WHY Of Better Way With Robert Glazer: Why It Works and When It Doesn’t

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually help you discover and then live your why. You see, we believe that knowing your why, that driving force behind every decision you make and every action you take, is the essential first step to really knowing yourself. It allows you to move forward faster and have a bigger impact. If you're already a fan of the show, then you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys and then we introduce you to somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. This show will be more powerful for you if you've already discovered your why. If you still need to do that, head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. It'll only take you about five minutes. Now let's meet today's guest.

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually helping you discover and then live your why. So if you're a regular listener, you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys and then we bring on somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. And so this week we're going to be talking about the why of Better way. So if this is your why, then you are the ultimate innovator and you are constantly seeking better ways to do everything. You find yourself wanting to improve virtually anything by finding a way to make it better. You also desire to share your improvement with the world. You constantly ask yourself questions like what if we tried this differently? What if we did this another way? How can we make this better? You contribute to the world with better processes and systems while operating under the motto I'm often pleased but never Satisfied. You are excellent at associating, which means that you are adept at taking ideas or systems from one industry or or discipline and applying them to another, always with the ultimate goal of improving something. So today I've got a great guest for you. You're going to love this. His name is Robert Glaser and he is the Founder and Chairman of the Board of Acceleration Partners, a global partner marketing agency and the recipient of numerous industry and company culture awards including Glassdoor's Employees Choice Awards two years in a row. He is the author of the inspirational newsletter Friday Forward and the Number one Wall Street Journal USA Today and international best selling author of five books Elevate Friday how to Thrive in the Virtual Moving to Outcomes and Performance Partnerships. He is a sought after speaker by companies and organizations around the world and is the host of the Elevate podcast. Robert, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks, Gary.

I'm looking forward to this. Man, this is going to be fun. I already know it's going to be fun.

We're talking about the best why today.

Two better way guys get together and.

Man, we, and no one will be able to get a word in.

Yeah, exactly. Well, hey, let's let our audience get to know you a little bit. Take us back now. Where were you born? What were you like in high school and kind of take us back to that timeframe.

I was born outside of Boston. I would say my, I have a speech that I give and when I give that speech, I show a lot of my report cards actually that my parents, they were moving out of the family house and they brought him over two years ago and I went through them and they're like all the same, they're like, he's, he's kind of capable, but we can't seem to really motivate him. I think I, I, I was very entrepreneurial, marketing oriented, creative that none of that is typically rewarded in the, in the normal education course. And so I think I was pretty bored and always told that I was, you know, underachieving and I am, I know that has direct impact on a lot of my why and otherwise. So, you know, it wasn't till I got to college actually and I got through like the standard, like core curriculum and I started realizing that I loved business and marketing and I, oh, I liked learning. I was just really bored with everything that I was learning before. But I, I was always tinkering with stuff. My mom would tell you, she'd ask me to clean my room and I would rearrange my entire room. I remember one time, I think I was nine or 10 years old, I like playing electronics and I thought, well, I could take my battery powered game and I could just hook a plug up to it and I could run it. And that exploded in my hands when I did that. But those were all the things sort of outside the classroom again, those, you know, maybe more today or maybe in a Montessori environment. But those were things more. It was like, hey, just color in the lines and stop messing with that stuff and follow this stuff. And to this day, you know, I ended up being diagnosed with ADD later on. Like, I can't pretend to be interested in something. I just can't. It's not, doesn't, doesn't work for me.

Okay, so A student, B student, C student.

What Were you B student? Yeah.

Yeah, me too. And so off to college. Did you have any idea what you wanted to do when you went to college?

I thought I wanted to be a lawyer because my dad was a lawyer. I liked the concept of it. I worked at a couple, Interned at a couple of law firms and hated the experience and really got exposed to business. I was always doing. Running little business things. But again, I.

