#37: Robert Glazer, Founder and CEO of Acceleration Partners — the importance of values and purpo...

Welcome to From Startup to Grownup, the podcast. My name is Alisa 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 bestselling author of 4 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 and I had an 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 Your 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 underdiscussed 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 gonna love it. So please enjoy my wonderful conversation with Bob Glaser, founder of Acceleration Partners and author of Elevate Your Team.

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

Thanks for having me, Alisa Cohn.

I'm thrilled because there's so much to say, so much to talk about. Bob, you're a bestselling 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—

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

Well, we'll see about that. I sort of, 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, 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, while 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 it intentionally. You start doing some work, you get known, you're good, you hire a person, and you wake up and you're running an agency. Uh, I actually learned about affiliate marketing from the other side. Um, I, 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, a retail chain at the time that was doing mom and baby centers. And we were 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 they said, we don't know how to do that. Do you want to help us do that? And so I actually knew that one side of this. I was like, I don't know how to 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 Prints, as 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 I, you know, I guess I would just say this, Bob, so there you were, I, 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 hated the big companies I worked at and the politics. Every company I worked at for like, for 4, 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 are gonna 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 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 was like 500 words and 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 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 a, 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, you know, that sort of led me to more writing. And I took, well, 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 wanna go reread it. So I went, I went and did that and that ended up being the, my first book, Elevate.

Wow.

Wow. That's, 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, uh, some of our companies like we should start a podcast and we were in performance marketing and they said, you know, I said, well, 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, and so we actually decided to split it. So we would just, uh, the, the original podcast was called Outperform. So I would literally start over, because if you don't know about podcasts, which, which you do, which I do, you 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 re-recorded the intro, and I was like, look, this is the— it's a good lesson. There are things that are painful, but they're 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 3 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 writing.

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, 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 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 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, you 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 downloads. And I did say in that, I was like, look, 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 gotta 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 and 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 5 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 then this is someone that our company was working with, right? So, there was definitely a halo effect. And I think people in this company struggled 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 comes back to you. And I'd always say to them, literally, people mention Friday Forward 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 written. Right. And It just has to do with where that person is at the time and did it help them that week or what, 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 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. I think it's easy for a person, but everything that people would 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 4 or 5 leader, you're gonna— it's gonna have to come from a place of authenticity and self-awareness. And, and I think when we teach our leaders and coach our leaders, that I always give an example myself, like, I started leading Managing people, it was like a patchwork quilt. It was like, I had this great boss, Alisa Cohn, and I'm going to do the thing that Alisa liked, or I had this terrible boss, Alisa Cohn, and I'm going to do the opposite of what Alisa did. So some of that stuff worked for me and some of that stuff wasn't me. And when you break it down to the core values, like you really understand that. So we would bring our, we'd start bringing, I figured out for myself, then I built a process when we did this advanced leadership training with our next group of people, we'd bring them offsite for a couple of days and we'd do a bunch of different assessments and we'd 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 are— if you don't know what— 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, 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, they, they, when someone on their team is late for a meeting, when they miss an assignment, when they can't be found or to a quick call, like it is sending them signals that this is a threatening person who can't be trusted. And they don't, they didn't realize this. They didn't know how to communicate it. They didn't know how to say to the team, 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 late to the meeting because it's triggering something in them.

Great. Deep feelings that this person is threatening, they cannot be trusted, right?

Right.

And 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, your— 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.. 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 what a lot of these things— so I figured out 6 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 what are those questions?

What is—

what do you remember off top of your head?

