Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Grant Cardone
I recently interviewed Grant Cardone on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:
Adam: Our guest today is a New York Times best-selling author, serial entrepreneur, and leading influencer. Grant Cardone is the founder of the TEDx movement, the CEO or partner in 17 different privately held companies, and was named by Forbes as one of the top social media business influencers in the world. Grant, thank you for joining us.
Grant: Hey, great to be here with you, my friend. You've interviewed some very powerful people. So I'm glad to be included in that bunch.
Adam: I’m excited to have you on. You grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and you faced your fair share of adversity really early on. You experienced personal struggles, professional struggles, the sudden death of your dad, drug addiction, getting fired multiple times. Can you take listeners back to your early days and your early challenges? How did you overcome those significant challenges and setbacks that you faced? And how can anyone overcome the obstacles setbacks and challenges that they face in their lives and in their careers?
Grant: Look, everybody's gonna have setbacks in life. It just so happened that mine happened when I was 10 years old. Everything was cool. Everything was going fine. I came from a middle-class family in Lake Charles, Louisiana. My dad worked every day to take care of us and I had a lot of love in my family, five kids. And then my dad died. And dude, everything changed. The leadership, the thing that you cover here is about leaders and influencers and people that are making a difference. And that guy in my life disappeared. And so what happened was, as a 10-year-old boy growing up in Lake Charles, my buddies are all learning how to fish and hunt, and work on cars. I didn't have that. So I felt inadequate. And I wasn't inadequate. By the way, as a boy going into becoming a man, I didn't have that man teaching me. So a guy comes along, and he's a drug dealer. And he's like, I'll be your daddy. There's always somebody that's gonna step in, right? And so I went down the wrong road from 15 years old to 25. I was literally a daily drug addicted, walking social liability. So I had to figure out how to turn that around. And I'm very lucky, fortunate, and grateful that I turned it around. And so for the last 35 years now, I've just been trying to keep my nose clean, stay on a good path and be of service to other people. Because for 10 years, I wasn't.
Adam: How did you turn it around?
Grant: I got sick and tired of being sick and tired, man. I got sick and tired of looking at myself in the mirror and seeing a loser. And I still handle this today. I have this tremendous divine discontent with life. And I had it then too, by the way. I always thought I was supposed to do something special. I think everybody has that secret kind of quiet. I can do something, I'm special. I think everybody is special, by the way. I know I had that. I always thought even at the height of my drug addiction, I know I'm supposed to be doing something else. I'm supposed to be doing something that contributes to something that gives back but I had to become somebody first. So the first thing I had to do, I put myself in a treatment center and spent 30 days not using drugs. It was the first time I had been 30 days without drugs. I came out of the treatment center and divorced all my friends, my girlfriend, the drug dealer, and the places that I went to. I changed all my habits, like literally as a violent, almost like this interview, man, you just drop right into it. The same thing happened. I just went back home and violently changed all my behavior where I went where I visited, and I threw myself. All that time that I had been wasted on drug addiction. I threw that into my career. At that time, I was a salesman and didn't like my job. By the way, I told myself you've lost the right to like or dislike anything, bro. You just got to throw yourself into the thing that you have and you need to get great at something. And that was the start of Grant Cardone, really.
Adam: Grant, I love it. And there's so much there that anyone can learn from. Taking control of your own life before you can effectively lead others. You need to be able to lead your own life and no one is going to be able to live your life but you. So taking ownership and having accountability. And something that you said right off the bat, which I love, we're all special. We all have something about us that makes us unique, that makes us different. And I think society might train us to believe that there are people out there who are special. Tom Brady is special, Michael Jordan is special, and Barack Obama is special. But what about me? And the reality is that each of us has something about us that makes us special. And it's really about identifying your superpower. And once you're able to identify your superpower, unleash it and become your best self.
