Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: GameStop Co-Founder Gary Kusin

I recently interviewed GameStop Co-Founder Gary Kusin on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today is the founder of the company GameStop. Gary Kusin was also the CEO of Kinko's, where he led the company's turnaround. He is the author of the new book, Always Learning, Lessons on Leveling Up from GameStop to Laura Mercier Cosmetics and Beyond. Gary, thank you for joining us.

Gary: You bet. Thanks for having me.

Adam: You grew up in Texarkana, Texas, and started working when you were 12, delivering furniture for your dad's small furniture business. You graduated from Texas high school. The commencement speaker at your high school graduation was a fellow Texarkana native and was the wealthiest man in Texas at the time, Ross Perot. He became your mentor. He later became a business partner and investor in the company that became GameStop. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What early experiences, early moments, and early lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?

Gary: Sure. Great question. So yes, Texarkana, that's deep in East Texas, near Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. That's how I got the text arc*1:56. I was one of four kids, but I was the problem child, I was the one that seemed to always be in trouble. My parents never quite knew what to do, and finally had it with me, and told me that I would be working in the Furniture Warehouse on weekends, holidays, and all the time from then when I was 12 years old until I left college, which they didn't know was a blessing for me because I find like, for the first time, I got to be around people who I liked, people like me and the lessons I learned there were hypercritical, as you can imagine being 12 years old, as younger than anyone else there being the boss's son, that have some skepticism built into that, and no one quite knew what to do with me. And I was the only white guy in a warehouse that had up to 20 black workers in it. We did everything from unloading boxcars, and furniture from North Carolina to 18-wheelers and mattresses, so I was in a completely new place. With new people, I decided that the only way for me to be accepted by that group was to work harder than all of them and gain respect by working harder. So I learned how to break down a boxcar furniture by myself. This is 12, 13, 14 years old, get all the furniture, put away correctly, where no one else had to get out there. And on a hot summer day, that meant a lot to a lot of people. I could break down 18-wheeler mattresses and put them all away. So all of a sudden people in the warehouse started going, oh. They started noticing and I started learning, wait a second hard work can lead to competency and competency can lead to respect. And that was what I was after. I desperately wanted respect. So I decided early on, that people could be smarter than me, could be faster than me, could be a lot more than me. But what they couldn't do is outwork me. I was willing to outwork anybody and that was my biggest formative years. So my high school senior year when I got the opportunity to meet Ross Perot, I was the student body Preston. And it was the year that the black high school in Texarkana integrated. And there was lots of talk about the Voting Rights Bill that had just passed, Mississippi Burning. It was a time fraught with racial risk everywhere and everyone was pretty sure that would hit Texarkana with the combination of Dunbar High School into Texas High School. What they didn't know was that I met so many people in the black community by that time, six years later, including the president of the Dunbar Student Council and all their top officers at that school, but I was able to sit down with them before senior year and talk about what we could do to make their senior near as good as it could be given it wasn't going to be done on our end. It actually kind of worked. So when Ross was there who was a big proponent of leadership, I won a National Leadership Award for my work in keeping the lid on integration in Texarkana. He liked that so much that after that speech that night, he asked my parents if he could take me back to Dallas with him. And so I'd had my first plane ride the next day, went with him to his office, and that started our relationship. But I never moved away from knowing that hard work was how I would get ahead. And I had a couple of really funny instances that are in that book about, I'd worked so hard and I'd gone to my brother's wedding. And everyone's talking about a man in Wichita, Kansas. And then everyone was saying, he was the richest man in Wichita, Kansas, and he went to Harvard Business School, by the end of the week, and I was like, okay, I got it. I know what I need. I needed to go to Harvard Business School and now get rich because I had nothing better. I wasn't even a business major. But I was working. And I worked my way through college. I didn't take any money from my parents. So I thought I was gonna be a good prospect for HBS. They sent me an acceptance letter. But the letter said I had to work for two more years before I could start. And I was mad because I'd worked since I was 12. So I borrowed my father's car, and I drove to Boston, I had been in Mississippi. And I marched right into the office of admissions at Harvard Business School, I found the Director of Admissions who'd signed the letter and I held it up, I said, "You guys made a mistake. "And he looked at it and started laughing. He said, "We accepted you, what's a mistake?" He said, "Is that a mistake?" And I said, "No. But you said I had to work for two years." And so he started laughing. He called a bunch of folks together. He said, "You tell them what you told me." And I went through that. And they said, "Well, we don't take many people after one year of work. We waited two years, but what are you doing now?" And I said, "Well, I just took over my family's bowling center. I will be the manager of the bowling center." And so they kind of laughed and the head of admission, said, "Well, I'll tell you what we'll do. You go back to Texas, you send us the income statement from the last 12 months. 12 months from now, you send us the income statement on your watch. And if you made a difference, we'll bring you in after one year." And so fast forward a year, I had more profits in my year at the bowling alley than there was total revenue in the prior year. So they said, "Come on." So I went to HBS after one year. When I started my first job after HBS, it was in a department store. I knew nothing about department store retailing, I was in the junior division, which is teenage girls' stuff, I was the only guy in that division and they were trying to run me off hard because they knew they wanted my peers, the other assistant buyers knew who they wanted and who would plan to take my place, but they didn't know their department store is gonna bring in an HBS guy and stick him in there. And so one, they took me into a big warehouse that had over 500 totes of junior swimsuits that were all mixed up. There were two pieces. One piece might be in this box. And the other part of it would be in some other box. And I had to sort them, sign them, everything. And I had to have it by Monday. This was Friday afternoon, I was so pissed because I knew what I would do that I got myself locked into that warehouse. I got myself locked into it the entire weekend. I did it perfectly. And on Monday morning, I strolled in, you know, to hear him say, "Well, what's it look like?" I said, "Come on, let's take a look." And when I took everyone down there and they looked at it, their jaws dropped and the head of the division started laughing. And she said, "I give up." It was like I was finally accepted by them. It was just more reinforcement that people be smarter, faster, better, but I would not let anyone outwork me. And I guess that was the key to my other successes.

