#37: Robert Glazer, Founder and CEO of Acceleration Partners — the importance of values and purpose, how to build your team's capacity, and why you should start your ideas even if they aren't ready

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Startup to Grown up the Podcast My name is Alyssa Cohn. I'm an executive coach, an angel investor, and the author of From Startup to Grownup. Each week I talk to founders, creators, advisors, investors and builders of all kinds about their insights and experiences in going from startup to grownup.

Welcome to the podcast and today I'm thrilled to welcome Robert Glaser to the show. Bob is the founder and chairman of the Board of Acceleration Partners, a global partner marketing agency. He's a best selling author of four books and the creator and host of the Elevate podcast where he interviews CEOs and thought leaders about personal growth. Bob also writes a very popular weekly blog of personal musings called Friday Forward. Bob, Bob and I had an incredible conversation. As you can see from my intro, Bob has a lot of hats that he wears, to say the least. We talked about how he ended up doing all these different things and how he fits it all in together. Bob is someone who cares a lot about values and purpose and he's also super practical about why they're so important to you and to your company. And also he creates a roadmap about how you can define your purpose and values as a person and lead your company in that process. Of course, we also talked about some of the key insights from Bob's latest book, Elevate youe Team. One area we covered is Bob's framework for building your team's capacity along multiple dimensions, including intellectual capacity, emotional capacity, physical capacity, and spiritual capacity. We also discussed how important it is for employees to learn self regulation, which I personally think is an under discussed topic topic these days. Finally, Bob and I discussed how he made the decision to step down as CEO and what that's been like for him and also how he deals with imposter syndrome. It's a rich episode and Bob is so fun and energetic. You're going to love it. So please enjoy my wonderful conversation with Bob Glazer, founder of Acceleration Partners and author of Elevate youe Team.

Bob, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you.

Thanks for having me, Alyssa.

I'm thrilled because there's so much to say, so much to talk about. Bob, you're a best selling author, a speaker, a podcaster, a course creator, and the founder and now executive chair of Acceleration Partners. That's a lot. I want to talk about this.

Yeah, so I don't do anything well, so I do a lot of things well.

We'll see about that. I sort of think of you having an octopus career so like why don't you first tell us about. Thank you. I just coined that. Tell us first about Acceleration Partners and tell us about the insight and kind of what the company does. And then I want to hear about your journey with all these things.

Yeah, so AP is kind of a big fish in a small pond, as we like to say. We, we are in the field of digital marketing called affiliate and partner marketing. So instead of buying a banner ad or paying for a click, you would partner with hundreds or thousands of people using technology. They take the risk on their blog or their Instagram or whatever, talking about your product or service, they link to you. It's all tracked. And then they are paid commissions for things that actually work. So we help build and grow those programs for pretty large brands around the world. And it's become a pretty big industry. It's, it's not as talked about as the other stuff, like, well, it's 20% of E commerce. I think people don't want to be super clear, like anytime you see a mom blog or influencers, like this is how they're making money. But I think people don't want to make that as clear that they have all these commission based relationships. But that's what we do. We do that for a lot of Fortune 500 companies.

That's amazing.

Bob, how did you figure out that.

Was the right space to get in?

By accident, like most people. Someone said to me recently, how did you, why did you decide to start your agency? And I thought about it and I laughed and they were like, what's so funny? I'm like, I know a lot of friends with the agencies. I don't think any of them started intentionally. You start doing some work, you get known, you get good, you hire a person and you wake up and you're running an agency. I actually learned about affiliate marketing from the other side. I helped set up this program with this company called Tiny Prints that was like, they were like the first one to do photo birth announcements. And it was like this crazy fast growing business. And I was actually working with a retail chain at the time that was doing mom and baby centers. And we like, they were like, look, let's you promote these things to your parents and we'll give you 10% of, of every sale. And we did that. And it went from a $200 check a month to a couple thousand dollars a month. And, and so when I left, I helped them create a bunch more of these relationships. And then I was like, you know, you could create a program like this that's not all this one off and coupon code. And. And. And. And they said, we don't know how to do that. Do you want to help us do that? And so I. I actually knew the one side of the business. I was like, I don't know how to run program. But I started asking around. I figured out we helped them build that program. They grew to $300 million in revenue and sold to Shutterfly. And it was a. Like, the program was a big part of the revenue growth. It was all. We just found all these mom content sites and bloggers and people. And then so all the people from Tiny Princess happens when there's a sale, they all went around the Valley and they all started calling and saying, can we do the same thing that we did there? And then eventually I couldn't do it myself, and I hired some people, and I woke up and I was running an agency of 350 people.

Wow. An inspiring story, actually, you know, and it's so interesting. I mean, that's like the entrepreneurial mindset. Like, I'll just figure it out, figure it out. And then, you know, iterate, iterate, iterate. And, you know, I guess I would just say this, Bob. So there you were. I could tell, like, you woke up, you found yourself running a company. That makes sense. But there's some other stuff that you did that has to have been more intentional. Like, you started to. To develop an email list. You started to write your blog. You decided to write books. You did a podcast. How do those pieces. How do those pieces come together? And how do they kind of fit into the whole.