Grant: Yeah, I agree with that completely. Take it a step further and just say society not only denies or does not acknowledge that each of us has some superpower and specialness, not only does it deny that and not acknowledged that, it actually suggests that we don't have that. And if you think you have it, there is something wrong with you, literally, medically, maybe even a mental illness. Anybody that claims that they're great, is probably going to be labeled Bipolar, ADD, or ADHD, one of these psychiatric labels that are put on people today. For whatever reason, I don't know whether it's to demean society, diminish it, discount it, or medicate it. All those things happen to me. I remember being in the treatment center, Adam, and the guy said, “You'll be back here”, on the way out. I'm leaving the place. I'm so proud of myself. I did 28 days of not using drugs. It was a big deal for me because, for 10 years, I had not been able to do that. And I knew that I was a good kid, I was a good kid that just went bad. But I still knew that goodness was in the right. And there was some genius that had been medicated and drugged. So I'm leaving. And the guy's like, you'll be back. And I said, his name is Paul, the counselor, I said, “Why you think I'm coming? I'll never come back here”. And he's like, yeah, because you want to be rich, and you want to be famous. And you want to be an author and you have all these, what do you call it? Delusional grinders of delusion or delusions of grandeur? Some two big words put together, right? That's it. Let me tell you something. I'll never be back here. I'll forget your name. I will write books, I'll become famous, I'll become rich. Okay, I know I can't do those things. By the way, if I come back here. And he says, you know, when you get home, you need to go see somebody to figure it out. What's wrong with you? Because I had this dream, I had this idea I was gonna be somebody. I remember the first time I heard this, I was maybe 15 or 16 years old. I might have the timing off a little bit here. But I heard Muhammad Ali is a Black man in the ‘60s or ‘70s. Say, I am the greatest, bro. The first time I heard that I was like, yes, I want to say that about myself. Though he had never won a professional fight. He claimed his greatness before he was. And that is always resonated with me. I believed I was going to be somebody. I knew when I was eight years old that I was going to write books. At 16 years old, I told my mother one day I'm going to be rich. And when I get rich and successful, I'm going to help other people. And today, I help a lot of people. I know that I couldn't have done any of that if I was using drugs, by the way. And I couldn't have done any of that had I not gotten rid of those liability people, the friends, the drug dealers, the girlfriend that was also addicted to drugs. I couldn't have done that if I continue to go to the places, and also couldn't have done what I've done had I not started getting graded for things I didn't even like to do. And you talked about control and accountability. It is about control. How do I get control of my life and not let the government have control or the boss have control of the economy? Or the next bad or terrible thing that happens to you? How do I stay in control of my world and continue to grow and expand? And a lot of that last thing I'll say about that is like a lot of that has been about service, you know? It is really about being a person of service and helping other people. Once I grab something and learn how to do something, how do I share that with other people?
Adam: I love it. And I want to go back to something that you said that really struck me. It was when you were told you'll be back here. But you pushed back and you said you know what? I have a vision for my life. And I did an interview with Brian Dawkins, one of the best defensive players in football of our day. And one of the things that Brian said that really stood out to me was you have to have a vision for your own life because if you don't, someone else will and their vision for your life is going to be a lot more beneficial for them than it is for you. You, so you need to take ownership. And if you don't, someone else is going to take ownership of you.
Grant: Yeah, and I think that's what's happening today. But giving up on any idea of hey, I could be great. Look how often people aspire to be in the middle class in this country. This happened to my family, by the way, my dad came from a poor family and he aspired to be in the middle class. Any aspiration, by the way, is loaded with greed. Any aspiration to improve the quality of your life is a greedy function. See, when you start talking about I'm gonna get wealthy, then you're like really greedy, right? You're really a greedy person. And all I'm saying to people is why settle? Why settle for anything? I came from the bayou of Lake Charles, Louisiana. 25 years ago, I had no money, I was in debt, and had a drug problem. No one in my city, the entire city, knew I was troubled. And I have gone on to now have 17 companies, I'm a partner in $5 billion worth of real estate. My personal companies are valued at about $3 billion. Like, it's insane what I've done. I don't know that I could have done this in any other country. But I know for sure I could not have done this had I not continued to fuel the dream. My dream. Not my daddy's. Not my mom's. My mom told me not to get into real estate. Okay, she's like, oh, don't do that. You're gonna have people calling you at midnight. I said, “I hope so”. Because if they're calling me that means they're renting from me. But all along the way, I've had people telling me, you're running too many businesses, you're burning the candle at both ends, you're gonna burn out. I've had people all along the way tell me don't drain. And the only people that tell me that are the ones that gave up on their own dreams.
