Adam Witty launched Advantage Media at 22 with no corporate track record, no funding, and no fallback plan. Two decades later, he leads a multi-brand firm helping thousands of founders build authority. In this session, Adam shares his personal entrepreneurial arc—from cold-starting a niche services business to scaling into a platform brand—fueled not by capital, but by credibility.
What you’ll get from this session:
• How a founder without a résumé built market trust through positioning
• Why authority-building was the growth engine behind the business
• Hard-won lessons from two decades scaling a founder-led firm
Why it matters:
• Authority doesn’t just attract clients—it earns resilience and longevity
• Your entrepreneurial story can be your best go-to-market asset
• Founders who build trust at scale create firms that last
TRANSCRIPT
Greg Alexander: Hey everybody, this is Greg Alexander. You’re listening to the Collective 54 podcast, which we call the ProServe Podcast. If you’re new to this show, we are dedicated to founders of boutique professional services firms, and we aim to help them do three things: make more money, make scaling easier, and make an exit achievable. And on this episode, we’re going to do a walk down the entrepreneurial journey with a friend of mine and business partner of mine, Adam Witty. And Adam is a leading agency, I guess, is what I would call your firm. You started as a book publisher, but you do so much more now, and you help people like members of Collective 54 become authorities in their niche through a variety of means. And I got to know Adam because he did that for me. We published The Boutique: How to Start, Scale, and Sell a Professional Services Firm, and Adam and his team made that a bestseller, upon which we launched Collective 54 off of, and here we are, almost six years later. And since then, we did a second book together called The Founder Bottleneck: How to Scale Yourself. And then one of our members, Michelle Prince of Performance Publishing, who has done a dozen or so books on behalf of members, has recently been acquired by Adam, so in a roundabout way, Adam is now a member of Collective 54. So, here we are. So, Adam, it’s great to see you. Would you please, I guess, provide an official introduction to the community?
Adam Witty: Well, Greg, thanks for having me. I am grateful, and it’s called the Burger King Introduction — it’s one Whopper after another. If my mom heard this, she’d say, who is that? That’s not my son. So, thank you for the gracious introduction. Listen, I’m just like everybody listening to this podcast. I am a from-scratch entrepreneur. I dreamed as a kid of trying to do something on my own. I was really fortunate. I had a parent who was an entrepreneur, and while he had some great failures, he also had some great successes. And I was able to see that. I had a front row seat. And, you know, some people, it turns you away, and you’re like, never am I gonna do that. And for me, it was like, oh my god, I want to do this too. And so, I am an entrepreneur through and through. I started Advantage in 2005. We are now 20 years in, and our business specializes in helping entrepreneurs, CEOs, and leaders build their authority, and be the thought leader in their field. Because what we know is the more authority you have, the more impact you have. And that impact can be seen in lots of ways. It’s impact in growing your business, its impact in creating a legacy that can inspire and help others, its impact in terms of making a difference in your community. But the more authority you have, the more influence you have. And the more influence you have, the more you can do what’s important to you. So, we get to work with incredible members, folks like Collective 54, professional service owners, to really help them take their stories, their passion, their knowledge, and craft it into a message that really serves the marketplace and serves them and their business, too.
Greg Alexander: Very good. So I’m gonna jump into my questions now. So, I guess my first question is, what was the aha moment that sparked this business idea, Advantage Media? And how did you know it was worth pursuing?