They all. Well, they all come back to my why, which I would later find out, was to find a better way and share it, which is kind of like my dominant core value. So a couple things. As we were building the company, I was reluctant to build the company because I, like, he did the big work, dad. And the politics. Every company I worked at, like, for four, we got smaller. And so I was like, I don't want to grow into that stuff. That I didn't like it. And when I finally decided to do it, it was like, all right, we're going to consciously do things differently. And as we tried some different things and stuff, I would share those stories or I would write. You know, the real breakthrough was when I started writing this note to my team every couple of weeks. And it was just about improvement or getting better or otherwise. And I just. It actually came out of a leadership retreat I did about reading and writing in the morning. And I Was like, you know what? I have some of these quotes, and I have some of these things. And so I played around with the format and I. Eventually it was like 500 words in a quote, and I sent it around. I didn't think anyone was listening to it or reading it. And then I found out not only were they reading it, they were sharing it outside the company. And once I found that out, I. I actually decided. And people were like, can you add my brother or can you add this person on it? And it was just a simple, like, bcc. And I was like, huh? I was like, I don't want to manage it this way. So I set up a newsletter list. I recalled it Friday forward, because it was being forwarded, and I just made it try to look like a regular email. But it was a newsletter list, and I figured I dumped 200 of my friends and family on it. And like, I sent it. And I expected to get. Because it wasn't about eight our company, I expected to get all, like, hate mail and unsubscribe, but I didn't. Like, people started forwarding it more. Someone wrote an article. This is the only email I read every week. And it just kind of ballooned from there. And then that sort of led me to more writing. And I took a bunch of those stories and I tried to make a compilation book. And I met an agent, and he said, no one likes compilation books. But, like, I think there's a story around this if you want to go reread it. So I went and did that, and that ended up being the. My first book, Elevate.

Wow. Wow. That there's so much there. Again, like, kind of you're iterating your way. And then did you decide to then share your ideas through the podcast as well? Like, what was the genesis of the podcast?

Yeah, so the podcast was some of our company is like, we should start a podcast. And we were in performance marketing. And they said, you know, I said, well, that that sounds great and you should do it. And I think this is a medium. I said, well, I think it'd be more interesting. What if we did performance in general? And so I started asking these very aspirational people who should have said no, like Dan Pink and otherwise to like, come on, just talk about performance. And it started really taking off. But at some point, it actually, we would have this, like, affiliate marketing episode. And then like, Dan Pink, and it didn't make sense. And so I had just come out with a book elevate. And so we actually decided to Split it. So we would just. The original podcast was called Outperformed. So I would literally start over. Because if you don't know the podcast, which you do, which I do know your ratings and all this stuff, like, so if I was going to start a new one, I was going to lose all of that. So I took the episodes, I rerecorded the intro and I was like, look, this is the. It's a good lesson. There are things that are painful, but they are the right long term strategic decisions. And it was very clear that like this was taking off. It was not really related to our business. People didn't care about the marketing stuff as much as they wanted to hear from these interesting people. So I broke it off three years ago and then it just like it kind of took off under the new name and it just put my book and everything all under kind of this capacity building elevate brand, which is where I've spent a lot of my time.

Right, right. So, you know, by the way, when you said it's important to do the strategic thing even though it's hard, I totally agree with that. But it also feels like you did a lot of experimentation and it seems like you just had maybe the courage to try things. The courage to invite Dan Pink and others on your show. The courage to sort of do something like dump 200 people into an email list. Is that like, do you think that's normal? Like what, what gave you that audacity add?

I don't know, I'm not sure. I actually you bring up a good point. Because I think there's a, there is a contradiction. Right. The people that I know that are not entrepreneurial will not start something until they know they can map out A to Z. And by the way, it will never actually map out like that. Right. All of the steps. I actually wrote a Friday Forward that was sort of summarizing my lesson of getting the million of downloads. And I did say in that I was like, look, I've never, I've started a ton of things that have failed, but I've never been successful in anything I didn't start. So I think, yeah, sometimes you just got to start and tinker and otherwise. But then you do get to these points where things become real, where you're like, huh, it's going to be a huge pain in the ass to split this out. But this doesn't belong as part of a marketing thing for the organization. Like it just, I know it's not the right long term choice. And so those. But if you if you, right in the beginning, you just need to go and tinker. I think in the middle, towards the end, you need to make bigger strategic bets, right?

Absolutely. Did you have advisors or mentors or anybody who you were bouncing this off of to help you think about this?

Yeah, I had a lot of informal groups. I had, you know, forums in, in YPO neo we, in our business, we actually had. I built a board, a non fiduciary advisory board that acted like a board and I would actually suggest anyone to do that. Like we had meetings, the management team presented to them. So I had a good amount of people to talk about that stuff with. There was definitely a halo effect too. Like what's really interesting was I would go to the big industry conference and I did wrote two books in our industry about our industry and that was for a different purpose. But I'd be at the big industry conference, I'd be at a party or event that night and I'd written a ton of stuff. Like I wrote articles about our industry and book and no one came over me and they were like, I loved your five predictions for affiliate marketing this week. But they would say I loved that Friday forward last week and I sent it to my family or otherwise. And this is someone that our company was working with. Right. So there was definitely a halo effect. And but I think people, even this company struggle to understand, like the stuff you're writing about is not about our business, it's not tied to what we do. But it's just, I think if you add value to people, you know, that that comes back to you. And I'd always say to them, literally people mentioned Friday for to me all the time. No one's ever mentioned any other marketing piece of content that I've written to me. So that person's listening to what we're talking about or listening to what I'm talking about. They're in our world maybe when they have to decide to work with us or someone else, you know, that that, that makes the decision for them.

Yeah. And I think to your point, you know, Friday forward is it's very personal. It's kind of what's on your mind and it's about topics that relate to people.

Yeah, yeah, it's people. It's getting better. I think I always, I always joke that, you know, every week I'll get some email from someone around the world where this is the best one you've ever written and this is the worst one you've ever. It just has to do with where that person is at the time and did it help them that week or was it opposite of something that was going on in their life or otherwise?

