Here’s our interview with Adam Gilad, Emmy-nominated producer, writer, narrative strategist, and founder of the Epicenter Group, on his rules for success.
Adam has written for X-Men and Gargoyles, taught at Stanford, and spent years building a company around teaching people how to communicate. But the through-line of this conversation is not Hollywood credits. It’s a five-hour interview process he runs with CEOs to find the one memory, the one image, that makes their public story impossible to fake.
He also lays out a hard rule for using AI in storytelling: use it to draft, never to speak for you. The moment your audience senses it isn’t really you, he says, you don’t just fail to persuade them. You lose them.
Background of Adam Gilad
Adam Gilad built his career on a simple, uncomfortable belief: most people don’t actually know how to communicate what’s true about themselves. He started as a writer, drawn to language from a young age, the kind of person who says a great line of poetry physically affects him. That pull carried him through a PhD track in literature and communication and into Hollywood, where he wrote and produced more than twenty film and television projects, including episodes of X-Men and Gargoyles, and taught writing and critical thought at Stanford.
The next chapter started almost by accident. Single again at 39, Adam turned to online dating and wrote a profile that stood apart from the usual list of credentials people post. Instead of describing himself, he described the person he wanted to meet. That profile got him cast on the ABC show “How to Get the Guy,” and it also became the seed of a business. He wrote books on how men and women communicate differently, built programs that taught thousands of students, and eventually moved from dating advice into men’s development work.
That work put him in front of entrepreneurs, and he noticed the same pattern he’d seen in dating profiles: business owners default to listing credentials instead of communicating who they actually are. A few years into equity crowdfunding work, helping companies raise capital from non-accredited investors under Regulation CF, he saw founders struggling to tell their own story convincingly. That became the founding insight behind the Epicenter Group. Adam now runs a five-hour interview process with CEOs and founders designed to surface the specific, human detail that makes their public narrative land, the kind of detail a founder wouldn’t think to mention because it never occurred to them it mattered.
His stance on AI is direct. He uses it constantly for research and first drafts, but treats an authentic, specific human voice as the actual asset. Once an audience can sense they’re reading something generated rather than written, he says, the relationship breaks.
In this episode of Rules for Success, Adam Gilad shares his insights with Joseph Varghese about founder authority, the mechanics of storytelling, and why naming the enemy in your business narrative matters more than most founders realize.
Questions and Discussions with Adam Gilad
Here’s a bullet-point summary of the questions and discussions from our interview with Adam:
1. The Gravity Effect of Public Authority
- Adam explains why founder visibility has a measurable, compounding business impact
- Public authority attracts capital, talent, customers, and press
- Research on founder visibility has found consistent advantages in fundraising speed and talent attraction, according to Adam
- People invest in the person as much as the numbers
- Cited Elon Musk’s SpaceX raise as an example: analysts called the valuation excessive, but people invested in Elon, not the cap table
2. From Comic Books to the Epicenter Group
- Full origin story in Background above
- Adam’s path ran through Hollywood, Stanford, and a single online dating profile before landing on founder narrative work
- Equity crowdfunding work later exposed him to founders who couldn’t communicate why they mattered
3. What Adam Gilad Listens For in a CEO Interview
- His interview process runs roughly five hours per client, built on deepening questions
- Goal is to find what a leader understands that the rest of their industry has gotten wrong
- Example: a Series B tech CEO’s childhood memory of following his nurse mother on hospital rounds in the Negev desert
- That single image became the emotional anchor of the CEO’s public narrative
- The aim is a parasocial connection, where an audience feels they know the person, not just the company
4. From Invisible to Inevitable
- Adam’s phrase for what happens when a founder’s public authority becomes clear
- Four measurable advantages: better capital raising, higher valuation, stronger talent attraction, better press
- Talent example: his son’s contrasting experience at Meta versus Hinge illustrated how company culture and visible leadership identity affect hiring and retention
