Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Robert Glazer: The Proven Decision-Making Framework High Achievers Use to Unlock Fulfillment | Leadership | E371
Episode Date: October 13, 2025For many high achievers, outward success often doesn’t lead to true fulfillment, especially when decision-making isn’t guided by a strong sense of purpose. Robert Glazer believes the key to overco...ming this challenge is aligning your actions with your core values. Without this alignment, even the most successful can feel lost or directionless. This insight inspired his new book, The Compass Within. In this episode, Robert returns to reveal how clarifying your values can transform your mindset, drive authentic leadership, and empower purposeful decision-making for lasting fulfillment. In this episode, Hala and Robert will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (02:10) The Compass Within: Understanding Core Values (07:48) Aligning Values with Purpose and Leadership (13:13) Why High Achievers Struggle with Fulfillment (17:45) Six Questions to Discover Your Core Values (22:27) The True North Test: Values in Decision-Making (32:38) Aligning Personal and Company Values for Success (37:44) Values-Based Leadership and Company Culture (44:52) The Power of Authentic Networking and Relationships Robert Glazer is a serial entrepreneur, award-winning executive, and founder and chairman of the board at Acceleration Partners, a global leader in partnership marketing. He is a bestselling author, and his latest book, The Compass Within, helps readers uncover their core values for better decision-making, strategic planning, and purposeful leadership. Robert also hosts the Elevate Podcast, where he interviews world-class performers. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/PROFITING Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Mercury streamlines your banking and finances in one place. Learn more at mercury.com/profiting. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust; Members FDIC. Quo - Get 20% off your first 6 months at Quo.com/PROFITING Revolve - Head to REVOLVE.com/PROFITING and take 15% off your first order with code PROFITING Framer- Go to Framer.com and use code PROFITING to launch your site for free. Merit Beauty - Go to meritbeauty.com to get your free signature makeup bag with your first order. Pipedrive - Get a 30-day free trial at pipedrive.com/profiting Airbnb - Find yourself a cohost at airbnb.com/host Resources Mentioned: Robert's Book, The Compass Within: geni.us/values Robert's Core Values Course: robertglazer.com/compass-yap/ Robert's Website: robertglazer.com Robert’s Six Questions: robertglazer.com/six YAP E270 with Robert Glazer: youngandprofiting.co/WinningCulture Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi: bit.ly/_NeverEatAlone From Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks: bit.ly/-Strength2Strength How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie: bit.ly/-WinFriends Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Time Management, Goal Setting, Problem Solving, Leadership Skills, Team Building.
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A lot of values decisions may cost you something in the short term, but it's almost always
the right decision in the long run.
Robert Glazer, founder of the award-winning marketing agency, Acceleration Partners, and a best-selling
author who has inspired millions with his work.
I think your core values are the non-negotiable principles that guide your behavior
and decisions.
How do you think about purpose and values?
Some people, they're really stressed to figure out their purpose.
If you can figure out your values, they're like the pillars and the purpose is kind of like the roof that sits across all of it.
I went on like a three or six month journey to figure out my core values.
And when I had that definitive list, I started making a lot of changes in my personal life and in my business.
You actually stepped down as CEO of Acceleration Partners.
How did that play into how you felt about purpose?
Every time the company doubles, you have to decide, do I want to be that leader, that CEO?
And if you do...
When it comes to values, how can it actually make your company more profitable?
I think if you really can connect to your values, you can...
What's up, Yap Gang?
Welcome back to another exciting episode of Young and Profiting.
Our guest today is Robert Glazer.
He's the founder of the award-winning marketing agency Acceleration Partners.
He's the voice behind the global newsletter, The Friday Forward,
and he's a best-selling author who has inspired millions with his work.
Robert is back on YAP for the second time to talk about his brand new book,
The Compass Within, which just came out.
In it, he shows us how to uncover our core values
and use them as a compass to guide the biggest decisions in our lives,
from career moves to relationships to the way that we lead.
You'll learn why high achievers often stumble
when they ignore their values, how alignment creates clarity and fulfillment, and why saying
no in the short term can lead to greater success in the long run. And if you want more conversations
like this to help you stay aligned and keep growing in your business, hit that follow and
subscribe button so you can keep on listening, learning, and profiting. Robert, welcome to Young
and Profiting Podcast. Good to see you. I am so looking forward to this conversation. I love being
able to interview my clients and my friends. I feel like it makes for such a genuine conversation.
And this is the second time that you're on YAP. So welcome back to the show.
Thanks. I'm glad I made the cut. I'm sure it's hard to get back. Always hard to get back.
Well, of course, I would have you back. You've got so much wisdom to share. So you've got this new book
and it's called The Compass Within. And I thought that was a really powerful metaphor. So talk to us
about what that actually means. What is the definition of a compass to you? I've been doing work
with people on this concept of core values for a while, and it was one of the things that made the
biggest change in my life. And I think we have these rules, and we have these things we should
follow. I think the problem for most of us is we don't actually know what they are. We know
kind of when we've made a mistake. So I like to say, it's not super helpful if you hit the electric
fence and you get electrocuted and you're like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. Having done a lot of
this work on core values, and I think the compass within is, how do we figure out what it is
that's most important to us so we can make decisions about what directions to go into and not to go
into? And I think a lot of people, like I said, they have a sense of their values, but they can't
articulate them. And if they can do that, that really is the compass. Take us back to a moment that you
can remember where your compass was really something you had to check in with. What was a moment that you
realize you really needed values and you really needed to use your values to guide your decision
making. The origin story of this to me was in about 2013. I was at a leadership training right
as I was building my company. And I thought it was going to be a lot about how to lead externally.