Yeah, totally. You know, one thing you write about and you just really, you hinted at it just a minute ago when you said that your why is to find a better way and share it. I think that's also aligned with, I mean, you talk about purpose and your why and values. You know, you have a whole course on values actually, like why tell us more about how important values are and what specifically you've gotten out of clarifying your own values and your purpose and why that's so important.

Yeah. So to me, values are, are easier to solve before purpose. Purpose is like the overarching roof that sits on value. So it's hard to get your purpose right if you don't know the, the, the pillars of it. So I would tell anyone, and I think companies are the other way around. Companies start with a purpose, then they figure out their values. And I think it's easy for a person. But everything that people normally read in my bio is after I figured out my core values and I went back to my company and my relationships and everything and decided to me it's the ultimate decision making rubric. And I think if you want to be a level four or five leader, you're going to, it's going to have to come from a place of authenticity and self awareness. And I think when we teach our leaders and coach our leaders that I always give an example myself. Like when I started leading, managing people, it was like a patchwork quilt. It was like this great boss, Alyssa, and I'm going to do the thing that Alyssa liked or I had this terrible blast, Alyssa, and I'm going to do the opposite. So some of that stuff worked for me and some of that stuff wasn't me. And when you, when you break it down to the core values like you, you really understand that. So we would bring our, we'd start bringing. I figured out for myself that I built a process. When we did this advanced leadership training with our next group of people, we bring them offsite for a couple of days and we do a bunch of different assessments and we help them figure out their personal core values. And they're like, why are we figuring out, like, why are we spending like personal core values? Like, I don't think you're going to develop into an authentic leader if there are things that you don't know. Like there are certain behaviors we expect of our leaders, but there's not a cookie Cutter template. And as I've done this work for a while, the amount of breakthroughs and like really intense conversations, because usually a core value goes to something very like childhood, like primal. And it's showing up as a leader. So. So as an example, like we've had a bunch of people who have a core value or even a why of trust relationships kind of based on trust. And I've learned that if someone has that and trust thing, you can ask them. I'd say, look, you don't have to tell me what it is, but did you have a violation of trust in your childhood at some point? And their eyes well up and you know, reaction and. And then when we look at what's been going on with their leadership, when someone on their team is late for a meeting, when they miss an assignment, when they can't be found or to like, it is sending them signals that this is a threatening person who can't be trusted. And they didn't realize this. They didn't know how to communicate it. They didn't understand. Look, trust is really important to me. Like I give everyone trust, but like when you don't show up, when you're late, when you do these things. And by the way, to be fair, once I don't trust you, I don't trust, I don't trust you. So there was a self awareness function of that, but there were numerous examples. There was someone who actually had a core value of self awareness and that came from a parent who lacked self awareness and really embarrassed them in their childhood. And they realized that like when people on their team showed signs of self awareness, they were like all over them. And so a lot of these things are just again, who you are, how you're going to lead. And I think if you unlock them, you can just, you have a much more authentic base for your leadership development.

Yeah. You know, I love that. And as a coach for 22 years, I can't help but notice in the workplace, everyone is working out their issues, their childhood issues in the workplace.

All mommy and dad issues. Yeah, it's kind of incredible.

Yeah. Mommy, daddy and school. Right. What happened to me on the playground kind of thing. And so to your point, people are actually, first of all, not aware of it. And then second of all, it's acting out, they're acting it out in the workplace without realizing it. So something really trivial happen. The person's like a little bit late for a meeting and the person will explode at them for being out of the meeting because it's triggering something in.

Them deep feelings that this person is threatening, they cannot be trusted.

Right, right, right.

By the way, these are, these are things, you know, 20 years, I mean you're not going to change people's personality. I think there are certain things if you have a 22 year old out of college you can work on by the time you've been in the workforce for 20 years. These things are, are deeply ingrained in your style.

Right, right, totally.

So can you walk me through specifically.

Specifically how you kind of had the revelation yourself, the specific activities or exercises you did to begin to clarify your own values and then a few specific exercises you did in the workplace with your leaders to help them clarify.

Yeah, so I don't even remember. I spent like so much time looking at lists and reading things like I just couldn't find a good resource, I couldn't find an actual thing. So I like kind of faked it until I figured it out and but then I tried to re engineer it for other people and so it was very similar. What I noticed is you'd find patterns and I think that's a lot of these things. So I figured out six behavioral based questions around things that, you know, went well, personally went poorly in the workplace. What people asked you for things that frustrated you and other people. And I have people answer those questions.

Wait, so one of those questions, what, what do you remember how to do it?

Yeah, I remember. So you know, name it. What, what is like a time you felt super engaged in, in, in, in your work or when did you feel really disengaged? Like what specifically were you doing? Or otherwise what's, what's the quality in other people that, that you really can't stand? The test of a core value is usually that when it's crossed you feel terrible. And so the anti questions are actually really interesting because usually those triggers are, are related to a violation of a core value for people. They're all in the book. I'm not going to get them. All right, there's another one. Oh, what do people come to advice for you for? And so what happens is you start answering all of these on different sheets and then you start going through them and pulling out like what's the, what is the keyword of the theme of this one? And then pretty soon you start to see that you're saying the same thing in a bunch of different ways. You group them all together. And then I have another process for how you start putting the verbiage around it in a way that's actionable because to be valuable they need to be. You need to know if you're doing it, if you're not doing it, and like, if it's like. And it needs to be almost like a, like a test where you can say, I did a good job, I did a bad job, or there's a clear threshold. So, you know, one of my core values is like long term orientation. Right. And so if I'm facing a decision or if I'm looking at like, you know what, one reason I've been very frustrated in the last year is that I'm someone who's constantly looking a year ahead or six months ahead or what can we do? Or the business otherwise, the business environment for anyone is in. A board meeting of the last two years has necessitated literally thinking a month at a time, like whatever, whatever was the supply problem last quarter is now a demand problem this quarter. Really hard to plan ahead with any certainty. Right. And so that's not an environment that I love being in. But I also, you know, I can tell if I'm getting frustrated that I'm, you know, we talk about book launch. Like, I'm just, I'm, I'm stuck in a lot of now stuff I have to do. It's not kind of long term stuff. So I think with each of them, you can, you can look and see if you have a decision or you have a behavior that I'm being aligned to this or I'm not being aligned to this.

