173: Chris Adamo (WhereBy.Us)

Chris Adamo on Innovation City

“The more you put into things, the more you get good out of them. It really is true in all things, and in business, too.” – Chris Adamo

Welcome to Season 4 of Innovation City, a podcast featuring innovators, creators, and disruptors to discover how business is changing in the modern world.

Created and produced by SLAM! Agency and Aīre Ventures, Innovation City gives you an inside look at how rapidly business and culture are changing thanks to increasing diversity and inclusion, heightened creativity, and a stronger and better-connected business community.

Today’s guest is Chris Adamo, chief business officer at WhereBy.Us, an experiential media tech company that creates technology platforms, tools, content and local publication, and their newsletter platform, Letterhead. Chris is a successful investor, and prides himself on his “bridge-building” abilities. In this episode, Chris sits down with the team to discuss the way he connects people, his views on the curation process, what he would do if he didn’t have to work, and much more! 

They discuss:

• Chris describes himself as a bridge-builder
  • He helps people connect, from worlds that don’t meet
  • That’s how we can grow as a world
  • The ultimate altruistic people connector
  • Inspired by his dad, who was a genuinely great human
• The lessons he learned from his father, both in life and in death
  • A life review
  • Do as you want to have done to yourself
• Practical examples of this energy is in his life and work
  • Helps people build connections, to raise funds, build partnerships, find clients, etc.
  • It’s all about “how important is this for both sides?”
• The titles he holds
  • Angel investor
  • Heads business for WhereBy.Us and Letterhead
• The business model for WhereBy.Us
• Chris’ views on the curation process
  • Design for your audience
  • Don’t try to get to everyone – you can’t
  • Direct and actionable, brevity
  • Be open and inclusive
  • Grow with your audience
• “The shirt”
  • Jam Shirts from Hawaii
  • He’s been wearing one every day since December 2016
  • It began as a social experiment
  • Now it’s become his uniform
  • His father lost his memory and had no short-term memory but he remembered the shirts
• His greatest challenge right now
  • Uniting people in Miami
  • Getting people to experience the whole of Miami, not just one part
  • Let’s show what the future of every city can be
• Uniting a cross difference
  • Miami is a welcoming, but segregated city
  • The differences don’t matter to most
  • How do we celebrate diversity and be authentically inclusive?
    • It takes someone from that community extending an olive branch to you
    • Having a guide to help you navigate
• What Chris would do if he didn’t have to work?
  • He’s got the dream life already
  • Make micro-impacts
  • Spend all day making other people’s lives better, the power of good
• The change having a baby makes on life
  • Having a baby makes you be in the moment
  • It’s a lot of responsibility
• Travel, the experience of being a tourist in a city
  • As a visitor you tend to see the tourist-side of a city
  • If you partner with a local, you’ll get a completely different experience
• Chris’ Miami
  • The New Tropic
  • Read the neighborhood guides
  • Have someone take on the city and give an inclusive summary every day
  • Show the full breadth of what’s happening
• WhereBy.Us
  • All the newsletters on one platform
  • Letterhead is the back end
  • New Tropic is one of the newsletter
  • Every agency wants to be super localized
  • This is an easier way to do local
• As a core team member of WhereBy.Us, what it’s been like for Chris
  • What insights he’s gained from the experience
  • The ability to do two jobs at once – it’s tough!
  • Culture can get shifted, or lost
• The importance of taking care of mental health
  • Chris has hypnotherapy
• @chrisadamo on Twitter, FaceBook, Instagram and LinkedIN; subscribe to New Tropic 

Lightning Round:

What is something that’s extremely popular right now that annoys you?

• The non-stop scrolling and FOMOing of social media.

Who is someone you met in your adult life that has had a significant impact on who you are as a person?

• My wife. She has taught me so much about how to be a better human. She “next-leveled” me.

What song would be your intro for the movie of your life?

• Welcome to the Jungle by Guns ‘n Roses, or some deep classical music

What is your most embarrassing moment?

• A baseball game when I was 10 years old, playing left field. I’d pitched a whole game and my arm was killing me. I missed the ball that scored the winning run, and we lost the game, lost the World Series. 

Who is one person that you would want to spend an hour with, living or dead?

• Oprah. Listening to her podcast about having gratitude, being present, making space, has been life changing.