The FFW logo appears on the screen before “Focus” by Ariana Grande begins to play. Then we see the studio being set up, the glass table sat in the center being cleaned, two cups sat on opposite sides of the table. Next we see Zack Hudson tying his shoes and checking himself in the mirror before he heads out to the set as a producer puts a microphone on his shirt before sitting down. When he looks across, we next see the various women who make up FFW and Future Shock flash by in images from their career until it finally stops on Adam Grant. And that’s when we head into the Focus studio and find him taking a seat across from Zack after the two men shake hands.
Zack: Welcome to Focus, the show where you get to know the people in FFW on a more personal level outside of what you hear them say on our television shows. Today, I’m joined by someone I consider a friend but he’s also the Director of Future Shock. Adam Grant, welcome to the show.
Adam: Thanks for inviting me, Zack. I’m sure there were some other people your viewers might find more interesting than me though. I don’t find myself the least bit interesting.
Zack: If you did, I think that’d be some level of ego. Listen, all the Future Shock fans know who you are. They see you making decisions and they know you and Brianna are putting everything together, but they don’t know much about your backstory. And that’s what we are here to cover on this show.
Adam: Fair enough. Where do you want to start this whole thing?
Zack: From the beginning. Tell me about your parents.
Adam: Well…my parents were very talented people. In a lot of ways, I sometimes feel like I’ve not really lived up to their level. My father was a commercial airline pilot when I was growing up, so I didn’t see him all that often. My mother was a certified nurse. Both of them had jobs that kept them busy more often than not. As a result, I had a lot of babysitters growing up as a kid. Um..I grew up in Carbondale, Illinois. What else?
Adam asked with a curious look, clearly not sure where he was supposed to go next before Zack followed up with him.
Zack: Why do you feel like you didn’t live up to their level?
Adam: Because here they are doing all this exceptional work. Mom’s helping to save lives, Dad is making sure people get where they need to go. And what did I do? I played with a camera and tried to take interesting pictures. That was always my main interest as a kid, taking pictures. I blame my grandfather for that. He gave me my first camera, and it was all downhill from there. I also blame him for my watch collection, because he gave me my first one of those too. But yeah, what I ended up doing never really matched up to what they committed their lives to doing, not in comparison.
Zack: I’d argue that. I’d say what you ended up doing changed a lot of lives for the better. After all, look at all the women you have given chances to in this business that they might not have gotten elsewhere. Maybe you’re looking at it from the wrong scale.
Adam: You’re starting to sound like my wife whenever we talk about this.
Zack: I could do a lot worse than agree with her. But back to your childhood, did you have any siblings? I’ve never heard you mention them if you did.
Adam: No, I almost had a little sister when I was 8 years old.
Zack: Almost?
Adam: Yeah, my mom ended up having a miscarriage so that didn’t happen. Her name was going to be Victoria. I wish I had gotten the chance to meet her. Other than that, I was an only child. Actually my mother wasn’t the same after that, I understood why. She was very depressed, and I think that ended up causing problems in her marriage to Dad. She felt like she failed as a mother. I never thought she failed at all.
Zack: Tell me about school.
Adam: In high school, I was far from the most popular guy. I wasn’t any kind of athlete. I was more into photography than ever. Not a lot of kids were into that when I was in high school. I ended up hanging out mostly with the geeky kids. Had next to no luck with girls. I think I probably went on all of four dates in my senior year. Then I graduated and went to the University of Illinois at Carbondale. I was able to find more people who I had things in common with there, since they have a lot of liberal arts courses at the time.
Zack: That’s where I assume things got better? Or was that where you met Kyle Kilmeade for the first time?
Adam: Yes and yes. Things did get much better. After finding a lot more people with common interests, I was able to get to go out more and get to know a lot of women better. Had a few relationships, all of which were ended because of Kyle actually. I don’t know what it was or how he did it, but pretty much every woman I was interested in….he won them over. I met him in a literature class. He wasn’t a serious student in the slightest. I think he thought college was supposed to be a reality dating show. Anyway, after he swooped in and won over four girls I was interested in one after another, I decided I should just focus on classes. Which I did, and ended up graduating with a 3.8 GPA.