I remember I had this. Now in leaders was this candy that was super hot in our school. I was 10 years old. I figured out how to take the train, go buy them, resell them for twice as much money. My grandmother found out about the operation, was like, you can shut it down or I'll tell your mom. So the things that I was doing that were entrepreneurial were negative, sort of in context. But I realized that I loved business, loved marketing, you know, and that my thinking outside of the box was like, I'm not the guy you put in the box. I'm the guy you put to destroy the box. So, again, it was interesting, right? I went abroad. I got done with the core curriculum. I was getting B's again still. And then once I started taking the classes that I wanted, didn't matter how hard it was. I got A's in almost everything junior and senior year.

So I'll ask you, so were you an A or B or C, you know, student? Remember when I asked you that?

Yeah. I was deeply into that, but I don't remember where on the answer I was.

I was telling a story about that. Yeah, we can go with that again. Okay.

All right. So were you an A student, B student, C student? What kind of student were you?

I was a B student. And I think pretty. Pretty consistently. And then as soon as I actually high school college got through sort of the core curriculum or the prerequisites, and I started taking the classes that I liked and that I was interested in.

I just got. I got straight A's. It didn't matter how hard it was or not hard it was. It just. If I was interested in it, I would wrap myself around it. And so I think my GPA, you know, was like a 3. 0. And now that'd be failing. Everyone is like a 3. 9. It's crazy. Um, you know, for first two years, and there was like a 3. 9 the second two years.

And so what did you. What did you end up majoring in? And where'd you go to college?

Uh, I went to Penn. And again, going abroad for me was a big transition point and just sort of Opening my mind and again, understanding that I love business and marketing, and these are things that I can learn at and get better. Uh, and I actually. Majors like this won't be surprising to you. None of the majors I like. So I applied to create my own major within the individualized major department. Very, very on. On brand. And it was sort of business and industrial psychology. So I took the business. Kind of allowed me to take the business courses in Wharton. But a lot of the sort of industrial psychology people stuff, which is running a professional organization now for over a decade, has probably been the highest things that I have used.

So what was that moment when you realized. Because I struggled with that myself. You know, I went off to college as an undecided, undeclared major and kept that as long as I could. What was the moment that you knew.

Okay, now I know what I want to do?

It was after I worked in a couple of those law firms. And honestly, like, I never liked tests. I wasn't good at the notion of having to study for the LSAT and kind of more school. I'm also a. I learned by experience. I learned more outside of the classroom. And so I thought about that. I'm like, I don't think I really want to do that. And I really like this business and marketing and people stuff. So I think that was sort of the transition. I mean, I definitely encourage everyone. We idolize some things, like, you should definitely do them right. I worked in a law firm, and I. Pretty terrible. One was actually okay. The other was terrible. I was like, I don't want to do this. So. But. But, you know, it seemed. Seemed fun from. From. From the outside. I. I thought a lot. I thought it was all negotiations and arguing with people, and I was pretty good on my feet, so. And I didn't even realize, you know, my dad was a lawyer and that. But I didn't even know he did real estate law. He never even seen a courtroom. So. So, yeah, so that was sort of the. But. But going abroad, being another country. I was actually in Prague right after they were dealing with this restitution and where they just gave families back their businesses and they didn't know how to run them. And so, like, we were doing some cool stuff like working with a brewery. And I was like, this stuff's fun. I love this parachute into a situation. You don't know what's going on. You got to figure it out. Like, that's the stuff that drives make sense people crazy. But the stuff that I like.

Okay, so you graduated then Got into what was your first business? Did you start working for somebody?

I went actually worked for? Yeah. I progressively worked for smaller and smaller firms until our firm is growing. I worked for the consulting firm that I worked for abroad. Made me an offer, Arthur D. Little. I went into strategy consulting for a couple years, then worked at an incubator sort of during the Internet bubble.

And then a venture firm. Because I liked being around this company creation. I think I learned that early on. I like these fast growing companies.