Adam: How did you make it to where you are? And what can anyone do to rise in their career?
Grant: I think anybody can do this. And I can't give advice on what anybody else should do. But I can tell you what worked for me was, I made a commitment and recommitted to that every day for the last 35 years to change the quality of my life. Okay, now for me, that means I need a clear vision of where I want to go. And where I want to go is always changing. There's a transition in a human being from being a student to an employee. And hopefully, to running something, to maybe owning something one day. One day, I'm going to own a bunch of stuff. I'm going to run a bunch of stuff from a distance, in the beginning, it's almost like I'm just moving cheese, right? I move, and I got a job. I have to sweep a kitchen, you're right next to the action. Later, hopefully, you got distance from 10,000 kitchens, and you're having other people make sure they're all clean. So number one, I gotta make a commitment and I have to transition between where I'm at and where I want to go. And that transition is easier in the beginning, even though it seems harder because you're going from nothing to something. That's a pretty easy transition, compared to when you have 10s of millions of dollars and you're starting to get comfortable and happy. Okay, I'm gonna give up the 10 million to go to a billion. That's a much more difficult transition to make, even though our society doesn't talk about it any because it's such a small group of people. But I think it should be talked about because how else is anybody going to get there if somebody doesn't set the example and the roadmap for it, right? I used this word earlier, a friend of mine, Kevin Turner, who worked for Sam Walton, talked about Sam being divinely discontent. Those two words define me greatly. I am always divinely discontent. I'm always somewhat not happy or satisfied with the quality of my life, knowing, by the way, I got more than I need. I can't spend what I have. I got a great life. Completely grateful for it, Adam, it's phenomenal. I'm blessed to have all this but I know I can do more. And that commitment to reaching my full potential, I think is a very sacred spiritual journey. Do you know that come about? It's not the destination, but the journey. My journey is like, okay, what else can I discover about myself? How many more people can be put to work? How many more people could we have on the payroll? How can I influence more people? Could I be in more countries?
Adam: Grant that's great. Being divinely discontent. And I've seen that by interviewing hundreds of the most successful leaders in America. Something that I've observed is the very most successful people are those who, even though they've made it to the very top, are continually trying to get better, trying to improve, trying to grow, trying to take that next step, even though that next step is a step further than millions and millions of people can even imagine as possible. And it's that mindset, that divinely discontent mindset goes hand in hand with being a lifelong learner, that goes hand in hand with being the best that you could possibly be.
Adam: So much of your career has been built on the backbone of understanding sales. You started off building a successful career as a salesperson. You started training others on how to succeed in sales. So much of the work you do now is educating people on how to become more effective salespeople. What is your philosophy and approach to selling? And what are your best strategies, tactics, and tips on selling?
Grant: Yes, so we really changed the way sales work. I was a salesman in the ‘80s, late ‘80s, and ‘90s. And this was when you kind of like avoided and evaded. This is what gave salespeople a bad rap. By the way, this whole idea that I had to manipulate control. Answer a question with a question, not an answer. And I was really opposed to this as a kid, I was 25-26 years old. I was like, none of this would work on me. I asked you a question. What color is your dog? Well, what color do you want your dog to be? And so what we did was a change sales. I went out and told people the most sensitive things they wanted first before they ever asked. I introduced a study and enough customers to know oh, they're gonna ask for a price. People are price sensitive. People are interest rate sensitive. They’re term sensitive. They want to know things. They’re warranty sensitive. Whatever the product or service, I looked at them and all the things that they were most sensitive about and I would introduce that first. Okay, it was basically buyer-sensitive issues I would bring up first, and that built trust between me and the customer. It also expedited the sales process. So it sped up a cycle. Now I've gone on now, I stumbled into this discovery, and I had enough confidence in myself that I believed that this discovery would be something beneficial to everyone. And over the last 25 years now we've helped some of the biggest companies on planet Earth increase revenue. I'm talking about multi-billion dollar companies that used information-assisted selling of what we teach. I have probably 100 million people that have been through a Cardone university, which we're now changing into an educational platform for kids to be called TEDx, Kids University, teaching kids how to sell, how to qualify prospects, how to use social media to market their products and services, how to build confidence, and how to communicate how to build trust.