Zack: Very impressive. My GPA in college wasn’t nearly that good, let me tell you. So after college, then what?
Adam: Theeeeeen….I tried to find work in photography. And I was having almost no luck. There just weren’t a lot of opportunities where I was living, and that’s when I decided I needed to change my scenery. So I told my parents that I was gonna head to Los Angeles and see what I could find there. Neither of them liked the idea of me leaving, but does any parent? So I packed up, cashed in a trust fund my grandparents left me, and moved out to start a new life in California. Hoping and pleading I could find a good job before the money ran out.
Zack: How’d that work out for you?
Adam: Slowly. Very slowly. I picked up one or two assignments here and there. The people who hired me always loved my work, but never enough to hire me to work for them outside of freelance. Anyone who works freelance knows what a grind that can be. So for years, I was barely making ends meet. If you had seen my apartment then, you’d have had to go outside to change your mind.
Zack couldn’t help but chuckle as he heard that.
Zack: Well we know something broke for you, so go ahead and tell us that story.
Adam: You mean how I came to FFW?
Zack nodded his head as Adam continued.
Adam: I was scouring the job boards on multiple websites trying to find something. I was determined to stick with what I wanted to do. I wouldn’t even look at a job if it wasn’t photography related. In hindsight, that was probably dumb of me. And I saw an ad for a staff photographer for a sports company that was soon to be launching. I didn’t know what it could be. After all, Los Angeles already has plenty of established sports teams. But I answered it, and ended up in a meeting with a guy by the name of Cody Kincaid. He was going to be the second in command of a little startup called FFW. I did an interview with him and two other people when I learned that the photography job….was only part of the job. They also needed someone to maintain the website. Luckily for me, I knew how to do that because I’d built a website for my portfolio. And they offered me the job. I needed the money, and I got hired. Had a tiny little cubicle here in LA to start with. I had a phone and a computer at my desk…and that was about it.
Zack: Little did we know what would spring from all that. Is that how you met Jake?
Adam: I met Jake when he was hired a few years later. By then, I was the lead photographer for FFW and they had other people handling the website. Well I had a shoot one day, and my assistant called in sick. So they sent Jake my way to help me. I love him like a brother, but he’d tell you he didn’t do a very good job with what I needed him to do. But that wasn’t his fault, this wasn’t the job he was hired to do. But we ended up talking and getting to know each other, and ultimately became very good friends. Still am to this day, closest male friend in the world that I have. Like I said, like the brother I never had.
Zack: I’m sure he’ll appreciate hearing that. So you go from website maintenance with a little photography on the side to full time photography. How do we get to you being in charge of Future Shock like you are now?
Adam: Well that wouldn’t have happened if Cody Kincaid hadn’t decided he wanted to seek greener pastures. He was the one who founded Future Shock and ran it, but he couldn’t take it with him when he took the job with SVW. So then I get a call to go see Samantha one afternoon, and she tells me how she has a pretty good track record of finding the right people and wanted to know if I was interested in trying my hand at running Future Shock. I told her I had no experience being in charge of a roster of wrestlers, much less an all female one. Then she reminded me Cody was the same way and she had been happy with him. I told her I’d give it a shot if she wanted, but she wanted me to make a list of changes I’d make if I were in charge of it. She wanted to see what I’d bring to the table. That took me a few days. About a week later, I came back to her office and told her the first thing I’d do is make Future Shock persistent. They’d been doing seasons….21 if I remember right. And that worked fine, but I thought we needed a full time show for the talent. Also because there was a logjam of girls waiting for their season to start. So with a full time roster, I knew I could get more of them on TV and exposure to show their skills.
Zack: That explains the reboot.
