I recently interviewed Mailchimp CEO Rania Succar on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today is the CEO of the leading email marketing and automation company. Rania Succar is the CEO of MailChimp, which helps 13 million customers around the world send more than half a billion emails every day. Rania, thank you for joining us.

Rania: Thanks for having me, Adam.

Adam: You grew up in Detroit to Syrian parents who played a big role in your upbringing, played a big role in your worldview. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?

Rania: Yeah, great question. Yes, my parents had both emigrated to the US five years before my siblings and I were born. So we were all born here. But we had the beauty of growing up in between cultures, we had the opportunity to grow up and experience everything amazing about growing up in the US. And we got to spend a lot of time immersing ourselves in Arabic and Syrian and Middle Eastern culture. Some of that was through summer vacations, where we spent it in Damascus with our families. And some of it was just through the friend group and the community that my parents established. And so we got a lot of exposure to that. And I saw many things in those experiences. One, I certainly got to see the beauty of different cultures and to deeply appreciate them. It's very easy for me when I meet someone of a different background to understand and recognize some of the traditions that are so core to who they are, because I've lived them. I've experienced them and understood what different traditions and cultures can feel like. So that's one piece. Another one is I got to see a very different part of the world. So I got to see a very developing country and live in it and build really deep friendships with my cousins, for example, over there. And that created a lifelong obsession for me in closing the opportunity gap and working to create opportunities for people because I saw as a child and experienced as a child how my opportunity set just kept getting bigger as I grew up, so my dreams kept getting bigger. And I experienced how people in Syria dream’s would get smaller as they grew up, because there just were so few opportunities in the economy. And I really liked to see people realizing their potential. And I became very excited and motivated to work on this idea of ‘how do you help create potential for people?’ And later, I refined that through different experiences to recognize the impact that a strong economy could have in creating potential for people. So that shaped a lot of my interests and passion from a very young age. My dad was a small business owner. He was a doctor, and he led a medical practice and my mom would join him in the office. And often we had summer jobs working alongside him. And so that was a big part of our conversations growing up was how the business was doing and I joked often that I knew what the word receivables meant when I was 10. I watched my dad hire so many different people to handle receivables and address so many different strategies, but it taught me about the challenges of being a small business owner, the excitement of running your own business and the opportunity to shape it, but also the challenges. And so that also very much shaped what I do today. Both of those experiences shaped what I do. You know, at Intuit, where I've had the fortune of working for the last seven years, I get to work on both themes in a big way. We're all about empowering prosperity and success for small businesses, in addition to consumers, but in my world, small businesses. And all of that ultimately translates into opportunity creation, because small businesses generate the vast majority of jobs around the world. And when they create jobs, it creates opportunities for people, which then creates a strong economy and helps people realize their potential. So those things shaped me a lot as drivers as I was growing up.

Adam: And Rania, really the key theme that I'm hearing is the ability to see things through the eyes of others, whether it's the ability to see things through the eyes of small business owners who are now your customers, whether it's the ability to see things through the eyes of people who have grown up in a completely different part of the world, with completely different opportunities and the opportunities that you might have available to you. A topic that I've explored over and over and over with so many of the most successful leaders in America. Empathy, one of the key characteristics of the most successful leaders, and a question that I've asked, how can you develop empathy? Can you develop empathy and if you can, how? And something that I've heard from many great leaders I've interviewed directly ties to what you shared. It fundamentally comes down to being able to see things through the eyes of others. You might have your own personal upbringing, you might have your own set of experiences, but the more that you can emulate what others are going through, the more that you can ultimately feel what others are feeling, the more empathetic you'll be as a leader, the more effective you'll be as a leader.

Rania: I might take it in a slightly different angle building on your question and your point. I think one of the things I do, and maybe is rooted in the way I grew up, actually achieves the same outcome of what you're describing, but I would describe it slightly differently. So the way I think about it is I'm constantly looking to bring out the thinking and the ideas and the perspectives of people I work with. And recognizing that there is so much brilliance in so many of the people I work with, and how do I pull it out to get to a great outcome. So it's this concept of ensuring that people around me are speaking their minds to get to a great outcome, which may, in a sense, build on this theme of empathy. But that's how I think about one of the things I've learned to do over time and has made me an effective leader, and has made me so much stronger and developing recommendations and strategies that are effective because I'm able to harness the different perspectives and points of view that are on the table. So I would just add that as I think about what I tend to do and how it connects possibly back to the way I grew up. There's some of that I would say.

