Start With A Win - Adam Contos: The 5 Principles Winning Leaders Live By in 2026

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

This episode of Start With a Win is a no-nonsense wake-up call for leaders who refuse to drift into the future unprepared. Adam frames a bold close to 2025 and a decisive launch into 2026, he blends hard data, lived experience, and unfiltered conviction to challenge how leadership is actually practiced when the pressure is real. It’s not motivational fluff or distant theory - it’s a sharp, energizing look at what separates those who gain momentum from those who get left behind. If you’re ready for a candid, high-octane perspective that will make you reassess how you lead, work, and show up when it counts, this is an episode you’ll want to hear all the way through and even need to re-watch!⚡️FREE RESOURCE: 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘞𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱?  ➡︎ https://adamcontos.com/myleadershipWant weekly leadership content? Go here ➡︎ https://adamcontos.com00:00 Intro00:28 Principle 1 - Treat AI Like a Weapon02:29 Principle 2 - Extreme Ownership04:33 Principle 3 -  Relentless Standards06:31 Principle 4 - Authentic Connection08:05 Principle 5 - The Grind Came Back09:02 This is not punishment it is preparation!10:30 Rewatch, write down and take action!===========================Subscribe and Listen to the Start With a Win Podcast HERE:📱 ===========================YT ➡︎ https://www.youtube.com/@AdamContosCEOApple ➡︎ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/start-with-a-win/id1438598347Spotify ➡︎ https://open.spotify.com/show/4w1qmb90KZOKoisbwj6cqT===========================Connect with Adam:===========================Website ➡︎ https://adamcontos.com/Facebook  ➡︎ https://facebook.com/AdamContosCEOTwitter  ➡︎ https://twitter.com/AdamContosCEOInstagram  ➡︎ https://instagram.com/adamcontosceo/#adamcontos #startwithawin #leadershipfactory

Today, I'm giving you the five leadership principles that define 2025 and the ones that will determine who wins in 2026. No theories, no fluff, just proven behaviors backed by real data and real momentum. Let's get into it. Welcome to start with a win where we unpack leadership, personal growth and development, and how to build a better business. Let's go. This is our 2025 recap and 2026 kicking the pants to get you going. Principle one. Treat AI like a weapon, not a crutch. Anthropics' November 2025 research showed that current generation AI models, nothing futuristic, can lift U.S. labor productivity by 1.8% every year for the next decade.

When you add that up, it's huge. That's historic, and it's long overdue. But here's the catch. McKinsey actually found that while 88% of companies use AI somewhere, over 60% are still stuck in experimentation or pilot mode. They haven't even scaled. Only about a third have. And that one third is pulling fast ahead on revenue, cost structure, and innovation against everybody else.

So what does this actually mean for leaders? It means AI isn't about replacing humans. It's about replacing inefficiency. One of my mentors used to tell me, if it makes you faster and clearer, it's not cheating, it's leadership. That's AI today. So 15 minutes a day of prompting, strategic questions, workflow breakdowns, scenario planning has really doubled my decision speed. It's removed my mental fog, it has amplified clarity, and it has made complex decisions so much simpler for me. On the business side, the St. Louis Fed found that workers using Gen AI saved 5.4% of their weekly hours.

roughly two hours out of a 40-hour week, just by removing repetitive tasks. That's real ROI for businesses. It's not theoretical. So here's your move. After this episode, type into your AI tool, optimize my biggest bottleneck and half the time. Give it a few more commands, tell it what you do, and then watch what happens. You're not using AI to replace your thinking. You're using it to unlock the possibilities because it's going to process so much faster than you can. So now let's talk about execution. The second principle for 2025 and 2026,

extreme ownership beats everything. Here's what we learned. 2025 revealed a massive gap. Leaders who embraced ownership built trust. Leaders who avoided it lost their teams, and they lost their ass to in their revenue. DDI's global leadership, forecast highlighted that trust gaps between teams and senior leadership widened to around 25%.

Not because people lack talent, but because too many leaders lacked accountability. This is a big deal for employees. Ownership is the anecdote. It's not about yelling or being harsh. It's about standing up and saying, this is mine, I'm responsible. It's about clarity. As Navy SEAL commander, Jocko Willink says, there are no bad teams, only bad leaders. Harsh?

Maybe. True? Absolutely. Well said, Jocko. In 2025, I doubled down on ownership myself. Early mornings, uncomfortable honesty, journaling my misses so I could see what I wrote down, taking responsibility for things I had let slide. And my follow-through skyrocket.

