204: Robert Glazer — Adapting to a New Normal

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Well, these are unprecedented and challenging times and yet there are lessons from people navigating these times now and from the.

Past that we can take some lessons and experience and principles from.

So listen as I talk with Robert Glaser about some interesting things that are really relevant for our leadership today.

Some great stories.

Hi there, I'm Bill Gallagher, Scaling coach and host of the show. This show is all about how to scale and grow your company no matter what the economy looks like right now, no matter what industry you're dealing with.

Or what part of the world you're in.

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We'll give you the book for free.

Listen in now as we talk with Robert Glaser.

All right.

I'm joined now by Robert Glaser. He's founder managing director of Acceleration Partners and he's also founder chairman of Brand Cycle. He's a serial entrepreneur. He's the creator host of Friday Forward. Did I get all that right?

Robert got it all right.

He's got a great podcast, blog, et cetera, and I wanted to have him on to talk about some of the things he's been writing about lately. I thought it was super timely and relevant and just a great guy to talk to. So I think you have some great stories to share. I notice as we're getting set up for this thing that I'm just super exhausted today. So as we record this right. A couple of events happened yesterday. I Was really busy. I was doing planning session with one of our teams, and then. Then I had to deal with a thing with my daughter. And then that caused a couple things and then that I didn't anticipate in helping to deal with that. And then I had a commercial tenant give notice that they were going to exit their lease early and wanted to negotiate. And I'm like, oh, Jesus now. And I just had this anxiety, like, oh, I thought I was helping everyone else and that I was in good shape. And then yesterday I just had this like, oh, it's gonna be messy for me too. And I live in this lovely house in this great neighborhood and feeling a little bit like the world is great all messed up, but I'm great, so I'm gonna help everyone. And then I just couldn't sleep last night. Just not like with any specific, like, oh, my God, the sky is falling. But just like, oh, there's stuff to deal and I have to deal with it directly. Right?

Yeah. Look, no one, no one is gonna emerge unscathed. I think it's just where you are in the. In the domino line. And, you know, it's interesting what you said, I think, because you can look at that both ways. I think like, oh, I'm gonna be okay. I'm gonna help people. Or, you know, I wrote about this sort of downstream thinking downstream, or like, you know, I'm gonna be hurt, but there are going to be people that are hurt worse than me. So it will help me actually to focus on them and not on myself. Right. I mean, they're good to be busy. They're similar than different. I do see the people that are struggling the most have a very centrist view of the whole thing, of what it means to them. I mean, I have some friends who are. Their businesses are going through Christ, but they're working nights to raise money and do mass drives and help their local community. And I think you do need an anchoring source of purpose to kind of get through some of this.

It's good. When I came back, I was on before the crisis got really serious where we are, I was on a seven country speaking and conference tour.

Sounds like a Covid tour.

It totally sounds like it. Right. And I noticed as we were getting ready to leave, the news was. But it was localized. It was largely China. And then all of a sudden it was Italy. And I'm like, oh, I'm very close to Italy. And then I thought, well, we could get stuck somewhere. What could happen? I was starting to worry about that as we left. I'm like, we're going to just charge ahead because it still seems like it's away from us. And then as I started transit airports, I was starting to notice, oh, in the Bahrain airport, they're stopping people who appear Asian and they're giving them temperature checks and stuff, but Western business guy sailing right through. And so I started to notice little things like that. And then more and more awareness. As I got to Greece, there was now suddenly there was only fist bumping. And it progressed as I circled. Yeah, it was quite a remarkable experience. The, yeah, the speed.

The speed has been logarithmic. I mean, my wife asked me to edit. There's a trip we were going on this summer and she had asked the person like what the plans were two weeks ago. And she now was kind of following up again. And I was asking me to look at her email from two weeks ago. It just seemed like it was from two years ago, you know, in terms of the context of what we were even willing to do two weeks ago versus today.

So our sun is exceedingly bright and a little bit anxious. And while we're in Greece, which would have been like the end of February, third week of February. And he's like, well, you really need to go and order all these supplies and equipment now. Not a ventilator machine, but like home oxygen machine and things like that and lots of medicines and supplies. So we're reluctant, but he's like, well, if you don't do it, I'm going to order it all and send it to you. Not a small amount of money going out to this stuff, which felt really silly. And I felt. And yet I did it. And now I'm like, oh, it's really good.