Uh, yeah, I remember. So, so You know, name it. What is like a time you felt super engaged in your work? Or when did you feel really disengaged? Like, what specifically were you doing or otherwise? What's a quality in other people 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. The other— 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 for core values 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 could say, I did a good job, I did a bad job, or, 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, like, is that I'm someone who's constantly looking a year ahead or 6 months ahead or what can we do with the business otherwise. The business environment for anyone who's in a board meeting of the last 2 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. Yeah. 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, 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, 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. They started 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 gonna 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 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 And 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 won the Forbes Small Giants, 25 small businesses 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 have to be better at things. We have to look— you've seen world-class companies when they have onboarding, the person comes in and they don't see their desk for 2 weeks. They're sent to client service, they're sent to this, they're sent to that. Oh, 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 hurt. So we, like, we couldn't have people come to their computers and, and have nothing to do. So we built out scripted first 2 to 3 weeks of everything they were have to do. We had to have clear values, we had to have 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 gotta 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 gotta 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 gonna 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 wanna coach 'em up. But if you're not the fit for the core values, it's not gonna work. And if you can't do what we all decided we're gonna do, then we're gonna 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 2 years, like we're not, we can't ignore that. Right, right.

Um, I love the way you frame that, and, um, 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 gonna 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 in front of them. They've 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, whether at home so I can see what they're doing otherwise. And I, I, 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 type, type thing.

Totally not the best practice. Opposite, opposite of best practice.

I guess, 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 100 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, 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 2 to 3 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. Like, so you need to tell people if you're not available during normal hours. You can't just disappear. You can't just be unaccountable. It's kind of the exact same standard as if you were in an office. I— if you can go to your kid's 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 red line before, I'm just curious for you, um, 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. Um, and, uh, 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, and I remember being like, look, we could tell ourselves whatever we want. One of our core values is embracing relationships. Like, we could 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 marketing got harder. And we basically just didn't, didn't renew with them and just walked away from that.

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

You know, when we're looking at comps and stuff, look, I have no doubt we would have lost more people. Yeah, I think when you cut deadwood or stuff, something, a green shoot always 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's 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's not great, but if we factor in the turnover and the cost of the turnover, it might not actually be making any money. Yeah, it 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 by it? But you do break that stuff. And I think for a company to get 30% better a year, for leaders to want to be willing to double their ability every couple 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, from a million to 10 million, I wanted to be the CEO. From 10 million And when I started like looking at a $40, $50 million a year revenue organization, what the role of 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 skunkworks. And so, you know, when it came time for that next turn, I was like, 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 2-year transition process. Uh, so, so about, and, 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's gonna 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 6 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, 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 report to me. Like, Matt's gonna now be the face of the company and I'm gonna 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 it piece by piece.

Yeah, I was pulling out of stuff and, you know, yeah, we, I mean, we brought on an investor, a private equity. So, you know, people react to change pretty well if it's not like all at once. Yeah. If it's a, what is it, something they, they love progress, but they hate change. I like that 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.

Yeah.

Was there a moment of truth that you really got this, or was it that also an evolution?

I think, you know, 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 like, 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 you're CEO and though you're, you know, you're friends with the, you know, M.H.P.P.D. or all this, like, like being CEO, like that's the reward for all that, you know, working. Like it's hard for people to give that up. I can that, but I, I think I, I was able to see what I actually wanted, what the organization needed. Um, and again, at each one of those doublings, 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, this is what the job of a CEO of a 300-person company is. It is to have an 8-person team and manage them and spend their time with them and the meetings and manage the board. And, 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 when maybe the 2 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 the HIPAA, 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 the board and I was like, I actually think let's push the date up. Like, 'cause I feel like I'm mentally there and I don't want to do that.

Yeah.

I don't want to sort of be deadweight walking around again.

Yeah. Wow. 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, you know, thing anymore. So.

Right. Right.

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

Yeah.

I love it.

That'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 of 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 asked for my— outside of the marketing ones, I wrote— yeah, I actually wrote Friday Forward first, but that was the one everyone rejected. So I wrote Elevate, then Friday Forward came out during COVID I wrote the How to Make Virtual Teams Work. Oh, right.

Right.

And this was sort of always going to be the— we actually pushed this back a year because of COVID and the virtual teams. And this, this was all the— so L&D 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, why we were able to grow that fast and, 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 are— get better at discipline, if they understand their values, if they're physically and mentally, uh, 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. Um, and that's sort of how we invested our, our training 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, um, 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 where, um, it's hard. It's a, it's a visual.

