Robert Glazer: The Proven Decision-Making Framework High Achievers Use to Unlock Fulfillment | Leadership | E371

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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 Glaser, 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 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 realized 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 to I hear 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 rid of 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 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.

And I've heard 10 different people tell me 10 different versions 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 words 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 a 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 it 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 and 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 with my kids and self-reliance.

So yeah, if you want to be happy and engaged, 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 were 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 and 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 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 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 the 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?

You know, 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 to CEO?

Yeah, he was my number two.

He was the president of the company and we had worked 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 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 off-site with the team, but I would come to the dinner and I would get out of 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 on DevOps.

Call me when you're ready.

We'll have a class.

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 because 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 and 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 asked people with a million dollars and a hundred million dollars in net worth, what was enough?

And basically that was the answer.

It was always 30 to 40 percent 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 onto this climb by family or otherwise.

And they said, look, you 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, right?

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 are 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 out 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 is this impact goal of how do I help a million people unlock their values in the next five years.

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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 robertglazer.com slash six, S-I-X, 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 watch this character, Jamie, 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 them.

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 were you happiest?

And that's, it could be, I worked for Hala, but what's more interesting in those notes is I worked 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.

It's more important that you understand what that environment looked 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 in 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 anything about it.

And their trust fund payment didn't come in on time.

It's like kryptonite to me, right?

So does 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 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, thinks of others and not just themselves.

Right.

So you probably have a couple core values in there, which 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 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 very young.

Health and vitality, which has also been elevated for me after some health stuff that I was explaining actually happened after I stepped 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.

We 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 a 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, 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 an AI middleist.

I'm not a maximalist.

I use ChatGPT 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 and 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.

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 was 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 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 to 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 to 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, wow, 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, 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 gonna 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 best seller status if you use a ghostwriter, but you feel that it's not in 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 an 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 was called 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 pained him personally and it was when 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.

Oh, wow.

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 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 where the 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 ammunitions 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 of stuff.

And all the analysts and stuff told him they were going to lose hundreds of millions of dollars.

And basically a month later, the stock was up $500 million more.

And 10 years later, it was up 10x.

And he's 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.

And CVS also years ago, when they rebranded as CVS Health, they stopped selling cigarettes.

They lost $2 billion a year, but they were like, look, we can't rebrand to 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 are 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 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 finer, 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.

You know, 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 a young age, you live for today.

There's never a tomorrow.

That was sort of how they lived.

Another 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 frivolish short-term decisions.

Well, if those two get married and one wants to live for today, every day in 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 faith 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.

Yeah, exactly.

So if people can't figure out, first of all, if you're a market dynamics person and 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 showstopper.

I think some of those beliefs that sit behind that could be fundamental.

But I think it's always like maybe someone who's faith and not faith might even be more important than which faith, right?

It's complicated, but I think they run bored 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 trust thing.

It's like, if you cheat on them, there's no coming back from that.

That's probably like a, 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, 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 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 arts 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 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.

So, 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 holla, 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 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 to 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 of like me and my business partner, 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 in 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, fam.

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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 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 Holla here halftime 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 Ferrazzi'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 holla, 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 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, you're, you know, 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, you know, 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 over value 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.

Yeah.

You're basically just describing it.

So I end my show with two questions that I ask all my guests.

The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young improfiters 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-within.com, 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 robertglazer.com, including Friday Forward, which is my newsletter.

And if you go to slash six, we talked about those six questions.

If you're interested in taking a few pieces pieces of paper and writing down the answers and seeing what comes up for you.

Okay, now I have to ask you another question that 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 and Profiting 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 upfront, 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, Ya 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.

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Your support helps us reach even more people with empowering content.

If you prefer to watch your podcast, I would love if you hopped over to our YouTube channel, just search Young and Profiting, hit that subscribe button and engage with the community.

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It's Hala Taha.

Of course, I got to give a big thanks to our amazing Yap listeners.

Until next time, this is your host, Hala Taha, aka the Podcast Princess, signing off.