Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Interview with Coursera CEO Jeff Maggioncalda

I recently interviewed Jeff Maggioncalda on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today as the leader of one of the most disruptive companies in the world of education, Jeff Maggioncalda is the CEO of Coursera, the online learning giant that serves more than 70 million people, and 7,000 institutions globally. Jeff is also the co-founder of Financial Engines, which he built into the largest independent registered investment advisor in America and was ultimately sold for $3 billion. Jeff, thank you for joining us.

Jeff: It's a pleasure to be here.

Adam: Jeff, the pleasure’s mine. You did your undergrad at Stanford, you got your MBA at Stanford, education was clearly an important part of your life long before you were the CEO of an education company. What inspired your interest in education and how has education fueled your success?

Jeff: Well, I went to public school and I grew up in Pacifica, California. I went to public schools through eighth grade. And I always, I always loved learning. I mean, I always loved learning ever since I can remember. And I did well. I think that's another thing that often happens; if people have good experiences in school, they will often end up saying, hey, I like to learn. I'm going to sink more of my time into that. I went to a college prep school in San Francisco called St. Ignatius and loved English. I was in theatre. I just loved the liberal arts and humanities and philosophy and things like that. I got into Stanford, and my dad said, if you get into Stanford, I will pay for your college. I was like, that's great. That's pretty expensive. And I got in and I was gonna be an English major. And my dad said- he's a very practical guy- he said, I'm not going to pay for Stanford if you're an English major, because you will never make any money to pay off what would really be the cost of that degree. And so I don't pick a lot of fights. I said, that's fine. And so I double majored in English and quantitative economics. And then I kind of just enjoy learning stuff. I like to learn about poetry, I like to learn about econometrics, I like to learn about philosophy. I wrote an honors thesis in philosophy on the comparison of steel drum bands in the West Indies and rap music in the U.S. This was back in 1990. So I just always loved playing with ideas and stuff. And then I was thinking about doing law and maybe an MBA. I worked in a litigation consulting firm and decided that many lawyers do not enjoy their jobs. Some I'm sure do but I didn't want to become a lawyer. So I went back and I got my MBA. And I worked at McKinsey a little bit and then had accepted a job at McKinsey. I was approached by a professor at Stanford, who teaches a course or taught a course with Andy Grove, who at the time was the CEO of Intel. And they said, you know, this was 1996, they said, we have these courses on strategy and information technology. We have no courses or cases on the internet. And so can you write a bunch of cases that we could use as instructional materials on the internet? So I did that for a few months. I was planning to go to McKinsey and then I got a call from Bill Sharpe and Joe Rumfest, two professors at Stanford, one, Bill Sharpe, Nobel Prize winner in economics, and they said, we're starting a company to reinvent on investment advice, would you be willing to try to write a business plan and get the thing funded? And so I talked to my wife, she said, you know, you should do this. McKinsey can live without you, but this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. And so I started when I was 27. It was my first job out of school. I was trying to start a company called Financial Engines.

Adam: That is an awesome story. And your entrepreneurial journey is a little bit different than the experience that most entrepreneurs have. Not too many of us are approached by legendary figures in the world of finance and economics, or had legendary figures in general who asked us to join us as founding partners. But lots of people like you face this decision of do I pursue a corporate career? And the question could be faced while you're coming out of college, coming out of graduate school, or even in the middle of your career. You're working for a company and you're debating whether to continue down that corporate path or whether to start your own company. What advice do you have, having turned down McKinsey and gone the entrepreneurial route and now being in the space of education and working with so many different types of people, to anyone listening in who's thinking about whether to pursue an entrepreneurial path or continue on that corporate route?