Adam: Gary shared so many great lessons, there's so much to unpack, a clear lesson, not being afraid to take no for an answer. Hard work can lead to competency, which can lead to respect. Regardless of how old you are, regardless of where you are in your life, where you are in your career, what industry you're in, what company you're working for, you are 12 when you learn that, and you could take that to the bank, no matter where you are.

Gary: I couldn't agree more. Hard work leads to competency which will ultimately lead to respect which adds to that and leads to a promotion. And then you start over. At your next level job, you did the same thing hard work, build competency, gain respect, and move to the next job and it's a cycle. And that's what you do. And when you take a new position, you work harder than anyone's ever worked in that position.

Adam: And when you work hard, and when you do good work, you never know who's watching. You shared the example of Ross Perot, watching you, observing you, doing good work as student body president. I'm sure the last thing on your mind when you were leading as a student was, this is going to lead to a relationship with the most successful business person in my home state.

Gary: Yeah, and, at the time, his EDS had just gone public, he was the top fortune richest man in the world. Because his company went public, he owned 100% and all of a sudden went public. And all of a sudden, he had a network that no one had ever seen or heard before. So it was even bigger than that. So of course, when they told me where I was sitting, and I saw him sitting there, I was speechless.

Adam: Can you talk about that encounter, you connect with Ross Perot, a lot of people in your shoes might have been intimidated, might not have known what to say. How do you act in that big moment?