Adam: I love that keyword there. Empowerment. Great leaders empower others, bring out the best in others. In your case, continually focus on ‘how do I get those around me to not be afraid to step up to the plate, not be afraid to say what's on their mind?’ Whatever anyone around me has to contribute, how can I get them to contribute it? I love that.

Rania: And it's actually a very liberating concept when you figure it out as a leader. I remember when I took over QuickBooks Capital, when I first joined Intuit back in the day, and the opportunity I had in front of me was to lead this incredible team. We had to basically figure out how we would help small businesses access capital because one of the biggest reasons small businesses fail is they're not able to get capital. It's very hard to underwrite a small business profitably. And we had a ton of data on the QuickBooks ecosystem that led us to believe we could do it. But it was a very hard challenge, we had to build data science models, we had to make sure the data was clean because it was all user-entered. This was a very new area for Intuit to enter. So it was very much a startup. And I was in way over my head. This was an area I hadn't led before, I hadn't had general management responsibilities before where I was overseeing product and data and all of these things. There were a lot of new domains for me, and it was a new area. And we, as a company, were tackling something very big. And I remember feeling very overwhelmed as I had to make decisions like we're not getting high enough conversion, what should we do in the design experience? Then recognizing that there were brilliant people around the table, and all I had to do was say, “Well, what do you think?" and then to stimulate a great conversation. But you have to first recognize the magic of the people around the table. So that's your job as a leader is to surround yourself with people who truly are best in class in their field or the way they think or the way they approach things. And then begin to recognize the magic that each of those people can bring and then to harness it by asking for that input. It is incredibly liberating as a leader, because you recognize, and this was a shift for me, that you don't need to have all the answers that you just need to facilitate an exceptional conversation and often make the decision or synthesize the strategy based on all the input that comes in. So that was another big realization for me as I led that helped me lead effectively.

Adam: You shared a lot of great insights there and I want to highlight a couple of things you shared. Surround yourself with the right people. And listen, humility, essential. Your background is as impressive as anyone out there, as impressive as anyone who I've interviewed, you've attended the best schools, the best undergraduate schools, the best graduate schools, you worked for the best companies. But you're the first person to say, ‘when I walk into a room, it's not about me.’ It's about me facilitating, it's about me getting the best out of everyone around me. Great leaders are great facilitators.

Rania: Agree entirely.

Adam: Let's talk about your background. How did you get to where you are? What were the keys to rising within your career and how can anyone rise within their career?