But really, it was two days of who are you and what do you value and you need to figure that
out first. And I got a sense that I was very values oriented, but I couldn't articulate what they
were. I probably said similar things. Do I hear people?
People say now, like integrity and family and things that are one word that aren't very helpful.
So I went on like a three or six month journey to like figure out my core values.
And when I had that definitive list, I started making a lot of changes in my personal life and in my business and doubling down on certain things and get ridding other things.
And when I was speaking, I think it was about three years ago, someone was reading my bio at the event.
And I chuckled because I realized that every single thing they read from that bio was after that 2013 event.
So you just mentioned people have these one-word values, and I interview a lot of people on the podcast, and they're always like family, fun, fitness, everything's one word. What does a good value sound like?
Let's start with what a value is, I think, because then it helps.
So I think your core values are the non-negotiable principles that guide your behavior
and decisions.
So it's important to understand.
They're intrinsic, not aspirational.
They reflect who you are and probably who you've always been.
They're consistent.
They show up in all areas of your life, your relationship, personal decisions, and they're
clarifying.
They help you make better decisions.
So the problem with these one-word values like integrity is it's really what's below
integrity. If I've heard 10 different people tell me 10 different version of integrity and I'm sure
it's more. But when I really ask them, what does integrity mean to you? And they're like, your word
should match your actions. I'm like, that's a lot more specific. And if you want to make a decision
based on a core value, it's got to be worded in a way that you can say, I did that or I didn't
do that or I can make an decision. Same with family. Family, I'm like, okay, well, how does that help
you as a leader? How does that help you with your friends? But when you ask someone, what does family
mean to you and they means you always show up, I'm like, oh, okay, now I understand probably
how that impacts with your friends and otherwise. So the problem with these one words is if you
really want ones that are actionable can help you with decision making, one word isn't going to do
that. Something that I always think about or that I actually teach is when it comes to your
personal brand online, you also need to understand your values because that will help you with
your messaging, the way that you communicate, how you respond to DMs, how you respond to comments,
and especially if something goes wrong online, how you actually respond in the way in which
that you respond. So values for me not only transcend real life, but also like online life
and the position that you want to put yourself in the digital world. Well, that's a key point.
I think one of the biggest problems with society today, particularly with digital,
is that people are willing to show up digitally and do things and say things that they would
not do in person. And if you want congruence and you want to feel good about yourself and what you do,
you should be consistent. So I agree with you. When I did a branding exercise, my core values,
they'll sound different. I mean, they're find a better way and share it, which is why I'm here today,
health and vitality, self-reliance, respectful authenticity, and long-term orientation. And so, yeah,
when I did a personal branding exercise, those were very close in there. And when people write me
after my newsletter and they are very upset about something and they want to talk about it,
I totally lean into that respectful authenticity, and I respond to them. And so I can point to a lot of
things I've done in my business. My whole two weeks notice book was very much a respectful
authenticity thing, but my kids and self-reliance. So yeah, if you want to be happy and
engage, you want to live in congruence with these things. And I think online has made it way
too easy for us. There's stuff we say online that we would never say to someone's face if we
sitting down in a conversation. Totally. Now, when it comes to values, how are they integrated with
your purpose in life? How do you think about purpose and values? A lot of people want to figure out
their purpose. So my purpose is to share ideas that help people in organizations grow. That's what I
figured out. I really enjoy. I think that if you can figure out your values, they're like the pillars
and the purpose is the roof that sits across all of it. Some people, they're really stressed to figure out
their purpose. It's like, show me what you value and the things that you want to do. And then it's
easier to sort of look at an overarching purpose that sits across that. But I think it's almost
easier to help figure out the values piece before the core purpose thing. So in my research,
I didn't know this up until today. You actually stepped down as CEO of Acceleration Partners. Is that right?
I did. I stepped down almost four years ago now. How did that play into how you felt about purpose?
and did you have any issues with identity?
We've got a lot of entrepreneurs turning in
and even I contemplate sometimes
should I step down from CEO.
And what was the reasoning behind that,
the thought process behind that?
And how did you overcome
any sort of identity issues you had after that?
That's a great question.
And I have been with so many entrepreneurs
that have struggled through this
and I feel like I tried to learn
from all of them beforehand,
but it was still not easy.
We brought on a growth partner for our business.
I, for years, had been the R&D department, I think like a lot of founders were.
But at that point, we were a 250-person company.
We were growing.
I had a number two.
Every time the company doubles, you're growing a business.
You haven't done this for the first time.
Every time it doubles, you have to decide, do I want to be that leader, that CEO?
And if you do, there's a whole bunch of stuff you need to learn and get better at and otherwise.
And I had made that decision at 10 million and 20 million and 40 million.
And I looked at it and I was like, I don't really want to be the CEO at the CEO at the
the next doubling. It's not the stuff that I love to do. I like the creating and the ideas and this
is about managing a lot of people and the day-to-day operations. So I had started my, you know,
I like to say my lifeboat with a lot of the personal brand and the speaking and writing and
something I felt like I knew I could go into. And I also had a transition period. We worked on it
for about a year or two and I went from five days a week with a business down to three the next
year and down to one. Even with that, there was some struggles. Even though my brain was like,
I want this, my body didn't adjust. It had been running 100 miles an hour for 10 years. And it was like,
all right, where's the juice? So I had to work through that. But yeah, a lot of people really
struggle. There are a lot of people who sell their business or step out or otherwise who are super
depressed because their identity was really wrapped up in their business. Because look, for a lot of people,
too, that business was the first thing that started to pay you.
back and give you the A's that you never got in school. A lot of entrepreneurs were not great
students and people that start businesses. So it becomes hard when you have to decouple that
from you, and it's an intentional process that you have to go through. Was your CEO somebody who
had equity in the business, or is this somebody that you specifically hired, or was it more of
like a homegrown employee that you then appointed CEO? Yeah, he was my number two. He was the president
in the company and we would work together for 10 years. So I knew him and he knew the culture and
he was doing a lot of this job anyway. That's the thing. As the job kept growing, I was like,
I don't want more people. They'll report to you. Right. And at some point, I had to look around and be like,
look, not having a team and working on all the new stuff is not really CEO of a 300-person company.
