Leap Academy with Ilana Golan - The Art of Reinvention: How to Elevate Your Career and Life | Robert Glazer

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

Throughout his life, Robert Glazer has reinvented himself time and again. First, he transitioned from a traditional career path to entrepreneurship. Then, realizing his interests had shifted, he transitioned from his role as CEO to focus on writing and thought leadership. In this episode, Robert shares his journey of continuous evolution and offers insights on how to adapt to new roles that align with your passions and strengths. Robert Glazer is an entrepreneur, bestselling author, and founder of Acceleration Partners, a global marketing agency. He is a sought-after keynote speaker who has delivered talks worldwide, including on the TEDx stage. In this episode, Ilana and Robert will discuss: - Overcompensating for past failures - The health scare that caused a major mind shift - His journey from underachiever to overachiever - How he created an agency by accident - Continuous evolution for business growth - Delegating leadership effectively - The importance of learning from successful mentors - Chasing success for the right reasons - Maximizing impact with the 80/20 rule - Debunking the overnight success myth - Turning disadvantages into advantages - Embracing failure to avoid mediocrity - And other topics…   Robert Glazer is an entrepreneur, bestselling author, and founder of Acceleration Partners, a leading global marketing agency. Under his leadership, Acceleration Partners achieved an annual growth rate of 30% over a decade and received over 25 industry awards. He is also a bestselling author of several books, including Elevate: Push Beyond Your Limits and Unlock Success in Yourself and Others. Robert shares his insights on personal and professional growth through his popular Friday Forward newsletter and his podcast, Elevate. As a sought-after keynote speaker, he has delivered talks worldwide, including on the TEDx stage. He has been featured in top publications like Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Inc. Connect with Robert: Robert’s Website: https://www.robertglazer.com  Robert’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glazer/  Resources Mentioned: Robert’s Podcast, Elevate: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/elevate-with-robert-glazer/id1454045560   Robert’s Newsletter, Friday Forward: https://www.robertglazer.com/friday-forward/  Robert’s Books: Elevate: Push Beyond Your Limits and Unlock Success in Yourself and Others: https://www.amazon.com/Elevate-Beyond-Limits-Success-Yourself/dp/1492691488  Friday Forward: Inspiration & Motivation to End Your Week Stronger Than It Started: https://www.amazon.com/Friday-Forward-Inspiration-Motivation-Stronger/dp/1728230438  How to Thrive in a Virtual Workplace: https://www.amazon.com/How-Thrive-Virtual-Workplace-Successful/dp/1728246849  Performance Partnerships: The Checkered Past, Changing Present and Exciting Future of Affiliate Marketing: https://www.amazon.com/Performance-Partnerships-Checkered-Affiliate-Marketing-ebook/dp/B0713Y5L7W 

Robert Glazer, entrepreneur, author, keynote speaker. First of all, welcome to the show. It's amazing to have you. Thanks for having me. It all started with a very scary moment. Can you share with us? Sure. So I wasn't necessarily the beginning. About 15 years ago, my son's 15. He was nine months at the time. I was taken to the hospital for what I thought was a heart attack. And it turned out to be a panic attack from a year where I was starting two companies, building a house, living with our parents, having a child,

and I just ran it too hard. And as I passed out in the kitchen there, I really thought that was the end. As I was staring at my nine-month-old son there with the babysitter walking around. So I think that was a wake-up call for a lot of different changes in my life around prioritizing fitness and health and realizing that you can push too hard. But I feel like I got a warning shot and was lucky. There's no way I thought I was going to the hospital and be like, oh, you're fine. It was nothing. So yeah, that was scary. Really scary, Robert. And I think sometimes we all have those moments that define us. And it sounds like this was one of those moments that was a wake-up call for you to say,

I need to change. How do you change? There's a lot of overcompensation. We're often overcompensating for past things. And I think I had grown up as someone who was a little more ADD and didn't fit into the system and it didn't really serve me very well. And I think I felt very much like an underachiever. And then eventually, I figured things out and things clicked in my 20s. And suddenly things started to work. And that felt good. And so I leaned into that and just leaned into that way too hard, and probably didn't totally learn that lesson there. And so just in terms of thinking about priorities and what was important and yes, having these successes and achievements, but also family and health and

balance and all those things. But I still have the bracelet from my hospital visit sitting up on my desk right in front of me. So as a good reminder that you got a chance and you better take advantage of it? Yeah, look, a lot of people have that moment and they either never recover from it or that was it. So I feel like I got pretty lucky. How did you get to become the entrepreneur, the author, not even one book, five books. Seriously, you put some of us

to shame, Robert. You had all the accolades, the Wall Street Journal, number one, USA Today, et cetera. So how do you grow up to become that? Again, it's not linear. I'd say from zero to 18 or 20, I had a lot of, yeah, he seems smart, but he's not very motivated. I just didn't enjoy learning. I like to do the new thing, the different thing, the new idea, the creative thing in our school system. That doesn't, it's not really valued. Valued is sit down, color in the lines, get it all right. And so, you know, at some point people are discouraging the things that you're actually good at.