Rania: One of the things I often talk about when I talk about my career trajectory and journey is how I have been constantly on this mission to hone in and get closer to what actually motivates me and excites me and where I get my passion from. And I think that that is extremely important because we all give so much to our careers and our professional lives. And it's very important that you can see meaning in that work and purpose in that work, but that's consistent with your values and what you stand for every day. Otherwise, burnout is inevitable, and not giving it your best is the outcome. And so that has been something I've done along the way where with every additional decision I made about a turn to make in my career, I stepped back and really asked the question, what motivates me? What inspires me, what is the impact I want to have on the world around me? That helped shape decisions and directions. And so you heard me at the beginning talk about this passion, I have to close the opportunity gap, and empower people to realize their full potential. And so the work I do at Intuit in the technology field is all very connected to that our mission is very meaningful to me, as I said, powering prosperity around the world. I see the impact we have every day, whether it's at MailChimp, how we're helping small businesses grow their businesses, we're obsessed with helping them get new customers and grow existing customers, or whether it was the work I did on QuickBooks to help address cashflow challenges. So that has been very important to me in defining the direction I went in. And that has helped me become successful because when you see meaning in your work, it'll enable you to be more effective. So that's one of the components of my career. Another is very early on, I did the things that were hardest, and I never shied away from what was hardest. So investment banking was really tough. When I started my career, just modeling and being in the numbers, and being detail-oriented wasn't the most natural thing. And yet, I emerged as one of the strongest analysts in my class. And I'm now most comfortable in an Excel spreadsheet with numbers. And so I always think that it's really smart to do the most rigorous, hardest thing that's going to really set you up to be able to handle any challenge later in the future. I did that with McKinsey as well, when I went off to the Middle East, and I had an opportunity to work at McKinsey there. I also got pressured and pushed and had to work incredibly hard. But those experiences gave me tool sets and skills that have helped me throughout my career. So the second thing besides the first one, which was find your purpose, and keep asking those questions as you go, the second thing I'd say is do the hardest things first. That gives you a really rock-solid foundation where nothing scares you anymore because you've been through the toughest moments and challenges and you come out really strong. The third thing I'd say is, it's important early in your career to experiment a lot and to do different things. Because during that time you're looking for ‘What am I passionate about?’ You graduate from college, and it's very likely you don't know. And so that first decision almost doesn't matter as long as you're going to a great company and working for great leaders that you're going to learn a lot from and build those foundational capabilities. But you then need to just keep experimenting in those early years. So my second job, as I said, was in Dubai, where I worked in the Middle East and a very different space than Wall Street and investment banking. One was very regimented, and one was very open-ended, very entrepreneurial, very different. And so that's the third theme, if you're going to find your purpose and your meaning, you want to experiment a fair bit. And the fourth one I'd say is you want to find the balance between staying too long and not staying long enough. So I made shifts often in my career. Early on, I typically looked for something new in the same company or different company every few years to keep growing. And that's important. You don't want to sit when the role is no longer helping you grow, you don't want to just stay there, you want to push yourself to take the next leap and search for the next role. At the same time. You grow a lot as a leader when you get depth of experience. And you can only get that if you stay long enough. And you keep building on the foundation, you have to keep trying the next layer of leadership and the next layer of leadership. And so I've now been at Intuit seven and a half years longer than any other company I've been at. I'd been at McKinsey five and Google five. And so this is the longest place I've been at, largely driven by the power of the mission and the number of growth opportunities I've had. But it's also helped me grow as a leader multiple times faster than anywhere else I grew because I've had the opportunity to keep building on one playbook after the next and getting to the next level of depth and leadership. So those are some of the things I've learned throughout my career that have helped me get to where I am.

Adam: What were the most important skills that you developed to help you become the CEO of a leading company? And what are the most important skills that you utilize today as the CEO of a leading company?

Rania: Many. One is how you build high-performing teams. At the end of the day, the thing that will differentiate any company is talent. And it's about being able to attract the best talent, being great at selling that talent. So they want to come join your team and be part of the mission of what you're building. I had to learn how to do that at Intuit. And so that's a big part of it and then engaging and motivating and inspiring that talent, so they are doing their best work. And so a lot of what I spend my time on every day is getting a pulse for how whichever organization I'm leading is doing, and then putting in place strategies to continue to create the right balance and the right opportunity for people to do their best work. So the talent piece is a very big part of it. Another one is how you balance short and long. Innovation is a big part of things. And it's been a huge part of my journey at Intuit. At MailChimp, we have the opportunity. We're innovating in such exciting ways right now, whether it's Gen AI and bringing in the ability to essentially help small businesses just turn on end-to-end marketing growth or sales growth strategies so that they can achieve growth outcomes better than they ever imagined possible with the most powerful AI that's available in the industry. So we're forging ahead and doing incredibly exciting work there. We're innovating on how we connect QuickBooks and MailChimp to solve customer problems in a way that no one else can. So innovation is a huge part of the toolkit. We did a lot of that when I was leading the financial services side of things, and the QuickBooks team. So innovation is a big part of it. But the other flip side of the coin is just how you operate and deliver consistent and strong performance results, week after week, month after month, and quarter after quarter. So all of those things weigh into it.

Adam: And I want to dive into the things that you mentioned starting off with innovation. How can leaders build cultures that fuel innovation?