Adam: Right. I also told her I wanted to take the show on the road. That was more of a stretch goal, if i’m honest. She didn’t want to spend the money to do that until she was confident it would pay off, which is why we rarely went too many places. At least not on the same basis we do now. I also wanted more titles to give the girls more opportunities to shine. But I didn’t want to do just any title, I wanted something different. Thus the Aspire Ring was born.
Zack: That name always did amuse me. Aspir-ing.
Adam: She liked the goals and ideas I had presented ultimately, and gave me the list of women who were still waiting to get called in for their season and let me pretty much pick my roster to start the show. And away we went. I immediately realized I was doing too much because I was getting frustrated, so then I asked for an assistant and they hired Brianna Singer to help. And she did just that.
Zack: Future Shock also had another benefit for you. That would be where you met your wife, Paige. Though FFW fans know her as Missy.
Adam: Guilty as charged. Wife. Best friend. All of the above. From the moment we met, I felt like there was something there. But with my history with women and the fact Kyle was floating around, I decided not to do anything. I didn’t want to risk losing another woman to him. Time went by, we spent more time together. We hung out, that sort of thing. And one night, she came to visit me and made the first move. Nothing overt, just talking and she kissed me. It all went downhill after that. It also helped to know she found Kyle to be repulsive, so that put my mind at ease too. Things went great. We moved in together, I ended up proposing, and we celebrate our wedding anniversary on the 4th of January every year since.
Zack: Did that complicate things with you dating one of your roster?
Adam: That was something that came to my mind at the time. I never wanted her to hear the whole ‘favoritism’ thing that I know Scarlett probably heard a thousand times with Cody still in power in FFW. That bothered me to think she’d have to deal with it, but she ended up suggesting that I let Brianna book her if I was that worried about it. Brianna had been my right hand woman for a while at that point, and I trusted her implicitly. Still do. So I gave her the reins on booking Missy for quite some time.
Zack: Are you surprised at how far Future Shock has come along since you took control of the brand?
Adam I was for a long time. I tend to be a little pessimistic by nature. So I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for that call one day from Samantha telling me things weren’t going in the right direction and it was time for a change. But….that call never came. The calls I did get were praising me and very happy. So I ended up getting more and more leeway to do things the way I wanted all the way to today. And today, I can pretty much ask for anything and it will happen. It’s really humbling to have someone who believes in me that much. I tell people there’s 2 women who shaped my adult life more than anyone outside of my mom: Samantha Star and my wife. They both believe in me, and that’s all the encouragement I need to keep doing everything I can to make sure all these women who work for Future Shock get to shine doing what they love to do most.
Zack: What’s one of the weirdest things you’ve seen happen since you took this job?
Adam: Only one? The weirdest to me is when wrestlers would DM me on Twitter asking for someone on the roster’s number. That used to happen pretty often, and I mean…I knew I was bad with women. But I never asked someone for the number of someone they knew. Of course, I never gave a number out to anyone. I never would. But I always found that odd. It’s like “Just go talk with them.” The topper was when some would ask me for Missy’s number…while I was dating her.
He rolled his eyes as he brought it up, causing Zack to chuckle again.
Adam: But then I know Jake has said he gets that now with Arabella. I don’t think, even if they were single, most women would have a lot of respect for a guy who has to get in touch with another guy just to approach them and have a conversation. They tend to like confidence, and that…that’s not confident.
Zack: See there, Adam? You thought this wouldn’t be an interesting conversation, and I think it’s been fantastic. I thank you for joining me today.
Adam: Oh, that’s it? That kinda flew by, didn’t it?
Zack: The best interviews always do. Like I said, I thank you for joining me on the show today. I think we’ve all learned a lot about you. I know I did. And I definitely look forward to coming to work Tuesday nights for Future Shock. Fans, thank you for watching this episode of Focus featuring Future Shock Director Adam Grant. Until next time.
Zack turns back to Adam to shake hands with him as the show fades to black on FFW All Access.