Adam: Grant, you've ticked off some things that are really important. Starting off with preparation, knowing your product inside out, knowing your customer inside out, and playing out all different scenarios before the scenarios can play themselves out. Yes, building trust, building confidence. How can one build trust? How can one build confidence?
Grant: Well, the best way to build confidence man is through success. I mean, there's no better way than to win. You could see this on the field on the court. Well, the guy makes one shot, he's got a better chance of making a second shot. So the first thing I would tell people is you have to make success, very important. Like it needs to be a priority to win. And then number two, once you win, do not take a break. I see people do this every day. I'm like, why are you taking a vacation now? And they're like, oh, to reward myself. I'm like, but not now? Bro, you're hot. You got a hot hand when you're playing blackjack in Vegas. And you've been there for two hours and you hadn't won a hand and all of a sudden you start winning hands. And now is not the time to go to the restaurant. Hold your bladder, and get control. Sit down and win. Don't go off to the Caribbean right now. Don't go off take a break, man. You got a hot hand. So you see this in the NBA when a guy starts making three-point shots when they get the ball back to him. So, unfortunately, for whatever reason, it's the craziest thing in life. And this might go back to earlier about people being trained to be satisfied rather than their dream. See, if you have a big dream, then you're not going to stop your dream to go on a vacation. Me going to Antigua is not my dream. Now, if it is your dream, then go to Antigua, get it over with, and get another dream. But if my dream is to build something like whatever, maybe it's a family, maybe it's a happy family. Maybe it's to make sure your two kids are happy and having fun and you're giving them great experiences. Whatever your dream is, why would you interrupt it? Success is going to pay for the dream. Failure will not pay for the dream. Success is going to pay for the dream. It's going to fund the dream that's going to allow you and your family to go do that part of the dream, whatever that is. To even serve the rest of the world, you have to have success. No one is going to listen to you until you are successful. You can lose both your arms and legs in a war and come back. People are going to say they care. They're going to feel bad about you. But they're not going to listen to your story until you do something that's successful. They're not going to just listen to the trauma and the drama, they're gonna listen to the upside, there's got to be an arc in the story. So I would just tell people like you to have to make success important and then not interrupt the success for some relief that distracts you from getting to the destination.
Adam: There is so much to be said for the power of momentum. It's contagious. One win leads to another. Winning streaks are a real thing.
Grant: That's right. When you went to school, did they have any classes about momentum?
Adam: I learned about momentum from my years and years of watching baseball and winning is contagious. Losing is contagious. You see teams get hot, you see teams get cold. I learned that when I was seven years old, and unfortunately continue to learn that from my years as a long-suffering Angels fan, oftentimes watching more losing the winning. Grant, I want to go back to asking you, how can anyone build trust?
Grant: Well, the first thing I would do to build trust is to have it in yourself. Don't try to build it with other people. Everything for me starts here. I got to do things that I believe in. And so when I was 23 years old, I didn't trust myself. How could anybody else trust? Now, temporarily, I would try to get somebody to trust me. But the truth is, it never worked consistently because I knew I couldn't trust myself. So the ultimate way to get other people to trust you is number one, you got to trust you. You got to do what you say you're gonna do. If you say you're working out, go workout. If you say you're eating clean, go eat clean. If you say you're gonna go to bed at nine o'clock and get up at five, then do it. And I see a lot of people doing one thing on Instagram and doing something else in their life. So number two thing is when you do get a customer, or an investor, or an employee, make sure you do what you say you were going to do for them come hell or high water, deliver. I've been in business for 35 years. There are a lot of people who don't like my confidence. They don't like what they call arrogance. They don't like my delivery. They don't like how black and white I am. I'm black and white on everything. So there's not a lot of gray with me. They don't like my positioning. They don't like to not promote myself. They don't like the fact that I get on a Gulfstream 650 extended range that a Coca-Cola or Google would buy. I bought it for myself, my family, and my business. They don't like me showing it off. But all the things that people say they don't like about me, nobody can say I ever, ever, ever let anybody down. Nobody can say I said one thing and did something else. I gotta live with me, man. At the end of the day, I was born by myself. I'm gonna go out by myself. And in between, I got to feel good about myself. And that's how I think you build trust with people.