But I was doing a lot of work for other people. I hadn't really figured out the angle I wanted to be around. And then eventually I worked for a startup and I was sort of came in outside the founding team and I again, I was the guy who came in and made it better. And then I was like, why am I doing this for other people? Like I ended up finding myself in a very marginalized position like helping founders make their businesses better. So then I just decided I'd start a business and work with those businesses, but I would own my business. They're also kind of really bad cultures, a lot of these high growth startups. So I found a way to like expose myself to that type of work but insulate myself from those cultures. And that ended up sort of being the, again, I guess the, you know, kind of the better way culture aspect of it.

So how do you feel about.

Building.

Something versus maintaining something?

I get really bored in the maintenance mode. Like I'm not your maintenance person. I'm the guy who comes in and you know, I actually recently even just stepped down CEO of my own company because I think we're getting to a size where, and the way I explained it, I had a president who my number two for almost a decade. And you know, when you're smaller, the R and D department sort of is the company. And now the R and D department actually is a small piece. Like keeping the trains on the track is a big piece. And that's the CEO job now. And so I even realized like I want to, I want to stay running the R and D department. So I've moved into managing new products and services and I'm leading all of our M and A and all the stuff that is new. I mean I don't, as soon as it becomes monotonous, I am, I am not, not interested.

You're not the guy. All right, so tell us about your company.

Our company, Acceleration Partners. We are the largest agency globally in a field called specialized field called affiliate and partner marketing. We help some of the biggest brands in the world build digital marketing programs that are made out of partnerships rather than, you know, buying clicks and impressions.

And so what got you into that? That's a different angle that people don't typically talk about. You don't really even hear about it that much unless you happen to be in that world, right?

Yeah, it's a very win win industry, which I was always. It's marketing, it's win win, it's partnership, which I was very drawn to. And I kind of fell into it a little bit by accident because I helped a company build its program that was incredibly successful, and it grew to $300 million and sold. And then people went to all the other companies and called and said, hey, can you come help us do that? And so, as I said, no one ever. I haven't met anyone who started an agency intentionally yet. Like, they solve a problem, they hire some people, people ask them to do more, they hire some more, and then soon they're running an agency. But I do remember being at a conference in our industry, you know, and reading this. It was a sort of my epiphanous moment that, as I think about it, is a better way. And. And there was a catalog of all these ads of people that could help you with your affiliate programs in it for the conference. And they were like the worst ads that I've ever seen. They looked like they were drawn in crayon and sort of. And I was like, jesus, if these are the people that people are hiring to do marketing for them, and their marketing is so terrible, like, we should be able to crush this. And I think that was sort of my go for it moment because I was kind of horrified at the quality of marketing from people who were being hired to do marketing.

It's interesting the way you said that, because that's something I say all the time. I'm like, if that person over there can do it like that, I could do it way better than that.

Right? I mean, is that in fact, what frustrates me the most? We were just talking about a situation like this management team is when there's a. When there's a company in the right place at the right time, and they seem to do everything wrong and they're still doing well. Right? Because something endemic to me wants to believe that you have to do it well and good to do well. But like, we, you know, we try to do everything really well and improve, but, you know, there are. It's easier to be an agency. It's harder to be an agency than it is to Be kind of like a hot software company sometimes.

Yeah. So people come to you when they want to expand their reach using partnerships versus just going out and, you know, buying a ton of media, right?

Yeah, they want to, you know, we use, we use software to build partner programs so that you could have like a thousand partners talking about promoting your product digitally, putting it in things. The difference is they get paid only on a performance basis. So, you know, again, in some ways I think the whole, I just think it's a better way to do marketing. Like rather than paying for a click or an impression, you know, you are paying for an outcome or a sale. So, you know, if I said to you, Gary, like you're trying to get, you know, good guests for your podcast, like, I have the best guest podcast site in the world and I'll promote people and I'll send them to you and as you accept them, like, will you pay me $100 per lead? And you go, that's great. That's much better than the PR service I'm using because I pay them up front and I have no idea what I'll get.

Yeah. If you, if you're a business owner and you've done any, spent any kind of money marketing, it's an amazingly frustrating experience. I mean, you just have no concept, you have no idea what you're going to get for the amount of money.