Rania: Several things. First, you always want to create an environment where lots of ideas are generated. So you want employees who feel empowered to share their own ideas, cultivate their own ideas, and go run with their ideas. So you need to create space. And you need to encourage that. You also need to create a culture where we are moving with speed on innovation, there are often really big ideas and innovation. But it's very hard to get something from zero to one, and then one to realize its full potential and get to scale. Those are very hard milestones. And so that's the area where I've invested most time and refined as a leader in terms of how you unlock innovation. So on the first one, zero to one, I find teams take too long to launch a product. They'll want to make it perfect, they've got an idea of what's going to move the needle for a customer, and the timelines keep slipping to get it to market. And one of the things I've learned over time is you need to get it to market quickly because that's when the learning starts. That's when all of your assumptions are shocked by what you believed was true. And what you see is true once it's in the market when customers are using it. And so one of the things we've worked on is how do you keep narrowing scope and focusing on getting something out? So you get learning started very quickly. The next is how do you deliver meaningful results very fast. And so what's important there is to narrow in on the leap of faith assumption. What's the leap of faith assumption in your entrepreneurial idea that could actually change the industry or change the game? And you have to identify what that is and then test that assumption over and over. Sometimes people get distracted by saying ‘I need to test how much revenue I can deliver? How many customers can I deliver?’ You can figure that out all over time. But you need to figure out the hardest thing and the idea you're working on tests that learn against that. And once you've proven that everything else can follow. And I think sometimes teams get distracted in what they're trying to prove and what they're spending time on. So those are some of the things I've learned over time about how you build a really high-impact innovation roadmap.

Adam: Another big piece of it, which you've mentioned a couple times thus far in this conversation, is the importance of having the right people on your team. What do you look for in the people who you hire? And what are your best tips on the topic of hiring?

Rania: Great questions. Number one, team players, that is something that if it's not a cultural fit, and they're not team players, and they're not humble and willing to be part of a team, it's a non-starter. So that's just a gating item as we think about the right talent to bring in. Another is individuals who are strategic thought leaders who are going to really think hard about what is the strategy that's going to enable us to disrupt or lead the industry. And so you want people who are going to be thought leaders who are thinking that way and can bring the right strategy. You also want people who can execute against it. And that is often where things fall short. People might have great ideas, but it's very hard to execute. And so I always look for, ‘How would they make it happen? How would they collaborate? How would they overcome obstacles as part of that?’ It's the tenacity to get things done and to make it happen. So all of those are important attributes. Another attribute that's really critical is lifelong learning. As leaders, when you take on greater scope or your scope changes, we have to reinvent how we lead. Being an analyst is very different from being a manager, which is very different from being a manager of managers. And that requires us each to lead differently. And I found that it's tricky for leaders to figure out how to change their leadership playbook and their leadership style. And so I am blown away by leaders who can do that. And so that's an attribute I look for as well.

Adam: As you're describing what you look for in the people who you hire. I'm thinking about a lot of the key characteristics of the most successful leaders, humility, adaptability. Those who are lifelong learners, those who lead by example, not only talk the talk, but walk the walk. What do you believe are the key characteristics of a great leader, and what can anyone do to become a better leader?

Rania: I think a great leader is inspiring, and creates a sense of mission and purpose and creates a narrative where everyone wants to be a part of it and join that effort. So I think that's a big part of it. Great leaders connect people and bring out the best in people. People want to work in environments where they are part of something bigger than a machine, and so that they get to know people personally, and they're seen and recognized, and there's a nice culture. So I think you want to create the parts of creating a community as well as a great leader. And then great leaders are able to operate at different levels. So you not only will need to be great at setting the strategy and setting the direction and setting the vision, but you also need to be great at getting in there and understanding why things are not working the way you would expect. Getting to problem solve with the team and understand it. So different altitudes, as well, influence great leaders.

Adam: Something that I would imagine everyone listening to this conversation is interested in is email marketing. You're the leader of the leading email marketing company. What are your best tips on the topic of email marketing?

Rania: Great question. So at the end of the day, let's just step back to growth. The number one challenge small businesses face is growing their customers, finding new customers and growing existing customers and two-thirds of businesses tell us it's their number one challenge. And if you think about marketing, and growing your revenue, it's both an art and a science, you have to build your brand, you also have to think about performance marketing. And our observation is that everyone does it slightly differently, and very few marketers are optimized and getting it right. And so what MailChimp helps small businesses do, what we're obsessed with innovating around is giving marketers all the tools that they need to be best in class. And so we think about several things. First is helping them get all their customer data into one place. As a marketer, you want to think about personalization at scale. So that means that you deeply understand each of the individuals you're marketing to, whether it's your customer or a prospect, and that you're able to customize content for what you know about them. And so this concept of having all of your customer data in one place is one of the most powerful things you can do as a marketer and one of the core components of our strategy at MailChimp. And the value proposition we offer is we help small businesses get all their data into one place. The second thing is you want to build a connected journey for your customers, you want to make sure that all the touchpoints you have with them, and typically you need six or more to convert them and to get them to buy a product for you. You want to make sure it's part of a connected journey. So you want to be thinking omni channel, you want to be setting up that strategy effectively. And so we've worked to make MailChimp an omni-channel platform where you can manage multiple channels through MailChimp. And we're creating the AI intelligence on top of it to essentially give small businesses recommendations on what messages they should deliver to each customer to help create that content to help them understand how they should think about the mix of their channels and that journey. But that connected journey is also very important to marketers. And so those are some of the things we think about that results in great outcomes for marketers and some of the things that we've been working on at MailChimp as a result.