Yeah, that's great. So I think what you did, and correct me if I'm wrong, like you took that work on values and then you also created in your side of your company.

Yeah.

And then you created also, you know, specific culture. And I just want to note for everybody that your culture is remote. Remote by design. So that was even before the pandemic. So I'm just curious how you really thought about codifying your culture to both take into account the importance of values, let everyone have their own values and also facilitate remote work.

Yeah. So, you know, it's interesting because we used to hide the fact that we were remote. We started by accident. There's nothing I did intentionally of asking because the affiliate industry, the talent was super spread out in the US and we were winning big accounts and we needed senior people and one was here and one was here. And we're like, look, we're going to do this and then we'll get an office and we'll figure it out one day. And we were never about remote per se. Like our whole thing is like people really and we had a lot of working moms. That's who a lot of the people in those, those kind of, you know, client services roles were. It was a culture of flexibility and accountability. If you were accountable, you could have flexibility. People would ask me to be on these like remote podcasts and stuff. Before COVID I was like, we're not about, like, I'm not like flying the nomadic flag. It's just our people, like, they don't want to be stuck in the commute. They like seeing each other. We see each other a ton. We do events together, we do a bunch of stuff, but we don't go into the same office every day. And you know, we won 25 best places to work awards. You know, there's no group for remote work. In fact, we'll be one the Forbes Small Giants. 25 small business in America, it said. And apparently Acceleration Partners is a great place to work even though they don't have one. Like they couldn't even understand. So I just think we had to be better at things. We had to look, you've seen world class companies when they have onboarding, the person comes in and they don't see their desk for two weeks, they're sent to client service, they're sent to this, they're sent to that. Great, great thing is not go shadow Winifred. Like, that's what I was told, like when I joined, they're like, oh, you're starting today. Go shadow Perth. So like we couldn't have people come to their computers and, and have nothing to do. So we built out scripted first two to three weeks of everything they were asked to do. We had to have clear values, we had to cloud clear goals. It's funny, I think everyone, I think these are foundational things of whether you're remote or not. If you talk about a company before, say before 9, 11, before COVID Yeah. Where they had great leaders who delegated well, who communicated well, who trusted people, clear values, good outcomes, world shuts down, you got to go work from home. It actually works out okay. Another company, no trust. Like measure people on time. No clear goals, no values. Tell me I got to work from home, It's a disaster. So I think some of these things were just, they weren't necessarily. They were the type of culture that we had built around. Look, we're going to treat you like an adult and we expect you to act like an adult. And we have our core values and those are our bright red lines. And we have our goals and the things we want to accomplish and you know, we're either. We're super supportive of our team and we want to coach them up, but if you're not the fit for the core values, it's not going to work. And if you can't do what we all decided we're going to do, then we're going to have to have a conversation about that too. Right. So if your KPI is to hit a million in sales and you're at 300 for two years, like, we can't ignore that. So.

Right, right. I love the way you frame that and, you know, especially this notion of the bright lines. But, you know, I'm also just processing that really what you're saying is good remote management is good management. And it's sort of just like if you're specific and rigorous and if you've sort of done the work to become a good manager and to become a good company, then that's going to like.

See you through a remote environment 200%. Right?

Yeah.

Because again, a micromanaging manager who values butts in seat time and is all managing inputs and not outputs, like, they are. Like, they don't know what to do when people are fun. They lost all their power. Right, Right. I mean, I had, when I was talking about remote work and speaking, I had a couple. I was so awkward. I was at a conference and a woman was saying to me, you know, and I like, my whole team be on zoom all day, you know, while they're at home, so I can see what they're doing otherwise. And I couldn't say to her, like, that is like the worst practice, like in the middle of this conference with this company. But I was like, that's horrible. Why are you doing that? Like, if you read articles about this, this is not a good, like, so you're making them all leave their zoom on so you can see them like at their desk at home. Like, that's a zero trust to type type thing.

Totally not a best practice opposite. Opposite of best practice.

Again, like, we have a simple thing. Like, my thing is, like, I think people focus way too much on exceptions and not rules. Because one out of a hundred person violated your trust doesn't mean you should not trust people. So I'd rather set a culture where, like, look, we trust you first and we give trust. That's the default. Once you lose it, really hard to ever get it back here. So we operate under sort of in office rules. You have to go to the bathroom, you need lunch, whatever. You don't need to tell anyone you're going to disappear for two to three hours during a workday. It's fine if your kid has a softball game, but when you don't tell someone and they're looking for you now it looks like you're trying to get away with something, not being honest. So you need to tell people if you're not available during normal hours, you can't just disappear. You can't just be out accountable. It's kind of the exact same standard as if you were in an office. If you can go to your kids softball game at 3 o', clock, great. I'm like all for it. But, but make sure someone's covering, make sure someone knows where you are. Like that's just basic trust and respect, right?

Totally. And when you mentioned bright redline before, I'm just curious for you, have you, can you share an example of a time that you made a decision that was hard because it did not align with your values or the company's values?

