The Beard Club

Sr. Director of Retention

PetHonesty

• Led customer retention strategy for the DTC business with a focus on converting leads and increasing LTV through email, SMS, direct mail, and onsite marketing campaigns.

Director of Retention

• Grew monthly email revenue 457% in first 6 months at the company
• Launched SMS marketing channel

Senior CRM Manager

Hopsy

• Led CRM strategy and implementation for the business.
• Doubled conversion rates for leads (acquisition), canceled subscriptions (win-back), and lapsed users (retention) through targeted, automated email flows.
• Executed multiple product launches, acquisition offers, and expansion into new U.S. states.

CRM Manager

FanDuel

• Launched CRM program for new Sportsbook product in September 2018.
• Developed and executed weekly CRM campaign calendar with focus on onboarding, promotions, and cross sell from our Fantasy product.
• Continuously tested and optimized targeted customer life cycle campaigns.

Manager, Sportsbook Retention

• Managed CRM calendar on a weekly basis, prioritizing and scheduling all stakeholder requests. Made strategic decisions on channel selection that drove impactful results.
• Built automated campaigns and dynamic landing pages that increased campaign efficiency and provided users with a more personalized customer experience.

Associate, CRM

• Coordinated the daily execution of email and mobile marketing campaigns with a focus on customer retention, reactivation, and cross selling.
• Built an email metrics dashboard that contained all engagement metrics, A/B tests, and trend data, making recommendations for improvement.

Coordinator, Email Marketing

GCP Applied Technologies

• Managed email, website, and social media marketing strategy including topic and calendar development, creative copywriting, website editing, analytics, and video creation.
• Acted as interim traffic manager for all projects within marketing communications department and created a new file naming structure as part of a project/asset centralization project.

Marketing Communications Specialist

Elmwood Day Camp

• Led eight 30-45 minute classes per day teaching children ages 3-10 years old the fundamental skills of four sports: basketball, baseball, hockey, and soccer.

Athletics Specialist

Cornell University

• Provided day-to-day support for the coaching staff and development of players.
• Created Excel database with player info to streamline recruiting process.

Men's Basketball Manager

Baltimore Ravens

• Interned for the Baltimore Ravens the summer after they won Super Bowl XLVII.
• Provided friendly customer service and helped execute all fan events at training camp.

Training Camp Marketing Intern

You can sell anything with the combination of copywriting + storytelling + email. Join 15,000+ entrepreneurs, and I'll show you how every week at writeoncopy.co

The back of my baseball card:

Experienced customer retention marketer. Generated over $50,000,000 in revenue throughout my career through Email & SMS marketing.

What I'm working on:

By day, you'll find me at Beard Club, laser-focused on increasing retention rates and lifetime value (LTV) for our subscription business. If you want to grow the best beard of your life, hit us up!

By night, I'm building:

• A loyal twitter following - https://twitter.com/joe_portsmouth
• A newsletter to help you become a better copywriter - https://writeon.beehiiv.com/

DMs are always open!

Joe Portsmouth

Mind Your Business Labs

Growth partner, collaborator, and advisor for founders of 5+ years.
→ Long-term business sustainability + scaling to sell
→ Prioritizing founder mental health + creative energy
→ Actionable strategies to stop being buried in the business and start leading with purpose

Founder, Growth Partner

Cavehouse Supply

At Cavehouse Supply, we empower kids with confidence and creativity while also supporting families. We do this in 3 ways: 

• The Optimist Adventure Club - a monthly kid's magazine that empowers children ages 5-10 to embrace adventures with confidence, creativity, and kindness through interactive stories, activities, and challenges. 
• Storytelling and interactive app for kids - An engaging platform where kids can create, share, and learn through interactive storytelling and activities.
• Cavehouse video series - A series of conversations with parents, educators, health experts, and kiddos, offering insights, support, and fun experiences for strengthening creativity and emotional growth.

Every child deserves the support and attention needed to become the best version of themselves. And if we can inspire adults to reconnect with their child self to rediscover the joys of play and creativity along the way, then we’ll be celebrating with all the excitement we have. 

Oh yeah! And every design, even our company name, is directly inspired by things kids have said.

#BrightnessAwaits

Founder

Life and Limb Printing

I started Life and Limb Printing in 2008, overdrawn in my bank account and in the middle of the recession. 

Grew it without borrowing money or bringing on partners and on March 3, 2025, the company was acquired by Country Screen Printing out of Goodlettsville, TN.

Founder, Company Acquired

MerchCave

Turnkey full service merch company for the entertainment industry offering - 

• eCommerce solutions
• Fulfillment
• Warehousing
• Product photography

I help founders of 5+ years build better systems that work for them - Not against them.

Hey, I'm Adam. 

