I recently interviewed Monumental Sports Founder and CEO Ted Leonsis on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today is a serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist and the owner of an NBA team, an NHL team, and a WNBA team. Ted Leonsis is the founder and CEO of Monumental Sports, which owns and operates five professional sports teams, including the Washington Wizards, Washington Capitals, and Washington Mystics. Ted was a senior executive at AOL and is the co-founder and partner at the venture capital firm Revolution Growth. Ted, thank you for joining us.

Ted: Great to see you and look forward to a lively chat.

Adam: I'm looking forward too. Ted, you grew up in Brooklyn, and you were the first person in your family to go to college. You attended Georgetown. Growing up, before going to Georgetown, before graduating at the top of your class, before getting to where you are, you didn't exactly have the brightest career aspirations, you didn't exactly have people around you telling you that you were going to be the next star and technology and owner of a sports team. You're told by your high school guidance counselor, that in the best-case scenario, you'd be working at a grocery store, and your dad told you that you probably would be winding up as a grocery store manager.

Ted: Yeah, jobs versus careers, you start to learn the difference there. And my mom and dad didn't go to college, and they always deferred to the professionals. So the guidance counselor in our 12-minute meeting with my parents first time and the only time she had ever met with them, said, "Your son's not college material. You should consider an avocation, maybe it'd be a plumber. I know he's been working in a grocery store. If he works hard, and he works there a long time, maybe he could run the produce department", then her work was done. And so I use that as a constant reminder that no one knows anything. That's the greatest quote ever in sports. It's why they played the games. Now that I've moved into a part of my life and times where I like to mentor young people, I explained to them that don't listen to experts that you're the master of your ship. Never use a victim card, and never be able to point to what someone told you that there is greatness within you. But you got to do the work. And I'm surprised that in today's world, we don't put more emphasis again on just shutting up, stopping whining, and doing the work. When you look at the great athletes and what they're able to accomplish, everyone's gifted, everyone's talented. But it is the ones that pay special attention to the craft and keep at it, that tend to break out and tend to be the real winners.

Adam: And there were a couple of mentors for you in your early days who helped get you to where you are, who helped get you to shift your mindset.

Ted: We moved from Brooklyn to Lowell, Massachusetts, and I was a fish out of water. I didn't have a car, now we live in a suburb if you will. So I was walking to school, hitchhiking the school. And during that first summer there, I thought I needed to make some money, I needed to gain some independence. And there were all these big houses near our neighborhood with lawns and I thought maybe I could mow lawns. So, I went to the library. I'd never mowed a lawn. I didn't live in a place in Brooklyn where there was anything but concrete. And I bought a book or loaned a book called How to Mow Lawns. And inside we're drawing on how to mow, how to turn on a lawn mower. So I used that and I kept it with me and I went knocking on doors. Can I mow your lawn this summer to make some money? And I knocked on this one guy's door, James Shannon, and had my book. And he said, "Have you ever mowed a lawn before? And I said, "Well, actually no. But I got this book." And he said, "Well, do you have lawn mowing equipment?" And I said, "Of course, I have lawn mowing equipment. I'm trying to make some money for the summer." And he laughed, and said, "Okay, there's my lawn mower. Go ahead, knock yourself out. If you do a good job, I'll give you 25 bucks. And let's see how you do." And I probably took seven hours to mow this man's lawn. I was fastidious, and I'm referencing, I was down on my knees and cutting like the edges with this little utter on the side. And a couple of times I saw him opening the curtain and looking out with his wife and they're looking at me, and she brought me out a lemonade or something. And when I finished, I said, "I'm done. What do you think?" And he said, "Good for you." And so I mowed this guy's lawn during the summer vacation, he'd come out and we chatted a little bit. And at the end of summer, he said, "Are you thinking about college?" And I said, "Yeah, I guess." And he said, "We thought about Georgetown." I said, "I don't know Georgetown. Where is it?" He said, "Washington, DC. Next week I'll get you an application." I sent a letter of recommendation, I got into Georgetown. And the first time I ever stepped foot in Washington DC, the first time I ever set foot on the campus of Georgetown was the day he got off of a Greyhound bus and showed up. And it was like, wow, this is the greatest place I've ever been. Georgetown has become a very, very important part of my life. Washington DC, obviously is home for me. America Online was founded in Northern Virginia because the Internet was founded in Washington, DC. Al Gordon found the internet. But there was a lot of truth when he said that it was here as part of DARPA. And when we built America Online, it was illegal to get on to the internet, you had to hack into the internet. And so as entrepreneurs, we built a Private Internet. And that all was because I mowed Jim's lawn and he got me into Washington, DC. I use that as a lesson to my friends. I don't think Jim knew what was gonna happen, but he cared. And probably it was 25 bucks. It was probably three hours collectively of time during a summer. And that little gesture, the ripple effect of that for my life, then I'd like to think I've had a positive effect on people's lives. And some of those people have had positive effects on other people's lives. The positive ripple was exponential. So, I tried to inspire my friends, and my family to do a lot of good, nice little things. And over time, the positive repercussion, the payback is just enormous.