Yeah, we, we, and we're still feeling the effects of this in some way. But we fired one of our biggest clients last year and we had an almost 80% turnover rate on this client and they just always wanted more and less and they were terrible to our team. And like we had 80% of people who worked on this account would turn over or then not and leave. And we tried a bunch of different things and we were in a meeting and I remember being like, look, we tell ourselves whatever we want is embracing relationships. Like we can tell ourselves whatever lies we want. This client is not a core value fit because it is hurting our relationships. It goes across everything. It is a significant amount of revenue. And look, we made that decision in March when the world was still great and you know, digital market, not harder. And we basically just didn't, didn't renew with them and just walked away from that.

That is really powerful. And how do you sort of process that now?

You know, when we're looking at cops and stuff? Look, I have no doubt we would have lost more people. Yeah, I think when you cut dead wood or stuff, something a green shoot always.

Yeah.

Kind of grows into it. That's just my belief on these things. And look there, there, there's some, you know, we're definitely, there are some financial implications of that. I don't know that it would have been worse if we kept them. In fact, one of the things we looked at, we said, look, the numbers, the margin is not great, but if we factor in the turnover and the cost of the turnover, it might not actually be Making any money.

Yeah.

May actually be a net detractor on the organization.

Yeah, that makes complete sense. You know, another change you made pretty recently is you stepped away from being the CEO. You became the executive chair. Tell us about that decision and how you came to it.

Yeah, I mean it was sort of an evolution. Look, we were on a great growth rate, about 30% a year for almost 10 years. And a lot of our coaches and people who worked with like you, you know, a quote people always said was, I remember was every time you double, you break half your people and half your processes. And we tried to be better than that. And that was a lot about what capacity building was. And like how can we, how can we coach up our team to ride with the wave and not be crushed? But you do break that stuff. And I think for, for, for a company to get 30% better a year, for leaders to want to be willing to double their ability every couple of years, that's a conscious choice. It's not just about do you want to get better? It's like do you want what that next thing is? I don't think people are objective between what is it that I want and what is needed. And you know, I, from, from a million to 10 million, I wanted to be the CEO from 10 million to, and when I started like looking at a 40, $50 million a year revenue organization, what the role of the CEO was, what I like to do, a lot of the management team didn't report to me. I had a longtime operator, you know, I didn't want to have a 10 person team and be at a lot of these meetings. That's just, I like to create, I like being in the skunk works. And so, you know, when it came time for that next turn, I was like, huh, I don't think that's the role I want to play. So I sat down with, you know, person that I had sort of groomed for 10 years and said, I, you know, I want you to take the, the mantle. And we, we did a two year transition process so, so about, and we got an investor during that time and we told them exactly what we were doing. And I actually think an investor, you know, they're, they're always worried that the founder is going to peace out. And so having someone who's stepping up into that role was attractive to them and who'd been there and knew the business. But so we told the full management team about six months in and then what was interesting was in the last year we just started to make all the changes. So some of the executive team reported to me, reported to him. As we hired new people, they all reported to him. He started to lead some of the meetings. People missed that. We just did, like, kind of. This was, by the time we announced it to the company, that people were like, well, what's going to change? And we were like, we already made all the changes. You just sort of weren't watching. I'm like, I don't lead the meetings anymore. The management team doesn't refer to me. Like, Matt's going to now be the face of the company, and I'm going to let him do that. But we had, we probably could have done it a little faster, but we tried to, like, everything. We tried to do it like, right. I felt like that was the right amount of time.

Yeah. And you were sort of evolving, like, gradually so that people began to get.

Used to pulling out of stuff. And, you know, yeah, we, I mean, we brought on an investor, private equity. So, you know, people react to change pretty well if it's not like, all at once. If it's a. What is this something they love progress, but they hate change. Accurate quote.

That is a great quote. I love it. But take us back still to that decision. I mean, when we were chatting before the podcast, you sort of said you, like, you interviewed yourself and you kept wanting the job, wanting the job, and then not wanting the job. Was there a moment of truth that you really got this, or was it that also an evolution?

I think I was doing some of this other stuff and the writing and all this stuff, and it was, honestly, it was like night and weekend work too. And I also realized I just can't keep up this. People are like, how do you do all this stuff? And I'd be like, I'm working all the time. But I think it just, look, ego totally gets in the way to people. I think mine is a very typical story of a creative kid who did not, not an A student, did not color in the lines, was always told, you could do better, you could do better. I just wasn't interested in what I was learning. I was very entrepreneurial. That does not play well in the traditional school system. So when I actually figured out what I was good at and got good at it, and then your CEO, you know, your friends with the, you know, mhp, pd, or all this, like, like being seen, like, that's the reward for all that, you know, working. Like, it's hard for people to give that up. I, that. But I, I, I think I, I was able to see what I actually wanted, what the organization needed. And again, at each one of those doubling, say, like for a while I was like, yeah, I want to do this, I want to do this. And then when I started to see like, this is the, this is the job of. This is what the job of a CEO of a 300 person company is. It is to have an eight person team and manage them and spend their time with them and the meetings and manage the board. And I was like, that's not what I want to do.

Yeah, totally makes sense. What surprised you the most when you stepped away finally.

In general? About myself.

Yeah. Either.

I think once you start letting. It's funny. People hold. This is how. This is not dissimilar to when I first started scaling the company away from me. People hold on to things really tight, but once you start giving away, like you start. You start getting used to that pretty quickly. So I think one thing I've learned about myself is that even this is way, maybe the two years was even a little long. When I know what the next thing is, it's hard to be straddled between the current and the future. So even in like the months before, like, I was already mentally there. Right. And so I recognize that was like a hard. It's hard. Right, because when you know what's coming next, you're sort of gravitating towards that. So. Yeah, I think that I actually learned from that. And part of what I have been doing is probably like, I phased down a little more this year and I actually pushed that up last year from. I knew it was gonna be January and by the end of the summer I transferred some more stuff and I moved to the chairman of board. And I was like, I actually think let's push the data up. Like, because I feel like I'm mentally there and I don't want to do that. Yeah. I don't want to sort of be dead weight walking around again.