I have that stuff. Well, it's an interesting point. I haven't talked to anyone who, who regretted acting too early. In fact, it was probably about a month ago when we started to see some of the kind of watching Asia and then Italy and starting to see some of the projections. And we could, we could just see like, we just froze hiring, Stop Travel, canceled all our conferences. And I know a lot of the people on our team are like, why are we doing this? Like, this seems pretty, pretty rash. And yeah, at the time I rationale was like, look, these things are all like, actually had we not moved all those conferences and canceled that stuff? And this was. Remember I said we're moving logarithmically. So like one of those conferences supposed to be today and a month ago. It seems like crazy to cancel a conference Right. And I was like, look, we can get our deposits back now. We can move the dates. What I'm. When, as I play this out, I don't want to get stuck in London. I don't want people to cancel last minute and then that'll really destroy the conference. So. And people are like, why are we freezing hiring? I was like, because we should do that for three weeks until we see, like, what's going on here in terms of traveling and bringing people in. And so, yeah, I think I scared some people early, but I don't regret.

Anything that we did early.

Yeah. Because in these environments, and I think I've stressed this to my team, there's two things I stress a lot. One's like, the risk of being short is much worse than the risk of being long. We had a point last year where we were like 10 people understaffed and people were really stressed. And I said, I get it, and we're working on it. But this is. We've had record years of no recession. Like, real stress is not enough work to do when you're worrying about your job. Like, real stress is not. We have more work to do than people. I understand that it's stressful, but, like, that's a. That's a solvable. That's a solvable problem. So, yeah, it's been interesting.

Well, we got back and it was. We started to self isolate a distance about March 8th on return. And I would suppose on our trip we were already like, not handshaking anymore and no cheek kissing in Europe and that kind of thing. So we were doing that. Then we come back, we start to do that. Then on the Friday of that week, we're like, yeah, we're just gonna self isolate at home now. We're done. And then on the Monday, they issued the order for the Bay Area in California, Northern California, to stay at home. We're like, oh, well, that helps us because it's like, encourages everyone else as well to do it. And over that week, things had started to cancel, but I woke up feeling like, okay, everything just changed. I have to do something to contribute and be helpful. So I got really, really busy and my wife was kind of like, well, what am I doing? What am I doing? And then one of our friends, Ayelet Waldman, chimed in, like, we need to help local restaurants and help the ER and everybody needs to contribute. And so she started this East Bay feed er and then Lori joined her. And so there as today, by the time this airs, I don't know what it'll be at. But today I think they're feeding 250er personnel with meals from local restaurants and paid for by, you know, people in the area. And East Bay, FDR is the. Is the website in the group. And they've now joined a national group that's doing these kinds of programs that's pivoted to helping connect local restaurants who are dying to stay alive.

Right.

And who often aren't operating with a huge surplus anyway. And then giving people a way to contribute and then helping the ER staff, which who are, of course, on the front lines care of people right now. It's really great to find ways to deal with things, isn't it?

Yeah. And take your focus to other people and how you can help. Yeah. Look, we all have our talent. Like, I would, you know, if you put me or any of my family near a hospital, we would injure more people than anywhere. So, you know, what I'm good at is marketing and getting supply and demand and helping people figure out the right message. So I think the thing we're all trying to contribute with our gifts. So that's where I've been trying to offer my time. Like helping businesses think about how to pivot what they can do. Get their marketing online. Yeah. Save their business because they have no revenue. And we don't all help in different ways. But even business leader, I think you need a purpose in terms of. I've narrowed my purpose during this time to how do we keep the most people working? How do we keep our clients working? How do we keep our team working? How do we use our business model, you know, to do that? Because, you know, you need that. Like, it's not, it's not pretty. Like if you look at the news, if you stuff. No.

There's no sugar coating it.

Right. It's not going to feel good. So I think we need to understand, like, what's the enduring thing to get through and how do we keep focused on something that is not the. The death count every day?