You hear all your friends who built their business on social media or digital marketing or paid search. But if you think there's inflation in gas and your housing and elsewhere, the inflation in digital marketing, the prices, has gotten to the point where it's very hard to make money unless you are a large player with really sophisticated tools. It's a massive auction and the whole world's buying. And auctions don't tend to benefit the buyers, they tend to benefit the sellers. So I always say a little bit, what we do is SEO versus paid search. You need to do the work, put it in, build a moat, you reap longer term rewards. It's not as instantly gratifying, but because of that it tends to be much more sustainable.

So how were you able to build all these partnerships? So you're starting your company fresh. You don't. Maybe you already had some connections and then you just put them together and said, hey, how about if I connect you with.

So yeah, there's a known group of people in the industry. They're sort of like called professional affiliate. There are people who are known to do this, but part of our thing is building that Rolodex and figuring out how to figure out someone who we worked with the one part program, why they'd be good for another program that's not competitive. But there's a. There's a known group of people in this place. We're kind of like matchmakers. Like, there's, there's people looking to date and there's people, you know, on both sides. And half the group has content and half the group has stuff to sell. And we're just, we're just bringing them together.

And so are you always adding new partners, always adding new products, or how's that work?

Always adding new clients, Always adding new partners. You know, growing our partner. Rolodex is a key asset for our. For our business, which to me, you.

Know, from another better way guy. Boy, that just sounds like so much fun. I mean, connecting people, connecting things, finding a better. Hey, this would be better if you did it this way.

Yeah. And the model is like, who's the new innovate? Like, who's figured out Snapchat or who's figured out mobile marketing? Who's figured out TikTok marketing? How do we go get them and partner, you know, bring them in to partner with retail brands? So that's the essence is it's kind of like sales. We got to kind of find who's new and interesting and doing something fun.

So then you've also written five books.

Yeah, I write over five years. Because not good at not doing stuff. Yeah.

So first book was what, like, take us through the sequence of your books.

I actually. So I had this note that I sent to my team called Friday 4 that I started years ago that ended up going outside of our company, reaching a couple hundred thousand people across the world every week as this kind of inspirational, thought provoking note. I decided to turn that into a book. A compilation of the 52 best Friday forwards. I pitched that to a bunch of places and they said, we love your writing, but no one buys compilations. I ran into one agent who said, love your writing. These are amazing. But no one buys compilation. But I think you have a book here. What is the story of these stories? And so I actually went back and deconstructed kind of what is the framework of this into this thing called. I was like, oh, this capacity bill. I spent like a couple years reworking that into why did Friday Forward work? What had changed my life? Like, what was the whole thing? And I came up with this framework of capacity building, and that was the basis of my first book, Elevate, which has still Been the most popular and actually. Sorry, that was my second book. My first book was I wrote a book called Performance Partnerships to try to explain to the world why our industry was a better way effectively and convince people like they misunderstood, you know, affiliate marketing and what it could be. And that was a real like we're going to try to turn the industry our way. And that book has become kind of a default training book in organizations. It was the first book really written on the industry. Then. Then there was Elevate. I ended up after Elevate was a huge success. I ended up going back and writing and publishing that Friday 4 book once I had an audience so I held onto it. And then we were all remote firm for over a decade and Covid hit and we had been doing this for a while. People started asking us all kinds of questions and I was giving speeches and every time I give the speech, I would take the questions they ask and I would tweak it. And then to your willing, I've always said my purpose is to share ideas that help people and organizations grow. I also hate the monotony as we talked about earlier. So I was like, why don't I turn this into a book so I can stop giving the same presentation over and over again. I can answer all the things. So I turned that into a. With my publisher, we got 90 days later we got down to an E book. Then I doubled it and released it as a full book six months later. And that was the number one New York Times and Washington.

USA Today and WSJ bestseller.

And which one was that?

That was how to Thrive in the Virtual Workplace.

And then you had one after that.

Even that comes out on Tuesday. So that's called Moving to Outcomes. And that is my second marketing book. It's sort of the sequel to Performance Partnerships five years later Moving to Outcomes.

So tell us about that.

