Andrei Mellas

ADAPT GROW FITNESS 

Design and deliver bespoke fitness and wellness programs for CEOs and business leaders, focusing on strength, nutrition, and mindset to drive peak performance.  

Achieve measurable client outcomes, including weight loss, increased energy, and enhanced confidence, with a 95% client retention rate.  

Conduct in-person training sessions tailored to busy schedules, ensuring sustainable results through holistic strategies.

Owner

Founder Adapt Grow Fitness & Ai Interdisciplinary Collective

I help men and women 35+ in Michigan get strong, lean, and energized again—using a powerful mix of personal training, medical-grade hormone optimization, and no-BS coaching that actually works.
For men, I specialize in TRT-fueled fitness transformations—restoring muscle, confidence, and energy when testosterone levels start tanking.

For women, I coach peptide-supported fat loss programs designed specifically for the hormonal chaos of the late 30s to mid-40s—helping you drop 20+ pounds, boost metabolism, and feel in control of your body again.

I offer real, personalized transformation programs backed by medical diagnostics, smart coaching, and unmatched accountability.

This isn’t about quick fixes or motivation posters—it’s about finally fixing the root cause of why your body stopped responding… and giving you the roadmap to take it back.

✅ In-person coaching available in Michigan
✅ Virtual programs with integrated doctor referral + bloodwork
✅ 8–12 week high-performance programs for serious clients only

If you’re a professional in your late 30s or 40s and tired of guessing, suffering, or stalling—I got you.

Founder

Conducting research and analysis on the applications and implications of data analysis and artificial intelligence, and to use the findings of this research to promote the public good and benefit society through the development and deployment of ethical, responsible, and effective Al technologies and practices.

whizzbangidea

World's #1 Startup accelerator for professionals⚡

CEO & Co-Founder

Rocketfitness

Healthy, high performance for entrepreneurs🚀

Founder and CEO

Equalsten

9 out of 10 mergers fail. Do you want to be one?

Advisory Board

Forbes Business Council

Business Council Senior Executive, Contributing Author and Industry Advisor

Contributing Author 

Institute for Mergers, Acquisitions and Alliances (IMAA)

Leading Executive M&A Training Workshops Globally.  Helping businesses build internal capabilities and capacity in their internal strategy teams.

Director of Faculty 

RSL Queensland

Supporting the Executive and Board in the execution of the organisation's strategy

Office of the CEO

KPMG

Specialising in Deal Strategy Integration & Separation for the FS Sector

Director 

Auswide Bank Ltd

Interim Executive Team Member Responsible for Bank Strategy, Digital and M&A
6 Month contract

General Manager Strategy

RACQ

Sales & Distribution Leader for RACQ Bank

General Manager Sales & Distribution Banking

Head of Group Strategy

Deloitte France / Australia

Integration and Sepration, Strategy. Headed up Global M&A Centre of Excellence in joint venture with US providing training to SE Asia

Director

Most people have a business idea. Few turn it into something real.

I started Whizzbangidea to change that, helping professionals validate, test, and build purpose-led, profitable businesses in 90 days. No fluff. Just strategy, systems, and smart execution.

Backed by 20+ years in global M&A and strategy consulting, I’ve led $15B+ in transactions, advised Fortune 500 CEO's, built high-performing teams, and scaled businesses across sectors. Now I’m using that experience to help the next wave of founders skip the BS and get to business.

Whizzbangidea is where bold ideas meet battle-tested strategy.

If you're sitting on a business idea and ready to move - lets go ⚡

Adrian Waters 🚀

Corporate professional to entrepreneur...

Most people talk about leaving corporate the way people talk about moving to Paris. Romantic in theory. Terrifying in practice (but I still did it for 7 years)🥐

Yet nothing is more practical than learning how to build and run your own business

The irony is that corporate life rewards certainty while entrepreneurship rewards capability

Corporate teaches you how to operate within lines someone else drew

Entrepreneurship invites you to pick up the pen and draw your own, and if the angle is wrong, the lesson comes faster than any performance review

We grow faster when the consequences belong to us

The reality is this...it is not really about quitting your job

It is about future-proofing yourself in a world where no organisation, no matter how glossy the brand, can guarantee relevance or stability

The safest person in the room is the one who knows how to create value without waiting for permission

Building your own business develops the skills corporate environments like to talk about but rarely teach well. Clarity. Courage. Communication

Prioritisation. Sales. Empathy. Independent thinking. Entrepreneurship takes these from concepts to capabilities and turns potential into something you can rely on

It gives you the confidence to say, if everything collapsed tomorrow, I would still find a way forward

Leaving corporate is not rebellion. It is self-respect

If you choose this path, expect three things

You will meet a version of yourself that your job title never allowed to appear
You will unlearn rules that kept you smaller than you realised
You will discover that the difficult path is often the one that frees you

So why make the move?

