I recently interviewed Olympic gold medalist Cullen Jones on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today is the first black swimmer to set a world record. Cullen Jones is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, winning gold medals in the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympic Games. Cullen, thank you for joining us.

Cullen: Thank you so much for having me.

Adam: You grew up on the East Coast. You were born in New York. You were raised in Irvington, New Jersey, which was a pretty rough neighborhood to say the least. As a kid, you loved being in the water. And when you were five, you were on a family vacation at a water park in Pennsylvania that changed your life. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What early experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?

Cullen: Yeah, I would say I believe in humble beginnings and also believe in irony. At the age of five, nearly drowning, that was not the plan for my parents when they took me to an amusement park for water rides. All they knew was that I loved being in the water. Every time I was in the water and they pulled me out, I would cry. So they were like, this kid's like, it calls to him. He loves water. And so my parents said, we're going to go to this water park. And I ended up going. I wanted to follow suit. My dad, who was 6'4", not just because he was an imposing figure in size, but also just because I looked up to him, wanted to get on the biggest ride. We ended up going down the ride and long story short, Adam, I ended up flipping upside down. When it comes to most drownings, it's usually because someone is going and doing something that they're not supposed to be doing. They're horseplaying and they're not listening to the rules. I was completely listening to the rules. I was coming down this ride right after my dad. And unfortunately, I ended up flipping upside down. My dad was handing me to the next person, and then the last car had to come and get me. So I think that's what's so important about this and why I'm such an advocate for people to learn to swim, is that at the age of five, I was just having a carefree day, listening to the rules, doing everything fully supervised. I was still able to go underwater. The only thing that could have helped me in that situation was having swim lessons. If I had had formal swim lessons at that time, I would have known I would tap off the bottom or jump to the side, or if I had lessons by that time, maybe I was able to hold myself up enough to say, help. So I'm a big, big advocate for people learning this.

Adam: And that moment, that experience drove you to learn how to swim, sparked a passion for becoming a swimmer. You started taking swimming lessons. You started training to swim. How did you go from becoming a casual swimmer, someone swimming with a bunch of friends, to becoming a two-time Olympic gold medalist?

Cullen: A lot of time, Adam. I don't think any part of my life was instant gratification at all. I got sixth and seventh place. I always say I got the pink and purple ribbon. It is the truth. I didn't take to swimming in the sense of speed and performance in the beginning. I was honestly just doing it for the love of it. I loved my friends that I was hanging out with. I loved going to swim meets and I loved just that I was able to do all of those things in the water. So there was just pure joy in the beginning. And I think that's why I was able to stay in the career for as long as I did was because it wasn't necessarily like I got to win. I was so focused on winning, especially when I was younger. It wasn't that. It was just the purity. And it took me five different teachers after that drowning incident to start feeling comfortable around water again. So that's why whenever I teach lessons, I've been teaching lessons since I was 15. My biggest thing is making sure that people have a positive experience around water because I know firsthand what it feels like to have a negative experience and then try to kind of come back from that. It's a road. And so for me, going into swimming, being a competitive swimmer, it was something that I was naturally drawn to. I was also naturally drawn to basketball. My dad was a basketball player. And at 15, I had to make that decision of which one am I going to do? But I listened to enough podcasts and read enough that for all parents listening out there, most athletes that make it to the high level, they do multiple things. So don't specialize too early. I was playing water polo, playing basketball, I was swimming, I did gymnastics, I did soccer. I did a lot of track and field. I did a lot. But swimming was the one that just kind of rose to the top because that was where my interest was. And I just love being in the water.

Adam: Collin, you shared a lot there that we can dive into. First thing you said which really jumped out at me was one of the reasons why you became a two-time Olympic gold medalist was because you simply loved swimming. You loved what you were doing. You had this deep passion for it. And when you love what you do, you're going to spend as much time as possible doing it. It doesn't feel like work. It's fun. And if you want to become great at something, it's a lot easier if you truly love what you're trying to become great at.