I started my first company 17 years ago, overdrawn $350 in my bank account, in the middle of the 2008 recession. 

I never borrowed money or brought on partners. 

And that company was officially acquired on March 3, 2025! 

I've worked with companies like Goodwill Industries, Redbull, Bass Pro Shops, Tito's Handmade Vodka,
and Gibson Guitars.

I had what looked like success from the outside - 
Growing revenue, expanding team, industry recognition. 

But what's less visible on the balance sheet is that in year 6, after weeks of not sleeping, barely eating, and feeling completely isolated despite being surrounded by people who loved me and depended on me, I hit rock bottom. I found myself ready to end my life.

I’m here today because play pulled me out of the dark. 

And now I help companies rediscover play so they can create, collaborate, and lead with purpose.

I help people move beyond "What if success can be fun?" to "What if fun is the key to success?"

I do this 3 ways - 
1. Speaking engagements
2. My weekly newsletter - Mind Your Business
3. Advising founders on how to go from being buried in business to start leading with purpose.
 
Play isn't an action, it's an environment. 

Let's create yours - hello@adamtanaka.com

Adam Tanaka

On October 5th, 2025, something special happened. 

Cavehouse Supply hosted its first ever fall festival here in Nashville, TN. 

And I can say with all the confidence, it was a success! We heard from countless families, vendors, and kiddos - “We want to be part of the next one.” And we hadn’t even planned for there to be a next one. 

It was a day of play, creativity, joy, connection, and being in the present moment. 

I’m so grateful for all of the vendors, families, kids, and our location partner New Heights Brewing, for allowing us a space for building community and connection. 

I’m thinking a fall adventure fest 2026 might be in the works…

Full video over at the Cavehouse Supply YouTube channel - 

https://lnkd.in/gkJdvETW

Helping audiences rediscover play | TEDx Speaker | Building the #1 kids brand at Cavehouse Supply

What childhood trauma taught me about being a founder.

- Always keep your guard up. 
- When you feel emotions, throw yourself into your work. 
- Avoid things that scare you and they'll go away. 
- Always wear a smile. 
- It's just a phase so push through it. 
- Be careful getting excited because something bad could happen. 
- Play is a waste of time and should only be used as survival. 

Once these patterns are put into practice, you risk destroying all that you've worked so hard for. 

Imagine your employees coming to work bitter and full of dread 

Or a client meeting turning into a venting session they sure didn't ask for. 

So you go into quick fix-it mode...

In our little neighborhood by the lake, we have small sinkholes that pop up. 
Nothing major but could eventually cause a problem. 
So the city comes out and quickly paves over them. 
Over time, that weight from the layers of asphalt causes the once small sinkhole to become a little bigger when they form again. 

That's a founder's way of fixing things when working from a wounded place. 

It tells us that our value comes from constant production, problem-solving, and being busy.

Time spent on temporary solutions because we just need that immediate hit of dopamine to feel needed or important. 

I've learned so much through the past 2 decades of owning businesses. 

But I've had to unlearn even more. 

The shift happened when I became honest with myself: 

- Pausing before reacting
- Stopped mistaking control for safety
- Making space for fear without letting it lead
- Stopped chasing approval and started trusting my own voice
- Moving forward with purpose-driven optimism - eyes up, not head down
- And ultimately giving myself permission to play

Whether you're an artist, entrepreneur, small business owner, millionaire founder - I could care less what title you have because we're all messy humans doing hard things...

My only question to you - How are you really doing today?

The world told us that as adults, we need to "get serious."

Where's the fun in that?

Find someone you can build with...

Build play-doh rocket ships and dinosaurs with, that is.

In my 3rd grade math class, the only way I could make sense of the numbers was by writing a short story with illustrations. 

It didn't make sense to me, it didn't make sense to anyone else at my school, and it didn't make sense to anyone in that small west TN town. 

But stories became my language. My mom and I even wrote a fun little book together during that school year. 

As I got older, I realized I wasn’t alone. And eventually, I didn’t need stories to understand numbers anymore. (I’m actually pretty decent at math these days.)

Storytelling has been with us since the beginning. Even before we speak, we’re shaped by stories. But for some kids, that process takes longer. 
Understanding the world, and themselves, doesn’t come easily.

Some pick things up fast. Others need more time to process, connect the dots, and make sense of what they feel. 
Some navigate anxiety or depression. 
Some are neurodivergent. 
Some are highly creative and imaginative.

While building my kids brand Cavehouse Supply, I knew there needed to be more to this than just coloring books, SEL kids magazines full of creative challenges, or video content with expert support. 

There needed to be something for those kids who see and feel the world differently. So that's when I started talking to those parents and meeting brilliant kiddos who held so much inside. 

When they felt safe, they opened up. But their outlet still often involved screens.