So again, it was a lot of first world struggle for me to figure out what do I like? What am I good at? And somewhere in the middle of college, I went abroad. It just all clicked. I fell in love with business. I fell in love with marketing, fell in love with learning, actually. And then I went back to school and I got all these for the next two years, which I had never done in my life because I was like, oh, I know what I want to do.

And I know what I love. And now these things all sort of fit into that narrative. And so I want to understand all this stuff, right? And I think a lot of us need a context for our learning. And then I kind of just became an over, no one would have ever called me in my entire life an overachiever from zero to 20. Again, if you read these report cards, it was like, we just can't get him to do the stuff he needs to do. Literally, they use the word capable. He seems capable, like six teachers in a row, but like, we just can't motivate them. And that had to come from myself. And then when it did, I realized I was working in other businesses, but I really was entrepreneurial and I just had a low risk tolerance. And so from the time I made that decision to cut

the cord and do my own thing, I never looked back and multiple businesses and books later. The writing sort of came out as I grew the business because I found, particularly in our marketing world, I was able to communicate through writing and take provocative opinions and positions that I think people appreciated. And as I did that, I started to write more and it got outside of marketing and more into leadership. And then I started a little note to my team and and then people started forwarding that and it became a newsletter. So as we grew this business from nothing to 300 people and won these 30 Best Places to Work awards, I figured out my why,

which is to find a better way. And my purpose is to share ideas that help people and organizations grow. So as we were building the company and doing it differently, if we figured out something that worked, I inherently wanted to share that or get it out there. So I just started talking a lot about a lot of things that we were doing in our organization and in our industry. And that led to a lot of writing around leadership and culture and things like that. That's incredible. And just for context, you are the founder and chairman of the board for Acceleration Partner, which is a marketing agency, a global marketing agency, right? So you start this little marketing agency. Well, now it's not so little, but way back. No one starts an agency intentionally, but yeah.

So tell us a little bit of that story, because I think a lot of the people that we have as our audience, some of them are in corporate, some of them are trying to figure out what's next for them. Some of them are maybe trying entrepreneurship, but not quite sure what to get to or how to get to it. How did that start? It was sort of a circuitous route. When I left, I was doing a bunch of consulting. I had figured out some online marketing things in this area of affiliate marketing. And I got connected with this company and was helping them with something. And I said, you know, you really should do one of these affiliate programs. I've been part of a bunch of them.

Here's how they work. And the founder was like, look, we're growing so busy. I have no time. Do you want to figure it out for us? And so I sort of looked around and helped build this program for this company called Tiny Prints that was the first digital high-end photo holiday cards before that space became commoditized. And they were just growing like crazy.

And we built a really great program there. We did it really differently than the rest of the industry. And the company ended up selling for hundreds of millions of dollars to Shutterfly. And a lot of the people around the Valley spread out. And soon they started calling me and I was doing a bunch of different types of consulting at the time. And they would call me and they'd say,

I moved on to this company. We want to do one of those programs. Can you help? You know, I got one of those calls and then I got two of those calls. And I was like, well, I kind of got, you know, and this is how an agency, it's how you wake up and you're running an agency, fortunately or unfortunately. So I got someone to help me because then I was too busy. And then they were too busy. And then

I got another person. Then we got someone to manage them. And then suddenly you wake up and you're selling services. So we just became a really big fish in a small pond in this area of affiliate or partner marketing. We just had a differentiated viewpoint. We got really good at it. The top brands were calling us and wanting to work with us on it. And we sort of grew along with the industry. But again, we took some provocative stances and sort of poked the bears in the industry. And there was sort of a dynamic with these things called networks, which is like dual agency in real estate, where the person represents both the buyer and the seller in the same transaction. And we were like, look, this shouldn't happen. This is a conflict of interest. And it was, but no one was willing to say it out loud. And we said, you should have an independent agency like us that is not on the other side of the transaction. And it just wasn't the thing that a lot of companies did at the time,

but I think companies started to look up and today it's the default. So we helped push our industry along with it. So maybe talk about that a little bit, Robert, because I think you guys did things that are very different. That shows for itself. That's why your newsletter is so popular.

We'll talk about it. That's why you have so many books. Because again, I think for people, even if they do start an agency, one of their biggest issue is that now you started from maybe liking marketing or doing marketing, but you actually need to now put your sales hat on and your own self-marketing on. Like now you're basically doing not necessarily the thing that you wanted to do, but you're actually trying to like bring business in. And I know that's a big wall for a lot of people. How did you guys break that wall? It's a lot about standing above the noise. If you're in marketing and most founders like to sell, like they're naturally good at

selling, but then you're selling and delivering and you're doing all of these things and the needs really change. You can get to about 20 people in a service business without much infrastructure. Again, my CRM was my spreadsheet. I did the billing with QuickBooks and I've seen a lot of people go through that point and then crash back down because you're probably also at a peak of income and you basically have to decide to reinvest it on the first people that you're going to hire that don't do what the business does, right? Like I sold stuff and I delivered stuff or otherwise.