Adam Witty: So, there’s two pieces that led to this, and both were somewhat by chance. The first is when I was in high school, I had a summer internship for a publishing company. And what I thought I would hate, I ended up finding pretty interesting. Because as a kid, Greg, I didn’t grow up wanting to be a publisher — I don’t think anybody does. I had this internship, I found it interesting, and the head of sales, who I worked under for those two summers, he was leaving the company at the end of my internship, and he was gonna go out and start his own business. So the first door that opens, the first lucky break that I get — to quote that term that I learned from you — the first lucky break I get is this mentor of mine says, I’m gonna go start my own publishing company, would you have an interest in coming and joining me? Okay? So there’s lucky break number one. The second lucky break is I’m having lunch in Central Florida, where I grew up as a kid, and my mentor was a guy by the name of Pat Williams, and Pat was the founder of the Orlando Magic basketball team. As a kid, I played basketball, I loved basketball, and we were die-hard Magic fans. It was in the days of Shaquille O’Neal and Penny Hardaway. And Pat, who had founded the team from scratch, was an inspiration, and I wanted to run an NBA basketball team. That was my dream job. So I read a book that Pat Williams had written, I write him a letter. He replies, I then invite him to lunch. He accepts. And as we’re having lunch, I’m telling him about my internship at this publishing company, I’m telling him I think I want to try and go do something on my own, and he says, Adam, you need to create a publishing company for CEOs and entrepreneurs. He said all of them have all of this incredible knowledge, and they need a Sherpa to help them shape that knowledge and share it with the world. Because when you are the authority, you’re the person that everybody goes to. And Pat Williams, who, in addition to being a sports executive, had written a number of books, and those books just opened incredible doors for him. So, I’ve got these two lucky breaks. My mentor asked me to come work with him. My other mentor says, you need to start a publishing company for CEOs. That will be the golden goose that lays the golden eggs for you. And those were the two factors where I said, you know what? This makes sense. And at the time, Greg, I was 22 years old, and I didn’t have a whole lot to lose.
Greg Alexander: Yeah. You know, that’s interesting, because most of our founders, myself included, spent time working in corporate America in some capacity, and then got disenfranchised with that, and decided they wanted to be their own boss. So you never really did that. You started your career as an entrepreneur, and you’ve been an entrepreneur your entire career, is that correct?
Adam Witty: I’ve never drawn a paycheck from somebody that was in a company that I owned.
Greg Alexander: Oh, wow, that’s interesting. All right, well, very good. All right, let me go to my next question. So what was the biggest mistake you made in the first handful of years? And what did it teach you?
Adam Witty: Well, Greg, you’re asking me to limit it to one? One or two. Yeah, there’s a lot of mistakes. The first mistake that I would say that I made was when I was starting out, I was the primary salesperson. And not to toot my own horn, but I would argue I’m still the best salesperson in the company. But you can’t scale a business when you are the only salesperson. And the first mistake that I made was, instead of being a CEO, instead of being an entrepreneurial CEO, I wanted to revert to what I knew and what I was good at, which was being the salesperson. And so for the first couple of years, I was the bottleneck. I was the reason the company couldn’t get to the next level quickly. The second mistake that I made was early in my career, I just… the idea of HR and people management — I didn’t like it. I thought, I don’t need to worry about that. And I had a couple of bad…
Adam Witty: endings with some key people that were working for me that really cost me and cost the company. Not in lawsuits or anything like that, but just… it was a bad ending, and it didn’t serve the company well. And I quickly learned early in my career that, like, at the end of the day, I’m in the people business, and I’ve got to get really good at leading and managing people effectively. Doesn’t mean I have to be an HR whiz, but I need to see people management as essential, not as something that is inessential.
Greg Alexander: Yep. So you’re 20 years in, which is a long time to be doing this. I’m sure along the way. There were moments where you wanted to quit and give up. But you didn’t. Maybe share one of those moments with us, and how’d you get through it?
Adam Witty: Well, there have been a number of moments where I’ve thought, maybe I should go sell ice cream at the beach. Okay, so there have been two times, where we had, a downfall in terms of revenue growth. So, you know, we’re growing, we’re growing, we’re growing, and of course, we’re adding expenses, expenses, expenses to help fuel the growth, and then the revenue stalls, right? And twice in my career, I’ve had to make layoffs. And those layoffs have not been because customers were unsatisfied. Those layoffs haven’t been because… Largely, there was an economic downturn that dictated it. Those two times in my career I’ve had to lay people off have been because of my piss-poor planning. And it’s not lost on me, because these are people’s livelihoods that are important and precious, and because of my poor planning as a leader, it had an effect on them. And so, what did I learn from that? I learned entrepreneurs are really good at addition.