So let's talk about. I've had. I looked at some of the stories you had. I thought it'd be useful for you to share with them that you've been sharing your Friday forward. And I've had a number of clients asking me lately, well, isn't it just going to be like, all business frozen, no new deals, no closing anything, all projects stopped until this whole thing is over, until the virus is killed, until we're off home. And I'm like, I think that although we're kind of in shock And I'm like reacting and my wife's reacting with what can we do? And just like somewhat, a little bit strategic, but also somewhat, just reactive to playing to strengths and purpose. But there comes a time when you kind of settle into a difficult circumstance for some extended period of time. So talk to us about your visit to the Churchill War Room.

Yeah. So it's interesting how different things have come together for me. And that was part of a Friday Ford I wrote called the New Normal. And I've even seen this over the last couple weeks. I remember it from 9, 11, I remember it from 2018, 19, where you're first watching these. And one of my first tough days, three days in, just watching the news, being like this isn't going to be okay, and just feeling terrible and just a lot of dread that night because this is all new stuff you're watching and it's scary, but eventually you become a little desensitized to it and that's a good thing. So I remember being in the church and they were telling the story about the UK and during that time in World War II and the German blitz and the Germans basically figured if they just bombed London every day for a year, that the people would kind of cave and surrender. And what happened in reality was they did that, but 99.8% of the people would wake up every day alive and they weren't impacted and they just kind of became like, they just kind of became impervious to it and the bombs went on and it didn't terrorize. You know, you think about terrorism, right? The point is, is to cause more fear than the actual act. And that's what, that's what this stuff does in the news cycle. It's, it's almost a form of terrorism that we're doing to ourselves because the fear is worse than the reality. It's not like all your neighbors are dropping dead, right? Which is the equivalent coverage that we have versus what you would have on an ongoing basis for car crashes or cancer or. I just read 200,000 people have died from malaria this year. Right. So there are some, you know, there's some comparisons there so that, that, that it reminded me of that story because I think the same is true for people here. They're still in the sort of shock phase, but, but every day that they wake up, someone they know is sicker, gets better. Look, bad stuff is going to happen, terrible stuff's going to happen. But for 98% of the people, it will be not life threatening or life destroying. Eventually you Just become a little callous to that and the news and all that stuff, which is actually a good thing, because I think it just allows you to be like, this is the new normal. And now what do I do?

Right. I think that's a really useful lesson for myself from history to think about and for some of my clients. I was talking to a friend who actually in the uk, and I'm like, you got this more than you realize. You're born of these people. A friend of mine, clearly born a generation or two after World War II, but I'm like, we deal with this. So after a while, you settle into something and you incorporate it. So there are, of course, great impacts. There are people profoundly ill. There are people actually dying, and not insignificant numbers of them. Right. And we begin to know, like, I already know people that have lost people, and I know people that are currently sick and that kind of thing. So those are real impacts. And then you get overwhelmed. Hospitals. And so, like, if you look around New York now, or what happened recently.

It'S terrible, scary stuff.

It's really scary. Right. But in spite of that, I think then. And people losing their jobs, and then people are like, oh, I can't pay my rent, and I can't. So there's all these kinds of impacts going on, but then at some point into it a little bit, there is an acceptance of an enormalization of whatever the hell is going on.

Yeah. And it sounds callous, but it's just the process of. As I said, look, I'm not on this thing of bashing the media, and I understand they've got a job to do, but if we reported every death of cancer every day and every car crash, you could scare people from getting in their car or doing anything. Right. So there is a. There is a. Understandably, because it's very viral, but there's a microscope, you know, on this now where, unfortunately, like, this. This happens during these crises. Like, not every death is. Is treated equally. Like, it's equally as tragic that someone just died of cancer today. Like, that had nothing to do with COVID 19. But that won't be highlighted. They won't be on the news. They won't be talking to their next of kin. Um, so. So that. That. That's the problem is this is just new for us, and it's a lot of shock. And I think when. When. When. When we build up those sort of emotional calluses a little bit, then we can kind of like, pull up our pants and be like, all right.

And we also don't know.

Right. We don't know how big and how long and how personal it's going to get. Like we don't know any and we don't know all the downstream effects. But I think the thing that I was noticing is that at some point you embrace kind of the ongoing situation and then even after the thing abates, there are lasting changes. Right. We still have expanded security at airports today because of what happened to 9, 11.

All over the world, people from the Great Depression still save lives, right? Yeah.

My grandfather lived through the Great Depression in World War II and it markedly changed him forever in both good and bad ways. I mean, it had him save more and be more frugal. It also had him not enjoy some of the money that he had as well.