But now I need an ops person or I need a... So it requires a step back. And either you add the infrastructure and you start to change the organization, or you basically pushed it past the brink of what it can support, there's something about that magic number where I've seen people, they either really take off at that point or they go up to 40 and then they're back at 10 in a year because they just didn't make the changes. So there's a phrase we used to be told by our coaches that every time I double the business, I break half the people and half the processes.

And I think there's a little bit of a truth to that. And it requires reinventing stuff. If you're trying to run a 100-person company the same way you ran a 10-person company, it just won't work. And I think this is incumbent upon all the people at each of these doublings to look around and say, do I want the job? Do I know what's required to the job? Am I willing to get better? And I did that five or six times. And so one time I said, no, I don't want to do the next doubling. It's not the job I want. It's not the role that I want. I think a lot of people lie to themselves and they felt that way earlier. Frankly, some people are the head of sales or marketing or operations, what they came from, and they get that

CEO title and it's not what they want to be doing. And they're not fulfilling the role of that. In fact, I don't think anyone should call themselves a CEO. You can call yourself a president or grand poobah or whatever you want. But until you have an entire executive team, a chief executive officer is managing an executive team. That is your job. If you are all of the roles on the executive team, then calling yourself the CEO is like having multiple personality disorder, right? It is you are the president, but you're probably the president and the head of marketing and the head of sales and the VP of finance, you know, etc. I love this. And I think even in tech, I remember there was always a break point between 10 million and 20 million when you would see the

companies that are trying to break that point and then didn't have the processes, didn't have the right leadership talent, and then it would go bounce back and forth. And I also love that you said, it needs to be intentional. It needs to be a decision that you're making. Do I really want to run, you know, multi, multi-million? Every time your business doubles,

you should sit down and be like, okay, what is the org chart? What is required? And do I want to do this? And if the answer is yes, it is going to require some set of learning or evolution. If you haven't done it, seriously have to do something a different way. And it's an important thing to ask yourself. Again, I see a lot of people playing the role of CEO that don't want to be in that role. They don't want to be leading people and holding them. They want to sell. A lot of times they're just a salesperson, but they're calling themselves a CEO.

Salesperson in disguise. I love that. So you have this passion, you're growing this thing until you realize that this is not, I mean, I'm still the founder and the chairman of this, but there's so many other things that I want to be doing. And now you're starting to write all these books and doing all these things. So walk us through that because that's another pivot that most people will never dare to do. I had a very good number two, and we had this vision operator relationship that I think a lot of successful companies have. And what I like to say to people was when we were younger and growing, the vision stuff was really important. It was the, what are we doing next?

And the big idea and all this stuff. And I'd make a mess and he'd figure out how to make it work. And as you got bigger, the R&D department is half the company, I think, when you're a small company, because you're hustling and moving around. As we got bigger, the R&D department is a much smaller part of the business. And I said, look, what I really like is these new ideas and leading people and working on the culture and otherwise. What I don't love is managing a lot of people and weekly check-ins and all the administrative

stuff and doing the quarterly. But this is what people are owed. And a lot of the team reported to him. So I looked at it and I said, look, we're building this company. This is exciting, but I don't think I'm actually the CEO anymore. I don't want to play those roles. We sat down, we had a conversation and he and I worked on, I said, I want you to take over this role.

And we worked on a two-year transition. And look, I've done a lot of things wrong. But one of the things I try to do is every time I do something, I talk to people who have been in those shoes before and what works and what didn't work. And I think the one thing I did really right with this transition is when we did it, we were doing all the things that we needed to change for the year before we told everyone. So if you looked up, I had no more reports. And he was leading a lot of the meetings. And he was driving a lot of the stuff. So when we went to the change, it was like, look, we've already been making these changes.

And I'm going to step out of these meetings. We can't walk in the meeting. You were looking at me for the answer yesterday. And now he's in charge. So I pretty quickly started to ramp down and really only did do the things that didn't appear with the operations of the business. And my name and my brand is so synonymous with this for a while that it's still to this day. Someone reached out to me this week, hey, my daughter wants a job there. And I'm like, look, I'm a board member at this company. They do not want me interfering in the operations.

I barely know you. I don't know your daughter. So I'm not going to tell them to hire your daughter. Or can you get on a call and talk to us? I have a client for you. I was like, I haven't know your daughter, so I'm not going to tell them to hire your daughter. Or can you get on a call and talk to us? I have a client for you. I haven't talked to a client in five years in sales. The sales team does not want me talking to clients. So there's retraining for the outside world still every week, but I really held that line. I spend time on culture and onboarding and leadership training and coaching people one on one, but not anything that interferes with their operational decisions in the business. I spend time on culture and onboarding and leadership training and coaching people one-on-one,

but not anything that interferes with their operational decisions in the business. And that's super, super interesting because I think one of the things that people don't realize is that at some point when you grow, you literally need to fire yourself from the role to delegate. Yeah. Fun for me isn't managing an eight-person team and doing this or other. That's not the stuff I want to delegate. Yeah, fun for me isn't managing an eight-person team and doing this or other. That's not the stuff I want to do. Again, I like the R&D and the new thing.