Jeff: It's an important question whose answer, I think, is different depending on the individual. In my experience, it was a lot of really hard work. Being an entrepreneur, I was terrified, routinely. I was CEO at Financial Engines for 18 years. I would say, for 90% of my experience, I was scared to death that I was going to screw up and that we were going to fail. So for me, at least, it was a lot of hard work. There was not a lot of certainty that there was going to be success. By the way, I got married when I was in college and our daughter, Allie was born two months after I graduated from undergrad. So we had kids, two of them were born. When I started Financial Engines, the third daughter, Lindsay was born one year in so I was trying to balance, you know, being a husband and having three little babies, and trying to start a company. And for me, at least, I would say, if anyone's like me, don't do it for the glory, don't do it for the celebrity, because you're probably going to fail. If you want to work really hard. Well, for me, I wanted to work hard. I wanted to challenge myself, I wanted to work with people, to your point, who maybe I could never have the chance to work with people like this again. And I wanted to work on something that, if it worked, it would be a big deal. It would not only be a big business, but it would really help improve the world. And I really felt that. And then as we went through and built this company, whether it's the investors, or the exact team, or even some of the early customers that you pick, pick people that are in it for the right reasons, because at least in my experience, it's tough going, it's not a walk in the park. And it can be lonely, and it can be depressing. And it can be terrifying. It could also be, of course, exciting and lucrative and those kinds of things. I will say this, if you have a significant other and you're thinking about taking a stable job? Or do I do entrepreneurship? The first thing I did is I talked to my wife. I said, honey, what do you think we should do here because I've got this offer from McKinsey, I've got this opportunity at Financial Engines. And she said, hey, Jeff, you think you're a smart guy, give it a shot, see what happens. And she was totally on board. I would not do this if your significant other is important to you and is not on board with it because it's an all consuming thing. And you know, some people say, oh, I can have work life balance, and also be an entrepreneur. And I will say maybe, if you're lucky. But you should expect that other entrepreneurs, creating companies that will compete with yours are probably going to be working 18 hours a day. So unless you have some magical abilities to outperform someone else who is equally smart, and working much harder, you're gonna have to expect that you're gonna have to work really, really hard.

Adam: How has your leadership style evolved over the years? And on that topic, what do you believe are the key elements of effective leadership?

Jeff: It's definitely evolved. When I started at Financial Engines, I had only ever been a student and a consultant. Pretty much a case writer, but it was all individual contributorship. My wife would say that I was arrogant. And, you know, I certainly would agree that I was confident, and maybe it would be arrogance as well. I guess I would probably agree with her because if you think about arrogance, like I think I can do things that I don't really justifiably have a right to think that I can do. That's probably kind of arrogant, or you should be doing it the way I do it. That's more along the lines of arrogance. And the biggest mistake that I made earlier as a leader, earlier in my career, was I knew for me, what worked, how do I work? How do I make decisions? How do I analyze things? How do I communicate things, even? How do I motivate myself? Well, turns out the way I get motivated is not the same as the way everybody else gets motivated. So my biggest mistake as a leader was thinking and trying to make people work like I do, lead like I do, solve problems like I do. And probably a lot of listeners are like, dude, that's really stupid. Like, of course we know that that's not good. It took me a while to figure that out. And the way that I figured it out, by the way, is my team, who I really respect. Well, way back in the day they were way more experienced than I. They were like, Jeff, this isn't working. Jeff, you think that that's the right way to do it but let me show you a different way to do it that works equally well and maybe when you join forces with the way you do it and the way other people do it, you'll get a better outcome. But realizing that other people have different styles and skills and motivational factors and sensitivities, it took me too long to figure that out. And so now I try to be a little bit more modest. I'm definitely seeking other people's opinions more, I'm not only embracing I'm, I'm actually composing teams with different styles, because I know that different styles. If people trust each other, and communicate well, different styles generally produce better results faster. That's the biggest difference, I think, in my leadership from then to now.

Adam: Jeff, we can spend an entire podcast talking about leadership, talking about your evolution as a leader, and one of the things that I love is that you're very open about the extent to which you sought out guidance from those who have worked with you and listen to the guidance that you are given. And I think it's extremely important for leaders to be open to feedback and to listen, and one of the most important traits of effective leadership is the ability to listen, and the willingness to take in whatever feedback is given to you, and incorporate it into your style to become a better leader. But I want to ask you about your journey, both building Financial Engines as an entrepreneur, and now really building and growing Coursera as a CEO. In your experience, what have been the key variables to building, growing, and ultimately scaling, a highly successful company?

