Boston Startup Interviews: Empowering Startups with Adam W. Barney

In today’s interview, we sit down with Adam W. Barney, an Energy Coach dedicated to helping startup leaders stay energized and accountable. With over two decades of experience in corporate marketing, Adam has worked with some of the world’s leading organizations, from venture capital-backed startups to global giants like Microsoft. Now, Adam channels his expertise into promoting equity and supporting the startup community, particularly here in Boston. Join us as he shares his journey, insights on leadership, and the tools he's developed to help entrepreneurs thrive.

Adam, if you want to go ahead and start, maybe you can just share a little bit about your background and what inspired you to enter the startup world.

Hey, thank you for having me today. It's great to be here. I really appreciate it and hope you're all having a great day.

Let me tell you a bit about myself. I call myself an Energy Coach. While it might sound like I deal with mystical stones and sorcery, it's about helping leaders stay energized and accountable. I've worked with many startup founders and entrepreneurs.

Before this, I spent over 20 years on a non-linear path in corporate marketing. I worked at venture capital-backed startups, ad agencies, and big global enterprise-scale companies like Microsoft. Across that journey, I led teams of over 20 people and worked with top executives, managing budgets of up to $30 million yearly on digital marketing.

Now, I focus on promoting equity among startup founders, investors, and entrepreneurs. My energy coaching practice is driven by the principles in my book Optimism and Autonomy. I use these tools to guide leaders from all backgrounds to success.

You mentioned a little bit about your company. So I do want to ask you how you engage with the startup community in Boston? 

So that's one of the biggest ways that I've taken my energy coaching practice and built this community based around the book of what I call glass fillers.

The startup community in Boston has been one of the biggest supporting areas. I, you know, I think everyone in this world has a superpower. My own superpower is networking, but it's not just about building networks. It's about building collisions within that network. So that's how I've engaged with the startup community globally, but also locally here in Boston.

It's led me to my network to become involved with venture capital firms that are local to here and have vibrant core communities around them. One of those is UnderscoreVC which is a strong venture capitalist organization, but it's also about bringing the community together. They have an annual Core Summit event that happens in October that brings together full-time employees, solopreneurs, and entrepreneurs and puts them in a community together, that helps bring people together. And that's just one example of a lot of the vibrant communities that exist here in Boston. We're blessed with that.

I was lucky in one stage of my corporate career to work in the Cambridge Innovation Center here in Boston at 50 Milk Street. The CIC or Cambridge Innovation Center has grown significantly over time. There's a funny story there actually. When I was first working in that CIC, we were getting a tour of the office, and I was looking at the business cards on the front desk, and I saw the name of someone I went to high school with. So, talk about how the startup community in Boston is just an extended network that continues to grow. That was one example of how it collides together, at least in my own journey.

The startup community is so important here. I'm actually in the process of working with the CIC to help engage with early stage founders to help guide them, and that's something I'm excited about, deepening that engagement. I'm also deeply connected and passionate about bringing equity and justice to venture capital in the startup world. I've become heavily involved with organizations like AllRaiseand Scroobiousthat are working to change that paradigm of how less than 2% of global venture capital and investment goes towards underrepresented and diverse founders.That's another vibrant thread.

I mean, I've dove into the Boston market because it sits in the mission of my coaching practice to try to bring more justice and equity to the world and help give people the confidence that they can take their ideas and achieve the goals that they put in front of them through systems that help keep them accountable and energize the moment.

So we want to go ahead and discuss your book a little bit. We were wondering what are, like, the key principles on your book.You may, you might have touched a little bit on that, with these answers, but if you want to just say it more, like, straightforward, yeah, anything you want to add about your book as well. 

Sure. So, of course, the book is “make your own glass half full again”, and the key principles in it are what have guided me through my own career. Across that 20 year corporate career, I ran into being laid off twice.

‍One time was due to a sales team in the organization. The second time was due to a 4% global workforce reduction. And those are just two examples of what I followed on my own path that inspired the book of how those things would happen. It's this idea that even on a cloudy day like it is here in Boston today, the sun is still behind the clouds. And as long as you're in the center of what is driving you from a vision standpoint, that path can feel like it just goes down, down, down, down.