I needed the self-awareness to be able to say that's not the role of the CEO. And so let me find the role that I want to do and continue. And what the business needs, though, is someone who wants to take that on. And that's incredible, Robert. And I want to also emphasize that some of the things that you said that were so, so, so fundamental, I want to make sure everybody hears that.

Because first of all, what bright you hear are not the things that will take you forward. So even if you think you don't know it all, it's not there. So if you haven't built a $10 million company, you don't know how to do it, even if you think you do. Yeah, and look, if you get it to 10 million and you want to drive it to 20 million, it's not that you can't, but you will have to find new members, new mentors, new advisors, new employees,

and you will have to reinvent yourself. So you have to ask yourself if you want to and are willing to do that. And also the fact that you said, learn from people who walk the walk. Because again, if somebody hasn't been there, they can't teach you. They can't mentor you. They can't advise you. You're going to need to find the right people that have been there to learn from them to take you forward. When we went through selling some of the business, I went and talked to everyone that

had done it. And I got every note that they possibly had. And I understood the market and the dynamics and the prices and all of this stuff. And we were able to have a really good outcome because we were completely realistic. I talked to everyone that had done it. On the flip side, and now being in the position of buying businesses for the last four years as part of the platform, I talked to so many founders who think they're so smart about it and their family lawyer will handle it. And none of these people have had good outcomes that I have talked to. And I can tell because they just thought that they were smarter about something they had never done before. If you've never done something before and you think you're the smartest

person in the room, it's just a really bad combination. So I could keep a note on a piece of paper when I talk to 100 businesses a year, this business is not going to sell and it's going to waste a lot of time because this person is just clearly not trying to understand. They're just saying things that are irrational. All the businesses in the industry are trading for 10x and we want 20x. And there's nothing special or different about that business. And I think one of the interesting things that you remind me is that if I look back on my time, even as a vice president, tech startup, theoretically been there, but no, because the difference between number one and number two is light years away. But that was kind of an interesting, I think, realization speaking of self-awareness. Yeah. And I've tried to help people. Maybe they think I'm disingenuous where

I'm like, do you have a good lawyer? Do you have a good accountant for this? They're like, my brother-in-law is an accountant. My wife's the trust and estates lawyer. And I'm like, no, that's not what this topic is about. And look, I made all those mistakes, like trying to do it cheaply when it's early. And then eventually you realize you want people that know what they're talking about and who are experts. I love this. So you reinvented again, and now you have this big brand around you in Elevate. You have the Elevate books and you have the Elevate podcast. And why Elevate? How did that form five books? Take us there, Robert. Another thing, I've always tried to be intentional

and again, not good at a lot of things, but good at looking around the corner. And so when I started to see that maybe there wouldn't be a CEO job for me in my own company, that was my own decision, I have seen how depressed people have gotten when they give up these roles or otherwise, or they sell their business. It seems like it's going to be great and they need purpose and they need a platform. And again, I've been to the sessions

and I talked to them. So for me, I started to do some of this stuff with the back of my head of this was kind of a lifeboat that I could also jump into if I needed to, because I think there's a lot of meaning that's connected to our work that people lose. And so the lifeboat was sort of building. And then eventually I did jump into it. And Elevate represented this concept of capacity building in my books, which is a process that I figured out and that I think is the process of how you get better and how people and organizations and individuals can get better. And really, it's about most of us are solving our own problem. Be the whatever you didn't have. And so for me, a lot of that is helping people reach their full potential, which was something I didn't do for a while. And the capacity building framework would

have helped me figure out, again, what my potential was about what I really wanted from my vantage point. I think a lot of things are projected onto us by parents and society and family of what good looks like and what success looks like. And I think it's really different for everyone. I think a lot of us are climbing the wrong mountain. And unfortunately, we're climbing really well and we're looking up and whatever, but you're going to have this moment where you get up, you look around and you're like, crap, I just spent 10, 20 years climbing the wrong mountain. Exactly. I'm raising my hand here because that was me. And I think that's a lot of the people in Leap Academy. I think one of the hardest thing for them is for high achievers

driven people i think that's exactly what you're talking about all their life they were driven about this mountaintop that now that they're starting to get there they're like i don't even know if i like the view so what do we do now and do i start now from scratch do i throw everything away as a recovering achiever holic i would tell you and having read a lot around this and you can ask a recovering achiever-holic, I would tell you, and having read a lot around this, and you can ask any high achiever this, there is almost a sickness of zero satisfaction of achieving whatever the objective is. It's like crossing the marathon and after the red tape breaks, be like, all right, that's fine. Where's the next race? And you don't even stop to enjoy

it. Even if it is the right mountain, you don't stop to enjoy the view. So while it's good to have these goals, you have to figure out at some point how to make sure that the journey is worth it and that you enjoy the journey. Because it is amazing that every high achiever I know, as soon as they get a thing, they move the goalpost, not 10 seconds later. And I don't know anyone who's actually stopped to enjoy it that I've talked to. And people can't see how hard you're laughing right now. But yes, that clearly resonates with you. and they have to celebrate a little bit the journey because my life was all black and white. You're right. The minute I got even close to the goalpost, it was already moving. So how do you stop that?

