A REAL WORK READY™ PODCAST
Hard Earned.
Leaders who built something, for the people building toward it. Every episode, one thing a senior leader had to learn the expensive way. New episodes every Tuesday.
ABOUT THE SHOW
THE PREMISE
Most people get the job. Nobody just said them out loud.
Until now.Almost nobody gets the briefing.
Everyone who has built something learned it the same way. By paying for it. A decision that cost them a year. A blind spot nobody named until it was expensive. A rule everyone else seemed to already know.
Laura Massetti spent fifteen years inside Fortune 100 organizations hiring, building, and deciding who moved up. She watched capable people do everything right and stall anyway, and she could never explain it to them in a way that actually helped.
So she started asking the people who got past it. Not what they achieved. What they had to learn, what it cost them, and what they would hand to someone coming up behind them.
THE SHOW COMES FROM THE SYSTEM
This podcast is the conversation. Real Work Ready is the training.
Hard Earned is where leaders say what it took. Real Work Ready is where your team learns it before it costs them: six learnable behaviors that determine how work gets received, planned, communicated, and delivered.
What nobody said to them.
Said here.
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29 - Not Getting Your Dream Job Might Be the Best Thing That Happens to You
CAREER MOVES · HIRING IN THE AGE OF AI
Kim Steiner — Vice President, Fource RecruitingShe walked away from a senior role that looked perfect on paper and clashed with her values, what she calls the gilded cage. Kim Steiner on how missing one dream job led to a 20-year career, why AI screening has made employers more risk-averse, and how to tell your story beyond your resume without burying the lead.
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28 - How to Work With Difficult People Without Losing Yourself
WORKPLACE RELATIONSHIPS · CONFLICT AT WORK
Amy Gallo — Contributing Editor, Harvard Business Review · Author, Getting Along
Great work is only half the job, and the other half is the manager who second-guesses you, the peer who agrees in the room and undercuts you after, and the colleague who always seems to be playing an angle. Amy Gallo on why conflict feels so personal, how your brain turns small moments of tension into negative stories about other people, and how to respond with agency and set boundaries when a relationship cannot be fixed.
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27 - The Sales System Nobody Builds Until It Is Too Late
SALES LEADERSHIP · BUSINESS SCALING
Aleasha Bahr · Founder, Black Sheep Sales MethodMost leaders who are good at sales built it on instinct, and that works fine until they try to hand it off, hire a team, or scale beyond themselves. Aleasha Bahr on why 50 to 70 percent of lost deals are actually winnable, what breaks the moment intuitive success has to become a system, and why hiring a VP of Sales before that system exists is one of the most expensive mistakes a business can make.
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26 - Your Company Has a Hidden Operating System. Here Is How to Read It.
ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE · WORKPLACE PSYCHOLOGY
Nick Holmes · Founder, Culturnova · PhD Researcher, Organizational Behavior
Culture is not a vibe. It is a system, and like any system, it can be read. Nick Holmes on the four domains that make up a company's operating system, Maps, Wires, Patterns, and Sparks, why burnout comes less from overwork than from role ambiguity, and what to ask in an interview that reveals more than anything on a company's website.
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25 - Why HR Professionals Undercharge (And What To Do About It)
HR CONSULTING · BUSINESS COACHING
Sam Eaton · Founder, MindAbility Business Coaching · Author, The Trouble With Pink Wheelbarrows
She scaled an HR consultancy from 650K to 4.3M and has since guided over 260 founders to build 6, 7, and 8 figure businesses. Sam Eaton on why HR professionals cannot see their own value, what a failed online retail business taught her about forecasting, ego, and knowing when to pivot, and why an objection in a client conversation is often an opening rather than a rejection.
Laura Massetti
New Yorker. Now based in northern Italy. Laura spent 15 years inside Fortune 100 organizations hiring, building, and evaluating talent. She was also the early-career professional who showed up early, stayed late, and still couldn't figure out why the effort wasn't translating.
She built Hard Earned because the conversation she needed most, the one where someone who had actually made the decisions finally said what they were thinking, didn't exist. It does now.
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Apply to be a guest
For senior executives, founders, HR Leaders, and people leaders who've been through it, and have something they'd tell their younger self if they could.
We read every application personally and review your LinkedIn ourselves. If it's a fit, you'll hear back within 7–10 days with a link to schedule.