But if you stay trudging ahead and stepping forward on that path, eventually, it starts to head up to the top of the mountain top in terms of success. That's ultimately where I see those key tools of optimism and autonomy coming into play to really drive transformational change within people. And that's what I want to inspire. You know, my goal, I would, of course, love to sell 2,000,000 books, you know. But if I can inspire five entrepreneurs of a younger generation to take these ideas that they have, build that confidence, and execute on making the world a better place, whether it's delivering on justice and equity or climate solutions or things that are going to bring us to a place of safety and security for future generations.

That's the guise of what I hope to inspire and the key principles that come through that. But I also pull in stories from others that I have seen, you know, whether it's people that I've interacted with across my corporate career or stories of people like Matt Gray, who has a community where he's trying to get  100,000,000 founders to reach $1,000,000 or more in annual revenue within his community, but he's got a really unique journey he's followed that started in the lowest of the lows and eventually has led them to a path of success. Or even looking at people like Adyi Barkin, a huge patient advocate in the ALS space here in the US. He took that disease to elevate the game of helping, you know, helping change the game in terms of that space of medical activity. So that's ultimately where it comes from.

A lot of it ties back into positive psychology, which, of course, is recently from an understanding over the last 20 to 30 years through work like Martin Seligman's but ultimately has not been distilled in a usable place, which is what “Make Your Own Glass Half Full” hopes works to achieve. That's the inspiration for writing the book. 

Well, you mentioned a little bit about how you engage with the Boston community, but I would like to ask what you think is special about Boston and the startup ecosystem or what unique characteristics you can find in the city.

Yeah. This one won't be a surprise probably to anyone who knows Boston even peripherally. We have so much great energy that comes out of the strong university and education system here in the city. It's one of the biggest things that brings the entrepreneurial mindset to the forefront for a lot of these, you know, the younger generations coming up to change the world. There's also a lot of great incubator space that happens here in Boston, and there are a lot of great operators and allies who are deeply experienced to step in to provide that guidance.

And I love being a part of that, you know, in less than a week, I turn 42. You know, that's one of those things that, as I get older in my life, I wanna help inspire more of those people. And there are a lot of like minded people here in the network of Boston who work with those, you know, whether it's MIT or people coming out of, you know, Babson and the entrepreneurial school there. There are so many great avenues for school there. There are so many great avenues for game-changing, world-changing activity that have been popping up here and continue to, you know, to embrace it and you support it, the energy that comes from that is just going to continue to grow and grow and grow over time.

‍More traditionally, though, I've also seen here in Boston, you know, there are organizations like Fidelity. Fidelity is a giant investment company. They're starting to change the paradigm a little bit of how they focus on their investment in venture capital or investing in early stage startups. That's something I don't think it's necessarily unique to the Boston network, but it's an additional piece that brings the puzzle together of how diverse operators are being brought to the forefront and supported within this system.

What are the most common challenges you find in leadership in startup work from your perspective? And as a coach, how do you help leaders navigate those challenges? 

There are a few unique things in that space that I've seen happen. So many of these founders and entrepreneurs are laser focused on the world that their brain is sitting in.

So as a coach, I like to come in and help them see a broader view of what's happening in the wider world to think about. It's not necessarily about growing their understanding of the things that are outside of their purview or outside of their blinders, but it's about helping ease them a little bit and challenge them on the ideas of what they maybe aren't focused on from a day to day basis. The other leadership challenge is the boundary that ties into that are you have a million things going through your mind at any point in time. How do you use scheduling with your calendar to zero in on prioritization for the things that are actually moving your business forward? You know, there are two tools I use in that realm.

One is, a dream week. Right? And the dream week looks at every single day of the week split in terms of the morning and the afternoon, and puts 1, 2, 3 priorities into those buckets of what would make that week work to the level that you hope it would. I love to pair that also with the Time Audit, which puts into play a list of all the tasks in front of you, and then works towards the idea of what you can do, what can you eliminate, what can you delegate, what can you automate to make some decisions and simplify. Because as a founder, if you have a million things that you feel you're responsible for, you need to find those outside resources to help you.