Greg Alexander: And really bad at subtraction.
Adam Witty: And I learned to put more emphasis and importance on Planning, and being more conservative in estimating The growth that will actually happen. And not ramping up the spending until the growth actually begins to happen. Because twice I got ahead of my skis, and it cost me. I mean, I didn’t lose everything, right? And we know the stories of people that lose everything, but they were good wake-up calls.
Greg Alexander: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think we’ve all made that mistake. The advice I give members is never hire ahead of demand. If you’re hiring into a sales forecast, you’re out of your mind. Just wait until the demand materializes, and then hire into it, so… Very valuable lesson, and worth repeating. Okay, so, 20 years. I’m sure the original vision for the company has changed over the years. I remember when we first met. You know, what I knew of you was Advantage Media. now you’ve got Forbes Books, and you’ve got all these other things going on. So, how did the original vision change over time, and what is it today?
Adam Witty: Yeah, the original vision was every CEO needs to be an author.
Greg Alexander: And when you as a CEO have a book.
Adam Witty: You are the go-to expert, the go-to authority that everybody wants to work with. So, the original vision was Book as marketing tool to grow your business. When we really began to ask our authors, you know, what is it that you really want? It wasn’t that they had dreamed of being an author their whole life, and they were finally realizing this vision. There were some of them that that was the case, but the vast majority, they wanted the benefit of what being an author, and really what being an authority would convey to them, typically in business terms, right? I think there was a famous marketing person that said, it’s not the quarter-inch drill that somebody wants, it’s the hole in the wall, right? That’s really what they want. And similarly, it wasn’t that they wanted to be an author and self-identified themselves as that. They wanted the benefit of what being an author provided. Which was the ability to get invited to speak at events or conferences, the ability to get interviewed by the media as an expert and a source for articles that are being written, the opportunity to have an event, right, where they’re sharing their knowledge with the world, a book launch, the opportunity to have a tool.
Greg Alexander: To market themselves that is not seen as.
Adam Witty: advertising and sales, it’s a book. It’s educational in nature. So that was a big, big unlock, Greg, was that the business that we’re really in is helping our CEO, entrepreneur members build authority to unlock and open doors in their business. It’s not that they want to be an author, they just want the benefits of what authorship brings.
Greg Alexander: Yeah. You know, it’s a very important point that I think many first-time authors that partner with you Don’t appreciate until after the fact. And that is, when you go through the process of becoming an authority, and you start producing deliverables that substantiate you and give you credibility, things like books, speaking engagements, podcasts, etc. It forces you to really think about your category. And so often, entrepreneurs don’t think about their category. You know, when you walk into a grocery store, and you go to the bread aisle. you’re selecting a category, and then when you’re in that category, you’re comparing the different manufacturers of bread, and you’re making a decision. Imagine going into the store and looking for bread, and there was no bread aisle. You would just wander around forever, wondering where the heck is the bread. So, if you are a member of Collective 54, an entrepreneur, more broadly speaking, and you haven’t told the world what your category is, this prospect’s walking by you every day. And they don’t know that they need to stop and pick your loaf of bread off the shelf. So, and I think book publishing and the other means upon which you help your clients It’s principal value. is defining the category, staking out where you are in authority, so people can select you. And I just wanted to make that point. I’ve been through a few transitions myself. I mean, I started my career as a sales leader in the technology industry. And I was categorically identified as a chief revenue officer in the tech space. And then I left that space and became a management consulting with my boutique, SBI. And what established me in the new category was my first book. Making the number, how to use sales benchmarking to drive performance. And then I sold that company. And I had to reinvent myself again. And there, I wanted to establish myself as a thought leader in the professional services sector, and that’s when Adam and I wrote the boutique. And how to start, scale, and sell a professional services space. And that redefined me and put me in a new category. It’s so important to think about category. All right, just a couple more questions, and then I want to make sure that we discuss your upcoming participation at Collective 54’s reunion. And tell everybody how to come by the library and meet you in person. So what is a contrarian decision, or an unconventional decision that you made along the way that you think contributed A lot to your success.
