Adam: Rebel With A Cause

You know those conversations that give you goosebumps?

Conversations where you feel an immediate connection? That are so vulnerable and open from the get-go you wonder why all conversations aren’t just like this?

That’s what chatting with Adam was like. I felt a familiarity like we were old friends, while simultaneously feeling the thrill of meeting someone new and discovering shared communities and experiences.

Oh — and the laughter. There was a lot of that.

Adam’s career path is a story of resourcefulness, openness to new opportunities and challenges, and long walks around NYC (maybe this could double as a classified ad, eh?). He’s built his community by consistently seeking to help others, staying true to his values in work and in life, and being downright cool.

In a Nutshell: Adam’s Career Path:

Adam’s entrepreneurial spirit was clear from a young age.

“When I was younger there are 2 things I did: I was always selling things, I was trying to figure out the psychology around what it means to buy or sell. The other was that I always liked designing things — like websites [because I liked gaming] and I got really into understanding HTML and.PHP.”

By the time Adam got to college, these two skills became the basis of what would ultimately become his collegiate legacy. That and a knack for spotting needs in the market (and only a slight disregard for “rules”).

“I go to college and the first interesting thing I did for my career was starting a convenience store / black market in my dorm room. My roommate was expelled and I was like I have all this space so what am I gonna do? My school was really far away from things, so I noticed people wanted soups and snacks, but everything closed at 8:00pm so — opportunity! — I can go buy the stuff in bulk (since no one has a car) and sell it on campus.”

In addition to selling physical products, Adam used his programming knowledge to crack passwords to websites and sell them (websites for both educational and “entertainment” purposes…). Giving free passwords to his Resident Assistant (RA) ended up being his saving grace when the Dean of Housing unexpectedly passed by one day and was on the brink of catching Adam red-handed.

Adam closed the store after that close call, but knew he wanted to do something else to keep his mind engaged.

“School was always kind of boring to me, so I had to do something else. I got into writing and became a journalist for a couple of music sites and spent a couple of years honing that skill.”

At the same time, Adam decided to partner with a few guys to make a videogame magazine, but was “fired” for questioning the slow movement and lack of progress of the project.

“They started getting mad at me asking questions about the business model and all of a sudden they “fired me.” There wasn’t even a website yet! So I said — why can’t I do this myself?”

And that’s what sparked Adam’s first startup — JRLOnline Media — a media conglomerate.

“My first property was called The Gamer’s Studio — and I ended up running that for 4 years. We had contributors, we ended up being one of the mid-tier websites, with 100,000–300,000 uniques a month and kind of doing that, just enough to be respected.”

By the time he graduated with his computer science degree, Adam was ready for something new. After selling his first startup, Adam jetted to NY to work as a mainframe programmer. While his new role was a great entry point into NY, after 6 years boredom got the best of him.

“I was really bored and I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go, and all I knew was that I didn’t want to be there. I saw people there and the average tenure was 17 years — people are there their whole careers. My mentor is still there, he started the year before I was born. The perks were phenomenal, you could have a life and a lot of people do, but I knew I didn’t want to do that forever.”

With some money saved up and no plan B, Adam up and quit.

“For the first 8 weeks or so I just kind of wandered around the city. I would go visit friends, stay on a couch for a week and ask myself, hey do I wanna be in this city?”

But he ultimately concluded that NY was exactly where he wanted to be.

That’s when an old competitor called and asked if Adam wanted to run a new education startup. He trusted that Adam’s business chops would come in handy.

“So I became the CEO. Next thing I knew we had a workspace in Newark, I had 2 people working for me, and it’s a bootstrap business and we’re trying to figure things out.”

But the business didn’t pan out as he had hoped, and the role became more about finding funding than anything else.

“I had to go raise money and that whole process is just hard. It’s hard and you start to realize really quickly that even if everything is right, you take money from someone and you have to listen to them.”

Fortunately, a trusted advisor gave Adam the clarity he needed:

“Look, if they’re giving you terms — how they see the company not just financial terms — and the terms don’t match your vision and there’s no path back to your vision — LEAVE.”

Adam took his advisor’s advice and after 6 months, he made the tough decision to dissolve the company entirely.

That’s when Adam circled back to his go-to strategy for contemplating next steps: walking around NYC.