But I think it's useful for him.

The notion that no business will get done or whatever. It's not true. We're already seeing little moves in places and people will have to do something.

Somewhere and that can't be true. Right. Because you need food, you need supplies, you need basic stuff. So if you shut down the whole thing. Look, if we had done that early and just had a 30 day pause, we might have been able to head this off. But, but yeah, I mean, I actually think the struggle now is that we're operating with a blunt instrument because we were behind it. What we need to start doing is figuring out. I wrote some this morning about like how to test people for antibodies, how to figure out who's had it, like who can go back out and work and a little, a little more of a sort of Korea and Japan approach so that we can kind of keep the people who are at risk at risk. But now all the people who've had it and have immunity, they should be in the warehouses, they should be going back. Those are the people we need out there.

So I was sick in early February and it was kind of nasty for a little bit and then lingered. And I think it isn't. It wasn't, but it could have been. And God, I would love to have that antibody test. But if you think about, you want.

To know whether you need to hide in your house or not.

Right. How much do I need to hide?

Right.

Because look, I might, might start delivery driving or something for people as a volunteer. But I think that there's an interesting thing. When we do get widespread testing both for current viral load and for presence and then for antibodies that'll change things when it's really widespread. But up until now, they refuse to test you, even if you suspect it, like, no, you have to really have slept with someone who. It's criminally short. Right. And then you could see some remedies getting developed. Like, a lot of things could change. But even then, people are going to be now, like, okay, wait, we have to have a pandemic plan, and there's going to be pandemic prep and supplies and protocols, and all of that stuff's going to come next.

I mean, we've spent decades preparing for war and advanced weapons and all this stuff. And more people are going to be killed by this than any war. We've been, you know, involved then.

So that's maybe a good segue to the UP student who was living or is living in Wuhan. Talk about what you noticed there.

Yeah, so it was interesting. And when I read that article, this goes to the sort of just acceptance. But, you know, he was home for the new year, got locked down in Wuhan, you know, I think maybe was a sophomore at Penn, kind of hitting his prime, and initially was kind of really, like, depressed because he wasn't going to be at school. He couldn't go back. And then eventually he realized, like, he was really needed in his community to help people set up online. He became sort of essential in the ordering of food online and distributing it. And he realized, you know, what, he was with his family and all of his family rather than being, you know, in the US And. And which. Right. Funny now a month later, that looks like a really good choice.

But.

But being there, worried about them, not being able to see them. And so he just sort of flipped his mindset to like, look, this is where I'm meant to be. This is how I can be helpful. It's not the end of the world. And then it's funny, maybe two weeks after that article, all of his classmates were sent home to the show. He really wasn't missing anything. It's going to get that semester over, I think.

When I read that, I thought every epic story has a moment of crisis. And if you're going to have a big finish to this period, you could imagine it and what it looks like, say, three years down the road. And then write about how and think about how your character got from where you are today in the middle of this and how this created the perfect opportunity if you've lost your business, if you've lost your job, if you've lost your home, if you've lost or if a loved one is suffering right now. How is this the opening of one of the great stories of Your life.

Yeah, I know a lot of people don't want to hear this, but how many times have you. And I heard the story of the person who was just comfortable in that job and didn't like it. And then something happened, they got laid off and they went and started that business. Most people can't give up good for or decent for, maybe better. They need that push. So I think we're going to have a lot of voluntary and involuntary career changes. People coming out of this, doing different things and saying, look, I don't, I don't want to work for that, you know, bleep hole anymore. You know, enough is enough. You're also seeing where like your, your bad value decisions. So that job you didn't leave, where you didn't trust the, the owner of the company and because you were kind of paid well and it was comfortable, like now that's going to be really miserable. Right. And one of the articles I'm working on now is, you know, CBS six years ago gave up cigarettes because stop selling them and they lost 2 billion in revenue. And they said, look, if we're going to be CVS Health, we can't sell cigarettes. We want to get more into testing and health stuff. And they kind of lost a lot of revenue and were chided for making what was a values based decision. Well, how does that decision look today? Because their cigarette sales probably would have gone to zero given that that's the leading associative cause with people that are sick with this and they're adding people and really focusing on testing and health services. So I write a lot about core value. I think this is a really good time to make sure you're clear on your values because there's probably some people and some things you want to stick with because it's value aligned. And it's also probably the time to bail on some things in your life where you just haven't had the will to do it.