Yeah. So you were done. Basically. You were like, I'm done.

Permission. Like, I don't want to be in a meeting where I didn't have a stake in the meeting.

Right.

It just wasn't. It wasn't my thing anymore.

Right, right.

I could sense that I was already at that next phase and so my mind was going there. So I moved my body there.

I love it. It's so good. Well, as you said, you were doing other things and one of the things you were doing was writing this great new book called elevate your team. This is, I think, your third Book, not the industry books, but like your third book of general interest. Right, Great. So this is kind of. You had first. What was your first book? Remind me.

I was actually fourth. My, my, my outside of the marketing ones. I wrote.

Yeah.

I actually wrote Friday for at first, but that was the one everyone rejected. So I wrote elevate. Then Friday 4 came out. During COVID I wrote how to Make Virtual Teams.

Right.

And.

Right. And this was sort of always going to be, though. We actually pushed this back a year because of COVID and the virtual teams. And this, this was all the. So Elevate talked about capacity building from a personal development leadership standpoint.

Right.

And. But all the stuff we were doing in AP was the same capacity building, but it was from an organizational standpoint. So how do you take some of these principles and embed them into the organization?

I love it. So first tell us what is capacity? What do you mean by capacity?

I mean, capacity is like how we get better. Like, I think it's the process of how we get better. And so when you, when you have a need and you have. It's like supply, how do you bring supply and demand in. In line? And so when your organization needs things, you can either find people that know how to do them or you can try to grow your people into the people that know how to do that stuff. And I think one of the things that we fell into or tapped into while we were able to grow that fast and have 80% of our people from within and keep lower turnover was we decided to kind of invest in people holistically that like, look, if they get better at discipline, if they understand their values, if they're physically and mentally healthy, if they get better at regulating emotionals and relationship and capacity, like, they will be better inside of work and better outside of work. We're not trying to make them better at the job. We need them to actually get better overall. And that's sort of how we invested our training over the years. Years.

Yeah. I love it. And then you have so many great frameworks in your book, including the capacity building roadmap. What's the capacity building roadmap specifically?

Yeah, so, so when we think about. Are you talking about the, the, the. Is that the chart?

Yeah, chart. I loved it.

Yeah. So I think that was the real epiphany that was there in the book of, of where it's hard. It's a, it's a visual.

It's a visual link to a visual.

But I'll talk to it. But it's basically you know, you have a slope that is the growth of the organization and then you have people that are either on that slope or they're below that slope, or they're above that slope. And if they're totally below that slope and they imagine someone comes in, they have no ability to get better and you're growing 30% a year, they are just going to be an underperformer right away. Someone right on the line, I think is, I always say, is the a player in that they're the right person, the right place, the right time. You need a director of marketing, they're a director of marketing. You need a VP of marketing. It's rare that someone stays right on the line, particularly if the growth is 30% a year. A unicorn is someone who actually gets better than your needs. But most people are sort of in this zone between the growth of the organization and then you know where they are. And again, so it was like, how do you coach them up to the line? How do you try to keep as many people eligible? Because let's just say it's a function like accounting or marketing is easier. Initially, the head of marketing in a business is the an associate. And then you're going to need a manager and then you're going to need a director. Well, probably you'll need all of them. But you know, as much as that person could rise up, they have a really hard time. They have a very hard time when they were number one, but number one was an associate level and then they become number two or number three, you know, because you need, you need that skill set above that. So that sort of whole capacity building zone to me is both the opportunity and the challenge for organizations.

Yeah, I really love that. I mean, I think you're also, your point is so accurate that like, you know, the associate goes into the manager, to the director, to the vice president. And you know, either they could because they have like a year or two years or whatever it is, but depending.

On that growth rate, it might be unrealistic, right?

Exactly.

For instance, if you're growing 100% a year and you are a bookkeeper and you're the lead finance person, you're not going to be a CFO in three years.

Right.

It's just not. And I talk about a friend who actually made that mistake and it cost him a million dollars. So that's where that person has to understand that it's great they've moved from bookkeeper to controller, but experienced CFO is coming in, is going to be a mentor. You Know to you.

Right, right, exactly. You know, but I also like that you break it up, the notion of capacity into these categories. Spiritual capacity, emotional capacity, intelligence, you know, and then also like physical capacity. Was there an epiphany that you had that kind of made you think that.

Or was it years of service, a nine month epiphany? After my book got rejected my Friday Florida, they said, what is the actual story of these stories? And I went back and looked at what I had done to improve my life and what we were doing in the organization to improve the organization. And I kept looking at the themes and the categories and I kept grouping them and I was like, huh, this is what we're doing, we're helping people figure out, you know, and spiritual is not religious. Like their core values, their strengths, what they're getting at. Intellectual capacity is like discipline, learning. Like we would talk to people about their morning routine and you know, financial literacy and like all these things so that you could just get better and be a better learner in these areas. But you know, physical capacity, we had people running races and doing stuff and we were flexibility, like we did not want people to work, you know, to death. And then emotional we would do, we did a whole thing in one of our events where people gave these speeches called One Last Talk. So vulnerability and psychological safety is a big part of that. So they got up there in front of the company and gave these like it's called One Laugh Talk speech. Like if I was going to leave the world tomorrow, like here's the speech. And it was usually something deep that no one knew about them. And so just we always had these sort of activities to encourage people to share more and be real and you know, understand their, their colleagues more. And so eventually I realized those were the same frameworks. And when I looked at sort of my personal development framework and when I looked at what our training framework was like, it was these same things and they're super interconnected. So for example, like if you're burnt out and your physical capacity is super diminished, you lose sight of your goals, you lose sight of what matters. You're, you're, your relationships with other people, you get cranky with them. Like it's not, you know, you lose your patience, like all the other area, you lose your discipline, like all the other areas are impacted.