Adam: Ted, you're hitting on so many important themes, we could spend the entire conversation just hitting on each one of these. The importance of believing in other people as a leader, showing confidence in the people around you, and caring about the people around you. Something that you brought up, which is something I love talking to audiences about, we all know what a mentor is—the definition of a mentor, is very clearly defined. Someone who is in your life, you can meet with them whenever you want. You go out to breakfast, lunch, coffee, once a week, once a month, you can call them, you can text them. A term that I've coined is mini mentor. What's a mini mentor? A mini mentor is someone who maybe you only see once a year, once every five years, or once every 10 years. Maybe you only see them once. But that one interaction can completely change the trajectory of your career, can completely change the trajectory of your life. And the story you tell, three hours, the time that he gave you, talk about changing the trajectory of your career, the trajectory of your life. Anyone listening? What can you do for those around you? It's great to be a mentor. It's great to be fully committed to making an impact in someone's life. But you could spend one hour, you could spend two hours, you could spend three hours with one person and make an incredible impact. Ted, to your point, the ripple effect that that has, is the ability for that person to then go and pay it forward.

Ted: And I would say if you have the ways and the means and the bandwidth to help organizations, philanthropies, charities, causes at scale, if you don't do it small and personal, it's hard to truly get engaged. It's really easy to write a check to help a politician, help a charity but I'll give you an example. The Shriver family, Ria Shriver, Anthony Shriver. They were Georgetown family, Maria was one of my classmates, and they had started Best Buddies. Best Buddies is a charity for young adults who are pushed aside because of special needs. And Best Buddies is, let's connect in communities and break down that barrier. And so they asked me to be chairman locally and buy some tables and raise some money. And I said, "Okay, I'll do that. But I want a best buddy. I want to meet someone." And so they connected me with a young man, Ken Holden, big Ken Holden, and probably at the time was in his early 30s, lived in Tampa, Florida. was isolated and I said, "Okay, Ken. Here's a personal computer." And at the time, he has an AOL account. "And you and I are going to communicate every day. I'm going to send you an email, and I'll send you links on things and you'll respond." And for about 18 years, just about every single day, we sent emails together, and he became a Bid Caps fan and a Wizards fan. And I got him for Christmas, the Direct TV package so he could watch the games. And whenever I go to Florida games, we'd host the family there. I became close with the family and Ken, which then propelled me because I had a real-life experience of Jesus. I'm president of America Online, and I'm talking about the power of community and communications. And here I'm living it and here's this charity. And now I could speak with authority and authenticity about, hey, this matters, and it works. And how many emails I get a day and send a day to be able to carve out five minutes a day, changed Ken's life.

Adam: I want to ask you about your entrepreneurial journey you started so many different businesses over the years. In your experience, what has been the keys to creating building, growing, and scaling successful companies across such a wide variety of industries?