Yeah, well, it's interesting because there are like Apple Computer, right. Formed in 1976.

Yeah.

That was not like a super happy economic time.

No. It's also not an overnight success. If you've seen the chart of Apple, it was kind of like its hockey stick wasn't well into more than a decade of the business being out there.

Oh, 25 years in.

There's a lot of stories about businesses formed during recessions and when it's tough and solving a need or, or the person just lost their job and decided to go do what they always kind of deep down knew that they should do.

Yes, that they should do and, or that was needed. Right. You see a match between something that you're brilliant at and passionate at and that's needed and wanted now in the world and you find and begin to find that customer and the germ of it begins in that moment. Right.

Yeah, exactly. So I think it's going to happen voluntary and volunteer. I just, I just posted an article today on how I what I think the changes to all the generations coming out of this are. And I think Gen X to me is the most interesting. Right. This is their third like catastrophe from the beginning of their career to sort of middle of their career. And so I think you're going to have a lot of people either looking for their swan and song or looking for, you know, to finish strong on something that's, that's meaningful to them. Because to me they're like the generals coming home from the valiant battle saying, this is great, but I'm retiring before the next battle.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting. My kids were born in 97 and 99 and so when they were awfully young and not terribly conscious, we had September 11 happen and the economic impact of the dot com bust. And I had two technology companies in those days and so that we shut down. And then they mostly remember me working with my wife for years in her jewelry business and not the businesses that came before that. And then they saw us go through 2008 and the impact of that and then their world is filled with all the usual urban kinds of issues and political drama and then, and then climate issues in the background. Big concern for them. And they both have a, not a terribly optimistic view of the future, which is fascinating to me because I have kind of a different mindset.

Yeah, I was perfectly. These cycles are sort of for me, like perfect. So one was I came out of college in just a record ridiculous dot com boom and saw all that stuff which you wouldn't even believe the stories if people told it now. And then that whole bust, you know, very early and then, and then, you know, so then kind of recovered from that and then I think most people again are in there now they're in their prime. That group are sort of 40 and 50s, are most of the, you know, a lot of the CEOs and leading and you know, this is now the third. You know, these haven't been recessions. These have been like, we haven't had a, like normal recession, you know, in a while. These, these have been, you know, boom and just major bust cycles.

Big Big change. Well, I think in the last year and a half fall two years ago, I smoke got so bad from fires more than 100 miles away that we couldn't see across the street. And my wife got a little anxious and so we left town for two weeks and we just moved to la. We just pulled up and went to LA and found a neighborhood that was unaffected. Even though they had fires down there, they were blowing clear in a different direction. So we hung out in an Airbnb. I don't know if I'd want to stay in an Airbnb today. Then last year in the same fire season because of what had happened the year before, they shut off the power. So we had long periods of time with no power, which felt awfully third world. And there are places that live normally, like. But I don't have a backup generator, although maybe I should now.

Send you one of those.

Actually, I've been thinking about getting the solar panel and backup battery so that I'm more and more independent and diverse. Internet connection. Right. And then now this. It's kind of like surreal that in a year and a half we've got these major life intrusive events one after another.

Maybe the world is trying to tell us something. It's not lost on on me that this virus has totally attacked consumption. And I wonder with the world heating up and we're years away from sort of irreversible damage and don't seem to be doing a lot about it, and then suddenly nature took care of that for us or maybe bought us some time to get our act together.

Well, one of the groups we've supported for years is this group called the Pachamama Alliance. Lynn Twist and Bill Twist started in there. Their whole thing is this sort of two pronged thing. One, save the rainforest because of its importance to the source of medicine and the ecological balance of the planet and the indigenous people and like that kind of thing, but also alter the pace of consumption in the West. And they've supported things that we financially supported and helped, like the Drawdown book about what are concrete steps we can do to change that. But nothing's changed it like now. And I noticed as we walk around our neighborhood the reduced traffic and the tempo of the people. And then as I ride my bike around on largely empty streets and look down the highway and look past the hills and see almost no air traffic and very like it's all just kind of peaceful. And I'm like, why isn't it like this? Why is there such anxiety and traffic Accidents every day on most freeways and, and all, like, maybe there's some way to chill the F out even as we come out of this. Is there some way to bring a little more balance to.

