Big Swings Only

Big Swings Only

Playing it safe is easy. It’s comfortable. And it will never take you to the next level.If you’ve got what it takes to hit the ball out of the park, the only thing holding you back is whether you’re brave enough to take a big swing.Big Swings Only is for people who were meant for more — the ones done playing by rules that were never built for them.Hosted by Kwame Christian, each week brings you the real stories of people who fought their fear, went after the life they actually wanted, and became who they had to become to get it.The psychology behind the swing. The strategy behind the risk. The nerve it takes to go all in.You were built for more, and this show was built for you. Subscribe now. About the Host: Kwame Christian, Esq., M.A. Kwame Christian the founder and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute. He's known for his viral TEDx Talk, “Finding Confidence in Conflict,” and is a bestselling author of two books: • How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race (2022) • Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life (2020) Tune in to Transform Your Life: Join millions of listeners who have already unlocked the power of negotiation. Subscribe now and start mastering the skills that will transform your professional and personal life. Watch our episodes on YouTube for more visual insights and tips. Connect with Us: • Website: American Negotiation Institute • Email: simon@negotiateanything.com • LinkedIn: Kwame Christian • YouTube: Negotiate Anything Produced by the American Negotiation Institute For ad inquiries, please reach out to: Network+NA@yapmedia.com

Episodes

October 19, 2026 • 60 mins
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… b...
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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 c...
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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 stre...
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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 "...
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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 ...
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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 Unive...
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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 www....
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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 pl...
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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...
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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 codiesanchez.com
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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 ...
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Great leaders don't avoid pressure — they know how to think clearly inside it. In this episode, Kwame Christian sits down with Dr. Tracey Marks, a board-certified psychiatrist and one of the most trusted mental health educators on YouTube (with over 2 million followers), to break down what's actually happening in a leader's brain during a high-stakes conversation — and how to stay in control of it. Dr. Marks explains w...
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Right now, someone is telling a chatbot about the guy she went on a third date with — and it's giving her a pretty good answer. That should worry you. Stefanos Sifandos has spent 25 years coaching people through relationships face-to-face, in the room. In this episode, he explains why AI can make you feel self-aware without ever making you change — and why that satiation is quietly keeping people stuck. We get into: ...
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Scott Stirrett left a prestigious career at Goldman Sachs to build something from nothing — and it changed everything he understood about growth. In this episode, Scott (founder of Venture for Canada, author of The Uncertainty Advantage) breaks down why comfort is actually the biggest threat to your growth, and how uncertainty — the thing most of us run from — is a skill you can systematically build. Connect w...
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David JP Phillips reveals how to hack your internal chemistry—on demand—to show up with confidence, presence, and power when it matters most. Drawing from his best-selling book High on Life, David breaks down the six key neurochemicals that control your behavior (dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphin, testosterone, and cortisol), and shows you how to intentionally trigger the right “emotional cocktail” be...
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What if reading people wasn't a gift, but a skill you could actually learn? Dr. Sabine Charles has one of the most unusual resumes you'll hear on this show — she's a former chief audit executive and fraud investigator turned hypnotherapist, and the founder of a leadership framework called MeQ (Mindset, Emotional Intelligence, and Leadership Qualities). As an auditor, her job was to walk into a room and convince skeptical exe...
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What if the biggest thing standing between you and your next opportunity is the decision to reject yourself before anyone else can? Leadership expert and bestselling author Selena Rezvani joins Kwame Christian to explore what it really takes to advocate for yourself, take bigger swings, and keep moving when fear, perfectionism, or self-doubt tells you to play it safe. Selena shares the bold ask that changed the course of her coll...
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Everybody knows ChatGPT. Almost no one knows the person who took it to market. In this episode of Big Swings Only, Kwame Christian sits down with Zack Kass, who spent over a decade at the center of the AI industry and led go-to-market strategy at OpenAI — bringing the technology to hundreds of millions of professionals worldwide. Zack walked away from that career at its peak, driven by a hard truth: technology promised to ma...
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Your best ideas won’t go anywhere if you don’t know how to build the influence to make them happen. In this episode of Big Swings Only, Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill and innovation leader Jason Wild, co-authors of Genius at Scale, reveal what it really takes to turn ambitious ideas into meaningful change. Their research shows that breakthrough innovation isn’t just about having the right idea&mdash...
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Why do some people seem addicted to conflict — and what can we actually do about it? In this powerful episode, conflict resolution expert Bill Eddy breaks down the four key traits of high-conflict personalities and teaches us how to deal with them — without losing our minds. -Learn Bill Eddy’s “BIFF” Response Formula-Discover the 4 types of high-conflict people-Understand why society is becoming more...
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