Suggestions
Adam Ryan
Learning from experts | Making work fun | ✍️ 🎤 Perpetual
Adam Ryan is a prominent entrepreneur and media executive based in Austin, Texas. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Workweek, a professional networking platform that operates notable brands such as The Marketing Millennials and Hospitalogy. Prior to this, he served as the President of The Hustle, which was acquired by HubSpot. His career includes senior advertising roles at MyFitnessPal (acquired by Under Armour) and Spiceworks (acquired by Ziff Davis).12
In addition to his leadership roles, Adam Ryan has contributed as a board member and advisor to several companies, including Matthew Berry's Fantasy Life, where he helps guide the company’s strategy in the fantasy sports and sports betting media space. Fantasy Life has grown into a leading platform offering tools, content, and partnerships for fantasy sports enthusiasts.134
Adam Ryan is also an investor with experience at firms like The Chernin Group and LightShed Ventures. He focuses on helping audience-centric companies scale operations and monetize effectively. Raised in St. Louis, he now resides in Austin with his family.12
Highlights
This might be the best Paris 2024 story: Zeng Zhiying made her Olympics debut at 58-years old.
Born in China, she is now representing Chile in table tennis because of an incredible journey.
At age 18, she expected to go to the Olympics for her birth country, China, as one of the best players in the world.
But then table tennis changed out the two-sided paddles, and her game was thrown off.
She never made the team and became incredibly frustrated with the sport. She retired from the game as a player at age 20. Shortly after, she moved to Chile and coached various table tennis teams.
Then, in 2000, she decided to get a “real job” and step away from the game. For 20 years, she didn’t play. Then, in COVID, she bought a table and started playing again.
She made it a goal to make the 2024 Olympics representing Chile. And, at age 58, she did it!
The human brain is crazy powerful, and it can prevent us from continuing something we love or help us persevere through times when the odds are heavily stacked against us.
What an inspiration to follow your dreams.
I don’t think I was the best teacher. But being a teacher definitely made me a better CEO.
This might surprise some of you, but before I worked in media, I was a high school history teacher. I went to college to become a teacher and even got a M.Ed. in workforce education.
Here’s what all of it taught me about being a good leader:
➡️ No one’s the same.
In any given classroom, you have as many personalities as you have students.
A student who loves history but never turns in homework on time. A student who hates history, and can’t stay awake in class. Students with focus struggles disrupting everyone else’s learning.
As a leader—a teacher—it’s your job to figure out how to motivate each of them, based on how they learn best. (Easier said than done.)
➡️ 3 things never change: death, taxes, and people aren’t going to listen to you
There were a lot of times I got my slides together for a lesson that I was excited about…and no one paid a lick of attention. This doesn’t mean they’re terrible students or you’re a bad teacher.
A lot of it really depended on the time of the day. Is it before or after lunch? Do I really need to show a 30-minute long movie in the dark at 7:45 AM?
I learned to not take it personally and focus on things I could control.
As a CEO, a lot of this looks like avoiding scheduling meetings on Friday afternoons or even leaving Wednesdays closed to meetings for deeper work.
➡️ The goal: an actual learning outcome
A lot of teachers (and CEOs, really) forget there needs to be an actual outcome instead of preaching to the choir.
“After this unit, I want students to explain what led to ______” sounds a lot similar to “After last quarter, we learned that doing ____ led to an increase in _____. We should keep doing that.”
You don’t need to be the best teacher or the best CEO in history—you just need to know your people.