That's the stuff that he was good at and the stuff that he liked to do. But yeah, it's hard.
And the problem with strivers is they get to a goal.
and they barely celebrate for five minutes and then start figuring out whatever the next one will
be. So Arthur Brooks wrote a great book called From Strength to Strength. And I think it's really
helpful to start thinking about how you think about success in the present and yourself in the
present and how you make those transitions. Well, I'm sorry to keep digging on this. I'm just
personally curious. How does decision making work? You're the founder. What's your title now? And do you
get to call the shots still, ultimately. No, so I'm executive chairman, and when I gave up the
CEO role, I moved on to the board. I've done a lot of things wrong. I think this is one that I did
pretty well, which is I stopped going to the meetings. Look, I've been the CEO for 10 or 12 years.
If you're in those meetings and you have the new CEO, they're going to like, is this what you
really want? Are you sure? So in that transition year, going down from five to three, I would still
go to the offsite with the team, but I would come to the dinner and I would get out of the
the planning session. So this is something if people want to do, you really can't be half pregnant
on. And they said to me, am I talking to you as a board member? Am I talking to you as sort of a team
member? And so at some point, I had to be like, look, I'm the board member. So the stuff that I stay
involved with outside of my board and exec chair duties are, I still run the new employee
culture onboarding. I run leadership training classes. I coach people individually. I do a lot of
stuff that helps build the team, but that doesn't mean I'm not responsible for operational
decisions. So helpful. I feel like I just got like a masterclass of how I'm going to step down
as CEO. Call me when you're ready. We'll have a glass of wine and we'll discuss that. I got like four
years or five years left in me, you know. Okay, so you interviewed a lot of high achievers. You've got
an amazing podcast called Elevate. You're in the Yap Media Podcast Network. You're always talking to
high achievers. You are super connected and you've got so many high achieving friends.
What are some challenges that you see with these high achievers,
especially when it comes to their values?
A lot of values decisions are going to cost you something.
It may cost you something in the short term.
It can be hard to make that decision,
but it's almost always the right decision in the long run.
I think double-clicking on something I said earlier,
the biggest problem is that high achievers start getting their satisfaction
from chasing something.
Can they keep getting it and they realize,
huh, not as satisfying as I thought it would be. And I think if you really can connect to your
values, you can think a little bit about your work more in terms of instead of it being a
destination, how do I pick a climb that I'm super excited about that climb every day?
If I climbed it for an hour, I call it the third climb or eight hours. It's hard. I'm
sweating a little bit and I'm working, but it's got a great view and I'm enjoying it the whole
time and I'm not doing it just to get somewhere. This is the work that I love to do.
I want to do. And I'm not thinking that the destination is going to provide all of the rewards.
And I think, again, if you're trying to figure out what that is, you really would be able to
want to rattle off your values and say, these are the things that I would enjoy. If I could figure
out how to orient my work about fulfilling these things each day, that I would enjoy the climb and
I wouldn't have to make it as much about the destination. Again, there are a lot of depressed,
successful-looking people out there. It's like the world's smallest violin. But they don't
realize, like, a lot of these people, they just don't know how to turn it off and they don't
have as much fulfillment as you would think. So you're really getting at the core of high achievers
not knowing when enough is. The goalpost is always moving back and moving back. And I think you give
this data point pretty often in terms of really wealthy people always say they'll have enough money
when they have about 40% more wealth. They ask people with a million dollars and 100 million
in net worth, what was enough? And basically, that was the answer. It was always 30 or 40% more
than whatever they had, which, again, just tells you that people say it's not about the money,
but it always felt like more would make them happy. And clearly the people with more still felt
that more would make them happy. I mean, 30, 40% sounds good to me, you know. But then when you
have it, you're going to just say, yeah, but that's good. If you can't figure out how to be happy
in the moment or with what you have,
it's hard to believe that you'll be happy
at some arrival moment.
Yeah.
So back to you've got to pick
what journey do you actually want to be on,
not where do you want to land?
Yeah, I call it the three climbs.
So I think for a lot of people,
we hear about the first mountain,
the second mountain.
I'm not sure it's the mountain
as much as the climb.
The first climb is you kind of got bullied
on of this climb by family or otherwise,
and they said,
look, you've got to be a doctor or a lawyer
or something and you went and you got good at it
and you hated every minute of it and you hated the top.
The second climb is what we were talking about that I think most of us have been on
or a lot of us have been on that listen to your show, which is, no, I chose this.
I wanted it.
And I liked most of the days climbing.
There was some good and there was some bad.
But like, I really thought the top would make the whole climb worth it.
And you get there and you're like, it kind of wasn't.
And that's where that third climb is where it just stops as much being about the ascension
and more about enjoying the climb.
And you can make plenty of money on that.
And you can have a lot of fulfillment in that.
It's just you're changing your orientation from,
it's this delayed gratification that I'm working for.
It's always great to have goals to,
I want to do this thing every day.
And I want the process to be fun.
What's your climb right now?
What climb were you on?
I'm on this climb with this book.
I've set financial goals.
I've set growth goals over the year.
