A Real Work Ready™ Podcast
What no one tells you about building a career. Honest conversations with the leaders who learned it the hard way. New episodes every Wednesday.
Listen on your platform
ABOUT THE SHOW
The rules of work exist. Nobody just said them out loud. Until now.
Most professionals spend years figuring out the unwritten rules of work on their own. Not because they aren't smart enough. Because nobody ever told them.
After 15 years building and leading teams, watching capable, motivated people operate blind in system nobody ever made explicit, Laura Massetti built the show that should have existed years ago.
Every episode: a conversation with leaders, executives, and professionals who finally decided to say what nobody said to them. The invisible rules. The unspoken standards. The things that determine who gets trusted, who gets promoted, and who quietly gets left behind.
NEW EPISODES
Every Wednesday
AVAILABLE ON
Spotify · Apple · YouTube
HOSTED BY
Laura Massetti
THE SHOW COMES FROM A SYSTEM
This podcast is the conversation. Real Work Ready is the training.
No One Tells You This exists because most early professionals operate without a map. Real Work
Ready gives your team that map: six learnable behaviors that determine how work gets received,
planned, communicated, and delivered.
What nobody said to them. Said here.
RECENT EPISODES
17
ORGANIZATIONAL INFLUENCE · POLITICAL CAPITAL
What Political Capital Actually Is and Why Every Professional Needs to Understand It
Julia Bardmesser — CEO, Data4Real
She has spent over two decades watching brilliant professionals do everything right and still lose. Julia Bardmesser on the thing operating inside every organization that most people never learn to see — and why being excellent at your job is not the same as being able to move anything forward.
EPISODE 17
16
PERSONAL BRAND · PROFESSIONAL VISIBILITY
Nobody Told You That Being Great at Your Job Is Not Enough.
Wes Towers — Founder, Uplift 360
When AI threatened to make his business less valuable, he rebuilt his entire model around it. Wes Towers on why excellence is the floor, not the ceiling — and what early professionals have to build on top of good work before the people who matter actually choose them.
EPISODE 16
15
EXECUTIVE COACHING · LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
The Leaders You Most Want to Become Are Not Born That Way. They Are Built.
Eric Nitzberg — Executive Coach to CEOs & C-Suite Leaders
Two decades inside the rooms where the best leaders in the world do their hardest work. Eric Nitzberg on what actually separates the leaders who grow from the ones who stall and what nobody tells you before you spend years figuring it out the hard way.
EPISODE 15
14
CAREER STRATEGY · SELF-ADVOCACY
What Happens When You Bet on Yourself Before Anyone Else Does.
Susana Goitia — LATAM Commercial Strategy & Growth Advisor
She left her home country with a one-year-old baby, became the first woman in rooms that had never had one, rose to CEO, moved female leadership in her organization from zero to fifty percent, and then walked away to start over. Susana Goitia on what it actually costs to bet on yourself before the path is clear, and what she would tell every early professional still waiting for permission.
EPISODE 14
13
RESILIENCE · CAREER THROUGH ADVERSITY
You Can Do All the Right Things and Life Still Happens.
Erica Olenski — Healthcare Strategist · Founder, August's Artists
She did not pause her career during the hardest chapter of her life. She made strategic decisions inside it. Erica Olenski on what it actually looks like to keep moving when your plan and your life stop running on the same track and what every early professional needs to build before their own defining moment arrives.
EPISODE 13
HOSTED BY
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 No One Tells You This 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.
Fortune 100 Executive
MBA · Baruch College
Harvard Executive Education
Imperial College London
New episodes. Program updates. Nothing you didn't ask for.
STAY CONNECTED
Join the Real Work Ready™ list for new episode drops, program updates, and the occasional thing worth sharing. No noise. No filler.
JOIN THE LIST
LISTEN ON
Also available on all major podcast platforms.
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.
Complete this form here →
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.