Cullen: Exactly. It's that anchor point. You can say that you want to get an A on this next test, or I need to get this A on this next test. Right. Well, that's great, but how are you going to do it? And if you need to do it and you want to do it, you will find ways to do it. I have a five-year-old. He loves to play roadblocks. He wants to play roadblocks. He will find any way to do it. But if I ask him to go brush his teeth, oh, God, I get all these excuses because he doesn't want to do it. But when people want to do something, they find a way. So that's one of the things that I think is so strong when it comes to goal setting or whatever you want to do. Find that anchor point that makes it more than just an affirmation of something that you want to do. Make it something that becomes an immediate lifestyle. It becomes something that you will live the way that you need to live to be able to accomplish that.

Adam: And a lot of it really comes down to the why. Your five-year-old son doesn't want to brush his teeth. I'm excited to brush my teeth because I understand the why. I want to have white teeth. I want to have healthy teeth. I love going to the dentist. When I go to the dentist, I feel great because I come out with my teeth cleaner, whiter, healthier. But a five-year-old doesn't understand the why.

Cullen: Correct. And sometimes as parents, you have to make the why. So the thing that we did was you don't want to smell bad. You want to speak to people. You want to have really nice, clean breath. You know, remember that nasty flavor? Yeah. Yeah. If you brush your teeth, you'll feel better, but you'll stand up taller. You say all of these things to just build this why for this five-year-old. And I feel like as parents and guardians, that's what we do. We build the why, even if it means embellishing a little bit. Like, does it actually make him stand taller? No. But by proxy, by brushing his teeth, is he doing it? Yeah, he's actually a little bit more confident in himself. He's walking a little bit better. And so I think no matter what it is, what we do, whatever we put our minds to, as long as we can figure out the why and to build the ladder to how to get there, you're going to find yourself being successful. You're going to be close.

Adam: Something else you mentioned which is interesting, the importance of not specializing in a single sport at an early age. You obviously spent a ton of time swimming, but you played basketball, you ran, you were a multi-sport athlete. And if you apply that more broadly, it's really important for us to get as many different experiences as we can, try as many different things as we can, for a variety of different reasons. Number one, it helps us understand what we're ultimately great at, what we ultimately enjoy. Number two, it gives us exposure to different areas. It broadens our perspective. It allows us to become better at what we ultimately specialize in, which was the case for you.

Cullen: Absolutely. And I think there was something from everything, right? Like what I got from track was my endurance, because as a swimmer, my endurance was very different than what it was on land. So I was a sprinter on land, I was a sprinter in the water, but when I ran track, I had to run for longer distances. So that helped my stamina when I got to swimming. You know, I did gymnastics and gymnastics is all about spatial awareness, which helped me massively just as a human being. I don't fall nearly as much as most people. I think it's just because I learn so much from all of these different sports. It also helped me when it came to the flip turns when it came to flexibility. I understood from I grabbed from all of these different sports on all of these different life experiences, which ultimately helped me in the thing that I was passionate about when I found something.

Adam: What were the keys to reaching peak performance, to ultimately attaining greatness in your craft? And what can anyone do to attain greatness?

Cullen: I think the first thing you have to understand is failure is part of the process. You have to understand that failing is not a for lack of a better word, death sentence to the goal of whatever you're trying to get to. It is actually part of the process of getting there. You have to find out the ways that don't work before you find the way that does. And I think that as long as you can continue to have that resilience to continue to try each and every way, no matter if it fails or not, you don't give up. That's when you'll find greatness. That's when you'll see success. And so for a lot of people, they see the gold medals, they see the world record, and they're like, oh God, Cullen, you must've been winning the whole time. No. There were a ton of losses in there. Absolutely not. The amount of times that I felt in life like, man, I'm a black kid in a sport that doesn't look like me. And it feels like this swimmer has a leg up, or that swimmer has this leg up, or this, this, this, and this. And I dealt with that my entire career. And was it always the case? No. Was it a lot of the time the case? Absolutely. But it didn't let it deter me. And so that's why I think that it's so important to have that anchor point. Are you living the goal? If I say I want to lose weight and I'm like, all right, I'm going to lose 20 pounds in the next year. I'm going to do that. Okay, cool. Well, at two o'clock in the morning when I wake up and I'm like, oh, my stomach's hungry. Let me go get a bag of chips. Am I living the goal of trying to lose those 20 pounds? No, I'm not. I think that that's the part where we have to make whatever the goal is that we have real, we have to make it attainable. And I would also add that I think we need to make baby steps towards whatever that goal is. So if it's 20 pounds, okay, in the first two months, I want to lose five healthy pounds, not water weight, five healthy pounds. And then if I get to that goal, maybe I do treat myself a little bit. Cool, I have something. And you always have that carrot out in front of you. I think that any goal that's worth having, you're going to have diversity, but also you should try to find the joy in what you're doing, even if it is hard. Swimming is one of those sports that is hard. You don't play swimming. You can play other sports. You don't play swimming. When you are training, you are in practice every day. I hate to say the word trying to hurt yourself, but you're really trying to put yourself in a very uncomfortable place so that when you have to race, you already know what that uncomfortable feeling is. You can push past it or delay it a little bit by the training that you do. So when you go to training, it's not necessarily always fun, but you have to find the joy in what you're doing. And again, make that goal a lifestyle. Don't make it something that you just want to do. It's something that you have to do. I need to do it. And I'm going to find out how to do it by going through these steps.