My goal for the next five years is to help a million people figure
their core values. I have seen how powerful this work is for people. I've watched what it's
unlocked. I've had some incredible discussions leading up to this launch and vulnerable moments
with podcast hosts like you and talking about stuff where people are like, oh, that's why I do
that. And every time I see one of those, I'm like, that's awesome and it's super rewarding. So my goal
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and you can be up and running in minutes. So speaking of unlocking values, you've got six
questions that you've developed to help people understand their values. Can you share some of these
questions that we should think through? We'll talk through a couple of them, but people are always
jotting to write them down. So if you go to Robert Glazer.com slash six,
I just have them all there with a video of me doing it, if you're interested.
So they start with simple ones.
The book is a parable, we should mention.
So it's actually a story where you watch this character, Jimmy, go through the struggle.
He's having some relationship issues and some work issues and deciding where to live
and sort of figuring out his values, how to reconcile each of those.
And he's coached by a mentor in the book through this.
Both you'll watch this happen and then you're told specifically the questions and how to go through him.
But this would start the process, which is in what non-work environments are you highly engaged?
So outside of work, what are the things that you do that light you up, time flies, makes you happy?
And then similarly, where did you do your best work?
And where are you happiest?
And it could be I worked for Hala.
But what's more interesting in those notes is I work for Hala on a small team of people who were chasing big things and we all had a lot of independence and I got to do what I wanted to do every day.
more important that you understand what that environment look like. Then we get into the negative
questions. I'll do this test with you. I've done it in a few interviews and it's always really
interesting. So we get a deep one. Like, what would you want said about you and your eulogy?
A lot of people, how they want to be remembered is about what's important to them. But as we talk
about the core validator, maybe a little later, which is the thing that screens, is this a good
core value? One of the tests of a core value, because it really doesn't feel good when it's
violated. And so a good way to test it out is to look at the opposite. And so this question
tries to reverse engineer that. So this question says, what are the qualities in other people
that you really struggle with the most and frustrate? So I'll ask you that because it's always
interesting. What's the stuff that makes your blood boil that people do, either behaviorally
or how they act? I really can't stand people who are not loyal. I really don't like selfish people
who don't think about others or who only think of themselves who have malicious intentions
or maybe it's not even malicious but just selfish intentions all the time.
People who don't better themselves, victim mentalities or sometimes I see people who are like
30, 40 years old and I don't understand how they don't have a career.
They haven't been able to maintain a job or something like this.
I wouldn't say like it's my pet peeve, but it's something that I would never want to be like.
So I think you and I share maybe some crossover and a value there because I would say a very
similar thing. And I told you one of my values is find a better way and share it. You should
figure out how to get better, how to improve, and I work with your company. You guys are
constant tinkerers. It's in your DNA. Like how do we make it better? How do we improve it?
What's the new thing we can do? But I told you, I also have that value of self-reliance.
My villain at the party is the person who's telling me about their woes and the world is happening
to them. And they're not doing it.
anything about it and their trust fund payment didn't come in on time. It's like kryptonite to me,
right? So is loyalty for you trust at the end of the day? Is that people you can trust?
Yeah, it's somebody who I know, like, whether it's a closed door or whatever, they've got my back,
whether they're in front of me or not with me. And I don't know, just loyal, essentially just not
selfish also, things of others and not just themselves. Right. So you probably have a couple core
values in there with you spit out a bunch which is great so they're probably different core values you
probably have one about getting better and improving that's probably a core thing for you probably have
one about being someone who's trustworthy or loyal you know in situations you may even have another one
about thinking about the group or the team or someone last week he said it's not about you that was
his core value and he's like I can't if I walk into a room and the person's you know he's like I'm
using that in my company I'm using that in my thing like it's not about you it's about us
So the opposites are really good tests of what it is that we value.
And if we had some time and you work through that, it's interesting to have those words
on the positive side because you can start to think about that.
And you could be like, you know, in my interviewing, like, I want to ask some better questions
about, okay, I've seen you, you've jumped around jobs every year.
Tell me about why did you leave those jobs?
And it's just what you start hearing is, you know, I deserve better.
I didn't get a raise.
You'd sense that this is not a person who's really loyal.
and connected. Talk to us about your own values. I think you were mentioning them earlier, but tell us
slowly what your values are. Sure. So I have five, and the dominant one is find a better way and share
it. I've been doing that since I was very young. Health and vitality, which has also been
elevated for me after some health stuff that I was explaining actually happened after I step down
after CEO, self-reliance, respectful authenticity, and long-term orientation. So again, again,
for me in the long-term thing, I really can't stand people who are trying to make a buck off
the crypto scheme of today and are don't care who gets screwed today. I'm always focused on
how's this going to work out in the long-term. I mean, I met my wife when I was 17,
I got married later. But generally, I have a long-term orientation. And so, again, that can clash
with someone who's, oh, there is no tomorrow.
Let's just focus on today.
So I want to play a game called the True North Test.
All right.
So basically, I'm going to rattle off a scenario, and you're going to tell me what value
you would use to help make that decision and maybe how you'd think through the scenario.
Okay.
First, I love this.
Second of all, it's the perfect demonstration of trying to use it as decision maker.
So go ahead.
Cool.
An investor is pressuring you to pivot toward AI hype, but it pulls you off your mission.
Like I said, the interesting thing about these decisions is they can cost you, right?
So if I do not believe that is the right decision for the long term, certain to mine,
and I don't think it's the better choice, I'm probably going to push back on that
because I know that this is the hot thing of the week, but is it the hot thing of tomorrow?
and it doesn't match with my vision.
Now, the investor may own the majority of the business, they may own a minority of the
business.
It may cost me the investor, right?