Gary: Well, what I don't try to do is lead the conversation. In his case, he asked how to get to be student council president which led to a conversation. He asked if my father was who it was because back when he was growing up in Texarkana, my father was in the same Boy Scout troop as he was in. And he started telling me other stories that he remembered from when he was in high school. And then the next day, I mean, it just started this relationship. He was very much drawn to the leader. So he had his slogan, and his company and electronic data systems were 'Eagles don't flock, you have to find them one at a time'. That was his big thought. And he believed the military was the perfect place to find the leaders. Because to grow and rise in rank in the military, you have to be a proven leader. And anytime he saw anyone who he believed was a leader, he found reason to collect them, if you will. I mean, in his office, the next day, I was able to go into more because he had listened to this award I got and talked about the segregation without incident, stuff like that. And he asked how that happened. And I explained to him about how I knew the president at Dunbar, which he was fascinated by, so let's call in right now. So he got it, it was his assistant. And he told her to find Harold's phone number. And he called Harold and of course, I couldn't hear it. I heard Ross's end of it, but he was checking with Harold. And you could tell what he was doing to see if Harold was telling him the same story I told him, which of course he was. And that's just how he was cementing the relationship. He was doing a reference check on me. And then the whole time I was at the University of Texas, it was the Vietnam War. There were anti-war rallies, they were shutting down campuses. And Ross was a big American patriot, he would call me and say, "Tell me what's going on on the campus". And I would tell him, and he was fascinated by it. He knew he could get the truth from. And so we had an interesting relationship that way. So my first job out of HBS was in San Francisco. But I got recruited, which is a whole other story in the book into the biggest department store in Dallas based on stuff that I pulled off in a department store in California. And the Dallas Morning News happened to run a big article. I was 28 at the time, three young business leaders in Dallas and I was one of the three of my pictures there. He called me at the department store the next day, it's over here, I didn't even know you were in Dallas. Of course, I dutifully drive out to exalt. But he said, "You shouldn't be working for a big company. You could start a company. Just like I did, you need to do that." I said, "Well, if I ever find one worth starting, I will." And then I map how my best friend at HBS, who was a partner at Bain in the Silicon Valley, helping a bunch of early video game publishers launch video games out there. He was doing some work in Dallas, and we had dinner and he stayed at our house. And he started talking about it. And I had already developed a very strong point of view that specialty stores were rising to crush department stores and it was in any channel of consumer goods that reached measurable size, that the specialty store channel would become important if not dominant channel distribution. And I had that all worked out in my head. I was trying to pitch the department store parent company on, we got to rebrand, we got to do this, we got to do that. They all thought I was nuts and said they wouldn't do that. By the time Jim and I were through that evening, I convinced him he should quit his job as a partner at Bain, which no partner had ever done it Bain, and I should quit my job and we were both just doing extremely well in our current positions. I said let's be the first in the world software-only stores selling video games and software for personal computers that will be used in the home. Let's do it. Let's get the first-mover advantage. And I was kind of pushing on an open door with him. And he didn't realize at the time that I was doing the same thing with him because he was the smartest guy in our class at HBS. And if he would be willing to jump from Bain to just a startup, well, then it probably had a good chance of success. And Jim was thinking I was the retail guy, and I thought this was gonna become a big deal. That'd be good for him. And so off we went. And Jim and I went to see Ross. I said, "Ross, here's what we're thinking about. What do you think?" And he said, "Well, I'd like to be an investor." I said, "No, Ross. I know you too long. We have a great relationship. I don't want to risk it. I don't want you to lose money and sour our relationship. We just wanted to pressure test what we were thinking." And he said, "Okay." Three months later, he called me one night, 10 o'clock at my house. And he said, "How are you doing?" And I told him we were moving forward. Jim had quit his job, I quit my job. He said, "Well, I'm going to back you. I'll be your financial backer. I'll come over tomorrow." And I said, "Ross, I told you no." And he said, in his way, "Dammit, Harry. I'll do whatever the heck I'm I wanna do. You boys get over here tomorrow morning." We went over there. And they said, here's the deal. And that's just how he thought. "Here's the deal. Each of you get a third of the company because y'all are gonna sweat and you're gonna work your hands up, I'm gonna get a third. So I'm gonna put up all the money. The only deal is we can't tell anybody that it's my money, or I'll be the lightning rod for the whole deal. And y'all don't need that." And we agreed we'd keep it top secret, which we did for 10 years. And then we replaced him. A couple of years later with bigger money, Jim's best friend *16:55 partner what's got Mitt Romney. So we got Bain Capital to invest and Mitt joined our board, and I had a real good friend at a big PE firm in New York City, Warburg Pincus and he joined our board. And we did that till we took it public. And then we bought our biggest competitor, but the one thing that they were named Software Etc., the only deal I cared about was, you're not changing the Software Etc. stores names to Babbages, we hate Babbages. And I said, "Well, we hate Software, etc.. And so it's a good deal." We all decided we change the name and the name became GameStop. That's when I took off and started Laura Mercier Cosmetics because I had a dear friend who was CEO of Neiman Marcus at the time, and he started talking about cosmetics. That was an area I was in charge of before I started Babbages, and I knew a lot about cosmetics. And I had the same kind of aha moment, we could start a specialty store with a makeup artist. He told me who ought to recruit to be a co-founder with me since I've had such a co-founder successful gym, and we were off to the races.