And then you never really become your full potential anyway because your potential is moving all the time. I know this is the smallest violin in the world, but if you talk to a friend who sold their business and made 10 or $20 million and you think they'd have a nod of care in the world and are happy and whatever, it's probably not that way for them if you talk to them. I mean, the vast majority that I have spoken to, because it's this treadmill and they don't

know how to get off of it. You also mentioned something so true about how do you even find what that mountain should look like? Because again, we were all wired in a very specific way, all the way from the education system, which I'm not even going to go what I think about that. But we were wired about everything is zero or a hundred and you either get the A plus or you don't. That's all you know. And you know that there's like a certain measurement of success. And now for high achievers, the hardest thing is not knowing.

How can I not know what's next for me? That is a no-go, right? And the problem is you're doing it for the wrong reasons. If you actually talk to a lot of high achievers, why are they doing it? They grew up dirt poor. Someone didn't believe in them. Their parents told them they never came back out to anything. Like there's a lot of unhealthy reasons that are driving that.

And again, those are extrinsic. I think making sure you understand your personal core values, what you value, what's important to you, and then figuring out how to align more of what you're doing to that. And then if you're hitting goals that serve your values and purpose, I think it's probably a lot more fulfilling. And we all go through the age cycles of this and some of it's learning. You could have told me all this stuff when I was 30, 40, and I would be like, yeah, yeah, and I would have ignored you.

And then, but it's very predictable cycles of at 35, what your focus is versus 45 versus 50. But at some point, I think you move away from it being about the idea and ego to being about the team and the people that you're doing it with. And again, enjoying the journey that when you start to realize that you might be nearing your halfway point, it's not worth it to give up 10 years of your life to maybe hit a binary goal. You want to make sure that whatever you're doing is fun and fulfilling to get out of bed every day and do. I love this. And this is part of what you're teaching now too, right? Yeah. I'm teaching my mistakes. Good. See, we all teach you about mistakes. So you are teaching people how to get to their values and how to become their best version. Do you want to share a little bit of one nugget that people can start listening to? This capacity building, which is this framework of spiritual, intellectual, physical, emotional

capacity. Spiritual being, what do I value most and what do I care about and what do I want? Intellectual being, how do I learn, plan, execute with discipline and get better, like my personal operating system? Physical capacity is, how do I make sure my mental and physical wellness is taken care of? Because now I know what I want, I'm going to get better. And then emotional capacity is, how do I relate with the world around me and people? And who do

I choose to bring into my life and push out of my life and the things that I don't control? And so those things are very interconnected. And I think if you start from, hey, what do I really want? Then you can think about then the commitment to want to get better and improve towards that is there. Then you understand what your physical and mental health might cost you. And then you also look at some of the relationships and things in your life and say, look, I need to spend less time with these people because it's pretty clear they're pulling me the wrong way. And I need to double down on these people because they're going to help get me to what I realize that is most important to me. Exactly, Robert. And I love that you said that. And I need to double down on these people because they're going to help get me to what I realize that is most important to me. Exactly, Robert. And I love that you said that. And I think sometimes it's hard for us to cut people out of our lives. But if that sinks us

and not getting as close to and you have to write everything in my books is not about more. It's about you can get a lot more by doing less and doing the right thing. I mean, the 80 20 rule is a real thing. If you don't think it is, walk into your closet right now. You wear 20% of your clothes 80% of your time. I've never seen a client list where 80% of the revenue isn't from 20% of the clients. So these things are very real. I want to take you for a second.

These books, the Elevate books, and you have a few others, Friday Forward, How to Thrive, Individual Plays, Moving to Outcomes, and Performance Partnerships. But with these books, specifically, you somehow, and I think that's going to be interesting for everybody listening, you managed to get to Adam Grant, Neil Patel, Ariana Huffington to blur your book. You write a little blur around your book. And you also, in your podcast, you talk to amazing authors like James Clear and Dan Pink. And how do you even get to these people that I think for most people that's light years away, there's a big people pile and you can't just, hi, I want you to blur my book. So how did you get there, Robert?