Adam: Cullen, you showed a lot of great lessons there. The importance of pushing your comfort zone, the importance of understanding that failure is an inevitable part of the process. If you fail once and you say, that's it, I'm done, you're never going to attain any kind of success. But if you recognize that everyone fails, everyone falls, even Olympic gold medalists, Fail all the time. Setting micro goals and setting macro goals. Here's my long-term goal. I want to win an Olympic gold medal, but along the way, I have to win today. I have to win this week. I have to win this month. We have to achieve the small things before we can achieve the big things.

Cullen: 100% Adam. I mean, there were days where I was so tired. I was so exhausted and had so little motivation. I always say motivation is crap because motivation is not what gets you that Olympic gold medal. It's the consistency. Sometimes the goal was just getting to practice, not finishing the practice, Adam, just going was it. And there were practices where my coach just, the light was not in my eyes. And he was like, you know what, bud, you're going to warm up. You're going to do some stretching today. But I was proud of myself because I went, I was there. And sometimes we had to adjust, but The number one thing was I didn't lose the passion and I stayed with the program that we had put forth. But some days, man, it was just getting out of bed was the goal.

Adam: How did you motivate yourself on the days that you didn't feel motivated? And what tips do you have for anyone listening on the topic of motivation?

Cullen: you have to make it real for yourself. And when I say make it real for yourself, a perfect example was I would put pictures of my competitors in my house of them winning. And so for me, it was always a trigger when someone said, you can't do something like you can't beat me or you can't do this. And I've had competitors say like, oh yeah, I'm going to win. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. And there's just so much confidence. And to me, I took that as a personal slight like, oh, you think you're that much better than me? OK, cool. So every day when five o'clock rolled around in the morning and I didn't want to go to practice and I would look up, I had these pictures of someone winning and I was immediately motivated. And so we all have these things, these phones. Put your goals on your phone. How many times do we look at our phone in a day? You have to live it. And when I say live it, it's when you start to feel that ache to not do it, to do that easy thing. That's the moment where you need the positive reinforcement trigger to continue the program. That's when you need it. And I knew I had some of those pictures of those competitors on my fridge. Like when I wanted to eat something bad, I was sitting there like pizza burger. Yeah, let's go. And I would go to my fridge and I'd see a picture of one of my competitors like, and I'm like, Fine, I'll have the salmon and the salad. You know, it's like at that point, I made it real for myself that even if I didn't want to do something, there was always a trigger where not that I felt bad, but it was a reminder that if I do this, I'm not living to the goal of what I want. And I think that that's what happens to so many of us. We say we want to do something, we write it down on a piece of paper, or we just think about it. And then one, the memory is gone. You're not living it. Two, you write it on a piece of paper. Where's that piece of paper? It's gone. And I see that with so many athletes, and I see that with so many business people. They're like, oh, I have this goal of doing X, Y, Z. And I say, all right, well, how are you going to get there? Well, I have to do this, this, and this. OK, cool. In a week, they're like, well, yeah, I procrastinated, or I didn't do this, that, and the third. Well, you're not going to get to the goal. You've got to make it real. I've got a timer on my desk. And when it comes to work stuff, I'm like, all right, I've got an hour to do this job. And if I don't do it in that hour, I'm like, OK, I missed the goal. All right, fine. I'm going to give myself an extra 15 minutes, but I'm going to do it another 30 minutes. All right, I'll come back and I'll do it. And I try to get it done. At the end of the day, the goal is to finish. The goal is to accomplish it. And if it takes baby steps to get there, that's okay. But ultimately, I want to stay focused on how I can get there and live that dream.