Adam: Grant, you bring up some interesting points. Firstly, be true to your word. Be true to your commitments, follow up, and deliver them. Secondly, authenticity is essential to being successful in life and is essential to being successful as a leader. If you're someone who wears success on your sleeve, that's who you are, and that is authentically you. That's you, be yourself. If you're someone who doesn't care about what comes with success, doesn't care about flashiness, doesn't care about a private plane, then don't have those trappings to impress other people. Be you, be yourself. Do what makes you happy. Do what is right for you. And along those lines, what, in your view, are the key characteristics of a great leader? And what can anyone do to become a better leader?
Grant: I don't use the word leader very often. I only use it when it comes up, right? Other people talking about that. I don't even think about myself being a leader. I really think about time. I did a show called undercover billionaire and Discovery Channel said, “Hey, could you make a million dollars without using your name? And without using your money?”. I said, “Yeah, I could do that”. She's like, “But could you do it in 90 days?”. I said, “I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll do $10 million. I don't need 90 days. I need about 45, drop me anywhere in America”. And she's like, “Are you being serious right now?”. I said, “I guarantee”. And she's like, “Why are you so confident?”. I said, “Because I know what I'm going to do when I hit the ground”. Now, I wasn't thinking about leadership in that capacity. But the truth is, whether you're in sales, or a manager, or an owner, if you're going to be successful, you're leading someone to something. And in this case, I was leading the president of the Discovery Channel to depict me for the show. Once I got dropped off in Pueblo, I lost my name. I had to become this other person, Louis Curtis. I shaved my head, I had no money, no credit card, I didn't have a place to sleep, and no food or water. And in the next 90 days, I built a five-and-a-half-million dollar business because of leadership. But I wasn't like telling people what to do. Do you know what I'm saying, Adam? I wasn't the traditional leader, a general god that's like, okay, troops go over here. I was in the trenches man, leading me to that first relationship. And then leaving the relationship to build this business. Again, I'm gonna go back to the thing I started with, you got to have a clear target. And my target was 10 million bucks in 90 days, I didn't know how to build the business or what it was. I didn't have any money or food or water. But I'm like, that's my target. I think the leader is clear on the target or the objective. And then does whatever it takes to control the hill or the target.
Adam: Grant, you hit on some of the most important principles of effective leadership. At the core of being a great leader isn't telling someone what to do. I've interviewed some of the most successful military leaders of our day, four-star generals, and four-star admirals, and they all say the same thing, which is that even in the military, the most successful leaders are not like Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, it's the exact opposite. It's about empowering others. It's about persuading others. It's about compelling others to become their best selves. Leadership starts with leading yourself, which is exactly your message. And having a clear target, which comes back to vision. You need to have a vision for your own life and you need to have a vision for others. Whether you're Jeff Bezos and you have this incredible multibillion-dollar vision or not, at a bare minimum, you need to understand the vision, even if it's not your own vision. You need to recognize the vision and translate it. Communication is essential to leadership and essential to just about everything.
Grant: You brought the word of control. Even our society today is talked about as a bad thing, when the truth is, people who have control are guaranteed success. And control would not be, I'm waiting for somebody to give me something, I'm waiting for the courts to award me something, I'm waiting for the police to do the right thing or the government to change the laws. Control is I'm taking this pony, I'm getting control of it. We're going for a ride, I got to figure it out. I'm all alone. And if I can bring some people along and control enough for the people along the way to see our target.
Adam: Control is a really interesting word. I did an interview with Penny Pennington, the CEO of Edward Jones. And I asked Penny, “How do you control the culture at an organization as large as yours?”. And for anyone listening, Edward Jones is one of the largest companies in America, a Fortune 500 business that manages over a trillion dollars in assets. And Penny said, “Well, the problem is really with your question because I don't control anything”. And oftentimes, I'll walk into a room where I'm the least powerful person in the room. And it's really about understanding what you can control and what you can't control. Grant, our conversation has really been centered around what you can control, which is you can control your attitude, you can control your mindset, and you can control your time. What can't you control, you can't control what other people are going to do. If you're running a Fortune 500 company, you can't control the 1000s and 1000s of people in your organization. What you can do as a leader is you can set the tone. You can lead by example. And you can make an impact by living the values that you want others to live.