Stalking, like a good answer. So A, I'm persistent. B, I think I build relationships far in advance of making asks or needing. A lot of, Too many people try to do a relationship and ask for the first time. And anytime you haven't heard from that person for 10 years and they want to get lunch so that you can help them find a new job, why do I want to do that? So many people approach networking selfishly. So I've always been someone who has built relationships and helped people and done stuff before that. When you write a book, you're cashing in every shit you have ever done in your entire life. You're redeeming it. So I think there's those things. But the other thing is the asks are very aligned to what's

important to them and what they're doing. I'm not going to ask Adam Grains. He's got no interest in reading or doing my marketing book. He's not a best friend of mine. Neil Patel is probably not going to be interested. He knows my work in the marketing space and probably not going to be interested in the Elevate stuff. I'm always conscious about what does the other person have to get out of this. Again, if I'm reaching out about a podcast, I know which other guests would be important to that guest as a proof of concept. I also let them know how it's going to

be helpful to them and how we can market it and otherwise. So I come from marketing, so that's important. But look, I just had three guests and two that I've wanted for a while that I recorded. Ed Bastian, who's the CEO of Delta. And I just interviewed Sebastian Younger yesterday and Kendra Scott. And I followed up with them 20 times over the last year. Not annoyingly, but there was just a lot of persistence on that. Maybe sometimes eventually it's easier just to say yes than no. But I'm not annoying and I don't do the follow-up thing with a, hey, did you get this earlier message? I find something different to say every time. Some of these sales approaches are so bad.

Forwarding the same email that is not a match at all for what I want to do. So I don't know. It's probably some combination of those things. And look, perception matters. I don't know how I got Dan originally, but once Dan pinks on your podcast, then you tell someone else Dan was on there. Well, if Dan was on, it must be good. This is how Elizabeth Holmes built her whole board of Theranos. No one did any due diligence.

They all just saw that the other person was on her board. I'm not necessarily suggesting the Theranos strategy, but I'm just saying people look at the company they keep. And I also know now with books, there are, and again, you learn, there are people who will only blurb the book after they read the whole book. And so they need months. And then there's other people that will only do it if you pre-write the three blurbs and give them to them. I pay attention to those nuances and I give the person what it is they're looking for. If I call Adam Grant two weeks before Bookadoo and ask him for a thing,

he's going to be more annoyed than wanting to help. That is brilliant, Robert. So first of all, note to self, thank you. I think persistence is something that is really, really important to emphasize here. I think when we look at all these overnight successes that took about a decade to get there, it could be overwhelming, right? Because you see them on social media, it looks like it's all easy. It's such a myth, the overnight success. It's such a myth. Yeah.

We tell ourselves that lie, by the way, because then it makes us believe that we don't have to do the work that they did. The overnight success is a cognitive dissonance lie that we tell ourselves. And I agree. But there's also accelerations that happen, like the four-hour work week and things that make you feel like, oh, I can actually work only four-hour work week, and I'm going to be a star. But the truth is, no, you're going to work your ass off for a decade, and then maybe you have a little chance to work for four hours for a little bit. If you've ever, right, it's like compounding interest.

And if you've seen the 1% or James Clear talks about, he wrote articles for seven years before the compounding effect. You know, it's like 1%, 1%, 1%. Then all of a sudden you hit the hockey curve. And somehow I feel like the universe rewards people who just keep putting it in without getting it out. Two books ago, I did a podcast tour. This was three or four years ago. Everyone was starting podcasts. Some big names are people I knew. When my next book came out two years later, I went back to that list. Half the people didn't have their podcast. I think they thought, I'll launch a podcast. It'll be super successful overnight. And they were doing it for the wrong reasons.

They were starting the podcast to try to help their business, not to make the podcast good. And I was shocked how many people had abandoned it so quickly when it actually was work. I think the successful podcasters I know, they've done hundreds of episodes. The early ones weren't good. They got better. But they were trying to create value for the audience. So there was a pure reason why it wasn't a means to a different ends. I think what you're saying is exceptionally important. And I think we have this myth around,

let me just start this and let me bring Richard Branson to my podcast and then things will open up. Well, yes, maybe, but that will take a little bit of time. So the question is, are you going to actually be the person that doesn't stop in order to live the life that everybody just dreams of? But it's really about not stopping, which I think is what you were saying, Robert. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's why your newsletter, Friday Forward, is already at, what, 110 weekly subscribers or something crazy like that, Robert? Yeah, it's about 150,000 people. Oh, so I can't keep up. Different formats, yeah.

But I think that's another thing. When did you start that and how do you keep the momentum? Because initially, in many cases, you put something out there and it kind of goes a little bit of crickets, right? And then you do it again and you do it again, you do it again. And again, by now you already have a wider audience. But in general, when people get started, there's really not much. And I remember even for us, people suddenly like, ah, we don't have any, nobody liked my post.

That's it. I won't post anymore. No, that's not the conclusion. Too many people are focused on scale early on. And I've heard people decidedly that you should do things that are unscalable. The trick of scale is that you focus on hacks to make things low quality and high scale. When really, if you have a 50 person newsletter and 20 of those people say, this is the most important thing I ever read and it makes an

impact in my life, that's probably more of a kernel of success for a newsletter than I stole 400 emails and put them on my newsletter list and mailed them crap four times a week. Which one's likely to be around in a year? So I just focused on the quality thing that I could write each week and making an impact. And actually, it was a lot of the feedback that I got each week that acted like a positive feedback loop in terms of realizing that, oh, that really made a difference for Jim this week or Sarah this week. I got to do that again next week. It's like an athlete with a good coach. How can I make this week the best I can and then focus on next week and not get too far ahead and not realize that the problem is if you put all your eggs into getting Richard

Branson on your podcast and you do one great interview and you haven't do another one again, people will leave your podcast. You're right. One of the key things that I'm getting from you is that intention is what is the actual impact that I'm doing by this? Let's focus on the impact first and solving a problem. I'm reaching out people that actually care. And slowly, when you continue, the rest will follow because you're aligned with what's truly value for you, what's truly aligned with what you care about.