5. Spotting AI Slop vs. Real Human Narrative
- Adam says he can identify AI-generated writing and music within seconds
- Describes an “uncanny valley” quality even in polished AI-generated content
- Cites falling book sales industry-wide as evidence readers now go straight to AI for information instead of full books
- Real individual voice and specific knowledge are what still hold attention
- Named Scott Galloway’s Pivot and Prof G as examples of voice-driven media that still work
6. Where AI Belongs and Where It Doesn’t
- Adam’s rule: use AI to support drafting, never to replace voice
- His process interviews clients individually to capture their specific phrasing and thinking before any AI drafting happens
- Losing perceived authenticity costs both interest and trust, he says the audience doesn’t just disengage, they lose respect
7. Naming the Enemy
- Adam Gilad draws on Lajos Egri’s writing on dramatic conflict to argue that naming a clear “enemy” (a mindset or industry blind spot, not a person) is what galvanizes an audience
- Example: a power-industry client whose enemy is the habit of treating power design as an afterthought instead of a starting point
- Connects the concept to the hero’s journey and Joseph Campbell, and notes that after every resolution a business faces a new plateau with new problems to solve
8. Making People Feel Something
- Adam argues that most business communication (numbers, stats, cap tables) fails to move people emotionally
- Recommends Sally Hogshead’s book “Fascinate” as a resource on capturing attention
- Cites the show “Beef” as an example of writing and performance that still make an audience feel something, in contrast to what he calls “pablum” content
9. Tell a Better Story, Live a Better Story, Make a Better World
- Adam Gilad’s personal framework, now the theme of his Substack
- Three layers: the story you tell yourself, the story you tell the world, and the story your culture tells itself
- Uses a “Spiritual Autobiography” writing exercise with clients: write your life story in three minutes, then rewrite it with no repeated names or places, to reveal how fungible personal identity narratives really are
10. Staying Uncomfortable on Purpose
- Adam’s daily rituals: hiking every morning before his household wakes, grounding through time with his children
- Rejects the idea of a “comfort zone,” calling it instead a “familiar zone” that is not actually comfortable
- Stays engaged through peer groups, masterminds, and reading material that challenges his thinking
- Currently in what he calls “nesting mode” with two young children, prioritizing learning over external adventure for now
Adam Gilad is currently building out his Substack, where he writes under the banner “tell a better story, live a better story, make a better world,” working through what he calls the three layers of story: the one you tell yourself, the one you tell the world, and the one your culture tells itself. He’s also continuing his work at the Epicenter Group, running authority-building interviews with CEOs and founders, and recently served as lead researcher on a book examining cognitive warfare and cultural narrative.
He continues to write and produce creative projects, including a new animated series currently in development, and to teach his “Spiritual Autobiography” creative writing course.
To learn more about Adam’s work, visit www.AdamGilad.com.
💬 Notable Quotes
“Authority, presence, a face and a force out there in the public realm has gravitational pull. The more you have, the more it compounds.” — Adam Gilad
“People invest in Elon. Don’t bet against Elon.” — Adam Gilad
“I get to the story behind the story.” — Adam Gilad
“The biggest mistake is putting out AI and thinking that you’ll fool people. You won’t just fail to fool them, you’ll actually lose them.” — Adam Gilad
“Stasis is death.” — Adam Gilad
“There’s nothing more boring than a story about a happy couple being happy.” — Adam Gilad
“Conflict is drama. Nothing moves without conflict.” — Adam Gilad
“You make money by solving problems. The bigger the problem you solve, the more money you make.” — Adam Gilad
“The comfort zone is actually very uncomfortable for most people. It’s just a familiar zone.” — Adam Gilad
“Tell a better story, live a better story, make a better world.” — Adam Gilad
“It’s imperative to protect our minds, especially for our kids.” — Joseph Varghese
“You want people to feel something. The worst thing to do in marketing is leave people feeling nothing.” — Joseph Varghese
🙌 Connect with Adam Gilad
Adam’s “invisible to inevitable” shift isn’t just a personal-branding idea. It’s the same mechanism behind why a founder finally naming the real bottleneck, out loud, in front of peers who won’t let it slide, is what turns a plateau into forward motion.
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