The Stream

TBD.

TBD.

TBD.

It ends up I’ve pursued this my whole life : – ) probably too vigorously.

(This page is in beta testing.)

At age 14, my first passion was nerdy—studying HBR magazines and PMA books while in high school. Because of the interest, I then spent two years selling motivation, sales, and leadership training tools and learned to love people.

My college degree in industrial design (design thinking and innovation) became my second passion. With a thesis in human computer interaction, I began a 20+ year career in the software industry.

In 2010, difficult life events led me to an ongoing (currently 11-year study of) cognitive neuroscience, behavior, and decision-making. As the years go by, I use this insight more and more to help others overcome life and business challenges, which is a third passion.

As of 2020, the world of vaccinations has inspired me further—into studying spirituality, emotional connectedness, subtle energy measurement, neurolinguistics, and customer-employee-employer partnerships.

Over time, I have added these to a broad career in high-growth software product management, sales, customer success, consulting, strategy, and marketing. This has produced consistently strong business outcomes—often in areas where I had no prior experience. In my last five gigs, part of my job was pitching growth ideas to the CEO and pursuing them.

As of August 2021, I am launching Adam 5.0—the first integrated suite “designed from the bottom up and top down” to make a positive impact on the lives of others. LOL.

My services: the people who “know me at my best” consider me an expert at [V.1.0 => make shorter]:

1. Product strategy, value pricing, and product management leadership in user interface, customer experience, CRM, and artificial intelligence areas.
2. Customer, sales, market, service, and partner leadership via trust, emotion, value, vision, behavior, meaning, challenge, and cognitive neuroscience.
3. Connecting with people—making friends everywhere I go and naturally finding common bonds at speed.
4. Reading emotions at an empath level to quickly understand people’s deepest fears, needs, and desires.
5. Helping people see the opportunities and rewards that come with motivation while leading them to good decision-making and action.
6. Product ideation, decision optimization design, and business model design (or redesign) based on real-time analytics and machine learning.
7. Strategic communications, brand, and go to market messaging, development, validation, refinement, application, measurement, and distribution across all customer touchpoints and departments.
8. Judging decisions with discernment and clarity about risk, reward, and adaptation in financial terms.

Why Cognitive Neuro-Science in Business?

1. In EVERY business, it is people who make decisions to drive business outcomes, communicate with the world around them, and build constructive customer, employee, partner, and investor relationships.

2. Yet, the investment in people is SIGNIFICANTLY lacking. For example, businesses spend trillions managing IT and roughly 10% of this on training and coaching. Aren’t brains more important than CPUs? Don’t we know how strong of a role emotions play in decision-making?

3. On top of this, COVID has put an exclamation point on historically poor employee-employer relations, and this is underscored by trends such as the Great Resignation. People are demanding that their work is a partnership. Brands need to move past culture and ethos to spiritual platforms.

4. We are just starting an era where humans pervasively use sensors/software/data to more purposefully and effectively change their behaviors AND related neuron structures. This will only continue. Subtle energy sensors, like heartrate variability, are just coming online now in early mainstream hardware. Media is currently providing neurolinguistic shows.

5. Cognitive neuroscience connects the study of functions like attention, perception, creativity, problem solving and reasoning with many biological aspects of the brain related to learning and behavior change (e.g. emotional connectedness or neurolinguistics).

6. In this and other contexts, the emerging “psychology-tech” market is a “blue ocean” and will reach over a trillion B2B dollars over the next decade. And, data-driven behavior change will provide a 10-100X ROI.

Other Interesting Stuff

When I am not working as a consultant, entrepreneur, or employee, I am trail running, paddle boarding, meditating, listening to music, learning, and spending time with loved ones.

With entrepreneurial DNA, I have started 5 failed companies and concepted products or written business plans for many more. There is a broad range of business designs.

In 2010, I began publishing 365 Days of Thankfulness to create a new perspective on life. After 1000s of posts, I paused the effort with tremendous lessons learned.

In 2020, I began to experience many aspects of life as an empath, which is easy to question, hard to navigate, and requires serious spiritual work to develop.

In 2021, I invented a personal leadership and life coaching program to help people change perspective, overcome fear, heal their past, find inspiration, and achieve personal and spiritual growth. It applies to business and life.

Things People Say and Surprising FAQs

Full of ideas, energy, and enthusiasm with an amazing ability to work. Adam has the comprehensives knowledge, detailed experience, and the ground level skills essential to 21st century leadership. He is an asset to any forward-looking team that is driven by excellence & achievement.

Dave Ryan, Founder of 4 Exited Software Companies (Most Recent by Battery Ventures)

Work Experience with Unicorns and Magic Quadrant / G2 Leader Products?

• Unicorns: WebMD, Siebel Systems, and Pivotal Software
• MQ Product Suites: 1. Siebel CRM Suite, 2. Unica Marketing Automation Suite, 3. Pivotal PaaS and Big Data Suite, 4. Zoom Interntional WFO Suite, 5. SaaSOptics Financial Operations Suite

Adam is an excellent thinker. His curiosity and passion energize team discussions. His creativity pushes everyone to greater performance.

Murad Fatehali, Senior Director, Business Value Services at Salesforce.com

Proudest Moment in Business?

I wasn’t necessarily proud then…but looking back…it was whenever there was a hard decision, and I chose integrity over comfort. For example, my manager wanted me to fire someone on my team after the team member announced they had cancer. I said, “Absolutely not and no way in hell…you do it if you want but I won’t,” even though I knew it made me more of a target to be fired. Yes, of course I am proud of the metrics improvements and ROI, but the impact on people is much bigger and is a much richer ROI.

Hands down, Adam is the best marketer and product marketer I’ve ever worked with in my 25 year software career. He has been instrumental in leading our company and product in new directions and towards growth markets.

Bill Devlin, CTO and Head of Product, Marketing, and Engineering at Elevēo

Biggest Failure in Business?

Lots of them, particularly as an entrepreneur and a human. I’d say my biggest failure was telling myself that I was worthless. It also turned into my biggest success. Lots of other examples too.

Anyone who has met Adam knows that he is an energetic, hard-working, professional who is passionate about innovative use of technology to drive real business results.

Edward Stone, VP of Sales and Chief Customer Officer, AutoQuotes

First Trip to the Hospital for Stress?

1997. As head of product for WebMD 1.0, I went to the ER because digestive tract contractions made me heave in moaning pain.

TBD next iteration

TBD next iteration

# of CEOs and Founders I have worked with directly or pitched to?

Wow. I don’t even believe it. Bert E, Jeff A, Blake P, Gary C, John C, Juan Pablo G, James B, Alston G, Tom S, Ron B, Adam C, Yuchun L, Tom M, David B, Larry B, Jags R, Abby K, Alexis R, Shay B, Salvatore S, Roman S, Ed S, Jay W, Brian S, Jake R, Lara H, John H, John D, Tom S, Dave R, Tim M, oh, can’t forget Barry. It is humbling to count this. Let’s see, 32 or more? Wow.

TBD next iteration

TBD next iteration

Favorite Business Quote?

There is no such thing. That is like asking who your favorite musician is.

1. Mike Tyson: Everyone has a strategy until they get punched in the face.

2. Attributed most often to Mahatma Gandhi: A Customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption on our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider on our business. He is a part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.