So that's what I'm hearing, Robert. Am I right? Yeah. And look, interestingly, it's a similar thing that goes on in when people ask me in affiliate marketing around stuff. And affiliate marketing is you write content around something and then you link to it and then you get paid if people buy it. And they say, well, what kind of site should I write if I want to make a good living? And I was like, look, all of the publishers I met who are doing really well, they actually didn't start

with monetization. They started blogging about gardening or barbecuing, and they loved to do it. And they would get up and write that blog if 100 people were in. Suddenly, they had 10,000 people obsessed with gardening, and they started linking to gardening tools and stuff on their site. So again, they just want to get to the finish line without doing the work. And my example in that is if you got to get up and write about that topic every day, those people are enjoying the journey. You're trying to think about every day how to write something that someone might click on. That's just two very different perspectives. You want the shortcut, but the shortcut is not quite there.

Everyone wants the shortcut. Everyone wants the hack. One of my favorite things was Morgan Housel, who's one of my favorite authors these days, said that they hired a social media consultant who came in and talked to them and basically realized that she gave all of these tactics, none of which had anything to do with writing better content, which was an interesting takeaway that he had. I like just marketing. Yeah. So Robert, if I can take you back in time, if you will, what is one of the hardest moments that you went through? COVID from the business was pretty hard.

I mean, that was feeling the responsibility of 300 employees, those first two, three days, waking up, not knowing if we were gonna have a business in a month at the rate that things were falling apart. People were nervous, our clients were canceling, they were telling us they weren't gonna pay. We had like a kind of a war cabinet meeting every morning. And it was just physically, I remember passing out one day, like it was just physically exhausting. And I think you're still seeing the burnout effects from COVID because I think a lot of

leaders carried the water. And a lot of the people that were 40 years old, their employees are just worrying about themselves, the 23-year-old employee. And the people who are in their 30s and 40s and managing, they have kids and parents and employees, and they held it together and they carried the water for a year or two. And then by 2023, they were just like, white flag, I don't have any more to give. And I felt a lot about that. What was hard for me was we killed ourselves in 2020 to keep everyone safe and not have to lay off anyone and not have to impact people's income. And as soon as things were clear the next year, the great resignation started. And people were like, hey, I got a better offer and leaving or otherwise.

And it just felt like I know a lot of leaders and managers who would tell you that 2020 at least felt purposeful to them. And then 2021 really broke them emotionally. Wow. I feel the chills myself here from just hearing this. Yeah, I think, look, it kept people going, having such responsibility for other people. But then eventually you're just exhausted. When you think about the average 40-something-year-old probably had kids under 10, parents over 70, and that's when you would have the most employee, right? Start to have a decent

amount of employees. There were a lot of other people's needs that they were attending to. And that's incredible because, again, there were also companies that just cut everything off, right? Like, I don't know the certainty. I'm just laying off half of the company or two-thirds of the company. I'll figure it out later. And there were the leaders that really fought for their people to really make sure that they're going to be as stable as possible. So that's a big testament to you also, Robert. I think we're seeing still a high degree of leadership burnout now, a couple of years later.

Well, but because I think it's also, there was like this hype and suddenly 2021, 2022, everybody was leaving and finding jobs and now everything is hard again. So you see these endless up and down that I think I see at least in the corporate world in a lot of the companies. So I think it's just as a leader, how do you keep yourself through the ups and downs? That's the challenge. And that's, I think, the real challenge for the next generation coming into the workplace who I don't think has developed a lot of those skills of adversity or resistance.

And their educators and their parents have really tried to make things easier and remove consequences. And if you see what's going on on college campuses now, it's very clear that people are very surprised when there's actual consequences for their actions. And they'd like to be absolved from all of those. So I think you have to realize

that you're not entitled for everything to go well. And for hundreds and thousands of years, that was probably more the norm. And then we hit this period where we just felt like we're entitled for everything to be great and that the aberration is when it's not. And I think the aberration is probably when it all goes. I'm most worried when everything is going well

because then it feels like I'm about to be blindsided. Right. And there's a lot to lose when everything goes well. Scares me out of me. So what is one thing, I'm curious, that maybe people don't usually know about you that you think has built you to who you are today? Look, I think, as I said,

I was diagnosed later in life with ADD. For me, it just made a lot of sense. Again, I think we're teaching victimhood and excuses these days. We all have different strengths and weaknesses and conditions. And even what you can see on the surface from someone, you have no clue what they're going through.