Adam: You shared a lot there. The importance of surrounding yourself with the right people. Ross Perot, identifying you early on, as a great leader, someone who he wanted to surround himself with, looking at unconventional sources of talent, trying to find leaders however he could, something that you share the way you phrased it. Collecting leaders, great leaders collect leaders, great leaders develop leaders, and great leaders are continually focused on finding the best people they can find. And then learning from them, asking them questions, trying to understand their perspectives. I love the anecdote you shared of Ross Perot asking you what's going on on college campuses. What do students think about the Vietnam War? I want to hear from you. I want your pulse. That's what great leaders do. They don't think that they have all the answers. They understand that to get to the right answer, they need to ask questions and listen.

Gary: You want me to give you the best example of that very thought you just expressed? And it's most proud I am of anything that has happened in my career. I felt that too. And it could be Ross rubbing off on me. But whenever I'd interview someone, sooner or later I'd ask them what they want to be and if I don't get some variation on I want your job, or I want to be CEO, I'm probably not interested in them. We had a turnaround team step into Kinko’s. It's a company that had lost over 10 million the prior year before I got there, into a company that was almost dried to the lip of the cup at 240 million of EBITDA. Three years later, the group of people that were senior leaders on that team, I've lost count, but at last count 13 of the people that were on the senior team are now CEOs of companies. If you ask me what I'm most proud of, it's that my job was to lower any barriers they had, it was just a smooth runway for each of them. And it worked. And when things work that well, people get next-level jobs, and they just let it out of Kinko's into the world of business and I mean, big company CEOs now, that's where they got their jobs was on the Kinko's turned around.

Adam: What were the qualities you look for in the people whom you are surrounding yourself with?

Gary: First, really smart. Because you have to noodle through very complex problems when you're in the middle of a turnaround. So very smart. intellectual curiosity, how does this work? I wonder if we could do that. Curiosity is so important. And then what I've told people, and everybody laughs at this, but it's true. I don't care if you don't have to win. But I care if you don't back that up by saying but I refuse to lose. And those are two very different things. I need to know that at a minimum, someone will refuse to lose, it's great if they say I won't stop till I win. But more important I will refuse to lose. Because when it gets tough, and you're hitting speed bumps, and they're coming at you from directions you didn't see coming, you have to resolve it, you are not going to let it beat you. And that's what the team did. It was spectacular down to store level, there was unbelievable alignment behind what we were doing. And just watching people work was just the greatest thing I've ever seen.

Adam: What do you believe are the key characteristics of a great leader? And what can anyone do to become a better leader?

Gary: So I have a set of leadership principles. And I am a real believer in those because I've seen them work. And I've seen improvement in action. I search for alignment when I'm interviewing someone for the first time. I ask them, where did they grow up? Tell me interesting stories growing up, how did you get to this chair? Because I want to be sure that they align with my thoughts and refuse to lose, or even have to win but are intellectually curious, very bright, and own their disasters, really important. And just, if you can get someone who's open and honest, you say my job is to make your job easier. But you have to tell me when you are faced with some barrier to getting done what you need to get done, let that become my problem. And if people learn how to do that, and allow me to do what I have to do to ensure that they can keep pushing their agenda forward, then we've got a win-win. To me, it's got a lot to do with chemistry. And when you look into someone's eyes, and you say we can do this, you develop a relationship that leads to a shorthand, which leads to getting things done quickly and right.

Adam: A pivotal leadership experience in your career. Leading the turnaround of Kinkos when you took over, Kinko's was losing a lot of money. You sold the company to FedEx for $2.4 billion. How?