Yeah, I think that's so accurate. I think we also don't talk about that. I mean even just your labeling it spiritual or also, you know, the physical capacity. I, I, as you know, I'm a fitness Fanatic. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm Kettlebell. Kettlebells. Exactly.

They're all over Instagram.

Exactly. I do my kettlebells and I work out with a fitness trainer, and it's taken me years to build that physical capacity. And because I grew up an overweight kid and I grew up in a family that didn't move. So it's very important.

Comes back. All comes back.

Totally, totally. All comes back to. I totally agree. And I think the reason I'm bringing that up is because I think we underestimate the things that are acting on us at work. Right. So if you're feeling healthy, you're going to be a better performer. It's not just about intelligence, and it's just not about job skill. It's about the other pieces around.

Your employees are not different people inside the office, outside. I always just say it's not that they have poor financial literacy at home. They have terrible eating, and they're exhausted and disorganized, and they show up to work and they're like, all over the budget. Like, it just. And by the way, that's when people went to an office. Now they're literally the same person sitting at home. So if they're not different people, wouldn't it make sense to work on the whole person or understand that, like, if Alyssa is physically, totally burnt out because she doesn't have any time to do that, that. That is. There's a stat that, like, if you get. And this I have the example of. I don't think it's talked about it much, the negative example of Marissa Iyer in the book and what she did at Yahoo. But I think there's a stat that you get less than five hours of sleep at night. It's the equivalent to having, like, three to be.

Yeah, drunk driving.

Drunk driving. Yeah.

And like. But a lot of business, like, you don't. You would. You would send home a drunk employee from the office, but you might have just created the drunk employee who then called back into the office. Like, it actually doesn't. It doesn't make any sense.

Right, right. I know. I really appreciate the way you think about that. I want to talk about another word that you just mentioned. You talked about authenticity. So I'm curious what you think about authenticity, because to your point, you have these employees who, you know, they need to work on themselves in some ways. And we've also talked about how we're all unfortunately authentic at work in some ways because we're adding our childhood, you know, issues at the workplace. At the same time, we do need you to show up with vulnerability and authenticity. Right. To be a human being. So how do you square the circle about appropriate authenticity versus, like, spilling over? Authenticity?

Yeah. I mean, I don't, I think they're spilling over emotionally. Like, some people just don't have a, like a filter. Leaky. It's leaky. Like, like, I, I, I, I've always preferred the word authenticity to integrity because I think actually, and I know you've seen this, if you operate in a lot of different cultures, you would also find very different definitions of integrity. There isn't turning in. Your sibling who committed a crime in one country would be like, like, you know, the thing you should do in another. It shouldn't. But to me, authenticity is just alignment between someone who's thinking something, saying something, and doing something. They are not actually intentionally, like, mixing up those things. So it is, you know, that to me, is just being real and as a leader, being like, look, this is, this is my style. These are my strengths and weaknesses. This is why you'll like working with me. This is why you're not working with me. Not trying to be someone that you're not. The emotional piece of that that I think you touched on is different. I, I think I was just talking to someone about this in a different context. And I, I don't think a lot of leaders talk like, are willing. They, they don't talk about how they don't trust people who are overly emotional, but they don't. There is the, there is the right emotion for the context. For example, let's say we're contemplating doing a, a, a layoff, you know, in the world, and someone on our team gets really choked up and is saying, look, I just, that was the worst thing on my life, being on the other side of that. I don't want to be with like, that is like, appropriate emotion for the topic that we're talking about. Right. But if we're having a different conversation and they are bringing an emotion from some argument that they had with their friend a day ago, and so I don't know which one of them I'm going to get, and their response is just to what's actually happening in the moment, that that becomes a real problem. Now, look, we all have things that go on, like if something terrible happens and you're not paying attention at work, you should be able to tell someone that and step out and sort of go away. Or that should be the exception, not the rule. But we all know these people who Come in and you're like, which Alyssa are we gonna get today? You know, we don't. We don't know what we're gonna get. And if, if that people start to avoid people like that.

That's so true.

And leaders don't trust people like that. So you need to be able to. To regulate. I'm not telling people to suppress their emotions or not pretend that bad things are happening. But it's just like anything if you do it every day versus, like, we all have a crisis and you're like, look, I'm just not in it today. Like, my mom's in the hospital with COVID and like, I'm a mess and like, I need to go home. Like, everyone should be like, totally. But there are people who do that all the time and it exhausts people.

Right. And also to your point of unpredictability, I love what you just said. It's really about consistency and alignment and also your ability to regulate. Really? That's self awareness and regulate and self regulation.

Like what you said. Like we were talking about, like I would expect, let's say we were talking about like letting people get out of work and have them being physically healthy. And you talked about this in your childhood and you got emotional. I. I would actually expect that because that's relevant. Right. To what you're bringing. The emotion showing that you that the topic we're talking about you really care about. Like, we don't want unemotional robots that we're working with. But to me, that's where the emotion and the context is important.

Right, Right. I love it, Bob. It's so powerful. How have you personally grown as a leader in the past few years, would you say?