That's a little more. You know, the first book was really meant to explain the affiliate opportunity in the industry and what companies were missing. This is a little more of the shift I was talking about about why people are holistically moving to partnerships and why the marketing is moving to direct marketing. If you're not brand, if you're spending marketing directly, wouldn't you want to do it on an outcome basis, not a click or impression basis? And why, you know, are all these reasons in digital marketing that companies really need to think about what is next once the sort of Facebook Amazon gravy train runs its course a little more?

Which it kind of has, right? I mean it's from where it was three years ago to now, it's a different animal.

I think it's really hard to build a competitive, sustainable advantage. You can spend a lot of money, you can get started but it's hard, particularly as a little guy to fight a war like you're fighting with BB guns while people have cannons and airplanes and things that they can do to get better yield. So yeah, I think it's the way I look at it. If you think about a stock portfolio, I'm not going to get really rich on Tesla, Apple and Microsoft over the next decade. They're so big that they're not going to 10x. I need to find what's the next company. And so I think for a lot of these channels they've reached the maturity where they're a bond now where you don't sell your bonds but you're not going to get your huge growth off of your bond. Yeah.

And this mastermind that I'm in, one of the guys is the spends the most money of anybody in the world on YouTube ads. And so it's fascinating how often stuff changes for him and he gets shut down or you know his business or.

I'm sure he could tell you it's gotten twice as expensive over the last year, right. To buy the same thing.

Yeah, it is. So within Accelerate within your company, you have utilized the why with your team, right?

Yeah. So I was exposed to this like seven or eight years ago, sort of your framework through a facilitator. It was life changing for me. I remember he was walking through the example at a conference and Jamie and I had very similar origin stories around this, around how he's coaching a husband and a wife, you know, and they were going on their anniversary and she had planned every day of the trip out and then he tried to figure out how to make every day better and it turns out I'm better way and my wife's right way. And so I think we are the most combustible of the wife from a marriage type and just it was game changing for me in my business and looking at it also like for my wife and I and just family, like we use the language like she will say like we're going to the thing tonight, like please don't try to make this better. And when she and my son who are both right way and just can't pick to save their life, pizza versus Chinese food on a Friday night or they go back to this store and they come back with everything because they can't decide or nothing because they can't decide. I'll be like, just make a decision. There's no wrong choice here. And it's one of the things I've seen is really interesting with. I have a lot of right way personalities in my life and company. And while that is potentially very combustible, the problem is they're the people you want to pull the plug to make a great decision. They are like just. But they just can't dumb down that decision making apparatus to really simple decisions. They're paralyzed by pizza or Chinese food. But they would be the first person to know whether you should pull the plug or not pull the plug in a life threatening situation.

That's interesting what you're saying there because what I found in working with lots and lots of companies is the missing piece for most of them is not having somebody with right way on their team. Yeah, if you don't have that and you're better way like you and I, we got you.

You will get. Yeah, they will slow you down. Look, they frustrate the hell out of you, but they will slow you down. Our team has a lot of make sense people too. And again, when you throw a big hairbrained idea on them, they don't understand what it is. They get so frustrated, you know, and I know that we have something good. When I'm able to make it clear enough where they're like, that makes sense, you know, we should do that. I think we, I mean our leadership team, we joke about these archetypes. We see them all the time. They're. They're the most powerful thing that I have seen in sort of interpersonal communication. I think I told you. We have a guy on our team too. For years, he just, you know, his visceral reaction was like, I don't buy this whole thing because you can't put in an archetype. But everything he says is about is it right or not. Like fundamentally, I think we've worn him down. Like at this point he kind of admits it. But even admitting it for right people that you can put people in archetypes for them, sometimes they don't think that's right. Yeah.

Do you have anybody on your team with the why of challenge?