It's a visual.

We'll 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 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 2 years or whatever it is.

But depending on that growth rate, it might be unrealistic, right?

Exactly.

That's— For instance, if you're growing 100% a year.

Yeah.

And you are a bookkeeper and you're the lead finance person, you're not gonna be a CFO in 3 years.

Right.

It's just not. And, 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 gonna 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.

Yeah.

Was there an epiphany that you had that kind of made you think that, or it was a, it was the years of service?

It was a 9-month epiphany after my book got rejected, My Friday Forward. And 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 good 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 of 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 walk people to work, you know, to death. And then emotional. We would do— we did a whole thing at 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 Last 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, 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, your, your, your, your relationships with other people, you get cranky with them, like, it's not you know, you lose your patience, like all the other areas, you lose your discipline, like all the other areas.

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

kettlebells.

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. Because I grew up an overweight kid and I grew up in a family that didn't move. So it's very important.

It all comes back. All comes back.

Totally.

Totally.

All comes back to child. 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 skills, but the other pieces around it.

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 Alisa Cohn is physically totally burnt out because she doesn't have any time to do that, that, that is, uh, there's a stat that like if you get— and this I have the example of, I don't think you've talked about it much, the negative example of Marissa Mayer in the book and what she did at Yahoo. But I think there's a stat that if you get less than 5 hours of sleep a night, it's the equivalent to having like 3 to be drunk driving.

Yeah.

And like, but a lot of business, like you don't, you would You would send home a drunk employee, right? 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 spilling over authenticity?

Yeah, I mean, I don't— I think the spilling over emotionally, like some people just don't have a, like, a filter. Leaky. It's leaky. Like, like, I, I, I've always preferred the word authenticity to integrity because I think actually, and I know you've seen this, if you've operated 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. Um, 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, 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 in 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 gonna get and their responses just to what's actually happening in the moment, 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 Alisa are we gonna get today?" Yeah. You know, we don't know what we're gonna get. And if that's, 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 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-y 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." I need to go home. Like, everyone should be like, totally. But there are people who do that all the time, and it's exhaust— it exhausts people, right?

And also, to your point, unpredictability. I love what you just said. It's really about consistency and alignment and also your ability to regulate. Really, that's— I mean, 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 would actually expect that because that's relevant, right, to what we're— 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, uh, 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, 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, and, you know, say, look, that's not my accountability, not my responsibility. Actually, you need to talk to Matt about that. Like, so, so that has been a very, you know, where it was always sort of a, a chain-link fence, it's like a concrete thing now that I, I need to stay— it's electric fence.

I need to stay That's your own self-regulation challenge. Yeah, I love that. Um, 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 has, except for— except for the people who have it 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 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, um, I, 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'm always like, that's good. Like, I'd be much more worried, you know, if you were way, way overconfident. Um, 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. Um, but you, you, you talk yourself into it after a while.

Yeah. And 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, like, so, 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.

Yeah. I think mistake.

Did not pay attention to the clock. In the back of the room. He did not have his computer hooked up in advance, so 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, um, 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 I'd say like, you're totally underpaid in your 20s no matter what you do. So like, it's absolutely more important to get under the best leaders and in 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, I can't remember, Jeff Weiner at LinkedIn, I think he worked for Jamie Dive, how all these people like came out of like other trees of leaders or great teams in organizations where they work for. And I see people jumping around for an extra $1,000 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 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 wanna reinvent yourself? You know, a lot of founders come from a discipline. I was in 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. You might— are you happier as sales? Are you happier as, you know, with someone else doing that stuff? And then I think, I think as things evolve and grow, I would constantly reevaluate again, what do you want? Where are you? It 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 personally or otherwise. You may have health stuff. And then what does the business need objectively? And then where's the intersection between those two? And that's what it was for me. My kids are all getting ready to leave, what the business needs, it was just very clear that it was time for a different decision. So I think, yeah, and to be, 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 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 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 Grownup. If you like what you heard, give it a review on Apple Podcasts 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, alisacohn.com.