Yeah, I mean, I've had to totally evolve my role. So. So I feel like I used to use this chart and now it's. Now it's me kind of leaders saying that. Like, the thing that's interesting about sports coaches and leaders that I've noticed is that like, the sports coach can never cross the line. They can never walk into the game, they can never take the ball. Like, they actually have to explain, talk, whatever. And too many leaders just walk in and fix the problem and take the ball and shoot it. And so in this transition, in order for this to work, I, as someone who gets involved in stuff, I have really had to respect that line, stay way back from that line and say, look, that's not my accountability, not my responsibility. Actually, you need to talk to Matt about that. So that has been a very. Where it Was always sort of a gen link fan. It's like a concrete thing now that I need to stay. It's electric fence I need to stay with.

That's your own self regulation challenge. Yeah, yeah, I love that. I guess. You know, you're so, you come across as very confident also. You're all about like testing and learning and you're very entrepreneurial. Have you ever experienced imposter syndrome or severe self doubt?

Yeah, I think, I don't know. I think you say everyone had. Except for, except for the people who haven't are the people that should have in a lot of cases. Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah. I mean always, I think at different points where, you know, you turn around and you have a company of 100 people and they're like, these people like know who I am. They know I was a C student. Like, you know, so I, I think at all different points and then, you know, you publish a book and then you're like, geez, why would anyone want to read my book? They want to listen, you know, to what I have to say. So I, you know, we've had a lot of people over the years or people on the team or some leaders, you know, come and say that they're struggling with imposter syndrome. And I was always like, that's good. I'd be much more worried, you know, if you were way, way overconfident. It's usually the best people that, that come to you and tell you that they're struggling from imposter syndrome, which is, which is kind of interesting. So, yeah, I think that, I think, I think when I first time, I do every. And you know, first time you get on the stage, these people pay me to be on stage. But you, you, you talk yourself into it after a while.

Yeah, what, what advice do you have for other people to talk themselves into it?

I, I think, I think practice like I, I again, I use a lot of sports analogies and I know they're controversial, but I think that there's stuff that the sports world does well and you don't do something. In the business world, we do something for the first time on stage that we have not practiced. If you think of theater or sports, you never do that. You practice it like 100 times. And so, you know, I just, like, I, there was a story I wrote last year about going to this speech and you know, checking in with the desk and doing everything and all the things that I do before I speak, having learned that like, and I actually go through this routine. I wrote about it. A month later my AV went out completely for 20 minutes of a keynote speech. And if you're not ready for that. And the guy after me was a world renowned expert in what he was talking about at the conference. But he got on the conference and made a horrible opening which was I'm not a professional speaker like Bob, which is not how you want to start a thing. He did not pay attention to the clock in the back of the room. He did not have his computer hooked up in advance. If someone was advancing his slides, he had 120 slides for 30 minutes and they had to hook and pull the guy off stage. It's not that he just didn't practice, you know, he didn't go through the steps and otherwise. And like I have every dongle in the world in my bag to connect to like old VGA monitors, like kind of assuming everything is going to go wrong.

Details and preparation. I love it. I love it. That's amazing. Bob, you just a couple more questions. What do you wish you had known earlier on your journey?

Yeah, I mean I wish I had known my values earlier. I think just it's such a clear decision making architecture. I also, you know, if I was giving advice to people just starting out, I think that say like you're totally underpaid in your 20s no matter what you do. So it's absolutely more important to get under the best leaders and the best learning environments that you can get in. And the difference that that makes later on is tremendous. I actually think it's really interesting. I'm sure you've seen this. You'll find like, can't remember Jeff Weiner at LinkedIn? I think he worked for Jamie Dyke. How all these people came out of other trees of leaders or teams and organizations where they work for. And I see people jumping around for an extra thousand dollars or $2,000 or whatever and it's just not going to matter. Like versus how much can you learn and how can you get under the best leaders at that point?

Yeah, totally. You know, Jim Collins also called that who luck. The idea of even finding the best people who will then take you on, that's like the very important thing. I love it.

Yeah, you'll always be underpaid in your 20s so you shouldn't get too patient. And then the day you turn 30 you can start becoming overpaid.

Yeah, totally, totally. And Bob, last question. What advice do you have for other founders as they embark on their journey to grow into leaders?

Yeah, so it's having that discussion. Do you do you. Do you want to reinvent yourself? You know, a lot of founders come from a discipline. I was a marketing. Some are finance, some are sales or otherwise. And some call themselves CEO and make the transition to that CEO role. First of all, you shouldn't call yourself CEO if you are running every position in your company. You should call yourself president until you have an actual executive team. You're a little bit misleading yourself. But again, do you want to do the work for that role or you just want the title? And I think that's really important. Are you happier as sales? Are you happier with someone else doing that stuff? And then I think as things evolve and grow, I would constantly reevaluate, again, what do you want and where are you might change. You might go from not having kids to having kids to having kids that are about to leave for college. And that changes what you want. Perfect. Personally or otherwise. You may have health stuff. And then what does the business need objectively? And then where's the. Where's the intersection between those two? And that's what it was for me. Like, my kids are all getting ready to leave, like what the business needs. Like, it. It was just very clear that it was time for a different decision. So I think, yeah, and I think it's just being really honest with yourself. It's probably separating from that ego and having a real discussion around, am I. Am I doing this because I feel like I should do it or am I doing it because I want to do it?

Amazing. Great advice. Great advice.

Bob.

It's such a pleasure to talk to you. I love, I love how animated our conversations are and I love how energetic you are. And this book, elevate your team. It's fantastic. Everybody should go read it. And you should also listen to Bob's podcast, also called Elevate, and go check out his other work. So thanks for joining me today.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks for listening to From Startup to Grown Up. If you like what you heard, give it a review on Apple Podcast so other people can find it. And if you know of a founder or someone else who is meant to be on this podcast, drop me a line through my website, alyssacon.com.