Adam: Really interesting, and as you're describing how you motivated yourself on the days that you didn't feel motivated, I'm actually thinking about a recent interview that I did with an Olympic legend, Greg Louganis, and something that Greg shared with me is that when he was trying to motivate himself on the days that he didn't feel motivated when his coach was working to motivate Greg on the days that Greg didn't feel motivated, They had a very different approach because Greg was motivated in a very different way than you were motivated. And Greg was very clear in the interview that he wasn't motivated by competition. as much as he was motivated by putting on a performance, being able to go out there and demonstrate to everyone, this is what I can do. I'm able to perform at my very best. And the way that Greg and Greg's coach frame motivation was around gamification. Let's gamify what we're trying to do here in practice today. You had a totally different approach. Because what drives you, what motivates you, very different than what drives and motivates Greg. And the takeaway is that we're all different. We're all driven by different things. We're all composed differently. We're all very different people. And we need to understand what drives us, what motivates us, what makes us tick. And on the days that we don't feel motivated, get down to that, figure out what do we need to do to get us going. And in your case, it was pretty clear. I'm motivated by competition. I'm motivated by wanting to be better than the people who I'm competing against. And if I see a picture of the faces of my competitors, that's going to get me going. That's going to get me out of bed. That's going to get me into the pool. That's going to get me to perform even when I don't feel like performing.

Cullen: Oh, 100%. You nailed it right on the head. Greg Louganis is the OG. I mean, there's few people that have done it better than Greg Louganis. And I think you're 100% right. Just knowing him and knowing how he probably viewed it, you're 100% right. He saw it as a performance. I've got to nail this perfectly for my own internal happiness. I feel like I've accomplished it. And I think that it can be different across different sports, especially compared to swimming, where your judge is a clock. For diving, your judge are these three officials that are sitting there judging it. So you might be looking at it completely differently in what motivates you. But the key is, what is it that's going to motivate you to get to the end result? For Greg, it was gamifying it and putting on a performance. For me, it was, I want to beat the people that they say I can't beat. And so two ways to go to the same position. And even in the workplace, what did I say? I have a timer that I try to get work done in a small amount of time. I put my phones away. I put everything else away. I give myself an amount of time and I work on that time. You need to figure out, by everyone listening, what it is going to take to motivate you. What motivated me in swimming is not going to motivate me in the workplace. Or it could look completely differently. But as long as you can figure out how to do it for yourself now in the workplace, I gamify it. So I do gamify it in the workplace. That's why I have the timer. I gamify it so that it's like, okay. And then when I'm done with that, I give myself a treat. Like, that could be an extra coffee, that could be a piece of candy, or a piece of cake, or whatever. But I treat myself once I have accomplished something. That reward, I think, is so, so important so that you can continue to continue to do it. You know, when there's no reward to something, I feel like people can tend to lose motivation. At least I know that for myself. So when I accomplish something, I celebrate it, man. I celebrate it. It doesn't even have to be a big deal. It could be giving myself an extra 15 minutes to be on Instagram or be on social. It could be like because I try to limit some of this stuff because I've got so much I've got to do. But I try to gamify it and reward myself when I am able to stay to the task and to stay to the goal that I have for myself.

Adam: To what extent did you feel pressure in the highest-stakes moments? And what advice do you have for anyone on how to perform under pressure?