So for me, I think there were points where it was a weakness, but in then understanding it, I figured out, oh, this is a strength. And what are the things that I do well? And how do I put myself in a position to succeed? And how do I explain to people the types of environments that work well and don't work well? And again, I never looked at it as an excuse or a woe with me. But one of the things of ADD is people don't change, not good at changing environments or circumstance really well. They actually tend to hyper-focus. And then when you distract them, they have a hard time getting back into it. So in terms of designing my workspace or how, or like, I have more permission to sort of put up the hand. Nope.

I could talk to you now. I'm actually really focused on something. And if you come interrupt me, you're going to... But it's communicating that to people. I don't transition well from thing to thing. So if I put up the do not disturb or whatever, please respect that. Or please understand that if I'm deep in thought, then that's something that I'm not not paying attention to you. I'm just deep in thought. And so I think self-awareness is good, but look, every strength overused is a weakness. So I think the more you can understand about yourself, the better you can understand how you leverage the things you're good at and don't let them become problems for you. I love that. And I think also just turning your sort of disadvantage, if you will, or more challenges into your advantages and why this is exactly why I can take myself further. I can focus more like whatever that is. I think that's

a really interesting gift because then you lean into it instead of fighting it or hiding it. And then it becomes your advantage. Yeah, we got to get over the excuses and the woe is me and trying to compete for who's more disadvantaged. This is not helping everyone. Again, we all have our problems. We all have our challenges. We all have our strengths. We all have our weaknesses. Just understanding that and leaning into it and trying to do the best you can. It's not going to work all the time and you're going to fail plenty of times. I think we've also just completely with kids and early, like we've just made failing seem like a really bad thing. To me, my mantra is don't make the same mistake twice.

Mistakes are fine. They're great. As long as you say, here's what we learned from it, and we're not going to do it again. What drives me nuts is making the same mistake twice. But if you're afraid to try or you're afraid to fail, it just leads to mediocrity. Oh, I agree. I think part of the problem with what we talked about education is that it doesn't let you fail, right? You need to take the test. You need to get the A. It's terrible. You got to get the A. And if you don't get the A, you're depressed. And most people who are going to be great at something are not going to be good. Elon Musk probably wasn't great in English class. And rather than lamenting him about how he needs to use his commas better, someone probably should have leaned into his obvious science and math

prowess. In fact, we see this in the data. Valor Victorians don't really outperform in life versus what they should because they're conformist by nature. They get everything right and well. I think if you're going to be a world-class poet, you're probably going to not be good at something else or you're a world-class... Look, if I'm going to college for pre-med, then I probably didn't want to do terrible in my science classes, right? But if I took a science class, I was like, that is not my thing. And I love history and I leaned into histories and got all A's. Why do you care that I got a B on the science? There's no science genes in my family. There's none. We don't have science genes in my side of the family. It's not what we do. I don't think it's been an indicative of any of our lack

of effort or success or otherwise. It's just not what we do. So I think there is no experimentation in school. So we're not taught that. And then suddenly when we're adults, we're expected to experiment for our own success. And it's like, nobody taught us this. So it's just kind of an interesting, phenomenal. So speaking of, if you would go back in time, and we have this little tradition in the podcast where if you could go back in time to a little bit of your younger self, whatever that age is, what would you give? What kind of advice would you give yourself based on what you see today? I say to everyone, if you're 20 years old, and you can see this, when you see a bunch of great leaders at a time, and then you kind of find out they all came from the same tree at like a company beforehand or otherwise, I think there's way too much jumping around because of ego. You are woefully underpaid in

your 20s. I was doing great stuff in my 20s that no one valued or paid me for. The most important thing I think you can do is learn, become an expert in something and get great mentorship. And then when people start to pay you in your 30s, that makes the biggest difference. The people who are just jumping around for raises and building no networks and no expertise, great. You can jump and get 5,000 more. I said this to someone yesterday in our company in Newport, they asked for this advice. You can jump to get 5,000 more. Maybe you get 10 or 15,000 more by jumping around in your 20s. When you're in your 30s, that's not really going to matter. The person who became a world-class expert at something in their 20s is going to get 50, 100 something more if you're just talking about income. To me, your 20s are a time to work hard, learn, be mentored, and not have it be about you and your ego. The 30s is more ego as you sort of start to come into your expertise and self, but find great mentors and great learning and training opportunities. And I wish somebody told me that and also to shield the ego a little

bit when I, you know, I'm telling you, no one cares the way you were a marketing manager and got a $2,000 rate. Like it doesn't matter five or 10 years later. What matters is that you got really, really good at something and we're seen as the best. I love that. So people can find, talk to us a little bit of wherever they can find your newsletter Friday forward. We'll obviously have the links with us. My whole world is all integrated at robertglazer.com. So you can sign up for Friday Forward. There's courses, books, all kinds of stuff is all clearly, clearly labeled there.

Incredible. And you're also going to help them find their values and how to become the best version of themselves. Am I right? All of those things. I love that. So Robert, thank you so much. It's such an honor to have you. I was cracking up half of the time. So thank you for making it so fun and so real and inspirational. Thank you, Robert. Thank you for having me.