Whether it's finding fractional support that could help you or finding virtual assistance or people who can help with R&D, sales, marketing, and those areas that maybe you aren't so strong in, and do it at an affordable level. There's a lot of great connectivity that's happening around the world now of organizations where you can hire super talented people around the globe for, you know, anywhere even starting at $12 an hour, which doesn't seem like much. But that's a game changer in terms of your ability to scale up. Once you realize that people can actually help you, and you find those qualified people who, from a Venn diagram perspective, maybe have a little bit of overlap with where your strengths are, but mostly they're stronger in complementary areas that aren't your strong points. That's where, you know, getting that help comes into being very valuable as a leader, as a startup, as a solopreneur, as an entrepreneur, a founder.

Is there anything else you'd like to add about how you support leaders in a high stress environment as Boston?

Sure. I mean, you know, high stress is only what you find yourself. Right? That's all about mindset work, really, from my perspective. You know, there's tools again, like time blocking and understanding when you can focus, when you can flow.

You know, I live in a chaotic world with two young daughters and two dogs in the house. So I'm someone who goes through this on my own. How do I use the time that I have? And I want to round that out with the idea that one of the few things that level sets every human on this Earth is the fact that we all only have 24 hours in the day.

That's one of the very few equal things that happens around the world. It's all about how you operate within those 24 hours that can help you achieve your goals. So whether it's time blocking, it's also simplified. You know, you can get so complex with the known and things going on. How do you strategically simplify toward your priorities?

And understand that there are steps involved with driving that success. The other piece of it is, you know, change happens slow, slow, slow, and then faster than you can expect it. Patience. Patience is one piece that I think does not get highlighted enough in terms of leadership training and entrepreneurial mindsets. Having patience and having that resilience, and, again, knowing that as you stay on that path, if you keep stepping forward, it's eventually gonna lead to success as long as it sits in the center of what drives you.

I do a lot of work systematically, looking at tools like Ikigai, the Japanese concept of reason for being. If you sit in that center of what drives you, across what you're good at, what the world needs, what you love, and what you can get paid for, there's an authenticity and genuineness that eventually leads to success. 

Is there anything you'd like to add as a piece of advice for other founders or early stage startups in Boston and everywhere, that you have, as a coach, learned or anything you like to add in that aspect? 

One that I didn't mention before, it's important as a founder or an entrepreneur. This is outside of hiring, you know, additional help on an hourly basis, to find a board of advisers. You know?

And these shouldn't be people that you met 2 weeks ago or at an event last week. These should be people who know you at a deeper level, whether it's people you went to, you know, get to school with and have known you for years, or whether it's people you've worked with at your previous job. Having 3 to 5 people who are on your board of advisers list that you connect with maybe only 15 minutes a quarter to say, here's what I'm thinking. Here's where I'm hoping to go. And then they're that checkpoint who says thumbs up, provides you with a little bit of challenge and feedback, and pushes back a little bit.

That board of advisers can be so crucial because being a founder and entrepreneur, you can feel you can feel very alone. And there's a lot of, you know, data about founders and entrepreneurs that, you know, in terms of depression and even suicidal ways of thinking that if you have that board of advisers and you have that network of same intention people around you as well, that can help feel more secure in the path that you're you're headed towards. So that's a very important thread of what any entrepreneur, soloprenuer or founder needs early in that journey before they can hire a team of twenty people who can provide some of that support and that operational help to provide that marching order and that process forward.
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So that was all from our side.  Is there anything you’d like to add?

My energy coaching practice is really built on that shift towards holistic value-based coaching and long-term transformational change. Please reach out if I can help any founders, or entrepreneurs and help guide them early in that journey and stay accountable as they scale up over time. And then also, make your own Glass Half Full. My book is available worldwide. Grab a coffee, and I look forward to seeing what that can change.

And then, eventually, stay tuned. I have this community of glass fillers that's going to be launching. It's going to help keep these people, you know, that I bring into that network accountable and energized. It's going to be an added value that's coming in the near future as well.

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Adam’s journey in energy coaching highlights the power of resilience, optimism, and the importance of community. His work is a reminder that leadership is about staying grounded, prioritizing what matters, and seeking support when needed. Are you a CEO or founder in the Boston area? We’d love to hear your story. Reach out to be featured in our series and share your insights with the community.