Grant: I can get rid of the ones that can't. So like we do a lot of that here. By the way, we have about 800 employees between Miami and the real estate and my offices in Scottsdale. And I can tell you, one of the most successful things we do in our company is get rid of people that don't want to get on with the show. If you're going to wear the uniform, but you're not going to operate the way the rest of us are, there are a billion people on this planet, 8 billion.
Adam: I'm going to add two more things to the list. You can control your standards and you can control who you surround yourself with.
Grant: Yeah, that's right. I love that.
Adam: You've been able to build this extraordinary brand with millions of followers. What are your best tips on the topics of branding and personal branding?
Grant: Well be authentic, figuring out who you are. So the one thing I did was I put myself on a whiteboard that was completely blank around it. And I'm like, well, who am I? Like I literally had to identify who I am. So I can tell my story. Most people are just telling one story about themselves or maybe not even telling a story at all. So let's say you're a victim like I was a victim. Okay, I was a victim of a drug dealer and the loss of a father. Okay, well, one thing is I'm a victim. I guess I could write a book about being the victim. I don't know who's gonna buy the book, but somebody will. There'll be some victim that gives me 29 bucks for the book. Probably not a lot. I had to start adding other stories about being a victim, a drug addict, a recovered drug addict, okay. Oh, a successful salesperson broke into debt, a college graduate. Like I have to start telling a story, a college graduate that didn't use this college to build a billion-dollar business. Oh, wow. Okay, these are stories. I'm a father, I homeschool my kids. I'm also a husband of 19 years, I started building the story out. I'm a real estate developer. I've done some of the largest business conferences in the world. As my life cycle continues, I continue to add stories. Now, I need to brand those stories. Brand means to steer. It's an old ranch term. It was basically ownership of cattle or animals. Right? I heard that these are mine. 10x is a brand of mine. It's not copyrighted or trademarked, by the way. But anybody that steals 10 acts. Basically, people know they're copying my brand. So to brand means to steer into the consciousness of the public. So if you think about salespeople, my name is gonna pop up. If you think about the biggest conferences in the country, Grant Cardone's name is going to come up. You mentioned the word Tedx. They're going to be like that Grant Cardone did. And so that's what to sear me. But you got to get clear on your story. You got to write it out and figure out who are you really, not the one thing you've done, but the many things that you've done, and then start promoting that story to the public. And the last thing I'll say about this is people have a very, very hard time telling their story. It goes back to what I was saying earlier, for whatever reason, we are told not to brag about ourselves in this society. We're told not to tell our stories, do not brag. Be seen, and not heard. I got businesses telling me all the time we do all word of mouth, our whole businesses word of mouth. Again, we don't advertise, we don't promote, we don't do it. You will never be successful on this planet if you don't promote yourself. Got to put yourself out there. And why not this? Well, my uncle told me to fly under the radar, you get too much attention. They're gonna come after you. It's not true. Okay, you have to tell your story. The top three things I do every day as the CEO of these companies is number one, promote, number two, promote, and number three, promote where we're going, what the target is, and make sure that we're going to get there.
Adam: Grant, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?
Grant: Number one, commit to success. You got to get diehard about this game. My mantra is this success is my duty. This is not an option. This is not that flick channel. I'm gonna sit down and decide what I'm gonna watch. And the people that are successful, they're diehards, they're freakazoids, they're committed. They're like, at all costs. Kobe, Jordan, Brady, these people are freaking maniacs. Okay, they are divinely discontent. Okay, the Sam Waltons, and the Ken Griffin's just go up the food chain, Bill Gates. These people are freaking ferocious, savage competitors. They refuse to lose. And so I can't be Tom Brady or Kobe or Jordan or LeBron, I can be a businessman. Anybody can do what I've done. I'm 5’8, and I can't jump, can't run, can't throw, I wanted to be a baseball player. Anybody can play the business game. But you got to commit to it. You got to commit to being great at something. Otherwise, people won't care about you. Good does not pay in this country.
Adam: Grant, thank you for all the great advice and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.
Grant: I appreciate you, man. Great job on what you're doing man. It's a massive exchange with the American public and around the world.
Adam: Thank you. I really appreciate it.
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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