It may have to lead to a discussion where I have to find someone to get this investor out
because they don't believe in my mission.
It's going to be really hard as an entrepreneur to build a company that you don't believe
in, right?
It's hard enough when you do believe in it and everything goes wrong in a given day.
It's really hard if you don't believe in it.
So I'm just not good about being excited about something that I don't believe in.
And honestly, with AI, I'm always like, hey, if it can make it better, let's look at it.
But I'm a AI middleist.
I'm not a maximalist.
I use chat GPT every day if you're not learning these things.
But there's also some data coming out on the trillions of dollars that have been spent
versus the like $12 billion in revenue that has been raised, that it's not hitting every business model the same way.
Yeah, I've heard that feedback too.
I've heard that a lot of the hype around AI is the people who need money to keep getting investors
are overstating what AI can really do, when in reality, it hasn't changed as much as they
thought it would when it first launched. A lot of companies fired people and have hired people
back after that, yeah. What do you mean fired people and hired people back? There were some
companies that did massive layoffs in customer support and whatever, because they thought
they were going to automate it all with AI, and it made a mess, and they ended up hiring back
the customer support team. I've seen a few high-profile cases. Oh, wow.
So, okay, next one.
You're offered a keynote at a global event that could change your career, but it means
you're going to miss a big event for your daughter.
So I had two of these.
I had one that probably did change the trajectory of our company, and it was like a fifth
grade graduation, and, you know, kids have a graduation like every year now, and I decided
to miss it, and maybe I was a little selfish at the time, but that decision got us our first
marquee client and probably led to 10 others over the next.
few years. But I made one solid promise, which was through all three of my kids who are all now
teenagers, but I was never going to miss a birthday. So I never missed a birthday. And that was sort of
a hard and fast rule around that. But those things are challenging. And I did cancel a speech that
someone got. I thought I was going to be able to leave on the morning of my son's birthday. And my
wife actually called me out on it. And she's like, look, now you're getting slippery slope. Now
you're like getting home in the morning of his birthday. What if you don't get home? And so she
called me to the mat on that, and I stayed with that. I think it's important to value those types of
things. Value family, of course. But also, you've got to be realistic in terms of the opportunities that
come along in your career. And if they're really once in a lifetime career opportunities, it might
actually be more important than, to your point, like, a kid's graduation if it happens 20 times, you know,
so. So if I look at my long-term orientation and finding a better way, I would have been like, look, this is
setting us up for the long term. The problem is not to be morbid, you never know when you're going
die, right? And so you could miss something and that could be your last event. But at the same time,
kids have a gazillion events these days, right? And so if you're going to be at every one of them,
my kids are teenagers now and they can travel. And I made a lot of sacrifices 10 and 15 years
ago that give me a lot of flexibility to do stuff with them now. Had I died 10 years ago,
maybe they'd be like, well, my dad had to work a lot and stuff. But I feel like now,
I can do things with them and they want to go somewhere. So a perfect example, my daughter,
I always challenge them to do new things and she's running a 10K for the first time at school.
And I said, okay, I'm going to come down. She said, do you want to come down and watch? I said,
I'll come down and run it with you. So I'm getting on the plane on a weekday. I'm running it
with her. And then I'm flying home. And most people would think that's crazy, but that's something
that's fun for me to do with her. And we're training together over text. That's super cute.
Okay, next one. A publisher promises you bestseller status if you use a ghostwriter,
but you feel that it's not an alignment with your authenticity.
Authenticity is really important to me. That one I would not do. I have had arguments with
publishers and agents, not over that, but on this book won't land with people. And I'm like,
this is the book I want to write. This is what I want to say. So I can't remember ever
writing something because someone told me it was better for the market, I would not feel
good about that. And so I have no problem saying no to that one. Tell us about a scenario in
real life that you've come across where somebody really had to use their values to navigate a
decision. So one I heard recently was there was a guy named Yvonne Schenard, who was from, I think,
Norway. And he was a entrepreneur and one of the first outdoor entrepreneurs like 60 or 70 years
ago, and he was a big climber, and he invented this climbing, I think it's got like a pivot
that you could put into a rock and nail it into a rock and basically hike, and it totally
changed hiking, and everyone all over the world was into him. And he was going out hiking and
seeing his invention in the real world. He was seeing all these holes in the rocks and all
this permanent damage. And he loved the environment. And this peened him personally. And it was
his father said you do the right thing or you take care of the environment. It was just a core
value of his. This product was like 80% of his revenue. He decided to stop selling it, pushed himself
to innovate a totally different system that would wedge in and didn't go into the rocks.
Yvonne Chenard is actually the founder of Patagonia. And that ended up being the launch point of
Patagonia. And look, Patagonia might not have been what it was if he had kept selling the product that
destroyed the environment rather than helped it. Oh my gosh. I love that story. And I know they just
got into food. I've recently bought Patagonia crackers. I was like, these guys are just taking over
the world. Yeah. And you remember when they closed on Black Friday, they encouraged people not to
buy stuff years ago and to bring your old stuff in and they would sew it up? That's living your
values. There's another one I really like with a CEO of Dick's boarding goods. So I think it was about
10 years ago and there was a school shooting and what the CEO found that the shooter had bought
guns and ammunition from his store. And while it wasn't actually used in the shooting, he was
incredibly shaken up by it. And he said, my dad always told me, you take care of those in the
community that you live in. Very close to the line. It was something like that. And so Dix basically
decided to bump up the age to 21 in the store, stop selling automatic weapons and a whole bunch
and all the analysts and stuff told them they were going to lose hundreds of millions of dollars
and basically a month later the stock was up 500 million dollars more and 10 years later it was up 10x
and he is just like we just have to do this and the company in the long run was better off for it
yeah why don't we touch on that further what is the profitability when it comes to values
how can it actually make your company more profitable we gave up our biggest customer
years ago because they violated one of our core values of embraced relationship. They made our
team miserable. They made everyone miserable. And we just decided we're not going to renew the
contract. And I think we had so much turnover on that team. And I think it brought us a ton of
credibility with our team and helped our culture. I think values decisions cost you more in the
short term. Usually there's an upfront cost because it's easier to do what's easier, right?
in the short term. But I think you gain ultimately in the long run, if you're willing to sustain
that short term, CVS also years ago, when they rebranded a CVS health, they stopped selling cigarettes.