Jeff: Well, when I often give a little talk- I didn't do this early in my career, I had no idea what my point of view was on it- but later in my career, and more recently, I give a talk on, you know, what has been my job as a growth CEO. And that's not to say that this is what some other growth CEO’s should be. And it's not to say that every CEO should be this way. But when I look back over now, almost 25 years of being a CEO of the growth companies, and granted, I've also advised and helped other people, but I've kind of distilled it down to a few things. And this is more of a CEO thing than leadership. And we could talk about leadership a little bit separately. But as I think about my job as a CEO of a growth company, to me, it really comes down to- and this is gonna sound obvious- growth, right? You have to build an enterprise that can grow. And in order to build an enterprise that can grow, you need to build an enterprise that's willing to change. And you don't want random change, you want intentional, well informed change, which means they have to learn. So I see the cycle as learn, change, and grow. That must be inherent in an organization if you want to maximize the chance that you're going to succeed. Now, you can succeed even if you don't do that. And you can fail even if you do do that. That's another big thing that I think is kind of a joke is people who think, oh, they're such great CEO’s, it's always going to work- it doesn't always work. And sometimes people get lucky and it shouldn't have worked and it does. And so it's really a lot more luck. But you can certainly put yourself in a position to get lucky. So learn, change, grow is kind of how I think about it at the organizational level. And at the personal level. And just like you said, Adam, in terms of learning, the way that you learn, the way that almost all people learn is, you create some hypothesis in your mind. It can be about what happens if you put your finger on a flame, it can be about what happens if you change a button on your website. You have a hypothesis that, if I change this, then this is what the result will be this sort of a cause and effect relationship, which is kind of how not just human but all animal brains, we think work that way. They call it active inference. And it might not even be conscious that you're making a hypothesis, but you make a hypothesis, you then test it. And then you update your credentials and basically your neurons reflect what happened. And then you kind of go at it again. The key part of that, though, is having some idea of what you expect, and getting feedback about whether that actually happened, and then modifying it based on what you learn. And so, I think, for an organization and individuals, a CEO, learning is critical and feedback is critical to learning. I also think clear hypotheses are critical to learning. On the change side, there is both the intention to change, which is sort of an open mindedness. And then there is the capacity to change. And I've definitely seen some people say I want to change and they truly want to change, but they're not able to say, well, what gets stuck? There's a sort of theory or a theory of change that kind of says, a lot of times people say they want to change, but they don't change because there are hidden commitments that they'd have to let go of. There are things that they will lose if they move from A to B, but they're not even aware of what those things are consciously, but they can't move to B because they haven't really let go of some of the things that they'll lose it they're B. So understanding what you have to let go of in order to make a change is often important. To have the capacity to change, and then once you change, you test it again and see if it worked. And if it works, you keep doing it and then you grow, you scale up. And if it doesn't work, you pivot, you do something different. So it's a lot like you're kind of the lean startup, but kind of in your brain. That really is, I think, the essence of leading a growth company, though.

Adam: Very well said and very true. I can tell you, from my experience leading smaller entrepreneurial companies- neither of my businesses are anywhere near the size or scale of Financial Engines or Coursera- but everything you said is as applicable to all the companies that I've started and grown and built.

Jeff: Yeah, in fact, I'll give a little tip. I was talking to my daughter. She has started a company called Lovewick. It’s a couple's app that's on iOS. And she's been asking me for advice around entrepreneurship and raising money and product design and things. And one of the things like, I will go back to Ali and say, often when she's like, do I do this? Or do I do this? Or this? I said, Ali, what will maximize your rate of learning? Is getting an engineer to build that feature gonna maximize it? Or is it running that test on Instagram that's going to maximize it? Or is it talking to that investor that's going to maximize it. Maximizing the rate of learning is one of the most important things that a leader of a smaller company must do. But to your point, Adam, even big companies with a world changing so quickly, maximizing rate of learning is becoming an absolute imperative for any, any leader of any company size,

Adam: Jeff, you literally transitioned perfectly into my next question. You gave one answer to the question, but I'll ask it anyway and see what else you have to add. I wanted to know what skills you believe are most integral to succeeding in the modern workforce and why? You named one. What are a couple of others?

