I recently interviewed Whole Foods Founder John Mackey on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today founded and led one of America's most successful supermarket chains. John Mackey is the founder and former CEO of Whole Foods and is the author of the new book, The Whole Story, Adventures in Love, Life and Capitalism. John, thank you for joining us.

John: Thanks for having me on, Adam.

Adam: You grew up in Houston in a very traditional middle-class background. Your dad was an accounting professor before joining corporate America. Your mom was a homemaker and you stuck around in Texas for college, attending both Trinity University in San Antonio and the University of Texas. You stuck around for a while. You spent nearly six years in college studying philosophy, religion, psychology, world literature, and history, but you left school without earning a degree. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What early experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?

John: To a certain extent, we're all products of the environment and also the times that we live in and the culture that impacts us. I didn't know this at the time, but when I look back today on where I grew up, when I grew up, what was going on in society, my parents had grown up in the Depression and then World War II had broken out when my dad was 20. My mom was 18 and they got married too young, so to speak, or got married very young. And right after Pearl Harbor, my dad was in the military and did that, served through the war. And then when they got out, that generation, you had a post-World War II boom expansion, that their dream was after depression and after a world war was to just have a calmer life, just a more secure life, raise a family in the suburbs. And like so many other millions of Americans at that time, they just wanted their garden and they wanted quiet. And that's what they did, more or less. And as the prosperity in America grew my generation, or a lot of the baby boomers, and I think grew up in the middle class or upper middle class. And our parents protected us from the economic stress that they felt when they were children growing up. They didn't want their kids to suffer from that. I think as a result, I didn't worry too much about what I was going to do in life. I didn't worry too much about making money. I found that I could work a part-time job if you lived frugally, and I did, that you didn't really need to work that many hours even at a minimum wage job. And so I was just trying to figure out honestly, the meaning of life. Was there a purpose to life? Was there a purpose to my life? And that led me on this search. I was a seeker, you might say. Led me into different spiritual practices. It led me into some experimentation with psychedelics. And so I didn't have any real pressure to feel like I had to graduate from school. I wasn't like like my parents felt like I got to get training so I can get a job so I can have a family and provide security for them. I was a product of that and I didn't really want to follow in those footsteps. That was the path that my parents had programmed for me, but I went in a different direction. And so I got very interested in all things sort of counterculture. I really identified with the hippie movement. I got into the new age movement. I was definitely into environmental movement, social justice, a lot of these progressive causes that got going in the 60s and 70s, that was where I came of age. So I was influenced greatly by all those things. I think the way I got into food was accidentally in that I moved into this vegetarian co-op when I was 23 years old, still in school, but winding that down, I decided not to graduate. I had 120 hours of electives, but it was, I thought, you know what? I wasn't vegetarian, but I thought I'd meet really interesting people. in a vegetarian co-op, and they were all young people like me, and they were very interesting people. I met people that had a big impact on my life in that co-op, and I became a vegetarian. I had a food awakening, so to speak, but I didn't know before then that food… I knew we needed food to fuel us. I thought of myself like a car. Got to go into a gas station from time to time and put gas in a car. You're going to eat, put fuel in your tank, but I didn't realize at that time what I learned at the co-op that we are these amazingly complex living organisms that have trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions of cells that need to be nourished, not just given the basic fuel that there's a complexity to the human organism I had not realized before. So I had this food awakening, became the food buyer for the co-op, fell in love with a woman there and I went to work for a small natural food store in Austin and then I decided I wanted to do this. I was so into it. I was into natural organic foods. I wanted to be as healthy as possible and I pitched my girlfriend about starting her own store. Renee, Renee Lawson at that time, and later Renee Lawson Hardy, and she was excited about it. And so we started working on it when I was 23, Renee was four years younger than me, she was 19. And our first store was called Saferway, Safeway, Saferway. We didn't know much about how to do business, but we were willing to work hard, learn, study, take chances, and move the business along. So that's the background of how I got going on this path.

Adam: I love it. And what's particularly interesting to me, your journey started off with the objective of, I want to meet interesting people. And the rest just kind of went from there.