Because building a business forces you to build yourself. And in a world reinventing itself every quarter, those who thrive are the ones willing to stop waiting for certainty and start building capability

We become stronger the moment we stop outsourcing our future

The future belongs to the self-directed, the self-reliant, the ones brave enough to say, if no one is coming to save me, good. I’ll lead myself

That is real freedom

And the smartest career move you will ever make ⚡

=============================

Build a business you love whizzbangidea 💓

Adrian Waters⚡

Choose your company well...

There’s an unspoken truth that everyone feels but few admit

Our lives rise...or fall, to the level of the people we spend the most time with

I’ve watched it happen in boardrooms, gyms, accelerators, and late-night founder circles

When you place yourself near people who think bigger, act braver, and move with intention, something shifts. Your own standards climb quietly. Your excuses get embarrassed. Your ambitions get louder

High performers don’t motivate you by preaching

They motivate you simply by being there

Their discipline forces you to confront your own laziness 

Their ambition makes your goals feel small in the best way. Their courage dares yours to come out of hiding

Their consistency makes “good enough” feel painfully inadequate

We like to believe success is a solo effort

But nobody grows at full strength in isolation

You become more capable when you stand among people who expect more from you

Here’s how to curate that environment:

• Spend more time with people who energise, not drain
• Join circles that make you slightly uncomfortable, that’s where you stretch
• Choose collaborators over cheerleaders
• Audit your week: who expanded your thinking and who limited it?
• Bring value, not vanity, high performers keep people who contribute

You don’t rise by accident

You rise by association. Choose wisely

Your future self depends on it 💓

================

Create, innovate ⚡

Exit options...

Great session with NEXEA - Venture Capital, Angel Investors & Accelerator entrepreneurs last week

I shared how most founders start thinking about M&A after the first inbound email. That's like starting marathon training at mile 22

Acquisition isn’t luck. It’s strategy. And most entrepreneurs don’t realize how much value they’ve lost, until due diligence turns into damage control.

Here’s the reality:

 ✅ 80%+ of startup exits are acquisitions
 ❌ <30% of founders plan for one in advance
 💸 The gap = millions left on the table

Buyers want clean:

 – Financials they can trust
 – Cap tables that make sense
 – IP without skeletons
 – Customers with signed contracts

Instead, they get:

 – Founder disputes in Slack
 – Contracts with “TBD” terms
 – A P&L built in someone’s cousin’s Excel sheet

If you’re 18–24 months out from exit, start now

 🔹 Clean the books
 🔹 Document everything
 🔹 Map strategic buyers
 🔹 Build a deal room before you need one

You’re not just selling a company.  You’re selling certainty.

How much is your lack of prep costing you, before the deal even hits the table?

====================

Create, innovate ⚡

Launch before ready...

Whether we are building a startup or releasing a new service inside a corporate, the first version will never look like the polished future we imagine. And that is exactly how progress begins

Most meaningful launches start with something imperfect. Something we wish had one more edit

Something that feels almost too simple. Yet those early versions teach us more than any amount of planning because real people shape them in ways we could never predict

Look at Canva. Today it is one of the world’s most widely used design platforms. But the very first version Melanie Perkins and her team launched was a simple tool that helped students create yearbooks

No global ambition yet. No huge feature set. Just a small MVP solving one specific problem. Once people started using it, the insights came fast and the product grew into the platform millions rely on today

The same applies to us. When we wait for perfect, we slow our own growth. We stall the momentum that only comes from putting something into the world and learning from it

So we launch early. We test fast. We improve in public. Thats exactly what Kristian Zwart and I are doing with whizzbangidea

If the first version makes us a little uncomfortable, it’s usually a sign we are moving in the right direction

==========================

Create, innovate ⚡

Revenue. Retention. Repeat

I ran a virtual session on Friday with entrepreneurs and SMEs on accelerating revenue and customer retention. What stood out is how much growth is trapped inside simple habits that most businesses overlook

Retention is the multiplier

A customer who stays 12 months is worth far more than one who stays 3

A 5 percent lift in retention can meaningfully increase profit without any new marketing spend

Yet most businesses spend 80 percent of their time on acquisition and almost no time on keeping customers active, happy and upgrading

A few insights from the session that every founder should consider:
Customers don’t churn because of price. They churn because of unclear value

If customers can’t quickly articulate the monthly outcome they get from you, your renewal risk increases