Not on my leadership team. I will say they don't tend to survive in the company for more than a couple of years. We had one, we're still friendly with them. We talked about it. He just would throw a grenade into things every six months. He just, We've talked about this openly. It was really funny. They just can't help themselves from. We have another person now who's challenged and he's definitely challenged and he's great. And he was the one in the session who was like, this whole thing's bullshit. Like, you know, this why thing. Like, but I actually found that the challenge people, like, they almost, a lot of them almost have to end up working for themselves because they just will throw a grenade into a situation if they're high on that thing. We actually have another one in sales. He's phenomenal, but he does not like to follow the playbook or do what he's told. Like, and we've just learned, like Ptolemy can't do something like, no, there's no way you could like sell like, you know, in. In Eastern Europe. And he like just gets all over it. So he, he works for the right way person. So, like, you can imagine, like there's some.

They've had to figure that out a little bit.

So it's interesting talking because we Talked for about 10 minutes before we started and it was really interesting to listen to you because you were speaking my language.

You were speaking your love language. Yeah, yeah.

You were saying the things that I say. And you've noticed the things that not a lot of people notice, but you did notice them and you articulated them in a way that I completely get. And so it's neat to have somebody with your why to have a conversation with. Because you're speaking the same language. Right. Have you noticed that?

With other better ways. And the most powerful thing and why we teach this to our emerging leaders on the core values, is that interpersonal. I think more than any other test, Drake Finders, Colby's did like, this gets to the root tension between people, like where they. And their understanding of that. You know, my understanding of what a makes sense needs, what a right way needs, like what people need. Like, that is. It is to me the ultimate sort of team thing. I mean, we don't use the language. Oh, someone's like, oh, that was a very D thing to say or something. But people do say, oh, that was a. And what's fascinating with the makes sense people, they just say it all the time. They just end sentences with that makes sense, you know, and you just hear it everywhere. And so that to me has really been. I can really tell you where people are going to struggle, you know, or where they're going to do well interpersonally based on, you know, what their why is and where. Where there are, you know, going to be natural conflicts.

So you also Hit on something a little bit ago. That is again what I've been saying about myself and about other people with the why of better ways is we don't necessarily make a good long term CEO. No, we got to get somebody else to replace us. We can build. But once it's built, and this is what I found and maybe this will be even helpful for you, is that the best why that I know of for the CEO after we it's been built is actually the why of contribute because they are now about everybody else and making everybody else better. You were about hey, how am I going to get this sucker to where.

I need it to be?

Yeah, who do I got to put in place to make that happen?

Right?

And now if you can put somebody with the why of contribute in the CEO position, then it's just going to be phenomenal for them. They're going to love it, your team's going to love it, everybody's going to love it. So I don't know who what the why is of the person.

He's a makes, he's a make sense. Although I would say that we all are very high probably contributes as our, our what's our house.

In our team, there's just a very high level of contribute trying to make people better, trying to improve them. So I think that's very endemic in our culture. I'll tell you one of the things self reflection and I'm sure that I've had to learn as it makes sense is, I mean.

As a better way is that look, every strength at 105 or 10 degrees is a weakness. And I tend to exhaust myself, exhaust my team and exhaust my family. And one of the things I've coached people on in their wise or otherwise, that if you can't turn it down, you only won't get like if I want to improve everything in the company, I frustrate people to the point where nothing gets improved, right? So I have had to learn to pick my spots of I'm going to make this thing better. I can't make everything better or nothing will get better. And look, I do it to myself and I know I exhaust my wife with it at times too and family with it. So it's just being aware of that. I think that to me is the biggest sort of exhaustion of like, I mean even like we bought an investment place or living like I am just constantly ordering extra batteries from Amazon just so we have them and moving that picture on the wall. People are like how come you can't just sit down and enjoy the play. I'm like, I don't know, there's still stuff to tweak. I go on vacation and I'm like working half the time on. Not work, but like on, you know, moving stuff around or hanging this picture. Like it's just, it's an optimization, both a blessing and disease, I think.

So how are you able to.

Stop improving things? Or are you, I mean, can. Are you. I guess. Here's a really interesting question. Are you ever satisfied?