Gary: So here's what I did. And it seems so simple to me. And this is one of the big things and it's so important to me. When I walked around and asked people what was going wrong there. An American legend, truly great company in the ditch, and no one knew. And I was walking around the headquarters. I say Napoleon said if you want to know what's going on the frontlines, go look. I love that. And so what I said and it served me well my entire life. What if I want to figure out why Kinko's is in the ditch? At that point, we had 1,200 stores and 42 regions in the US. I said I will see you guys later at the home office. I set aside between six to eight weeks, I go into all 42 regions of the US, and all stores were open 24/7. And I ran three town halls per region. Each day, I was there to hit all the workers on every shift in every store so that after their shift, they could come to a town hall, but I would set up in a hotel. And I would always start with, "Hey, I'm this guy. What the heck has happened here? Can someone tell me what's wrong and what I need to do to fix it?" And guess what happens when you've been in 42 regions over eight weeks, and you've met 10s of 1000s of people, and all of them care a lot about the company, you kind of know what's wrong. And we took what we learned. And we sat down, and we put together a strategic plan that focused on the big areas. And they were right, I could have spent two or three years and figured that out. But why? They know. The people who are closest to the customers always know I've never been in a business where they didn't know. So I came back, and I knew what we needed to do. And I sat down with the team, we put together a presentation and we pulled our top 150 people together and had this meeting where we laid it all out. But I told them, here's what I'm offering to do. For the next 30 days, anyone in this room, who thinks this is the wrong path, who doesn't think it'll work, who just wants to get out of here, you come straight to me, I will be a one-man gang to find you your next job. I'll be the best placement service, I'll do whatever I need to do to ensure you land on your feet for the next 30 days. 31 days from now, I will find you and I will weed you out personally. And the room got very quiet. But they knew they could tell I was committed. And I needed people who could accept accountability, who could align with what we were doing, take the accountabilities they needed to, and be able to deliver it. And frankly, over the next year, I did personally weed out about a third of that group. But the people who stayed were bought in. And when everyone buys in, they could get everyone to buy in, in their regions, their districts, their stores, because it came from them. So they're fine like thank God, someone listened to us. So I had people that were so happy that I had listened to them, everyone signed on and engaged for this. And we went from a loss to plus 120 million of EBITDA in the first 12 months, and then to 180 and then almost we were in September of the third year on a way to 240 and on a plan to do it when Fred walked into my office.

Adam: The power of listening can't be understated.

Gary: Yes, that's correct. And it worked swimmingly and has ever since.

Adam: What's the most significant failure you've experienced in your career? And what did you learn from it?