Onboarding decides your revenue curve

Most churn happens in the first 30 to 60 days

A structured onboarding with early wins is more powerful than any sales script

Communicate like a coach, not a marketer

Customers stay when they feel guided, supported and reminded of progress

Simple behaviour triggers such as 'no activity for 7 days' can save more accounts than a discount ever will

Upgrade paths should feel natural. The best upsell is not a push

It’s simply showing the customer what people at their stage normally do next to get more value

Measure customer health before it becomes a renewal conversation

A simple green, amber, red score based on usage and engagement will tell you more than a quarterly report

These aren’t big transformations. They’re small operational behaviours that compound into serious revenue growth

To everyone who joined the session, thank you

Your questions and openness made it a strong, practical discussion.
If there’s one takeaway, it’s this

Businesses don’t scale by acquiring more. They scale by keeping more

Revenue. Retention. Repeat

===========================

Create, innovate ⚡

Brian Tan Boon Yong and the gang it was my pleasure 💓

Talent is optional...

Strategy helps. But most goals are achieved the old-fashioned way: brute force and repetition

What

People overestimate brilliance and underestimate endurance. The truth is that most meaningful progress comes from showing up, doing the work, and doing it again. Not once, not perfectly, but repeatedly

Why

Studies show that consistent effort outperforms bursts of inspiration

The brain is most capable of deep, focused work in the morning, yet most people burn that time on shallow tasks. Progress doesn't require genius. It requires protecting your best hours and applying them, relentlessly, to the same thing

How

Block your mornings for deep work: Guard 90 to 120 minutes for focused execution. No calls. No context switching

Build a repetition habit: Choose one goal, define the next micro-step, and repeat it daily. The value is in consistency, not complexity

Reflect and realign: At day’s end, review. What worked, what didn’t, and what deserves tomorrow’s best hours

What result could you produce if you repeated one smart action every day for a year?

================

Create, innovate ⚡

Shut it...

The smartest leaders talk less and listen better

Sometimes the most powerful person in the room isn’t the one speaking. It’s the one listening

We’ve all heard the saying, “two ears, one mouth for a reason.” But few of us use them that way. In a world full of noise, real listening has become a competitive edge as its very much a lost skill

Something most people overlook:

Mirror emotions, not words

When someone speaks, don’t repeat their sentences. Reflect their feelings

Say, “Wow that must have been tough,” or “You lit up talking about that mate.” It shows presence, not performance

Research shows people remember how you made them feel three times longer than what you said

In leadership, sales, or coaching, we win trust not by talking more, but by helping others feel seen

Next time you’re in a conversation, pause before responding

Listen for the feeling. Reflect it back. Watch what happens

=======================

Create, innovate ⚡

Winning...

We move so fast chasing the next big thing that we forget the small wins sitting right in front of us

Finishing the workout when we didn’t want to start.  Sending the proposal that took longer than expected. Choosing to respond calmly instead of reacting

Those moments are progress. But we dismiss them because they don’t feel 'big enough'

Research shows that consistent progress, even small, is the number one driver of motivation. Not money. Not status. Just movement forward

It’s like training for a race, you don’t notice your fitness changing day to day, but one morning you realise you’ve become the person who finishes what they start

Small wins are proof that we’re becoming who we said we’d be

Let’s celebrate them more often

My win so far this week in securing a client meeting that could lead to big things. So instead of dismissing and thinking about the outcome I am quietly recognising just getting a meeting in the diary was a win, regardless of what happens

What’s one small win this week that deserves a proper celebration?

==================

Create, innovate ⚡

Inspire each other...

I’ve worked in boardrooms from London to Kuala Lumpur, helped corporates innovate, built accelerators, trained founders and even opened a yoga studio

Across all of that, I’ve never met a genuinely successful person wasting energy tearing someone down

I’ve never met anyone in a healthy relationship gossiping about mine. I’ve never met a real entrepreneur criticising someone starting out. And I’ve never seen a genuine corporate innovator blocking someone else’s ideas

People creating real opportunities don’t behave like that

At the top we collaborate. We share ideas, open doors and build together

That’s how new ventures, new markets and new exits happen

Here’s how we show up:

We share our spotlight
We shout out people doing great work
We back colleagues in public
We connect people without expecting anything back

And we cheer others on when they win. It builds trust and momentum for everyone

Successful people don’t pull others down. They lift. And every time we lift someone, we raise our own game too

That’s how entrepreneurship works. That’s how innovation spreads. That’s how we all win together 💓

===============

Create, innovate ⚡

Health is wealth

We upgrade our laptops, phones and job titles yet forget the one system running the whole show

Our health

The greatest irony of modern ambition. I learned this by doing the opposite during my time at KPMG