Jeff: You know it. And where I get a little bit confused in my thinking is trying to separate segments. Well, what are skills? And what are attributes and sort of preferences? So if you don't mind, I'll kind of clump them together and the listeners can try to figure out which might be which. I also think that habits can change preferences. And so if you do something enough, you actually start enjoying it more, especially once you gain a sense of mastery. So let's assume that these are all learnable traits. But when we say sort of traits, which might be preferences, plus skills, what traits are really important? If you think about an entrepreneur as maximizing the rate of learning, I think curiosity is incredibly important. Now learning is really important. But that, to me, is the special sauce of curiosity. Curiosity makes learning fun because you actually genuinely want to know the answer to something. It's not like, I have to eat my spinach and learn. It's like no, I'm actually super curious to know why that button didn't work. Or I often just ask why. If we really miss a goal, and a goal is generally a hypothesis- we missed a goal and I say, why did we miss something? Like, ooh, I'm in trouble. I was like, no, you're not, I just want to learn. When we beat a goal everyone celebrates, but how many people celebrate and then do a debrief and say, why did we beat that goal by so much? I think curiosity and wondering why is really an important attribute. I think that communication is a really important skill, because if you want to have a group of people, whether those are investors or employees or customers, creating meaning and clarity about what you're trying to do is very important. I'd say written communication and visual communication are both really important. I would also add in a little bit of performance in theater, because that's also something that is a way of communicating that's important. I think, you know, I've been in this group called YPO, for a long time- Young Presidents Organization. So they're all CEOs. And there was a group of about eight of us that were being interviewed and they were asking, you know, what do you think is the most important thing about a successful entrepreneur and we all had sort of different answers. But as we sort of shared, like, you know, what we're all kind of saying is one of the most important traits- and it's kind of odd- but we all came up with systems thinking. Not for every company, not for a lifestyle company, perhaps, but if you want to build a company it’s going to scale. It's important to think of it as a system and even a system of systems. So your HR system, how do you recruit people? How do you train people? How do you set goals? How do you set budgets? How do you test hypotheses with the product? How do you write code? I mean, there's just so many ways that a business is a system and when you look at certain problems, thinking about the scale of ability of the business as the scalability of the system. And if you think about that, we're like, well, where's the bottleneck? What will be the constraining factor on the scalability of the system? Sometimes it turns out to be people that the leaders aren't scaling. Sometimes the servers aren't scaling. Sometimes your distribution channels aren't scaling or you don't have enough sort of market opportunity that you're going after. I think thinking of things as a system is another really important skill that entrepreneurs should try to master.

Adam: Jeff, I love that. We used to work with a technology partner and he would always say people, process, technology; people process technology. He would just drive those three points home. And process is integral to scaling a business. You mentioned people. I would love your thoughts on the topic of hiring. What do you look for in people you hire and what are your best tips on the topic?

Jeff: Yeah so they're sort of necessary versus sufficient. So for me it is necessary- they have to be honest. I mean I just don't like to work with people who are not honest, and who are disrespectful to other people. That's just like table stakes. I really, and again, this is more me, I like people who are passionate about what they're doing. And ideally, there's a good match between what they're passionate about and what the company is working on. And even what role they'll be in. I like people who have a track record of performance. And, by the way, I do think of the performance of another CEO sort of entrepreneur trait. Do you care about performance? If you think of an entrepreneur like an athlete- you might be totally gifted to be a very fast runner. But generally speaking, that's not going to be enough. You have to be committed to always performing at a higher level, like that's going to maximize your chance of being successful. So I like to find performers, I do feel that people who have been athletes in the past often exhibit, you know, traits that are your performance traits, which often by the way, great performers get feedback, they measure themselves, they get objective coaching on how to do better, and then they go back and hit it again. And they just love getting better. So I love people who are committed to performance and improvement. That excites me. I like people who are positive, I think it's important to be realistic and data driven. But honestly, pessimistic people who are kind of downers, they kind of subtract energy from the room. And so I generally go for people who are open and honest, and performance oriented, have a track record. I also think there's a certain quickness that I look for. I mean, just how quickly can people put together ideas, decide on what you might want to do, respond to something clever. I think there's a quickness that also is pretty valuable. So that's not super coherent, but I would say respect, integrity, positivity, and then performance improvement, and a real passion to do the best job you can do.

Adam: Jeff, you hit on so many important themes that I hear over and over again, from all the great leaders who I speak to, and I want just to touch on one of them; the importance of having a can do attitude. I've seen it over and over again, in my own personal hiring. It doesn't matter what school someone went to, it doesn't matter what company someone worked for, what their grade point average was, as soon as they start working for you, what is their attitude? Are they someone who is going to get things done and have the ability to solve problems without needing you to hold their hand? Or are they someone that is going to really struggle without the structure that most companies aren't really able or willing to provide to each and every employee. So just the mindset and the attitude that an employee brings to the table is so important in determining whether he or she is going to succeed in your company. So I definitely appreciate that.