John: I don't know if you ever studied Justice Campbell's work, but I really believe in the hero's journey. I believe that each of us is called a hero's journey. Most people don't answer the call because for various reasons, mostly fear of one type or another fear. that their parents are going to be upset, fear that their friends are not going to approve, fear that they might fail, fear that they're not adequate to do it. Some people are afraid they might be successful at it. And so people hold back and they go down a more traditional path and they may or may not find happiness in that route. But I heard the call within me, so to speak, my own soul about, and the way people can find that, things that you're really excited about, things that you're passionate about, those are like windows into your inner interiority, into your soul. And you'll find your hero's journey, so to speak, if you can get in touch with that deeper part of yourself, a deeper part of your being. And I did, and I was so excited about doing natural and organic food. And once I got excited about it, I have an evangelical streak. Passionate people get us excited because their enthusiasm gets us enthusiastic too, and I have that gift. And so then Renee and I launched it, and I saw it as an adventure. I really do think that life, the way I conceptualize my own life, and I try to influence other people to think this way, is that life's an adventure. It's a grand adventure. You don't exactly know how it's going to turn out. But on an adventure, you're going to go down this path and you're going to meet some dragons and you're going to have some setbacks and some failures and you're going to learn and you're going to grow and you're going to have people help you. But that's the hero's journey. That's the adventure. I call it the adventure of life. And so that's what I was starting to do. And I, frankly, I'm still doing it. I've been very blessed. I've had lots of failures in it, but overall, it's been an adventure and I've learned so much. I've met such amazing people. It's been amazing. And that's why I actually wrote the book. I really wrote the book partly to bring closure to my relationship with Whole Foods Market, my final gift, so to speak. And part of it was to look back retrospectively on almost 50 years of my life, but also it was to share it with other people, particularly young people. It's like, you can have an amazing adventure in your own life. But you have to get going on it. You have to start it and you have to be willing to risk rejection, fear, failure, things like that.

Adam: John, you shared so much there that I want to dive into. Starting off with the importance of uncovering your passion and overcoming whatever fears you might have to not hesitate to pursue your passion. What advice do you have for anyone listening to this conversation on how to get to that place?

John: The things that you're most passionate and excited about, those are keys. Those are hints of the direction you need to be pursuing. When I moved into Prana House, the name of the co-op, I wasn't that interested in food at all, but I was around people that were very interested in it. They were vegetarians and they knew so much more about food than I did. As they talked about it, I felt their own passion. It awoke in me my own passion. It's like a candle can light another candle. So my candle was lit by these other, in many cases, older people who were more experienced in this world. But then once it got lit, then my candle was blazing. And so your hero's journey, it's within you. It's not found out there. It's found within your own being, within your own heart, within your own soul. Oftentimes people ask me what advice would I give a young person. I always give them the same advice. Follow your heart. Your heart is wise. Your heart knows what's best for you. There are no guarantees of success. You could fail, but when you're following your heart, you're being true to yourself. You won't have regrets when you follow your path and you find your hero's journey. You won't have regrets. You won't get to the end of your life or get further along and then think to yourself, gosh, I wish I'd really done what I wanted to do instead of what my parents wanted me to do or what my friends wanted me to do. And you'll always wonder what might have been if you'd chosen differently. So we'll call that a regret. So you can find it in your passions. But if you don't have any passions that you're conscious of, so to speak, how do you find those? You might have to do some work on yourself. You might have to do some meditation. You might have to do some breath work. You might have to do journeying of other types. But there's all kinds of ways you can begin to access a deeper part in your soul. And if you're willing to do that, then you're already launched on your journey. Because I really do believe that when you begin to pursue your meaning and purpose, you find them. If you really are serious about it, you'll find them. So you just got to get going.

Adam: Passion is contagious when you surround yourself with other people who are deeply passionate That passion is going to fuel you as it did with you. You ultimately surrounded yourself with three other co-founders. You started one store. One store led to more than 500 stores. What were the keys to growing and scaling Whole Foods and what advice do you have for anyone on how to successfully grow and scale any business?

