this episode, she and Kwame break down why confidence is a learnable skill, why "done" beats "perfect," and why firing the "energy vampires" in your life can change everything.
You'll learn:
- Why arrogance is actually rooted in insecurity
- How to turn goals into deadlines that stick
- A simple therapy trick for silencing your inner critic
Connect with Heather
Connect with Kwame:
negotiateanything.com
@kwamenegotiates across all social platforms
21 September 2026, 9:00 am - 1 hour 4 minutesKwame Christian and Codie Sanchez on The Big Deal Podcast - 1 Hour Straight of Negotiation Gold
Learn how to take control, reclaim your freedom, and build a business that works without you.
Get Codie's new book: Own Or Be Owned
17 September 2026, 9:00 am - 1 hour 8 minutesThe Saboteur: There's a Voice in Your Head That's Been Lying to You for Years | With Shirzad Chamine
You've been listening to the wrong voice in your head for years — and it's cost you more than you realize.
Shirzad Chamine spent the first 30 years of his life in clinical depression — despite building a venture-backed company, attracting Silicon Valley's top investors, and landing Hewlett-Packard as his first customer. Then, at the height of his success, his own leadership team staged a coup and demoted him as CEO of the company he founded.
That devastating moment forced him to ask a question most high achievers never stop to consider: if I'm this successful and this miserable, who am I really — and what's actually running my mind?
Connect with Shirzad
positiveintelligence.com/assessment
Connect with Kwame:
negotiateanything.com
@kwamenegotiates across all social platforms
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