No, but. But probably not. Which is a good thing and a bad thing. I had, you know, hard time being present. I think what I have learned is it's more of like again, I've always done these renovation projects, but once I had a new one, I never thought about the old one again. So I think when looking at. It's almost like I just need a new thing to turn my sights on, to sort of actually close off the old one. And that's, that's the way I sort of mentally detached myself. It's not necessarily a healthy thing, but I think it is just. It is what it is at this point. Yeah.

Yeah, I feel the same way. Are you able to celebrate wins?

No. Not good at that. Our whole team is not good at that. We all, we joke. We're all, we're all Gen X leadership team by parents that were not effusive and praise like, you know, parents are today. And the pro side of that is we get over difficulties really quickly. We don't linger on it, but we're not great at celebrating upside. I think that is both my personality but very endemic of. We talked all the sort of childhood upbringing, you know, Gen X versus I think Gen Y and Z. I wonder.

If that's what it is because I feel the same way. It's very hard for me to. Luckily I have people on my team that point things out to me, but otherwise I would just be like, okay, what's next? Okay, what's next? Okay, we did this, let's now what's next?

And that is a criticism. And we hear that. I think it's both our team, but also that the cultures are changing. And again, you're talking about generations that have grown up with extreme amount of praise for in some cases mediocre effort.

And you know, we have to be aware of that. It's tough. We talk about it like we are a high performance culture. So, you know, we need to make sure that we don't, you know, people generally need more of that open praise. But we also want to Be careful. We probably shouldn't hire people that want praise for mediocre effort because that doesn't really align with our culture. Like, hey, you tried really hard. I mean, I went to my kids invention convention. I loved that when I was a kid, not surprisingly. And like everyone got an honorable mention and people had theoretical projects that their parents did. And I was like, this is ridiculous. Like, this is. Who the hell is this teaching? Like, I remember the guy who won my year figured out how to put a bike up his, you know, straw up his bike and you could drink out of it. Like he won a prize. And now it's everyone gets an honorable mention. And clearly either the parents did the projects themselves or it was a theoretical thing. Like this is a food shrinker and I point a gun at it. I'm like, I don't understand.

This is actually supposed to be kids doing the work.

So what's next for you, Robert? Where are you headed next?

Yeah, so I actually to what we were talking about, trying to self identify and solve a problem the way I have been the CEO. I've been 70, 30 for a few years. I've been the CEO of the company, but I have also, I have a great team. I've been writing books, doing stuff outside the company. The issue is it's really been 130% right and not 70 30. And I physically mentally exhausted myself, capped off by Global Pandemic and doing a big deal with a private equity partner. And so I realized I actually really just want to get down to 70, 30. And so, you know, I will turn over the CEO role. I'll continue doing the stuff that I love, I'll continue writing the books, but I'm not going to do it on the weekends, I'm not going to do it at night. I've got some kind of golden years with my kids. And part of that restructure was to give me some space to think and you know, be the RD department, but also just to practice being more present. And in fact, initially after the sort of transition with new partners in the role, I tried to throw myself into new things and I exhaust like, and then I realized like, I can't do this. Like I actually really need to step back, you know, recover physically and mentally, you know, from a 10 year marathon of never stopping. And so a lot of that was some awareness of what I was likely to do. So I'm just not letting myself get into fundamentally any major new thing for a while. I'm know, very invested in my business. I'm Continuing a different role. But I'm not looking to start anything new or do anything, you know, majorly new.

I'm really interested to see how that's how that goes. Yes. Because of. That's me as well.

Yeah, right.

100%. Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go. And I don't ha. I have not figured out. Been able to not do that. It just doesn't seem to. I feel like I'm wasting time if I do that.

I'm not bored. My mom sort of like this. I mean she just could not. She could just like a 12 hour day out of nothing. Like. So I'm, I'm not bored at all. And look, I'm, I'm learning how to do M and A, you know, for our business. I've joined some boards so I'm filling in with macro things. But I've recognized, I sort of, I've run myself a little too hard trying to do all of these things, trying to run a company, write books, speak, all this stuff. So dialing it down I think has been healthy. I don't think it's a long term solution, but in some ways it's a little meta in that I think that if I don't give myself the. I don't really want a second act right now. My kids are all kind of high school, going to college. Like I kind of want these years. But if I don't give myself some space then I think I'll actually not figure out maybe some really cool thing that I could do in five or 10 years that is kind of. I need the space to figure out what that is for. For, for a few years. But I'm not in any rush to do it now.