John: I find the study of ecology quite useful in terms of thinking about business. Business is a type of its own ecosystem in a way. A business has all of these other inputs and outputs that are happening. One of the things you can always ask when you're studying ecology, studying the environment, you can always ask, what are the limiting factors here? What is keeping this species from growing more? Or why is this species being culled back? And generally, for most living beings in an ecological system, the thing that limits them is food. That's the primary limitation in most cases. They can only grow their population to the limits of the food supply. Then also they also have predators or may I say competitors as well that come in and call them back as well. So my point is, that it's good to think about what the limiting factors of your business are. The biggest limiting factor for most businesses to grow, well, the first thing is The customer, if you're not creating value for your customers, you really can't grow. You have to be selling services or products that people want to buy. And you have to be able to sell those products at a price that they're willing to pay. And if you can't do that, then you can't grow the business. So that's the first thing. You have to have products and services that people value, and that they want. And then if you don't have that, you have nothing. Let's say you get that, you're starting to grow. And you have a successful business, your first business, whatever it is, is making money and you want to grow it. Then the limiting factor generally is capital. I need more money. We're making some profits, but not enough to be able to grow at the rate I want to grow. So that's why you have things like friends and family, angel investors, venture capitalists. and then ultimately possibly doing an IPO and going public. Whole Foods went through all of those phases ourselves. We also were very frugal in terms of saving our money and plowing it back into the business rather than just increasing our own compensation. So that's the second point. The third one that we found is talent. Steve Jobs famously said that you should only hire A players. And A players will hire other A players. If you hire B players, then they'll hire C players. Your business limitation by the amount of talent you have that can grow the business, get the job done. In other words, you have to build a great team. So as you're growing, sometimes the business outgrows the talent that you have. And you sometimes very painfully have to replace people because the job outgrew them. and you have to be able to bring in new talent that can help the business go to the next level. So first, you have to have value that you're creating for your customers or your members or whatever, that's something they value. Secondly, you have to be able to have the capital in order to grow. Third, you have to have the talent in order to grow. I might say that Then you get into all the other important attributes like you have to be a good leader. People want to work for you or have to be led by you. A leader is somebody that actually leads people. And if no one wants to follow you, then you're not a very good leader. And maybe you're the wrong person to grow your business or you have to do some work to become a better leader. One of the things that I make very clear in the book is how many times I came very close to failing and I had to grow as a leader. I had to grow as a human being. I got to these sort of roadblocks. I was the worst enemy the business had because I needed to go further. I needed to go deeper. I needed to become a different kind of person. The business forced me to grow or get out. And I think that's a limiting factor. We're talking about an ecosystem. Ultimately the entrepreneur, him or herself may be the limiting factor for the business. And they either have to get out of the way and let other leaders take over and take it higher. or they themselves have to grow and learn so they're capable of going to that next level.

Adam: How did you develop and evolve as a leader and how can anyone become a better leader?