Jeff: You're spot on. And you know, one of the things I've noticed for a lot of people who are just starting their careers, and maybe this is generational, and maybe it was always a case, I don't know. But here's what I would say is there's an expectation that I've noticed among younger people earlier in their career, they want to know what do I need to do to get promoted? What do I need to do to do this? What do I need to do that? And I think it comes from an educational system where you're super high performing, you want to get into a good college, like, tell me what I need to do to get an A. And so it's kind of study to the test and boy that's super smart and they work super hard. But often that can-do is a bit compromised because it's like, I can do it if I have instructions. One of the most important things about entrepreneurship is if it was obvious how to solve the problem, someone would have already solved it. No one can tell you how to do it. You have to believe that you can do it. You have to expect that you're going to fail multiple times, but certainly no one's going to tell you how to do it. And so what I often try to do when I talk to people, and they're thinking about the career, as I say, look, in the earlier start parts of a career, yes, more guidance, more clarity, helping people with a little bit more prescription of how you do these kinds of jobs is important. But I set the expectation that as you develop in your career, as you get broader accountability, broader span of control, as the leverage that is expected of you to solve important problems increases with that role, the certainty that you're going to have about how to do it goes down. The number of people who are gonna tell you how to do it goes down, because if I tell you how to do it, you're not accountable anymore. I'll be accountable because I'm the one who told you how to do it. There is self accountability, right? There's a can do, I can do it. I'm not even sure how, but I will figure this out. That really actually provides, in my opinion, a certain liberation, I hear so many people kind of say, I'm gonna blame that or I didn't do this well because that person didn't do something or that wasn't right. Or it wasn't really spelled out for me how to do it. And I actually think that that reduces agency, it reduces effectiveness. Now, of course, people need support. They certainly need a fair playing field. But to the extent that someone can say, I can do this, and I will figure it out- I think the opportunities are much greater for those types of folks.

Adam: Jeff, I love it. I truly love everything you said. And I can tell you and I can tell listeners that as an entrepreneur, I don't have a boss. When you were running Financial Engines, you had partners, but you didn't have a boss. No one told you what to do. And, yes, that, in theory sounds nice. But in reality, it means that when you come across a problem, you can't just turn to someone and say, can you please solve this for me? You can seek the counsel of others, you can try to bring in resources to help you. And that's what leaders do. But at the end of the day, there's a level of accountability that, as an entrepreneur, falls on your shoulders. And with that same experience, the first thing you want in someone you hire, which you articulated beautifully, is that same mentality, because you want members of your team who have that mindset, who aren't going to turn to you every single time they're given a project and ask you, okay, well, how do I do this. Rather, you want them to be able to drive it to the finish line, as independently as possible unless they truly do need some guidance. And clearly, you want people who are team oriented and are willing and eager to solicit input, but who are at the same time, independent enough to be able to get things done without hand holding.

Jeff: And in fact, you will, the company will not scale, if you are solving everybody else's problems. Oh, by the way, you probably can't solve those problems. The people you hire should be better at solving certain types of problems than you're able to. The other thing I would say is that the board officially is your boss, but to your point, Adam, they basically decide whether they're going to hire or fire the CEO, and whether they're going to sell the company, and then they want to make sure that there's no crime or fraud. But generally- and then, of course, they can provide strategic input. But in terms of accountability, the board is not accountable for the success of the company, the CEO is. And so to your point, I think about delegated accountability. I am ultimately accountable for everything, but then I delegate. I don't delegate tasks, I delegate accountability, like I'm accountable for all this, but you know what, we're on a team. And so we're gonna actually say, I'm accountable for this, but you're going to be accountable for this piece, which means figuring out and working with other people to figure it out. So we're not all isolated, we're a team. But we all have to be accountable. And ultimately, if you want to be the CEO or an entrepreneur who's the leader- I don't know if everyone has to do this, but what I've always said is ultimately, I'm accountable for everything that happens in this company. And that's just the way it is. And to your point, I want to find other people that I can delegate some of that accountability to, so that I can handle that job.