My workouts massively increased and everything started coming together. Not because I gained more hours, but because I gained more ownership. When leaders say, here's what happened, here's how we fix it, and we fix it now, teams respond immediately. They stop hesitating. They stop waiting. They start owning their work because they've seen what ownership looks like. And we stop delaying things getting done. So your move today.

Pick one problem and write down, I own this. List three solutions. Do one of those solutions before the day ends. Momentum begins with ownership. Your ownership. Here's the third principle. Relentless Standards. Corn Ferry's April 2025 findings were crystal clear.

CEOs with the highest standards delivered 8.7% annual revenue growth, compared to about 3% for low standard cultures. That's almost triple the performance simply by raising the bar. High performance teams perform better. Sounds simple, doesn't it? But it takes the leader to do that. Standards aren't harsh. They're healthy.

They create clarity. They create consistency. They create confidence. As Steve Jobs famously said, if you're not passionate enough from the start, you'll never stick it out. standards protect that passion. They ensure the right people are in the right seats doing the right work.

Mediocrity is expensive. I hate that word mediocrity. It drains energy. It slows progress and it makes top performers quit. This year I raised my standards in small daily increments. Better preparation, tighter commitments, stronger boundaries, and the compounding effect was immediate. In business, organizations that enforce standards with fairness and transparency eliminated drag and unlocked performance.

They stopped tolerating the bottom 10 to 15% eroding their culture. They got serious about excellence. Everybody at the top rose even more. Your move. Identify the three biggest drags, habits, processes, or people, and either elevate them or eliminate them. I have a question for you. How many of you know somebody that needs to be fired? Go do it. Upgrade your team. It's time to upgrade. Standards aren't just expectations. Their strategy and their results. So here's principle four. Authentic connection. Authenticity isn't soft. It's powerful.

PWC's 2025 hopes and fear survey found that when employees believe their leaders are aligned, honest, and purpose, motivation surges, in fact, by 70 to 80%. That's a massive multiplier. And Gallup's 2025 engagement numbers echo the same story. People don't need perfect leaders. They need real leaders. As Bray Brown says, clear is kind, unclear is unkind. In 2025, clarity became kindness.

Direct communication became care. Honesty became alignment. And what we found is everybody who was avoiding everything, raise their hand quickly. I made it a priority this year to show up more clearly one-on-one on calls, events with teams, things like that. And the doors that opened proved a simple truth. People rally around leaders who are genuine. They trust leaders who tell the truth. They grow with leaders who connect directly.

Inside organizations, nothing transforms a culture faster than leaders who communicate clearly. celebrate loudly and correct quickly. Not harshly, but quickly. Stop avoiding it. So your move. Send one message today. I see what you're building. How can I support you? It's one of the simplest and most powerful leadership tools on earth. And now here's the separator, principle five. The grind came back. PWC's November 2025 study confirmed something powerful. employees who find their work meaningful are 91% more motivated. This is not a subtle difference. It is absolutely transformational for businesses.

Meaning drives effort. Effort drives consistency and consistency drives results. We want results, don't we? We got to put in the effort and the consistency. Behind every overnight success in 2025, we're three to seven, years of unseen work. The Kaufman Foundation research shows that repeatedly. Success hides the grind, but leaders feel it every day. It's about the grind. Personally, I leaned into this more than ever in 2025. Earlier mornings, deep work, skill building, harder decisions, and higher standards.

And it paid dividends every single week. The grind isn't punishment. It's preparation. It's preparation for more success. For teams, the grind isn't about hours. It's about intensity. It's about readiness. When leaders model preparation, teams rise to meet it. Or they naturally deselect themselves. And both outcomes strengthen the organization, by the way.

So your move tonight. Invest one extra hour in your craft. Learn something powerful about it. Build something, strengthen something. strengthen something. That hour compounds year after year. So here's our recap. AI is your competitive weapon with a confirmed 1.8% annual productivity boost and real-world time savings. Extreme ownership to close the trust gaps and widen across industries. Relentous standards. Backed by an 8.7% revenue performance advantage. Authentic connection, supported by

70 plus percent motivation lift tied to aligned leadership. And meaningful, consistent work, the grind, with 91% motivation anchored directly to it. These aren't trends. They're your unfair advantages. You get to pick now. How do I want to work going forward? These observations from 2025 really set me up well for 2026.

Make sure you write these down. keep a scorecard and let me know how it works for you. Also, we've noticed that not everybody is subscribed to start with a win that watches it. So please like and subscribe and go to YouTube and like and subscribe it there as well. Thanks a lot. Have a great 2026. Let's have some deep accountability and kick some major ass. We'll see you soon.