Michelle Khare

“At this point in 2026, 2025, we release eight to 10 episodes per year. That's my upload cadence. And so every opportunity is a big bet, but what I have found is that when I did that, something even more special happened. It created something unique. And I have found that defining something unique can be even more valuable than consistency or mass viewership. We're very blessed that Challenge Accepted does get a lot of views and we feel strong about the bets that we make on these episodes.”

“The first paragraph is one sentence about who you are and your legitimacy has to be encompassed in one sentence. Hi, my name is Michelle Khare. I'm a content creator with this many followers, and I've done this, this, and this. It's very succinctly proving your value. Second sentence of that first paragraph. What are you asking for or offering to the other person? And ideally, you're doing both. You're offering something. Second sentence of that email to the FBI would be, I'm reaching out to Inquirer about an opportunity to film a collaboration for my channels.”

“Challenge Accepted at its core originally began by me taking a whiteboard, writing all of my fears out, and then connecting each fear to a circumstance that would cause me to address it. Not just as a, like, personal self-help type of thing, because I am a very anxious person internally, but more specifically because it makes for a better story. We realized very early on showing the vulnerability, showing the fear, that's a key part of Snyder's Beats of storytelling. So starting with the all-is-lost moment of the story led us to unlock really, really fascinating episodes.”

“Part of our defensive strategy was how do we do something that is so crazy? No one would be crazy enough, I don't think, to run seven marathons on all seven continents in one week and make a documentary about it and go through all of the production headache of that. Or call the FAA 300 times to get permission to hang off the side of a military plane to recreate the Mission Impossible stunt. It's almost like the things that feel so untouchable instantly become opportunities for story, because it's a great story to try and overcome that. And also, the second mover scenario will at least take them so long to catch up to us to get there.”

“So, what I have done at every step in my life is try to find who are the best people to put around myself to continually challenge me, whether it's business, personal, relationships, content, story, and assembling that team is really important to me. Those are the people who help me decide how do I spend each minute of a calendar day. I really thrive in that environment. And being a business owner is such an oppositional to that, because now you are both the coach and the athlete at the same time.”

“I decided, I'm going to train myself for the worst possible outcome. So I moved into a studio apartment with a roommate. I financially stripped down, I mean, I didn't have much anyways, but stripped as much as I could to simulate, if I'm truly failing at this and having to live in a Hollywood apartment with a bunch of roommates, I'm just going to get used to that. I'm going to get used to it right now. I'm going to cancel all of my memberships and figure out how to stay healthy, with just myself, just myself in this small place.”

“And the quadrant I identify with the most is ruinous empathy, which is the idea of you are so nice to everyone around you, that when you need to give critical feedback to someone, they might leave the meeting feeling like, wait, am I actually doing great? I don't know, because you're sandwiching complements or downplaying the critique and you're not direct enough. And so transforming that into radical candor is about being more direct with feedback. And so some of the things that Kim has helped me very applicably work through are workshopping, giving critical feedback to people.”

“And yet, if you look at what the virtual guy did, because I was trying and wanted to get involved in tech, and then ultimately angel investing, where was I? I was in the Bay Area for 17 years. If I had not done that, I think my success would have had a 0% likelihood. I mean, literally 0%. If I look at how a lot of the ultimately best advising or investing relationships came together, they almost all started with chance encounters at the equivalent of a kebab shop. I go to a barbecue at someone's house and accidentally bump into someone and spill their drink and start a conversation.”