Cullen: I think there was pressure in 2008, but it was more pressure from myself to want to be on that relay, to Phelps going for eight gold medals, the French team saying they're there to crush the Americans. I think for me, it was a personal goal at that point to try to be the best, not just for myself, but for Team USA and for these three other guys. I think after that, that's when it was, you are the Venus and Serena, you are the Tiger Woods, you are the Arthur Ashe of swimming. And it was like, what? So now I'm not just swimming for myself, I'm also representing my culture. So every time that I don't win, I'm letting my culture down. I'm letting my family down. I'm letting this message of people learning to swim. I'm diluting that. If I don't perform to the highest, that type of pressure I felt in 2009, right after. that gold medal in 2010. And then I started realizing this is never going to go away. I'm always going to feel this. But at the same time, although I may have more pressure on me and I'm putting more pressure on me than maybe my other seven competitors in the other lanes. When I'm racing, I'm going to take that crown off. Do I see myself as a role model? I didn't when I started swimming. That's not what I started this for. I'm thankful for it. Am I a beacon? I can be. I'm thankful that people see me as that. But when I'm racing, I can't think of that because that's going to weigh me down. I've got to focus on what I started swimming for, which was to go fast, which was to put my hand on the wall. And because I just love being in this. So, I think one of the big things, did I feel pressure? 100%. I felt it from every direction. And it took time. I went to sports psychologists. I went to just psychologists that didn't have anything to do with sports to try to train my mind to allow myself to do what my body has been training. I go to practice every day to work to get my body right. What I found after 2008 with all that pressure was that I was going to break mentally if I didn't start investing in myself mentally. So for me, it was a very, very big important push for me to continue my career, to not just focus on the body, but to also focus on the mind. And that's how I dealt with pressure because my body was fine when it came to the pressure. I'm in the water diving, swimming, training, doing all of those things. The pressure that I was feeling after that was all mental. And I had to learn how to deal with that.

Adam: How did you deal with that? And what are the keys to optimizing your mental health?

Cullen: I mean, for me, it was twofold. It kind of worked out. Breath control is a very big thing for the 50 freestyle for my event. I have to learn how to hold my breath and still swim fast and still be uncomfortable, but still be able to hold my breath. So I went down this deep dive of understanding breathwork. And then I was introduced to Wim Hof and I was like, okay, the more that I do this breath work, the calmer my nervous system becomes. OK, so if I do this right before a race, it's not like my body's not ready to go because I'm still ready to go. But I can calm down some of those thought processes because I'm focused on something else that still will optimize my performance. So I started working on breathwork. I started listening to my therapist about writing down some of the things that I was really nervous about the night before, putting them on a piece of paper and that paper you throw away. That's the one that you don't pay attention to. so that when you start to think the things that you wrote down the night before, you remember you threw that away. My brain's going in the wrong direction. Throw that away. So I used some of the things and implemented some of the things that I'd learned from reading books, from my sports psychologist, from my psychologist, from Wim Hof's breathing method. And I tried to just toy around with different things because there was no downside. There was no downside to me strengthening my mind. And everything that I was reading was always focused on trying to help me to get better. I was just a sponge on trying to learn how to fortify my mind when it came to hard things. And was I perfect? Oh God, no. Did I fail and miss relays and didn't swim as fast as I will? Yeah. But when it counted, I was able to get my mind right and understand that everything else that I'm feeling, I feel it because I allow it. That pressure of being the first black American to have a world record, that pressure to say, my goal is to get every child to learn to swim. Is that really diluted if I don't win gold? No. Because I'm still going to be out there speaking from every rooftop of how important it is to teach kids to swim. And personally, I want to win. But all of those nerves are something that I have control over. And honestly, I want them. Because if I have those nerves, that means I care. If I have those nerves, that means my body's lit up and ready to go. Change the perception of it. My perception of it was, I need these nerves. It means I care. But I'm not going to let it debilitate me.

Adam: You gave a lot of great advice on how to get to a place of mental wellness, how to alleviate the pressure that we feel. You dealt with a different kind of pressure, obviously the pressure of trying to be the best on the world stage, but you mentioned the pressure that comes with Being different, being the only black person in a pool of white people and putting the pressure of that aside, how did you develop the comfort in your own skin to walk into a room understanding that I'm different, I'm unique. And what advice do you have for anyone listening to this conversation on how to get to a place where they feel comfortable in their own skin when they walk into a room and are different, whether it's because they have a different skin color, a different gender or are different in some way. Could be some way outwardly or some way inwardly. We're all different in some way. How can we get comfortable with being different?