So in 2022, I had an idea: a kid-powered storytelling app. 
And fast forward to this past Wednesday, we showcased our prototype for testing at Vanderbilt University's LIVE Learning Innovation Incubator with Dr. Alyssa Wise.

Thanks so much to Dr. Wise and the class for this wonderful opportunity.

Big shoutout to Bill Greer, who has been with me not long after the app idea and worked so hard to help bring it to life via prototype with his UX-ellence.

Thanks to Timothy Nobles for being a close friend and brilliant human the past many many years, who is my go-to when navigating bizzy biz things (and for rocknroll). He’s a rarity and I count myself lucky.

Incredibly grateful for Deepa Caveney and her deep knowledge of how to drive the vision and communicate the purpose. 

My love, Kelsey Thomas. She is the most supportive person. Her brilliance and inspiration is what helps drive all the things.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

What a joy it is to be on this adventure going from an adult needing to reconcile with my child self to now building the #1 kids brand!

Australia just made a bold move: banning social media for kids under 16.

What does it say about the environment we’ve built for kids that an entire country felt the need to step in like this?

If childhood is supposed to be about imagination, identity, experimentation, and play…
What happens when so much of that happens inside algorithms, comparison loops, and dopamine-driven feeds?

And if we remove the screen without changing the environment around the child…
What are we actually giving back to them?

More time?
More boredom?
More creativity?
More connection?
More anxiety?

I don’t think this is really a “social media” conversation. I think it’s an environment conversation.

And environment shapes everything.

As the founder of a kids brand built on creativity, confidence, and emotional wellbeing, this moment doesn’t make me feel certain.

It makes me curious.

What would it look like if we didn’t necessarily restrict what kids consume, but radically expanded what they get to create?

If you’re a parent, educator, therapist, or human who cares about the next generation, I’d love to hear where this lands for you.

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In late December 2024, I made a decision. 

It was to stop caring so much about the things that didn’t matter, and do the things that fired me up. 

It became the age of less asking and more telling. 

I’ve spent so much of my life disconnected, but not in the right way. I was disconnected from me. Who I was, where I wanted to go. And bit by bit, losing my sense of self. 

In my 20s, I asked myself - what are my goals, but then ultimately allowed others to define those goals for me. 

In my 30s, it was - what do I want, only to make the final call based on what I thought others wanted from me. 

Now, in my 40s, it’s - what excites me and then doing the thing regardless what others think or say. 

I’m thinking 50s will be something like - I do what I want so either come hang with me or get out of the way. 

I’ve fully embraced the fact that I’m a big kid. Still full of wonder. 

Making it a point to stop and be absolutely fascinated by the leaves changing in the fall, listening to the comforting sound of neighbors having a conversation about trash day, or just observing other people being awesome and knowing deep down, the world is much more full of those kinds of people. 

I recently heard this and it resonated:
What a privilege to be tired from the work you once begged the universe for. 
What a privilege to be challenged by a life you created on purpose. 

That doesn’t discount the fact that we’re just a bunch of messy humans doing hard things. 

But it does support the fact that we are 100% capable. 

I get to build the #1 kids brand Cavehouse Supply, empowering kids with confidence and creativity. 
 
I get to speak on stages about something deeply personal to me - rediscovering play as an adult.

And I get to meet leaders and creatives where they are, and use my knowledge and expertise to help them build and grow. 

Sometimes we don’t have to justify the decisions we make. 

Sometimes we can just make decisions out of pure excitement and joy.

What leaders can learn from children’s creativity.

Kids don’t "try" to be creative.
They don’t brainstorm.
They don’t work things into a schedule.
They play, explore, and follow their curiosity without apologizing for it.

Meanwhile, most leaders are drowning in pressure, deliverables, and decision fatigue, wondering why their creativity feels like it’s on life support.

Kids aren’t more creative just because they’re young.
They’re more creative because they’re unrestricted.

No fear of looking like a big goof. 
No obsession with efficiency.
No ego attached to being right.
Just experimenting.

Every breakthrough I’ve seen with founders, entrepreneurs, and leaders comes from giving themselves space to return to that same mindset.

When you create an environment for unstructured play, even at work, you unlock the things you’ve been trying to "tactic" your way into:
Clear thinking.
Real connections.
Energized collaboration. 
And a healthier mind.

If you want to expand, loosen the rules you’ve quietly built around yourself.
If you want creative breakthroughs, stop shrinking to fit someone else's version of you.
If you want thrive as an adult, you have to go back to who you were as a kid. 

Yes, we have countless responsibilities as adults. 
And if you don't want to lose your sense of self in the process, give yourself permission to play.

taplio

The Battle

Joe Portsmouth

Adam Tanaka

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The Battle

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Adam Tanaka

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Likes

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