John: One of the most important things you have to do is have a lot of self-awareness. You can't have your ego driving everything. Egos get in the way of, particularly when you get a little success. I've seen so many entrepreneurs blow up because in their geniuses or they have the Midas touch and they stop learning, they stop growing. They think they've figured it all out. I've never felt like I figured it all out. I still think I'm figuring it out. And I think one of the questions I used to ask myself that proved to be a very useful question, I asked myself the question, what does the company most need me to do now? and what does it most need me to become now? And that means sometimes it needed me to be and do something that I wasn't really comfortable at. For example, early on, one of the most important things we needed to do to grow the business was find good real estate. If you get a bad real estate location, your dream could be over quickly if you're in the retail business, because you're signing a long-term lease, usually 10, 15, 20 years of a lease, if it's a big store like Whole Foods had, and you're investing a lot of capital in the business for equipment and inventory. And if it doesn't work out, you still have to pay that rent and that lease for years and years in the future. And it can become like a black hole, sucks up capital, and prevents you from being able to grow. So in the early days, knowing how important real estate was, I really focused on it. I was like the head of real estate. I didn't have that title, but I remember when we left Texas for the first time, we went to Palo Alto, California. And that was the biggest step we ever did. And one of the reasons Whole Foods became very successful because we left Texas and went to Northern California, where they didn't have any natural food supermarkets. And first Palo Alto, then Berkeley, then Mill Valley, then San Francisco, and then throughout the entire Bay Area. Once we'd done that, we knew we could go to other states and replicate what we'd done. But it was so difficult to do that initially because we had to get great locations. I knew if we opened up a bad location, that could be the end of our expansion outside of Texas. I actually moved to Palo Alto for about a month before I signed the lease. I just really wanted to get to know this community. And I remember when I came back to the team with my report, I said, A, whoever invented the word yuppie probably lived in Palo Alto. This was back, we opened that store in 1989. So it was a long time ago. The world was very different. Silicon Valley was really at the early stages. You had something like Hewlett-Packard, but Apple was a small little company back then, not very big. The world changed tremendously. And Palo Alto turned out to be this fantastic location. But I was very careful. The same thing when we went to the Berkeley store, spent a lot of time thinking that went through. We just couldn't mess up the real estate. Okay, let's go forward. Now the company's doing very well. We've got a lot of great sites. It didn't need me to primarily do real estate anymore. It needed me to be thinking about, one of the things that one of my co-founders, Craig Weller, told me once, which stuck with me, he said, John, you're really good thinking about the future and leading Whole Foods into the future. I'm really good at taking care of today. And so one of the limiting factors as an entrepreneur, when I talked about self-awareness, you have to know what you're good at and what you're not good at. And the things that you're not good at, make sure other people compensate for your weaknesses. And the things that you are good at, you need to do them, but don't get trapped in them so that you don't do what the company most needs you to do as well. Even though real estate was very important, and I still, until I retired from Whole Foods two years ago, we never did a store that I didn't vote on and generally approved of. That remained an important quality in our growth and something I still paid attention to, but it wasn't what I was preoccupied with. I had to work on other things. So that question, I'll repeat it, is what does the company most need me to do now or do next? And that changes over time. At one point, the company more needed me to be out. As we got to be better known, I needed to be more visible. I'm an introvert by nature. I'm a quiet, self-assuming guy, very happy being by myself, reading books, et cetera, et cetera. The company needed me to be out more out in front, being a more visible leader, visiting the stores, talking to the media, talking with them, particularly when it's in public, talking to investors. I had to develop the more extroverted side of my personality because that's what the company needed me to do.

Adam: John, you shared so much there that is essential to successful leadership. Some of the most important characteristics, self-awareness, humility, commitment to self-improvement, willingness and ability to push your comfort zone. I love the way you framed it. Ask yourself the following questions. What does the company most need me to do now? What does the company most need me to become now? One day, it might be to be the real estate guy. The next day it could be to be the big picture strategic thinker. The next day it could be to become the face of the company. And you might be most comfortable as the real estate guy. And to become the big picture strategy guy, that might be a little bit of getting out of your comfort zone. To become the face of the company, that might require you to get way out of your comfort zone. But if you want to be a great leader, you have to be willing to get there.

John: I think you said that very well, Adam. That's exactly how I see it. And it also means sometimes giving up things that you're really good at. We all like to do things that we're good at. That reinforces our own feelings of self-esteem. We know we're good at it, but oftentimes the things I was good at weren't any longer what the company needed me to do. I was good at real estate, but it wasn't what the company most needed me to do. And that's very hard. I've watched a lot of entrepreneurs over the years who don't want to venture. The company's calling them to go somewhere else, but they're unwilling to do it. A lot of times those entrepreneurs need to sell their business. And I know lots of serial entrepreneurs who the last thing you want to do is manage a big company. They want to start one and they hope it gets big and they want to sell it and then start another one. We call that a serial entrepreneur. I was more of a builder entrepreneur. Meaning I wanted to build the company. It was my child and I watched it, wiped its butt when it was little and helped hold his hand to help a toddle and then took it to school and watched it grow up. And so now it's Whole Foods is now 46 years old. You start back at Safer Way and now it doesn't need daddy anymore.

Adam: For your business to evolve, for your business to grow, you as a leader need to evolve. You as a leader need to grow. It's true. You mentioned the importance of hiring, specifically only hiring A players. How do you define an A player? What, in your experience, are the characteristics of an A player, and how can leaders recruit, retain, and motivate the people who they hire?