Ted: I'm at that point in my life where I'm trying to get those answers and look back at one of the big truths. I've been first and tried to innovate and disrupt early. The first company that I worked for out of college was called the Wang Laboratories. Until that, I went to Georgetown University, where I graduated in 1977. The university was founded in 1789. It's an old university. Women were first enrolled in 1972. And the 70s was the era where women, at scale, were going to universities. They were entering the workforce. This little company, Wang Laboratories, said, we're going to be anti-IBM, we're going to make computers populous. And we'll focus on this first generation of female leaders who are graduating from college. But as they entered the workforce in big companies, they were being forced into administrative positions, which meant typing. And if you made a mistake, put a white out, it would blow the white out. This company applied computer technology to that task, fixed that problem, and freed up time for the people who were doing drudgery work, to be able to develop their careers and add value to their company. Now, I've just added a whole romantic narrative, the word processing company, but that's how I saw it. It's like a revolution of education, the next generation, demography, women entering the workforce, and technology being applied to it. And that was from 1977 to 1980. And the next logical thing from that, which was a mini-computer with an application, aimed at word processing, was personal computing. I bought an Apple II computer, first generation, and saw the demography and technology, and big computers to mini computers, to personal computers. And I quit my job. I was living in Boston, and IBM had started a personal computer division in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. They wanted to get it away from the bureaucracy of Armonk, New York. And I said, well, I'm young, I'm single. I'm going to the beach. I started a company called LIST, the Leonsis Index to Software Technology. And I worked with the founder of the IBM PC division. His name was Don Estridge. A hero to the world and technology. He perished in a plane crash in Dallas, Texas. And so I started this company. It did well. Steve Jobs was introducing the Macintosh Guy Kawasaki, called me and said, "What you did for IBM can you do for us?" And I got to meet Steve and early on worked on the Mac launch. And the first couple of million Macs that got launched, they put this magazine called The Macintosh Buyer's Guide that we made that was, here's all the software that works on the Mac, because we had that list of, here's all the software that works on the PC that we had done for IBM. Early on, I went from populous computing for women, and word processing to personal computers. They ended up selling that company at a very early age, which seems quaint today. It's still a lot of money, but $60 million. And because I was first generation kid, an only child, parents didn't go to college, we retrained. go to school, work hard, get good grades, get good grades, you'll get a good job. get a good job, you'll make a lot of money. declare victory. So at a young age because I had skipped grades, started school early, at 26 years old. That's worth 60 million bucks. And then I got on the wrong airplane. And I was on a plane Eastern Airlines leaving Atlanta that developed all sorts of technical issues and lost our flaps. We thought we had lost our landing gear and the plane had to make an emergency landing. As the plane was circling burning off gas, moving everyone around on the plane was a very antiseptic way, you have your reckoning. I had my reckoning. It's like a bad joke. It's like really now, I just got here. And people are weeping and crying and then moving people around.  I started to pray, even though I wasn't that religious. And during my reflection, I started laughing. Because all I could think of was if God was listening, God's saying, "Oh, I got it. Now you need me, right? Everything's cool. Now you're sending up the bat signal and you need something from me." And so I tried to come up with my sales pitch. It's like, let me live. Let me get through this. How am I going to fill in those dots? And I said I'll leave more than I take. I will filter everything I do with what is the positive, group societal community uplift, I won't just make the calculus through me. And obviously, I made it through. So I did this very feeble list of 101 things to do before I die, which I am not proud of now in reflection. It was a bad tool set, but it was falling in love, getting married, having children and grandchildren, building the world's biggest media company, buying a sports team, winning a championship, winning an Oscar, and giving a billion dollars. So it was a random list of stuff. But it did propel me to say there was a fundamental need that I was trying to feed here. And that through the years got translated. And I later wrote a book on the subject called The Business of Happiness. I took my son on a field trip in DC to the Library of Congress with the Declaration of Independence. And the only line paragraph that had no edits was 'Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' And then went on not being a great dad, because I'm doing to my son, what my parents were doing to me. Work hard, go to grad school, get good grades, make a lot of money, full stop. I never talked about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must be central to our psyche or mindset. It's right in the founding document and the authors of it said, yeah, that's a pretty powerful thought. So I try to interpret that as people want to be happy, and organizations want to be happy. So, what's the formula? And if I could start through research, find what made for happiness, what made for self-actualization, and not sound like a bullshit psychologist make it practical. And so that was powered really by about 25 years of my work, which was being an active participant in multiple communities of interest.

Adam: What is the formula?