Gary: There are many. One was not paying attention after I left Gamestop because I was so busy starting Laura Mercier. I kept my stock and Gamestop and borrowed on margin for all the money to start Laura Mercier Cosmetics. I should have been paying attention to Gamestop because it's a highly cyclical business and seasonal. And they had a really bad year and their stock price dropped to 2. And my break on busted my covenants all my margin was four, which meant I was gonna be completely wiped out. And it's in the Austin airport, I just left an Electronic Arts Board of Directors meeting. And I'm waiting for a plane at the Austin airport. I'm just messing around with the Wall Street Journal. And maybe I'll take a look and see it. When I saw the price I knew that I was underwater, but I knew they were gonna sell it all. And I'd be broke, I'd be completely busted. So I called the president of the bank that had loaned me money. And I called my accountant who I trusted with everything. And I told the bank president, "Hey, I need to come see you." And I was sitting there the next day. And he had their half dozen other bank officers in there. And I told him what had happened. They hadn't caught it. They were unaware of it. And it ended up, they said no one had ever come in and self-disclosed, that they had tripped their margin call, and that we needed to sell all their stock. So we're not going to sell all of your stock. We're not going to sell any of it. You tell us how long you need to turn this around. And we will let you do it and I said, "I gotta have at least a year." And they said okay, because you are high integrity and that kind of stuff, we'll let you do it and I sat down with my accountant and ended up the only way to do it, was to sell Laura Mercier. And it went on to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And I sold it to Demons for $12 million to cover my issues. And that was not paying attention. And that was shame on me. So that's one that had to do with money. Then the other one had to do with, the I introduced 360-degree surveys at Kinko's, the first time I'd ever had a 360. And they write up your peers, your up, Bob sideways*30:31, and people that report to you. And there were like 20 categories, and I was where I thought I'd be on 19th. On the 20th, I was 30 on a 100-point scale. And it was called rewards and recognition. And I went there's simply no way that could be right because generally, I feel like I'm a decent leader. And when I told my direct reports, on a Monday meeting, hey, I hope they made a mistake. But I got 30 Honor Awards and recognition from this group. And they all kind of smirked. And what I learned was, I am great at leading two levels down to the shop floor. Everyone loves me, I have five people, I run around, I'm just all that. But for the people who report directly to me, I never said thank you. I never said, "Great job." I never said, "Wow." And we were all doing wild stuff. And it registered with me finally, that everyone, not just first-line people, everybody needs rewards and recognition. And that Christmas, I bought nine pieces of crystal each engraved with somebody's name. In my Monday morning meeting, I said, "I want to hand out some crystal in my All-Star bill*31:50 where it goes is carried away with the rewards and recognition now, but when I started, when I would pick something up. And so, Adam, you've had a great year, let me tell you what I liked the most about what you did this year. You'd start sitting up straight in your chair, and I'm talking about EVP-level people. You'd sit up straight, you'd blush, but you'd be genuinely proud. And everyone else in the room started doing the same thing. I've never seen anything like it. Someone I knew for 10 years when we were done, said, "Could I take a picture with you holding my Crystal?" And all of a sudden, you realize and I have to tell you, that's the biggest lesson in my life, all the way till now. And it's something that I do to the cashier at the grocery store, I do it to a Lyft driver, it just simply doesn't matter. People need to be recognized, they need to be thanked, they need to be told they're appreciated. Everyone needs that, including me. And I learned that I need that too. And so as part of my mentoring, this is the culmination of a lot of things that have led me to 1,000 mentoring sessions, because I want to pay it forward with all these lessons. I never tell people in a mentoring session what they should do. I tell stories. From my stories, I tell what I learned. And if they have an issue, because I'm going through my Rolodex of issues that I face because I've had so many laps around the track in my career, I can say I don't know if this will be helpful to you or not. But let me tell you, I had something similar to this happen to me. Let me tell you what happened to me. Let me tell you what I decided to do about it. If it resonates with you, great. But if it doesn't, great also. Because you are on your journey, I cannot look through the prism you view the world through, I can only look through my own prism. And I have spent all of my time since I left kind of active oversight and management tearing the keys as I call it. Since I quit doing that, I've spent a lot of time principally with people in underserved communities. I've had all kinds of advantages. And I do recognize the color of my skin, my gender, all of that, and so I spend time with people who may not have those advantages, giving them every advantage I can have through my mentorship and things that they can feel good about in their lives.

Adam: Gary, you shared a lot of great stuff there. Starting with the importance of recognizing everyone around us, great leaders understand that every single person in their organization adds value, and contributes makes a difference. And it's on us to reward and recognize every single person. That's a great takeaway. Another great lesson, every single person, no matter who you are, no matter how successful you are, you could have started two highly successful companies and turned around a third. Everyone has blind spots. And it's through feedback, that we discover that. And it's through being receptive to feedback, being open to listening to feedback, and consuming the feedback that we receive, that we're able to improve our areas of weakness. The last piece of advice you shared, which I love, great mentors don't tell people what to do. Great leaders don't tell people what to do. Leadership and mentorship are not the art of forcing the people around you to do this or to do that. It's about empowering others. It's about positioning others to be their best selves, to take ownership of whatever it is that they're interested in acting on. It's on you as a mentor, and as a leader, to help pay it forward.

Gary: I agree. Very cool. We're in violent agreement. I got to do a lot of stuff. It is not lost on me that I got to do it because I have a list of advantages that so many don't have, and that had I not had those advantages. I wouldn't have had those experiences. So I am trying to pay it forward to people who might not be able to have the kind of mentorship I had, which is spinning the rest of my work harder, doing this kind of thing, the Skype conversation, you have listeners, you have people who are translating everything they hear on your podcast, into what kind of action can I take, based on what I'm listening to. Those are the people you're trying to talk to, and those are the people I'm trying to talk to. And I guarantee you they're hearing the list of people who have been on your podcast. Wow. That gives someone a chance who's listening to truly listen to me, to listen and learn and try things, and want to listen again. That's why I applaud what you're doing. I think it's just fabulous.

Adam: Gary, I really appreciate it. Thank you for all the great advice and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.

Gary: You bet. My pleasure. Good luck to you.


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.

Follow Adam on Instagram and Twitter at @adammendler and on LinkedIn and listen and subscribe to Thirty Minute Mentors on your favorite podcasting app.