John: That's a batch of really good questions. The first thing is the A players are people that you think are smart or smarter than you are. And sometimes people are afraid to hire A players because they're worried that they're going to be better than they are. And so you have to be willing to hire people that actually could be better than you. And in many cases, they are better than you in certain areas of the business. That's one mark of an A player. Secondly, an A player is someone who takes responsibility. They don't make excuses. They just, find ways to accomplish the goals and the tasks that are set before them. And when they make mistakes, which inevitably they do, if you mess up, fess up, and then they're willing to learn from that mistake and not repeat it. A player is also somebody you can trust. I cannot emphasize this too greatly. Integrity is the one thing you cannot compromise on. I've watched people compromise on integrity because somebody was so brilliant. But even more important than intelligence and drive is integrity. Because when you have someone with integrity, you know you can trust them. And if they don't have integrity, they'll screw you somewhere down the line. And that's to me like an absolute requirement to have integrity. And frankly, I always look for leaders that I thought were more caring, that just weren't assholes, and weren't so ambitious for their own success that they put their own ambition and career ahead of what was best for the organization. Conscious capitalism may emphasize servant leadership a great deal. I really do want leaders who are team players that get along with others while at the same time being highly intelligent, hardworking, and having a lot of integrity. These are all qualities of A players. Now, you may not find the perfect mix of all of those qualities in any one person, but you want to get as many of them as you can. And again, the integrity one is the one I'd probably put up there first. After that, it would probably be their intelligence and drive. I would say emotional intelligence, particularly today, we're always in relationships, always in teams, we're always connecting with other stakeholders. And the people with high degree of emotional intelligence, the ability to be emotionally self-aware and also empathetic to others, those are the two most important qualities of emotional intelligence. In today's more complex world, those prove to be invaluable traits. I try not to promote anybody that I don't think has a high degree of emotional intelligence. You can't always tell when you hire somebody, they can bullshit you. But down the road, when you get to know them, don't promote them if they don't have good emotional intelligence. You'll regret it if you do.

Adam: How can leaders recruit, retain, and motivate those people?

John: Let's talk a little bit about culture. Because culture is a magnet. Culture draws in the right kind of people. And the culture comes from your purpose and your mission. It comes from your core values, and it comes from the leadership principles, the way the company's managed and operated. And all those together make up a culture. And cultures are magnetic or repulsive. And so that's your best recruiting tool ultimately is your culture, because people feel it and they want to work for a company that they feel like they fit in well, that it's attractive. I know for so many years, Whole Foods just, we just, people wanted to work for Whole Foods and we'd get a lot of talented people who would be willing to start lower and lower positions than they probably deserved and were willing to prove themselves. So then they rise up, so to speak, in the hierarchy. So I think culture is very important for recruiting. But then I also think the leadership itself. Generally, when I've really wanted to get somebody, almost all the time, not every time, almost all the time, I was able to persuade them to join the team. Because I'd be evangelical, I'd be passionate, I would talk about the things we're going to do. And I'll tell you, the two things that I've learned, this is about retention, because that's part of your question. The two things that are overwhelmingly the most important things if you want to retain people, it's not the one most people think, which is compensation. I don't think that's the most important. It's a little bit down, it's not unimportant, but it's not the most important. I think the most important is purpose. I really do think people want to feel like their work is contributing to the world in some form or fashion. They're helping other people. And secondly, love. People want to feel that people care about them, that they're valued. And in my experience, Whole Foods was named one of the 100 best companies to work for by Fortune Magazine for 20 consecutive years. From the very first year they started it until we were acquired by Amazon and no longer an independent company, no longer eligible. So we had 20 consecutive years. It was those two things. It was our purpose and the fact that we had a culture based on love. I'll tell you a little story. So when Amazon bought Whole Foods Market, there were many things that they were surprised to learn as they dove deeper into our company. But one of the ones that they were most surprised at was how long people worked for the company. Because people worked decade after decade after decade with Whole Foods. Many people started and they'd worked their entire careers at Whole Foods. And that's pretty rare today. You don't see that so much. Amazon has a professional culture, meaning they're very professional and they hire really good people, really smart people. But those people, if they find a better opportunity or more money, are likely to move on. But I found if you want to retain people, that purpose and caring about them are the keys. The relationships hold people together to the organization. One of the reasons I went as long as I did was I'd stopped taking any compensation back in 2006. I stopped taking any money, any stock options or anything else. But I just loved, I had a sense of purpose and I had so much camaraderie with the people I was doing the business with. But what happened is I got older, almost all the people that I built the company with retired. I was the last man standing from the early days for sure, but everyone else had just moved into a different phase in their life. So for retention, purpose, love. Those are the keys.