They lost $2 billion a year, but they were like, look, we can't rebrand a CVS health and sell
cigarettes. And CVS did fine over the next couple of years. They started all these new categories
and selling other stuff. So I think it's the people who are just weaker in the moment and not willing
to give up anything. There's another story of a founders who were willing to give up their
entire company rather than have politics going on and work all day long. They said that we're
not going to have politics. And their company is thriving years later, but they were like,
look, we were willing to go home and shut it down. It was not the type of company when we wanted
to work in. How do you think about personal values versus company values? So they have to
connect. So a person should try to figure out their individual.
values, which is the framework that I'm giving to them in the compass within, and then they can
try to match it up against companies. But a personal values fully reflect me, myself, and I. A company's
values reflect things that they want the company to have. And if you're 10 people, it's like,
what is the best pieces of all of us and behaviors? They're behaviors that you want to reinforce.
But I will say that as someone who does work on company values and stuff too, 98% of it is
BS and crap. So I'm also fully aware that integrity and respect.
the company has values, which is the behaviors, it's rewarding. The question is, are those the same
things that it's saying? So you might have to take a bigger look to what the company values,
but I think it's really helpful for people to be like, oh, I really love this company. It really
does align to my values. I'm a find a better way person and it's all about improvement or this
company doesn't align to my values at all. And in that case, as I say in the book with the big three,
if your relationship, your community, or your job don't align with your values, it's a very low
chance of success in the long term. That was literally going to be my next question. Why are those
big three choices so important? Look, if values can help in decision making, I think those are the
three of the biggest decisions you make in life. And hopefully you don't make them all of them
way too many times. I think on the relationship side, my wife and I are different people,
different personality. This isn't about being the same, different activities, but around the big
stuff and our kids and what we want for our family and where we want to live and how we're
always on the same page. I think some people may have the opposite. They might see a lot of
compatibility and activities and otherwise, but around the big things they're not. And we didn't
talk about this earlier about where values come from, because this is important to this part.
They generally forge during childhood or formative experiences of your life, and they come
from things that you are doubling down from or that were painful and that you were running away
from. So in a relationship, when you bring these things to it, and they're really that deep as an
adult, it's really hard to move away from it. So I was telling a story recently, let's imagine a couple
is married, and this is based on not a real couple, but two real stories. So one had a parent who
was given a year to live when they were younger, and then ended up living seven or eight years. So for
them, there was like never a tomorrow. So they had decided as young age, you live for today,
there's never a tomorrow. That was sort of how they lived.
grew up in a family that always spent all its money and gambled and they never focused on
tomorrow in a different way. And so that kid really developed the thing of, look, you save and you
take care of yourself and you don't make frivolous short-term decisions. Well, if those two get
married and one wants to live for today, every day and what they do and the other wants to plan
for tomorrow, that's hard. And you can work around that if that's one of four values. But imagine
if we did a similar scenario with three or four values and these people are together and they
have the opposite orientation on each one, that's like a Mac operating system and a PC operating
system trying to run the same software. I'm not saying it can't be done, but that's really
hard at the end of the day. Do you think you need alignment with politics and face when it comes
to relationships? I think politics has become a little bit weaponized. Unfortunately,
I think the birth rate in our country is going to decline precipitously, because if you read it,
it's like the women are all going liberal and the boys are all going conservative.
So if people can't figure out, first of all, if you're a market dynamics person, you want to be
a liberal boy or a conservative girl from a marketplace standpoint.
But I actually think politics has become a form of tribalism.
And there's some stuff going on in politics where people just doing things that don't make sense
or saying things that are just not consistent or incongruous because they're in a team
sport. I think if you can peel out some of this stuff and say, what is my actual value? So if your
value is we treat all people with decency, then you don't get pulled into a group who says,
yeah, yeah, but we should treat these people terribly because they're horrible. That is a tribalistic
thing, not a value thing. So I think our politics has become very tribalistic. You have
conservatives that aren't acting very conservative about thing and you have progressives that aren't
acting very progressive about certain things. So I don't think politics is a show's
I think some of those beliefs that sit behind that could be fundamental.
But I think it's always like maybe someone whose faith and not faith might even be more important
than which faith, right?
It's complicated, but I think they run board of the person's personal operating system.
For you, if you have someone that's disloyal, all those other stuff doesn't matter, right?
That's going to be the showstopper.
People have a loyalty or a trust thing.
It's like, if you cheat on them, there's no coming back from that.
that's probably like almost a more relevant thing than some political stuff.
Let's move on to leadership and culture.
So you were actually voted one of the top CEOs on Glassdoor, which is absolutely amazing.
What is it about your leadership?
Because from my understanding, your team actually had to vote for that, right?
Or what was it based on?
Yeah, I think it was team voting.