Adam: Jeff, and accountability has clearly been a key theme in your advice throughout this conversation in terms of how to succeed as a leader and how to build, grow, and scale your company. I did want to add one more thing before I ask you our final question, which is to anyone listening to this podcast, who heard Jeff's comment about employees going to Jeff and asking him how do I get promoted- because that is a question that people will ask their bosses and if they don't ask their bosses, it's a question that they're thinking. I had Dan Helfrich, he was one of the first guests of my podcast. He's the CEO of Deloitte Consulting. And this is a question that I've asked a number of other guests, but I'll point to Dan's answer. When I asked Dan, how did you become the CEO of Deloitte Consulting? How did you get there? And his answer was, I got there because I never tried to become the CEO of Deloitte Consulting. I was never focused on getting promoted, I was never focused on my next job, I was focused on the job that I had, on excelling in the job that I had, on doing as good a job as I possibly could. And if anyone listening wants to understand how to get promoted, or how to become CEO, it's by focusing on your job, doing as good a job as you possibly can so that the company you work for has no choice but to promote you, or whatever competitors are out there take notice, and will poach you and bring you on. So that's how you get promoted.

Jeff: Yeah, Adam, I totally agree. I would maybe add one nuance to it. If you think about a career as having momentum and direction, I think that the momentum has to be generated by the individual. By working hard, by being honest, being a great teammate, always improving, performing at the highest levels. There are these questions about well, which direction should I go to become this job in order to tend towards the CFO or that job, etc. I do think a lot of advice and mentorship can help you choose your direction. But the true force of your career needs to come from the dedication and the effort and the honesty with which you perform your job. And so I would very much agree with that.

Adam: Great advice, Jeff. I want to ask you one last question and that is directly related to what you focus on day in and day out. What is the future of education and what should entrepreneurs, leaders, and listeners of this podcast, who, by definition, are lifelong learners, understand?

Jeff: Well, so we're gonna end on a really simple, narrow question. I will assume that your listeners will be more interested in what might their future trajectory of learning education look like, as compared to how might the structure of higher ed change? As I think about it, sometimes I give talks at business schools, and people say like, if I want to become a future leader, what are the most important things that I need to be thinking about in terms of learning? I think one- and this is going to sound a bit cliche- is to really set yourself up to be a lifelong learner. And what that means is to set the expectation and the habit of learning. The number five all time course on Coursera is a course called Learning How to Learn. It wasn't so important 20 or 30, or 40 years ago, because the world was changing more slowly, the obsolescence of knowledge and skills. And the emergence of new tools was sufficiently slow that what you learned had a long shelf life. But the rate of change in the world is making it so important that you learn new skills and new tools. And there's new ways of doing things. It's just happening so much faster, that if you don't become a lifelong learner, you're going to get left behind pretty quickly. So I would say, set yourself up to be a lifelong learner. What does that mean? Frankly, I do think that learning is important. But credentials are also important. Because it's hard for an employer to know or an investor to know, you know, what do you really know. They'll know it from your track record, and often from a credential. So I would say that learning skills and often getting credentials, whether that's a college degree or certificate, or a nano degree or a Coursera professional certificate, I do think the credentials can be helpful. And they will, they are already available in much smaller pieces. So I would say commit yourself to learning. There's a world of incredible online learning out there at different bite sized chunks. You can sometimes go for the big chunk and get a degree, a Master's or a bachelor's. You get a smaller chunk, which is like a certification, a cloud certification, professional certificate. Or you go to a really small one, which is a YouTube video. But continually learning is going to be the key. And I think it'll be a broad portfolio of more formal, longer term rigorous learning and credentialing, like college degrees, as well as very short things, including on Coursera. We have these guided projects, they're about 90 minutes. You build a project using a tool, and you just get a certificate that says, you finished the project and you could show the project. I built a Python program, I wrote a sequel query, I used Photoshop and made this picture. So I think there's a really large portfolio now of ways that you can learn and credentials that you can earn together. I think they're going to help people with that lifelong learning journey.

Adam: Jeff, thank you so much for joining us. And thank you for all the wisdom and all the advice.

Jeff: Adam, it's been my pleasure. Thank you.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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