Adam: John, I love it. And something that I tell leaders who I speak to is. You never need to tell the people on your team that they need to work harder. If you do, it means that you have the wrong people on your team.

John: Yeah, yes, exactly.

Adam: What we need is to remind ourselves why we do what we do. And we need to bring that intentionality to our work and to our lives every day. And when we approach our work and when we approach our lives with purpose, with mission, with everything that we've been talking about, that's what it's all about.

John: You're absolutely right. I 100% agree. And. You have to be the purpose yourself, by the way, because people, as you know, they hear what you say, but it's how you show up that really matters. You have to live the purpose. You can't just say it. You have to live the values. You have to embody them. You have to be. That's one of the things that, by the way, when I was going back and saying, what does the company most need me to do? One of the answers I once got was, you need to be the purpose of Whole Foods. You need to live this lifestyle in every way. You have to embody it, and you have to talk about it constantly as well. One of the things I realized as Whole Foods was growing, Adam, as rapidly as we were growing, was that we were hiring new people all the time. Just every time we opened a new store, you'd be bringing in hundreds of new people. And so in a sense, they all had to be enculturated. They were attracted to the culture, but then how do you get them to embrace it for them to be the culture themselves? So we focused a lot about that. I often realized that one of the things the company needed me to do at one point was just to really double down on the culture and really most CEOs pick the culture for granted. I think that's a mistake. The culture is something that's living and it's either getting healthier or it's getting less healthy.

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

John: I'm not sure this is the right question. because I'm not sure your goal should be to be more successful. Now you're away from your mission and your purpose in that sense, but that question, success is something that comes about from fulfilling your purpose. Let me give you an example. If you are trying to be happy, you probably won't be. you're going to be more narcissistic. Happiness is something that comes from a life well lived. It comes from purpose. It comes from loving people and family and friends and your children. Success is the result of all the processes that you're doing, your purpose, your values, the love that you're sharing in your organization, and the value that you're creating. So I think success is not the direct goal and if you start pursuing success for its own sake, I think you're off track. Now that being said, let me give you another answer that may be more in what you're really asking. Always be thinking about how you can create more value. Remember the first thing I said about a business was you have to create value for customers or members. That's why you exist. Your higher purpose ultimately comes out of your value creation for other people. And you should never, ever, ever stop asking the question. Every single day you should ask the question, how can we create more value? What are we not doing that we could do? What needs or desires do our customers have that we're not fulfilling, that they want us to fulfill? Or how can we innovate in ways that our competitors haven't even seen so that we can create value that they didn't even know they wanted? Steve Jobs famously said, for example, that When he created the iPod, he didn't do market research about how can I make the CD player better. You can go from 12 songs to 24 songs. The market research would have said, we'd like a CD that could hold bigger songs. And he just radically rethought it and said, what if we could hold all your songs? What if we could have something that would fit in your hand and it have all of your library in your hand? That was the initial thinking about the iPod. So he thought radically big in terms of how do I create value for people that they don't even know they want it. They didn't know they wanted an iPod until it was invented. People didn't know they wanted an iPhone until it was invented. Now think how radically say the iPhone and smartphones have changed our lives. If you want to have more success, never stop asking that question. You can never rest on your laurels. Your competitors are studying what you're doing. You're copying what you're doing well, and they're innovating themselves. This is why capitalism is this infinite game of lifting humanity up to higher and higher levels of prosperity collectively. It's because we're continually thinking, the entrepreneurs are continually thinking, how do we create more value? So that's the ultimate key to success. And everything else supports that primary goal of creating more value, fulfilling the higher purpose of your business, and value creation.

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

John: Adam, thanks very much for having me on. I've enjoyed our conversation a lot. I wish you the very best and I wish you great success in all ways.


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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