Yeah, I think this is going to change behavior. It's going to be the equalizer. I've had a lot of other CEOs share to me that they, you know, we've been a remote company for almost 10 years now and have really built our business around it. I've had a lot of my friends and in CEO groups and forums share with me. They're worried that the jig is up now, that now that people work from home, they're going to realize they can do their work from home and they're not going to want to get in their car and commute an hour each way to work. So I do think we'll see some things change. I think, look, it's bringing, as Cuomo said, like in a lot of speeches, it just doesn't discriminate. It's putting everyone on a level playing field. It's forcing people to work together. And, and I think once we're through this, I'm hoping there was about, as you know, with the absence of a war, I think before this, our society was about as divisive as it's been globally. Ideologically. Nationalism, just no one can understand the other person's perspective. So I'm hoping there's some lessons.

Well, not to be political, but to use an example of leadership that is working right now. What are the styles and what you talked about? Cuomo tell a little bit about more what you notice about the tone and the approach that we can learn from it as business leaders.

Yeah. So first let me put a disclaimer because I see comments in my articles. I'm very centrist. I have voted. I am not registered and I'm voted for both parties in the last year. So anyone who wants to say that, I always say, have you ever voted for the other party? When they say if I look at someone's behaviors, I'm very much looking at people as leaders and not politicians. So very early on, I caught, and I really knew nothing about Cuomo. I didn't even realize he was Chris Cuomo's brother. I knew he's the governor of New York, but I really, I didn't know much about him. I couldn't even tell you what party he was in. I had, you know, seen him on some press conferences. But.

But I caught a couple tuned into politics. Right.

Yeah. I'm Trying to get too mired in the politics. But I just. I just saw one of his early press conferences and I read the transcript, and this was in the middle of the federal government, you know, and, you know, all kinds of mixed messages and stuff. And he was just really just so well spoken. You know, he stood up there, had control, and he really, like, split this thing that I think all leaders are struggling with right now, which is how do I tell people the truth and make them appropriately, like, concerned about things because it's not going to be good, but not panic them and cause fear. And he just, he was very factual. This briefing was just the pain, best thing I had seen from. From anyone. And I just caught it on a fluke. And then I think over the last couple weeks, he has really, you know, his stuff has been. His daily briefing has just become kind of known around the world as, like this. This is how you do this. He actually even said last night he announced that his brother Chris, who's the, you know, one of lead anchors on cnn, had it. And he talked about how Chris's. Their mom was at Chris's house a few weeks ago, and he said to Chris, like, Chris is a really bad idea. Like, you should not have mom in your house and all this stuff. And he was saying, and, you know, he was saying, my brother will be fine. He's not as tough as he thinks he is, but he's tough. But, you know, he kind of was chastising him for not following the rules. So I just, you know, irrespective of what you think of someone's politics, I definitely, you see in this time, leaders who rise to the occasion and who don't, and he's leading, he's telling people the truth, he's trying to keep them calm, but he's not sugarcoating it. He's like, he's like, this is me really bad, and here's what's going to happen, but here's what you can do, and here's what I need you to do.

Yeah. So clarity, real facts, non hyperbole. Humanity, Empathy, firmness. Consistent communication, regular communication. Right. What else are we missing about that?

Yeah. You said facts. Yeah. I don't know what the word. This balance of, like, optimism with realism, I think, because, you know, you had one of the things I was critical of in one of my writing, and again, I had a very partisan. People say, oh, you know, liberal or something, comments on whatever. But this was after, you know, Larry Kudlow and who's an economic adviser to the president And Kellyanne Conway, we know is a political operative, you know, came out a couple of weeks ago and said, you know, the virus is contained. And like, this is not. These are not the people who should be speaking about viruses. Yeah. So, you know, that was my comment. Like, look, when you see political operatives coming out and not science people and telling you that, I mean, they were told to say that. Likewise, you had the treasury secretary coming out and saying 10 days ago, I think we're going to skirt a recession. We're going to have the biggest quarterly drop in GDP in the history of this country. It's probably then going to be the biggest bounce back. But that's the problem, and that's been the communication strategy is having people. I mean, there's difference between being optimistic and seeing the light through the tunnel and just telling people stuff that's not true because then your credibility goes away. One of the things I stress with my team throughout this whole thing is do not make promises. Like, we can tell people the truth. We can tell them scenarios we can tell we're looking at. But I don't think anyone, it's moving so fast. I don't think anyone is a position to make promises because you might find yourself breaking that the next day.