Cullen: I don't think you're ever fully comfortable. There will always be that thought that comes in your head that's like, oh my God, you're the only black person in the room. Like, I get that every day. To this day, I still have it. It doesn't go away. There's this syndrome called angry Black man. And people are like, just because I get passionate about something or elevate my voice because I'm excited about something, I've been called intimidating or, oh, you're angry. And it's like, no, I'm just passionate. I'm excited about it. That's a stigma in our country, unfortunately, that if I get excited, that means I'm a danger. And that's something that I deal with every single day. So to answer your question, that never goes away. Most rooms that I'm in, I'm usually the only black person or one of like three. And so for me, I am so proud of my blackness. I'm so proud to be what I am, that God made me. I'm proud of it. And I have to be proud of it because I only get one body. This is what I'm proud of. And I'm not going to be ashamed of it. But at the same time, do I deal with that every single day when I sit back and I'm like, I'm different. Yeah. What you do is you try to learn to embrace that. You learn to love yourself. Is there ever a place where you reach that? I'll let you know if I ever get there. I don't think I've ever been there. I always have to do self-talk in the morning. I got to get myself up and say, you are handsome. You do look good. You do work hard. You are this person. I lost all of my hair due to alopecia. Man, I used to have this amazing lineup with the Mohawk and the beard. You know how confident that I forgot I was at that moment? It took losing all of it to be like, oh, my God, now I've got to work on this new person that I see. I don't want people to think I'm sick. My dad had lung cancer. My mom's breast cancer twice. Are people going to think I have cancer because I don't have hair? My eyebrows are gone. Oh, my God. All of this stuff goes through my head every morning, dude, every morning. But at the end of the day, I've got to build myself up. And I think every single person has their thing. Every single person has a thing that they're not confident about. And I don't think you'll ever get to that place where that will ever just go away. But you can do the work. You can do the work every morning to try to get yourself in a positive mindset. I try so hard to just be positive. Because I think that there's so much negativity out here. There's so many people walking around with negative thoughts just because they're hurting inside about something that they're dealing with, that they won't do the work to fix. I'm not going to be that person. And I don't want to put that out into the world. And I don't want my son to see me that way. So for me, it's all about building myself up to be able to go out into the world, to be different, to be okay with being different, and almost putting that armor on, man. I know someone's going to try to break me down. Someone's going to say something that's going to make me upset or could be racist. I deal with at least one racist comment a day. It just happens. And is it right? Absolutely not. But am I going to let it get me down? Absolutely not. My dad passed when I was 16 from lung cancer. His last words to me, don't you ever let anyone slow you down or stop you. How am I doing him justice if I allow someone that's having a bad day and that's upset with what's going on in their life to affect mine? Not going to happen.

Adam: Cullen, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?

Cullen: Map it out, map it out, map it out. I've got so many family members, so many friends that say, I'm gonna be the next president of the United States of America. Okay, how? And no one ever thinks about the how. I'm gonna lose 30 pounds. Okay, how? Once you start mapping out how to get to somewhere, for a lot of people, they start to change their thought process on what the goal is once they see what they have to go through to get there. And so I think for anyone that's looking for success, you need to identify what success looks like to you and then map it out. How do you get there? OK, if I want to lose 30 pounds, I'm going to have to go to the gym three, four times a week. I'm going to have to up my cardio. I'm going to have to watch what I eat. Am I going to be pescatarian? Am I going to be vegetarian? How am I going to do this? OK, maybe 30 was a little ambitious. Maybe let's start with 20. OK, well, let's start with 10. Hey, start with five. And then once you get to five and see that result, okay, maybe you can do another five. Okay, maybe we can do another five. Then you get to the 30. You get there. But map out how you're going to do it. I think there's too many people that are out here that do not do the work, say that they're going to do something, and it's an empty promise to the people that are listening, and it's an empty promise to yourself. That's what breeds anxiety, depression, and doubt. Map it out.

Adam: Cullen, thank you for all the great advice and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.

Cullen: Thank you for having me. This was fun.

Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally recognized authority on leadership. Adam is 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. 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. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, 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. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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