Ted: I'm giving you the number one. You have to be involved, and extroverted in multiple communities of interest. Number two, you have to have high levels of self-expression. If you can create a company, you come to a hockey game, you'll see we sell out every game and you will see fans all badging in the color red. We have read every game, but you'll see people expressing themselves individually in a way that makes them feel like they're a part of something much bigger. So social media companies early on that were allowing for self-expression, whether Facebook or AOL, back in the original day, we invented instant messaging, and we capitalized on that. We were able to allow people to self-express. You're podcasting, you are self-expressing, and you are now able to say in a low-cost, highly leverageable way, listen to what I have to say. I'm influential and smart. I'm podcasting. The tools of podcasting on Spotify are an outgrowth of this basic human need of I want self-expression. Third, that I've always seen, and it's certainly powered my teams is to get out of the I and into the we. I know you're a big Angels fan if you can have the greatest historic players with the greatest stats. But if they're not part of a collective, they won't be historic. They'll feel underserved. They'll feel left out in not having the collective win of a championship. In no sport, and no business can one person do it. The media wants to talk about someone's greatness. Elon Musk, and Steve Jobs, you want to try to simplify. But LeBron James can't win championships without a healthy Anthony Davis, and five other great contributors. It's for getting out of the I and into the we in everything that you do. Being a dad taught me about family collective, which you can't talk about, well, this is what I want to do with the family. Everything has to be collective. Being able to find the higher calling, I've said, I don't want the best TV ratings, I don't want to just make the playoffs. I don't want to sell out every game. I don't want to win a championship. I don't just want to win the Stanley Cup. We want to bring our community closer together. When we won the Stanley Cup here in Washington, DC in 2018, it was the most divided our country had been and our city had been. And we won the Stanley Cup. And we'd have 20,000 people in the building and 50,000 people outside the building watching the games on the big screens outside. We have a parade. Half a million people were at the parade. We then went into the National Mall, we had more people on the mall, all wearing red than the President of the United States had during his inauguration. We brought the community closer together. We had this higher calling. The mayor stood up and her speech was, Washington DC now stands for the District of Champions. We won the championship in the NHL. The very next season our WNBA team, the Mystics won the championship. We had an Arena Football League team, the Washington Valor, they won the championship. The next season, the Washington Nationals won the World Series. We had four teams like that all pulled into this collective and we made Washington DC, the District of Champs, and the community was uplifted, and the economy was fantastic. I went, there. See how the formula works. And so by having a game plan, if you will, by having a formula and trying to live your life that way, and then trying to manage your enterprises, the businesses that you create, the philanthropies that you create or you're involved in, putting them into that game plan, I have found is an easier way to manage to positive outcomes than just every single thing that you're doing is a random individual bespoke process.

Adam: What would surprise people about owning a sports team, about the ins and outs of the world of sports, and sports business and what advice do you have for anyone interested in breaking into? o the world of sports or rising within the world of sports.