Adam: So if you had to share a couple of thoughts for someone who's in the early innings of their email marketing journey and a couple of thoughts for someone who might consider themselves an email marketing expert, and is trying to understand how can I get as good as possible at this, what would you share to those two groups?

Rania: For the early businesses, I would suggest that the number one thing is to get all their customer data into one place. One of the big mistakes we see for small businesses, as I said, is that their customer data is sitting in so many different places that every time they want to start a campaign they're working in spreadsheets or they're downloading and uploading data. And so making that investment to get all your data into one place is really key. And that's something we've been leaning into on MailChimp to make it super easy to come in and connect all your customer information in one place. And that is a huge differentiator for small businesses. So that's the most important thing I would say. And then investing in the hygiene of the very basic things you want to do as a marketer. So not only do you want to run regular campaigns, you want to build automations into your marketing strategy, so that based on all the actions your customers take, there's an automated communication path that you're working on with them. So if they visit your website, and they don't convert, you've got an automated journey that you're putting them through, or if they're browsing, and they're not converting, what does that look like as well. So getting the hygiene associated with that, with the more sophisticated marketers, there's so many opportunities, one is certainly taking advantage of the entire AI toolkit that's out there with generative AI today. And this is something that's quite important, we see from our research that the majority of marketers believe that AI is going to be critical for them to stay competitive, and to continue to lead their peers, but only 50% of them are using AI enough to feel that they're staying competitive, so they want to use it, but the majority aren't using it enough. And that's why we've brought AI, Gen AI into the heart of MailChimp with every workflow where it's just there for you as you're doing your work. But that would be the first thing I'd say is to use it to its full potential to use it, to create content, to use it, to create images, to use it to create a full campaign strategy, to use it to query your data to understand how you're performing, all of those things are really important as you want to continue to get more sophisticated. So that's one piece. The second thing is to invest in the data attributes you're capturing about your customers. So not only is all your customer data sitting in one place, you're understanding them more and more. So how do you append that customer database with more events, real-time behavioral events about the activities your customers are taking, or third-party attributes that you can use to append so you really get that sophisticated view of your customers? And then how do you then get into very advanced marketing strategies around multivariate testing, and constantly be testing and learning around different strategies to keep getting better performance results as you go?

Adam: You're the CEO of a company that was acquired for $12 billion. You're also a wife and a mom to two young children. How do you balance being a CEO with being a wife and being a mom? You also co-founded and lead a highly successful nonprofit organization? How do you find balance in your life and what advice do you have for listeners on how to attain balance in their lives?

Rania: I'd say several things, the first thing I do is I have clarity around what matters to me. And I build guardrails around that. So for me, I know the times that matter most in terms of how I want to engage with my family, and I just create the space to make sure I'm constantly doing that. So I get up very early and start working. But I'm offline every day at 5:30 and I spend the time making dinner with my husband and the kids and spending time with them. And we give them baths and we put them to bed together. And so that time is really important to me. And so I make sure to have that. So that's one. Second is about how you create energy for yourself throughout the day. Because that energy is really important to getting through the day and making things happen. So there's a lot of activities throughout the day, whether it's at work, or in your personal time, that can be incredibly draining, meaning that they don't give you energy, interactions that don't give you energy, things that you're working on that don't give you energy. And I'm constantly assessing my energy level throughout the day, and making changes based on that. So I get energy every day. So I can't wait to tackle the next thing. And I can't wait to get out of bed. So I will literally look at my calendar and assess which meetings I think are gonna give me energy and not and decline and accept meetings based on that. And other things to where I look at them and say this activity, this project is not giving me energy, I'm not going to be a part of that. So I think just this concept of understanding your energy levels and reacting to it is a very important one as well. And because the things I'll work on are so meaningful and important to me, I think that they actually give me more energy. They're creative to my energy, rather than taking it away and allow me to do so much without truly ever feeling guilty about things. So those are other ways that I've been able to handle the nonprofit, my family and work and still feel good about it. So those are the things I would say.