No, you just can't predict and promise any of it. Now, you could model something, but none of the models reflect what some of the people who want to spin and predict and that. And of course, we've heard lots of people talking about Stockdale and his experience, relating how the sort of centrist realists were better off than either the pessimist or the optimists after extended captivity because they took that balanced approach. They didn't give up faith and hope, but they weren't naively optimistic that it was tomorrow or anything like that.

And think about companies and the people asking a CEO today, like, well, we have layoffs, you know, and I don't think anyone should say no. I think they should say, here's what we're looking at, here's what we're measuring at. Here's our cash, here's our metrics. It is the last thing in the world that we would want to do. But there's no business that can stand 75% drop in revenue and not have be able to furlough or lay off its staffing. So if you tell people that you're not going to do that and then you're put a position a week later to do it, that's very different than telling them that is the last possible resort and here's what we're going to do before that. And then when they see that you've.

Reached that point, well, and you know what I think gives a lot of access to all of this is if as a leader, you remember that this is not about you. This is about the team and the, the partners and the customers and the enterprise that you serve. Your leadership is in service of all of that. And this is not about you. This is this company, this enterprise, this whatever you want to lead. If you want to be effective, you'll know that even if your name is on the door, it's not about you. It's about something you stand for, something you're committed to. And that gives you access to a kind of leadership that is way more powerful and effective where you can speak the truth to people, not talking down to them as people who are small and can understand, but as people who together can shoulder the challenge that you.

Face and empower them. Right? So, I mean, look at the rest. If you're a restaurant, this was early and you said, guys, I need your best ideas because we need to pivot to a delivery and a prepared food restaurant like ASAP or we won't have anything to do. Now you're having people, you know, instead of feeling helpless, they're feeling part of the solution. And there's a guy in our town who has a deli a few towns over. He has built this incredible word of mouth business like a super high end deli. So instead of ordering the supermarket, he packs it together, he drops it off every night at everyone's house, he writes you a nice personal note and then you're so wowed by the whole thing that you tell two friends, those are the people that are figuring out how to survive. And when this is over, his business is going to do great.

Yeah, I think the purpose and the values make a huge difference right now. If you've never figured out your life purpose and your business purpose, just ask yourself, what do you want said about your retirement or your memorial by your kids and your longest employees? What they say about who you are and what your business was is a lot awfully close to your purpose. And then how you navigated this, Those are your values. What do you want said about you and how are you actually operating? That's the values you want to go back to the purpose and the values. When you figure out how to navigate this thing, if you stay true to that, nobody could say how it's going to go for you and your business, but you'll be playing your A game by doing that kind of thing, right?

Absolutely. And I have a few exercises. Again, that's a great question. That's one of the ones I have in my book Elevate, which is still free for the next couple weeks, the ebook on the core value section. I have some of those lists that you can start if there's anything that you could do time now. If you could come out of these next couple weeks and really articulate your core values, you would be in such a better position for everything that comes next.

So the website robertglazer.com, you'll find Friday.

Forward there and the Elevate podcast there. The Elevate book is out now sitting in front of me. I've got performance partnerships, lots of regular awesome stories, nuggets from Robert Glaser. Thank you so much for coming on the show with us today.

Thanks, Bill. Thanks for having me. And I hope when this runs and we talk again, we're, we're, we're working on, you know that, that that record bounce back that we're all trying to take advantage of.

Yeah. Thanks again so much. Be well everyone.

All right, if our show helped you, please share it with somebody right now so that they also benefit. That helps us grow the show and pass along but also give us a review like it, subscribe to it. That helps us in so many ways and you'll get them every week. You can of course email us, send us a Note to info scalingcoach.com I want to give special thanks as always to the creator of the Scaling up framework and the original Rockefeller Habits book, Vern Harnish. The show is produced by Lucy Summers, the audio is edited by Albert Burge at Podfly Productions and the show notes are compiled by Ein Kodina and proofread by Tim McGowan. Thanks again for listening. Keep scaling up.

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