And look, the thing about, I think, using your core values to understand your authentic leadership style is
that whatever that is, it may not be for everyone. And I think eventually, I just got comfortable
in saying what I believed and saying, like, look, if you work on my team, again, find a better
way and share it. We are going to work on making things better. If you don't like that, you like
steady state and doing the same thing every day. You don't want to be on my team. But I feel like
I always supported people. I was respectful for them. When it didn't work out, I would have a
direct conversation with them. I tried to help make people better. That's my North Star. But at some
point, I just got comfortable being who I was and not trying to be anyone else. And like universities
are an interesting example, right? I'm looking at schools tomorrow for my youngest and there's like,
you know, big city schools and they have a value proposition. And then there's rural liberal
art schools. And you could love one of those schools and probably hate the other one because it just
doesn't work for you. What those schools don't do is to pretend to be the opposite. I think too many
leaders try to say stuff that appeals to everyone or everyone would want to hear and they're trying
to be everyone's friend rather than saying the stuff that they really believe and they can stand by
and is consistent and understand that that's not for someone. Some people may want a company that's
super political and competitive and others may not. But I think that is ultimately about
understanding your authentic leadership style. And Jim Collins talks about level five leadership,
the highest level. I think that's very much understanding your values and saying, if I'm Hala,
look, loyalty is important to me. There are a lot of things I can put up with on my team,
but disloyalty isn't one of them. And you should know that. And if someone has a problem with that,
they'll go work on a different team. It's so true. There's like employees that are just super
loyal, and I'll make sure that they always have a job because they've been loyal to me.
I'll put them in whatever job they're going to thrive in, no matter how big my company grows.
But is that the wrong mentality to have?
Do you feel like you should not keep employees on just because they're loyal?
You don't want loyalty, but bad behavior.
There's good loyalty and bad loyalty.
Bad loyalty is, I tell you to go do something illegal and you do it.
I assume part of loyalty for you is you do what you say you're going to do.
You're trustworthy.
You follow up. You're reliable. That's all part of that. If you actually broke that down,
I think it's more honest to let people know that and say that that's something you really value in people.
And I'm sure you're finding it. And some people don't care about that. You probably don't want the people
working at Yap who want a job for a year and then want a job hop and use it as a resume builder.
So I'd be chasing them away before they came to my company. And I would be saying this is not the place to come to get a title bump and then leave.
and it won't serve you very well.
Other places don't care.
I'll be more clear because there's been situations
with me and my business fronter
because we have different values on this.
Yeah.
Where like I actually let go of one of my employees
who I had for like five years
because he really pushed me to do it
because he felt like she wasn't good enough
for the job anymore,
but I was being loyal to her
because she's been loyal to me.
And to this day, I'm like,
I think I made a mistake.
and I shouldn't have let her go.
And I still feel that way.
My definition of weaknesses are strengths overuse.
So you're probably going to do some things to a fault.
You know, the struggle for you is going to be when people aren't doing the job well anymore,
but they've really been good soldiers.
I think that's common.
I struggle sometimes where the team I'm trying to make everything better that I'm
overwhelming everyone and I'm not making anything better.
But look, at this point, our life, it's fully baked.
And if we had a lot of time when I got into that, I'd probably find a story from your childhood
where someone was incredibly loyal to you and it made all the difference or someone was really
disloyal or broke your trust. And that's why it's so important to you. And I think it's just
understanding that. It's part of your operating system. It's gotten you through life. It's what you're
good at. Anything we're good at has an Achilles heel to it. And that's probably the case in that one.
Yeah, bam, if you're a girly girl like me, you probably have so many products lying around
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goes to waste. And the older that I've gotten, I've tried to move away from that kind of a mentality.
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other stuff that's just going to clutter up our spaces. And my favorite brand for my everyday look
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So talk to me about one policy or procedure or something you did at your company
that you just want to share with our listeners in terms of something they could leverage
at their own company, whether it's how you run in your meetings or how you planned
or anything that you did with your team that enabled you to scale so big.
We, ironically, and it was really tied, it's funny, because you do these things by accident
and then you figure out your values and you realize why.
To my respectful authenticity, we changed how people left our company.
I was like this whole process of people saying they have doctor's appointments and two weeks
notice seems crazy to me.
And this ended up being my TED Talk.
Could we like have an open transition program and have more honest and open discussions with people?
And they were like, look, I think this isn't working out.
I want to do something different.
We say, okay, great, you can work here for a few more months and go get another job.
Because I always felt like the leaving part wasn't consistent.
with the type of culture we wanted to build.
And I think actually having that policy made it safer to come work at our business.
It made us able to have more buy-in and do stuff.
Can you explain?
If people aren't giving two weeks notice, what did you actually implement?
It was called an open transition program.
So you could opt into it or we could have a discussion about opting into it.
And they would get two to three months to keep doing their current job and go look for a new job.
and we do it with totally open discussions so that leaving wasn't this taboo thing.
And look, we're in a client service business like you were.
And the number one thing that pisses off clients in a client service business is their
account manager leaving suddenly.
And sometimes you don't recover, right?
So we were like, look, we would much rather have Hala here half time while we start sliding
in Ben and getting Ben on the account and recruiting Ben and having her here in some form
and keep that consistency for the client, even if she's looking for a new job and we do that.
And so we just felt like it was better for our clients and it was better for the team.
That's really, really smart.
You were about to say something else.
Oh, yeah, the tactical one, we did quarterly two-day off-sites for all of our high growth years.
I think that 90-day period for a team to opt out of the day-to-day, leadership team, go off-site.
The first day was always a recap of the quarter.
What did we do well?
What did we not do well?
and the second day was planning for the next quarter.
I just think that if you're a high-growth organization,
that is a necessary discipline.
We used to do one days, and once we did two days,
I don't know how we ever did one day,
but you get off the hamster wheel
and you get a chance to discuss the business
and plan for the next 90 days.