Adam: I love that. And it really aligns with something that I try to share with audiences that I speak to. You and I are coming at it from very different places. You're a wife, mom, to two young children. Two areas which I don't know a whole lot about from personal experience. But what I try to share is when you're doing something that you love, when you're doing something that you're great at, when you're doing something that allows you to make a positive impact in the lives of others. When you're doing all three of those things, when you're checking all three of those boxes, you could do that from the minute you wake up until the minute you have no energy left, and you hit your pillow. And the next morning, you're fired up to do it again. And it could be all kinds of things. It could be with your family, it could be with your nonprofit, it could be with your business, but what are those things that fuel you? What are those things that energize you? What are those things that get you going, that pump you up, as opposed to those things that drain you? And a lot of it comes down to knowing yourself, understanding yourself. Know thyself, self-awareness, is essential to effective leadership, essential to success, period.

Rania: I agree entirely. I agree. And it's about knowing what you're passionate about over time, and then also assessing daily how you're doing and checking in with yourself.

Adam: Rania, you've enjoyed so much success over the course of your career. What's the most significant failure that stands out to you? And what did you learn from it?

Rania: It's a great question. I experience a lot of failures all the time, because I take on very big challenges. I remember one of the early ones. When I joined, Intuit was not delivering against the expectations we had for QuickBooks capital, the business I led when I first joined Intuit. It was the first time I had true P&L responsibility. And I signed up for a big number because I was used to doing that when I was a consultant. You look at paper math, and it looks very doable. And the assumptions all make sense, and you sign up for it. And halfway through the year, it became very clear we were going to miss that goal materially. And I learned a lot from going through that, which was that I had opportunities to work with the team and build these assumptions on what it was going to take to deliver our number. They needed to believe they could do it too, because at the end of the day, the team was going to do it. It wasn't just me and signing up for a number. So that was a big learning for me about how I recognized I had to lead through people. But then the other thing was to always put things in context, I think as a leader, you need to understand what is the meaning of that failure? How significant is it and for me, it's I have to step back and recognize what are all the positive things I brought to the equation that was a year where we innovated like crazy, we built a whole new offering that has become so substantial to the company and has become a material business for the company, QuickBooks Capital, and one of the greatest examples of building a startup from inside the company. So the work we did that year was very consequential and very important, we didn't hit our revenue goal. We missed it by a wide margin. But what that taught me is I've experienced failures in the future is to put them in context for myself. Many times, we have a very high bar for ourselves, and we want to be successful all the time. And so you can fail and feel like it means a lot about your impact as a leader, your ability as a leader, and could translate into you becoming more sheepish about your potential and what you can do. And if you can contextualize it, and recognize ‘I may have missed it. And here are the five lessons I can take about being an effective leader.’ And I always do that. But if I look at the flip side of what we achieved this year, it was actually quite good. And I want to celebrate those things, while also working harder to deliver the positive. So part of what I've learned as I grow as a leader is to contextualize these failures. And also to just ensure that I'm growing from them.

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

Rania: Some of the things we've talked about, I would say, starting by recognizing what your passion is. It's the most important foundation and making sure that the work you're doing is aligned to that, making sure that you're in an environment that's conducive to bringing out the best of you. And if you're not making change, that is a huge deal in someone's ability to succeed. Third, believing in yourself, seeing the things that you're exceptional at recognizing your strengths, and recognizing work in context that bring out your strengths. So you can do that. And then fourth, once you do that, becoming fearless, taking bets on yourself, jumping into situations where you're not sure how you're going to succeed or you're not sure you have all the leadership experience to do it, and betting on yourself to do it so that you can constantly grow as a leader.

Adam: And a common message in everything you just shared is take ownership of your life. It's your life. It's yours. Own it.

Rania: Yeah, agree with that.

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

Rania: Thanks for having me.


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.