“So I’m walking around NY and I go out and have coffee with this guy John Henry — he actually has a show coming on Vice now about entrepreneurship called Hustle. We were having coffee and he has this incubator called Cofound Harlem and long story short I ended up becoming Director of Strategy.”

The strategy work led him to some eye-opening consulting opportunities in product management.

“It was a departure from the straight engineering stuff I was doing before, but it helped bring a lot of my career focus in one job. I didn’t realize it at the time but everything I had been doing had been a straight plug into product management.”

Adam was also lucky enough to have a mentor that was named Product Strategist of the Year 2016 (Chris Butler) . But after a mixed bag of experiences in the product management space, Adam found himself once again wandering the streets of NYC.

Fortunately, back when Adam was “CEOing” he had taken advantage of some learning opportunities — including Seth Godin’s altMBA. Not only was it an incredible chance to “level up” (a chance that Adam really took to heart by becoming an altMBA coach and appearing on the program’s website), but he added a whole new community to his existing web of badass professionals.

“So I walked the earth a little bit and then somebody from altMBA calls and says hey — would you like to be a product manager at Informed? So I came on as a Product Manager, and within a week or two got promoted to Director of Product. And I didn’t know at the time, but they said we have to build a product team and you should do it. So right now I’m the Director of Product…It’s been fun so far!.”

Of course — the altMBA wasn’t the only community that panned out for Adam’s career. Set on making an impact, Adam served as President of the Board for a nonprofit called the Barbershop Boys, which is how he ultimately got connected to our mutual community — Starting Bloc.

And yes — I had the same question: Does this guy ever sleep?

Adding It Up: Confirming My Happiness Formula Assumptions

Here’s how Adam’s journey adds up to my assumptions about finding happiness in your career:

Hands-on Opportunities

• Adam made his own opportunities: from his dorm room black market, to his first startup, to diving into journalism because he found it interesting — Adam embraced challenges and opportunities to just try things, make things, start thinks, and do things.

A Supervisor’s Faith

• Adam’s former competitor set the stage for Adam to try his hand at CEOing an education startup
• John Henry — founder of Cofound Harlem — gave Adam his first taste of strategy work.
• His current company — which promoted him after just a week on the job, giving him the opportunity to build out his first ever product management team.

An Inspiring Mentor

• Adam’s advisor that gave him that great advice over breakfast was instrumental in Adam’s big decision to dissolve the ed tech company where he was serving as CEO.
• Adam had the opportunity to hone his product management chops with a mentor well known in the industry.
• Adam apparently also had a mentor from his first job as a mainframe programmer in NYC — — how many mentors does this guy have?

A Supportive Community

• I’m sure these just scratch the surface, but Starting Bloc, altMBA, Barbershop Boys, and a strong circle of friends are likely only a few of the communities that Adam relies on.

Adam’s Tips for Career Shifters and People that Feel Stuck:

Write, write, write:

“I’ve been doing something for the past 4 years — writing every day. I think kind of working on being self aware working on it’s heightened my life to people around me.

“But you really have to find something to get your thoughts out. I use writing. It could be an insta account. It doesn’t even have to have your name on it, it can be a random tumblr, audio gibberish, it can be a podcast. I think if you have some sort of creative outlet, that’ll help you get unstuck. It’s more so for you than anything else. It’s a place you can go on a consistent basis to continually flow.”

Be generous:

“I find that helping people helps you get unstuck. Taking time out of your day to make someone happier always helps. I try to be very helpful as much as possible. For types of projects, being generous with my time…Your opinion is needed out in the world.”

Leverage your community to: try new things:

“The key point of my story [is the importance of] having a community. You have a network of folks. There is a free way to try to test projects. Especially with the internet. Everyone — if you have no background — if you’re offering something for free, people will jump on it. You wanna try something help people out. It’s a great way to test whatever passion you have if you feel stuck.”

Leverage your community to: figure out your strengths

“Go figure out what your strengths are. Go talk to the people around you. Go ask what your strengths are. If feel comfortable with someone, have a real conversation with them like — what am I good at? I’m feeling stuck — help me. And you might be surprised someone might say — oh I didn’t know you were feeling that way or I know someone like this or I know this job etc.”

Find Adam on Linkedin, check out his website, and read up on his blog. He’s got lots to say!