Okay, my last question to you before we close out the interview
is about relationships.
One thing that I've noticed is that you seem to know
so many amazing people.
You know, you've referred a lot of people to me.
It just seems like a lot of people come
to you for advice and you've got a really great network. So what are one or two tips you can give
to other entrepreneurs in terms of being the node of their network like you are? Yeah, I got a lot of
my networking DNA from Keith Farazi's book, Never Eat Alone. And I think also, you know,
I try to get my kids to read how to win friends and influence people by Dale and Carnegie.
The title makes it sound so cheesy, but the advice is so deep. And so I focus on,
mutually beneficial outcomes for other people. The problem with networking, and I'm sure you've seen
this hollow, you hear from the person you haven't heard from in nine years, can we meet, can we
catch up? And it's because they need a job, right? That's not great networking. And that's how
a lot of people use their network. So I'm always listening for opportunities. For one thing I need
from my network, I probably put three gives into it. I think it's kind of a giver's gain thing.
I think if you're putting people together genuinely that you know both, not one wants to sell something to the other, but when someone says to me, LinkedIn just dumped us from our podcast, I'm pretty sure that if I send them to you and say, this new podcast is looking for a new home, you're going to want to talk to them. They're not trying to sell you anything. If someone says, I'm looking for a lawyer, oh, I know that lawyer. A lot of people make referrals with someone trying to sell something to the other person. You're like, Robert, Steve really wanted to talk to you. And Steve's
trying to sell me something. That's not a helpful networking thing. That's a doing a favor for
Steve by exposing someone in your network. So really, it's that simple. I try to connect with people
a lot, talk to them when there's no agenda. And I'm listening. And when people need something,
I take the time to write a good introduction and introduce to people. And I do that all the time.
And when you launch a book and you have to call in every favor you've ever had for the last 10 years,
people will help you if you've helped them.
If you help people without having any sort of intention, you end up building these really rich
relationships that down the line, those people will help you when you probably don't even
like least expect it.
Like I value relationships so much in that way, probably overvalue relationships where I always
just try to go above and beyond for any of my relationships, especially like really high
quality relationships, knowing that at some point that will come back to me.
There's your loyalty core value again.
You're basically just describing it.
So I in my show with two questions that I ask all my guests.
The first one is what is one actionable thing our young improfitors can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?
We lose a lot of days at the beginning of the day by playing defense.
So if you wake up in the morning, don't turn on your phone, have a morning routine.
Pick the three things that if you accomplished them today,
would get you towards your goals and make sure you did them for noon and before your day gets
totally out of control. And you do that for a quarter, that's 90 things. I think you'll see a
material difference in your goals. And what would you say is the secret to profiting in life?
So having a successful life across business, family, and just having a successful life.
I think it's playing the long game. There's a lot of things that you can do in the short term
that just are going to cost you or aren't going to work out.
So I think if you're looking for long-term happiness and profitability, then think about decisions
in the context of someone once said, how will I feel about this decision in 10 days, 10 months,
10 years? I think that's a great orientation. Robert, this has been such an awesome interview.
I've really, really loved this conversation. I feel like we went really deep. And I think our
listeners got a lot of value out of it. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?
sure new book is out i think the week we're running this and i have the course that actually started
the book which is the core values course i'm giving it away for free during launch week so if you go to
compass dash within dot combe you can both buy the book and then there's a form right there to put
your receipt in and we'll send you the course all of my other stuff is at robert glazer dot com
including friday forward which is my news letter and if you go to slash six we talked about those six
questions if you're interested in taking a few pieces of paper and writing down the answers and
seeing what comes up for you. Okay, now I have to ask you another question than I wanted to ask you.
So I'm like obsessed with growing my newsletter and I feel like everybody is. Give me your top
two ways that you grow your newsletter in 2025. It's getting a lot harder, but I think that it's
mostly through sharing I found. So people tell me they share it through the company or otherwise. So I think
Thinking of your context in the newsletter of how can someone forward this to someone else
and then how do you have a message where, hey, if someone forward this to you, here's how
you subscribe and join, I think that's how I get the majority of my new signups.
Oh, so good.
Okay, well, we're going to stick all the links that you mentioned.
We'll make it super easy.
We'll stick them in the show notes.
People can just go find them to take the quiz to find all your channels.
Robert, thank you so much for joining us on Young Improfiting Podcast.
Thank you very much, Hala.
Well, guys, Robert offered up such a wealth of great insights on how to use values as a compass
in life and business. He reminded us that real turning points come when you stop chasing external
validation and start making decisions anchored in what actually matters most to you.
One big lesson was around defining values with precision. Words like integrity or family,
they sound nice, but they're too vague to guide real choices. Instead, Robert
encouraged us to dig deeper. Maybe integrity means your words always match your actions, or family
means you always show up. When values are clear and specific, they become practical tools for
decision-making every single day. Another important takeaway is that values-based decisions often
cost something up front, but reward you tenfold in the long run. Choosing alignment over
convenience may feel hard in the moment, but it builds credibility, trust, and lasting fulfillment.
And finally, Robert showed us that authentic leadership comes from leaning into your values
instead of trying to be everything to everyone.
That's how you build culture, scale with integrity, and stay true to yourself through
every transition.
So take this with you, yeah, fam, your values are not abstract ideas.
They're your operating system.
When you know them and live by them, every choice gets clearer and every relationship gets
stronger and your success feels deeply meaningful.
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Young and Profiting.
If you enjoyed the show and took something valuable away,
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Halataha. Of course, I got to give a big thanks to our amazing Yap listeners. Until next time,
this is your host, Halataha, aka the podcast princess, signing off.