Ted: I believe sports is the absolute toughest industry in the world to win a championship. And you have to keep score by that. We've done incredibly well on the business side by not focusing on it. It's not the kind of thing where you can say, "I'm in an oil company, I'm gonna pollute the earth. But look at how much profit we're making. And the shareholders love me." It's not there. Fans, the mayor, your employees, they don't care. And you shouldn't care about being the steward of how well is the company doing, or what's the valuation of the company. It all has to be about how are you servicing your fans. Are the fans happy? Are you winning championships? Are you competing for championships? Do the fans think you're doing the right thing in the right way, and they see you in them and vice versa? I walk around every game. We're rebuilding our NBA team. We knew yesterday was going to be a bad game. And I got there early. I walked around and welcomed fans. At halftime, I walked around. At the end of the game, I walked around. And that was by design. Because I wanted to see it's easy for me, it's easier for people. So you rebuild the team, blow the team up, and be bad till you're good. It sucks getting blown out. I mean, our game was over yesterday in the first period. But walking around was uplifting, because the fans were, "Hey, tough game. But you did the right thing." Getting High fives from people and people who see that you're committed to winning and you've been straight with them, hey, this is not going to be a lot of fun, there's going to be nights like this, but this was the path that we've decided to go on. We're going to be transparent with people. We're going to be honest with our communications. We're not trying to oversell someone on when we'll be successful. And so I have found that if you have a certain level of fidelity and integrity in your personal life, you have to translate that to your business life. And that if you lay out a strategy, you execute a plan, you start to get results. The players will want to stay with you. Our Washington Capitals hockey team, we were a good playoff team, but I didn't think we could win a championship. We decided to blow the team up. We win the lottery to get the first pick in the draft. In 2004, we drafted a player named Alex Ovechkin from Russia. Doesn't speak much English, his mom and dad dropped them off here. I spent some time with them, he came to our house. He's hanging out with my son. They're about the same age. And I have a heart-to-heart with him. I tell his parents, "I'll treat him like he's my second son. And that means tough love when needed. But you can trust me that I will communicate the truth to him." And I said to him, "We'll be in this together. The reason we're able to draft you is because we stink. And he was Rookie of the Year, third year as MVP. He's coming off his first deal as a restricted free agent. And most great rookies were assigned four-year extensions. And we knew from the day we signed his extension, the world would be saying, "When is he leaving? When is he being traded to a real hockey market?" And we did something very interruptive and innovative. We said to him, we'll do a five-year extension with you. But then you'll be an unrestricted free agent. How about if we negotiate your unrestricted free agency now? And we ended up I remember doing the press conference. I had all our fans and media and I said, I have bad news, all the leaks, everything that's being written about Alex staying here and signing a five-year extension, it's not true. And you felt this, ugh. Almost like, why can't we have nice things? And I said that's because Alex is signing a 13-year contract, and the place went nuts. And like that, the community now trusted us. And if Alex Ovechkin thinks this is a great place to play third-best and is willing to commit like that, then I am too. And we sold out every single game. We ended up so far during that career span, we've had the third-best record during the regular season for three of those seasons. We had the best record, we won the President's Trophy, we won the Stanley Cup. And by uniting the community, building this huge fan base, 16,000 season tickets from 2900 season tickets. Oh, by the way, we're one of the most valuable teams in sports. And so that outgrowth of being committed to the team, to the players, to the community, taking the long term view, I bet you Forbes will now say that monumental sports and entertainment is worth $6 billion. And I'm the majority shareholder. Now, I never entered this from a business standpoint. It was, I want to own a sports team in my hometown and I want to win a championship on my list. Oh, it ended up being one of the best investments I could ever make.

Adam: Ted, you shared so many great insights that apply to anyone inside of sports, but to everyone outside of sports to everyone period. I love that you are present, walking around every single game, being there. That's what every leader needs to do—putting your stakeholders first, putting your fans first, putting your people first, being honest, being transparent, prioritizing relationships, investing in relationships. The story with Alex Ovechkin started with investing Personal Capital, treating him like a son, and then investing financial capital and look how it paid off. You mentioned that you never looked at sports teams as investments. But a big part of your life is looking at investments here, a partner at one of the leading venture capital firms in America. What do you look for in companies you invest in? And what do you look for in people you invest in?