Adam Witty: Hmm. It’s interesting that you say that. What you just shared is really important and relevant to what I’m about to say, and that is, we had identified ourselves initially as a book publisher.
Greg Alexander: And…
Adam Witty: people would come to us because they wanted, you know, they said they wanted a book, but we learned that really they wanted authority. Book was just the vehicle to get them the authority. And then, they would say, well, okay, I’ve got this book, but what about all the other stuff? Like, can you get me interviews? Can you get me speaking engagements? I want to have my own podcast, I need to create content, I need to build my personal brand.
Adam Witty: And we quickly realized that the biggest investment that we had made was building these relationships with our… we call them members, too. And instead of just trying to go out and get new members, which is a really hard thing to do, getting a customer is the hardest thing in business, in my opinion. How do we expand the relationship and do more with them? And that’s when we evolved to, we’re not a book publisher, we’re an authority-building company, and a book is simply one medium in which to build authority. So, what’s contrarian is that most people would say, I’m a publisher, how do I grow my publishing business by selling more books, and serving more authors. And we said, no, we’re an authority-building company. A book is simply a medium to build authority, and what are all of the other mediums in which we can build a halo effect around the book, and have new front doors that people can enter our business with?
Greg Alexander: You know, it’s a great illustration of solving the problem, not pitching a solution. So your authors wanted to be authorities in their space. For a whole variety of reasons. They weren’t looking to become authors. And a lot of book publishers, and I’ve… I have worked with some before, I met you. Traditional book publishers, and all they wanted to do was, you know, produce the book for you, and earn their royalty, and they missed the bigger picture. None of them ever asked me, hey, what do you… how… what’s the vision for your firm, and how does this help you reach that vision? You guys have done that, and that was very, very helpful for me.
Greg Alexander: Alright, so, we’ve got Collective 54’s annual conference coming up. We call it The Reunion. It’s happening in Fort Worth, Texas, at the historic Fort Worth Stockyards in the Drover Hotel. It’s October 27th and 28th. And you and Michelle Prince will be there. And I understand that you’ve set up an interesting way for people to come meet you. It’s called The Library. Tell us a little bit about what it is, and how people can stop by and say hello.
Adam Witty: Well, first of all, so many Collective 54 members have become authors. They have invested in this idea of building thought leadership and being the authority in their niche. And we want to first and foremost showcase your fellow members who have made that impactful decision to build their authority. So, in the library, we’re going to be featuring different Collective 54 members. Of course, Michelle Prince is a multi-book author. I, Adam, am a multi-book author, and I love libraries. I’m a nerd. I admit, but I think the best place to have great conversations with people is in a library. And Greg, I have had the pleasure of being at your house, and you have an incredible library, and it’s where the real work gets done!
Greg Alexander: Yeah, no doubt.
Adam Witty: So I said to Michelle, like, how do we bring at least a library feel to the reunion? So we’re gonna have the library presented by Performance Publishing, and we want all of the members to come by. I want to meet every single person. We want to showcase and share the incredible accomplishments of so many of your members who are now authors themselves and authorities. And of course, have the chance to connect with people that may be thinking. Is this the right thing for me?
Greg Alexander: Yeah, excellent. Well, we are so grateful that you can make it this year. We’re so glad that Michelle’s gonna be there. She’s helped so many of our members. We will come by the library for sure. And Adam, I have a lot of respect for you. You are a purebred entrepreneur. You’re my kind of peeps, as they say. So, thank you so much for coming on our podcast and sharing your story with everybody. I think you probably inspired many to keep going and push through and make the most of each of their lucky breaks.
Adam Witty: Greg, you’re awesome. You have been a mentor to me. I have learned so much just through observation, watching you, and I know and understand why Collective 54 members feel so connected and so taken care of, and it starts with you.
Greg Alexander: Great, thank you for saying that. Okay, everybody, that’s it for this week’s episode. I appreciate you making time for us, and I wish you the best of luck as you try to grow, scale, and someday exit your firm.