I got caught in the “do what people expect” cycle. Long hours -stress dressed up as ambition

A life that looked polished from the outside but felt strangely hollow

The work wasn’t awful. It just wasn’t something I would ever choose if it didn’t pay so well

Eventually I got out. Thank god

Now I have agency over my time. My days are built around a calendar I control

Gym sessions fit in because I choose where my energy goes instead of where someone else points it

I sleep better too

Honestly, that alone is worth escaping the corporate race

Poor sleep cuts cognitive performance by nearly 40 percent. Sitting all day slows calorie burn by about 30 percent

Stress spikes cortisol and wrecks recovery. No surprise so many people feel drained before the week is even half done

The turning point came when I stopped chasing applause and started investing in the only asset that compounds for life...My health

What we do..

We move early - Even ten minutes lifts dopamine. We eat simple whole foods, we make fewer decisions. We protect our mind - Less time with people who drain our spark

We sleep properly - one bad night can drop immune function by up to 70 percent

When we choose a life that fits who we are, not who others want us to be, we become a bit more of who we were all along and forgot on the way

Rocketfitness 💪🏽

Kristian Zwart welcome to the team ⚡

Now a whizzbanger officially and we are very excited, over the moon actually to have you as CTO and co-founder 😃

Someone of your caliber, work ethic, creativity and all round positive energy to come in and lead the next stage of growth globally is an honor

This is the next chapter, one that is going to take whizzbangidea to the next level, helping more people build a business they love 💓and have a bit of fun along the way

We are building in public and running whizzbangidea through the four week accelerator starting Monday so you can all see how it works and give you insights into why we are the #1 accelerator in the world for professionals🌍

DM either of us for details to join the January 2026 waitlist ⚡

Frankie James 😉

AI Product Builder & Lead UX/UI Designer | Specialist in Conversions & Intelligent System Design

Recently, I put a lot of time and energy into a project that didn’t go as planned, but it turned out to be a huge blessing in disguise. I managed to escape an environment that would never have worked for me, and within the same 24 hours, better opportunities and greater reward came along.

Since then, I’ve had some exciting updates, moments that have pushed my work to the next level. It’s all about progress, and I’m feeling more energised than ever.

While helping bring Lovable to Kuala Lumpur for a hackathon, I met a Welsh guy with whom I instantly clicked. Adrian Waters⚡ We share a relentless work ethic, he’s an Ironman, and I’ve walked the Camino de Santiago twice with a guitar. It was one of those moments where the banter was flowing and we just knew we were in sync. There’s a lot of mutual respect here-he brings the strategy, vision, and decades of M&A experience, while I bring the AI and tech. Together, we’re a pretty unstoppable combination.

Now, I’m honoured to be serving as CTO/technology partner at whizzbangidea, where we’re building something that helps professionals break free from corporate life and build businesses they love. The mission is clear: Create a life-aligned business that doesn’t burn you out but fuels your future. I’m excited to share the real-time process and experiments with everyone. The work is real, the intention is real, and the mission is one worth building.

It’s better to be adaptable than collapsible,
Better to be unstoppable than just remarkable,
For at WhizzBangIdea, we make the impossible, possible.

Now, I’m excited to share our first video advert experiment. It’s a work in progress and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Your feedback will help shape the next phase of this project.

This is just the beginning, and I’m looking forward to where this journey will take us.

Phil Owers Per Oldeide
#AI 

#WhizzBangIdea

#BuildingInPublic

#ProductDevelopment

Want to know the #1 leadership mistake I see?

(It's killing your team)

Leaders think they need to:

Be superman
Have all the answers
Work 24/7
Never show weakness

But here's what actually works:

Admit when you're wrong
Ask for help
Take real breaks
Share your struggles

The best leaders I've worked with?

They build trust by being human

Not by being perfect

Why?

Because perfect leaders create anxious teams

(Who are too scared to try anything new)

But human leaders create safe spaces

Where people can:

Make mistakes
Learn fast
Grow strong
Win together

Want to level up your leadership?

Start here:

1. Say "I don't know"
2. Take real vacations
3. Celebrate failures
4. Show your real self

Because at the end of the day?

Your team doesn't need a superman

They need someone who’ll stand with them

Through the wins and the losses

That's real leadership.

And that's how you build teams that last.

===========

Create, innovate ⚡

No alternative text description for this image

taplio

The Battle

Andrei Mellas

Adrian Waters 🚀

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreAdrian Waters 🚀's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Andrei Mellas

Adrian Waters 🚀

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Adrian Waters 🚀's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreAdrian Waters 🚀's LinkedIn Performance