Ted: I usually bet the jockey is not the horse. I looked at my history. I raised my first million dollars in venture capital from a bank that a good friend of mine introduced me to and brought me into the boardroom. It was a company called EF Hutton. They're out of business now. But they were big important banks. And when I was launching my software database company with IBM and eventually Apple, I made this presentation about personal computers and networks and distribution. And they asked me to leave the boardroom after my presentation. And then they brought me back in. And the chairman of the board of the company said, "That was an interesting presentation. Nobody here understood a word you said. But I think you could sell snow to Eskimos. So we're gonna give you a million dollars. And your buddy who brought you here, he's going to be our board rep." And I turned that faith in me. They didn't know what my business was, but they were betting on me. So I look at the individual and whether are they in the business for the right reason. Are they solving a problem? Are they building something that will leave more than it takes? I back away quickly when I hear someone say, "I'm going to start this company, we're going to get an exit in two or three years that 20 times, multiple." It's like you've been watching too many HBO shows, and attending too many of these banking conferences. I think you just have to have this really deep commitment to solving a problem, making a great product, building a great organization, and having a sense of why what you have is better differentiated and can disrupt and innovate. I take great pride in that for us to be the first team that gets into the eSports space. First in sports, gaming. We were the first organization to say our business isn't about sports real estate, or media. We are a next-generation SaaS platform. If you look at the world's greatest tech companies, they're valued because they have recurring revenues. And those revenues are predictable. And they grow 3, 4, or 5% per year. My business is just like Oracle or salesforce.com. I license my content to big media companies and local media companies. They're all huge businesses, and they'll sign 10, 15, 20-year deals. I'm not in the real estate business. I'm in the long-term rental business, so I have suites. And companies will pay us half, a million dollars a year for the suite. And it has a 5% escalator and then we get the opportunity to sell those suite holders, merchandise, and tickets. My variable product is season tickets and regular season tickets. And I even renew those. I have data that shows that we renew in bad years at 80% and in great years at 95%. And then there's a secondary market when we're a great team. We broadened everyone's perspective. I remember when I was at AOL and I bought the caps, I paid $85 million for the caps, and I think I paid $350 million for the wizards. Forbes just came out and said the wizards were worth $3.5 billion. So that's a 10 times increase for the basketball team. But I say I'm not buying a basketball team. I don't know what the wizards are worth. I own Monumental Sports and Entertainment. And we're one of four teams and four organizations in North America to own teams. As you said, we own WNBA, NBA G League, and NHL, own venues that the teams play in, and own networks that distribute that IP through traditional, terrestrial, and digital, license it and we manage it like it's a platform company. And our vocabulary, the way we do GAAP accounting, us look like a SaaS business. And SAS businesses are valued at 10 to 15 times revenues. So connecting the dots being creative and looking at businesses differently, we had a higher calling. Grow revenues and increase the multiple. And we've done that. But if we haven't made the playoffs all the time, I mean, I blew up the Wizards because we only made the playoffs 5 out of 10 years. My TV interview on opening night said, "I apologize to our fan base. I failed you That's why I have to rebuild the team." But we made the playoffs 5 out of 10 years. And that's a failure in sports. And that's the thing about being humble in business. You're very successful if you build a Fortune 1000 company. In the NBA, there's one champion and 29 Losers. I mean, that's how psychological binary it is. We lost a triple overtime playoff game, game seven in the semi-finals against the Rangers a couple of years ago. And it was death short of a loved one dying. I was crushed, our fans were crushed. People were crying, it was devastating. That's how much it meant to us. And you go that's only a game. No, it's game seven in the playoff, we never won a Stanley Cup. We had won that game. That's how important it is. And that's how you want to manage your enterprises that it is a shared responsibility. And you're feeling the angst that people feel. I've gotten letters. And then you follow up with the phone call. A woman calls and she says, "I live in San Francisco. And I grew up outside of Washington, DC. And my dad would take me to hockey games if I did my homework, and I loved doing that with my dad. And so my whole life, I'd go to games with my dad. And then I went away to college. And then when I came back, I met a guy, and I got married, and we moved. So I watched the games now at four o'clock in San Francisco. And he's watching the game at seven. And we're on FaceTime, and I'm watching the game. And it's like we're doing the same thing. And my dad just died. And I realized that the most meaningful moments that I've spent with my father over our life together were over your team's hockey games. He's being buried. And I want him buried in the Caps jersey. Will you get your team to autograph a jersey? That's how we're going to bury him." Oh my god. Yes, of course. But like, I've created and run huge businesses. I've never had somebody go, "You know that AOL 3.5 client that you guys launched with instant messaging changed my life." I have had people say I met my wife over AOL or some app.

Adam: Ted, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become a better leader?

Ted: I think engage deeply with your communities of interest. You can't fake real live knowledge, experience, and authenticity. And it doesn't matter what business you're in. If you're not with your employees, with the customers, with the suppliers, and seeing the product and service through their eyes, you can't lead well. It's all theoretical. It's all a couple of clicks away. At AOL, early on Steve Case, who is our founder, used to tell me, "All this stuff is too technical. And design everything for my mom. Could my mom use it?" And I went, "You know what? That's a great thing." So we'd have engineers, and they'd show me all the stuff and they'd go, "Well, that's cool. And I really liked it. Get rid of it. Steve's mom can't use it." We use that as a rallying point that we want to get America Online, we have to be able to get everyone to understand. And by doing that, that was an authentic, real, rallying cry. And so I would just say, be empathetic and close to everyone in your community of interest. So I have found that just staying close personally, regardless of how big the company of the enterprise is, is the fastest, best way to success.

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

Ted: Good for you. I'm proud of you. You're doing a great job too. And keep at it.

Adam: Thanks again. 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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