I'm going to be. Like I said, I'm going to be very interested in watching because it's, it's.

You'll either, you'll either learn something, you'll see. I told you that's not going to work.

It's just how we're wired. I mean I don't. We can not.

You ever. Have you ever exhausted yourself? Just totally exhausted yourself? For sure. Yeah, for sure.

And exhausted people around me. And so it'll be fun. It'll be fun to watch. All right, last question for you. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given? Or what's. Or the best piece of advice you've ever given?

Yeah.

It'S probably a little bit of both. And I would say this under the context right now. Of all the people shifting careers, thinking about something new or otherwise. And I think there's good reasons to do that and there's bad reasons to do that.

I see a lot of people in their 20s chasing or they're chasing $500 or $1,000 or $5,000 more without irrespective of what that situation is or otherwise. I think the most important thing you can do early in your career is work for extraordinary leaders, go to companies with extraordinary training programs, focus on learning. You're always underpaid in your 20s. But the difference to me of people who.

Worked for great leaders, got great training, like, really focused on making themselves the best they could get, that that 5 or $10,000 more that that other job offered you is irrelevant. You turn 30, you start to be an expert in something. So I would just focus on the environments where. Where you have the most learning and work for incredible leaders and frankly, learn on someone else's dime. Like, don't. Everyone's so eager, I think, in, like, the 20s to, like, get somewhere and get to the end like you are. I was always underpaid in my 20s, no matter how good of the work that I was doing. Right. It's just. But you're setting yourself up for what comes next by working for the right companies, the right leaders, and being in an incredible training program. Like, you probably know the amount of sales leaders I know who worked at Cutco. Like, just as a simple example, who. Some of the best salespeople in the world who just went through this Cutco training when they were 22. Like, if that's what you want to do, that's the best training and preparation that you could have.

Love that. That is great advice.

Well, Robin, that's the best advice, though.

The best advice. You know what? And I would add to that, because there's kind of a common theme for all the people, many of the people that I've had on the podcast that have done amazing things, and when I kind of point them back to, okay, what was that turning moment, a lot of them will say it's when I got into personal growth.

Yeah. Oh, that was for me. I mean, I joined. It's for a lot of people. I think it could be any of these organizations, whether it's EO or ypo, but I joined eo. I jumped into this exponential learning, and it was like drugs. Like, it was just incredible. The only thing I would caution that I think I found myself going down this road. If you are married or you're in a partnership or Whatever. Be very careful going down that road without bringing your partner along with me and with you. And that is, that is why groups like EO and YPO have these spousal and partner things around, trying to create that same experience. Because I think, you know, sometimes you're going to these conferences, you're going to these learning like this why thing. My wife was with me there, you know, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It either these are things either happen together or they happen, you know, apart. And so I have seen it do amazing things for relationships and I have seen it pull relationships apart. I love that.

So if there's people that are listening to this that want to connect with you, want to follow you, want to see what you're up to, maybe want to work with acceleration partners, what would be the best way for them to connect with you?

Yeah, they can learn about acceleration partners. It's easier to Google it than to spell it. So just Google acceleration partners. We're doing our job. We should come up number one in terms of me. I have everything under one place now. So, Robert glazer.com, glazer.com you can sign up for that free Friday forward note. And I've got the books are listed on there. I've got like a course on helping to discover your personal core values, which goes really well with the why stuff. And I've seen a lot of overlap and speaking and other stuff is all on that page.

Love it. Thank you so much for being here today, man. I was looking forward to this because, you know, we've got a lot of people in common that we know and you've utilized the why so much. So thanks for being here and I love to. I'm going to follow you now because I want to see what happens with this little test you're doing.

You're starting a clock.

Check.

Little wedding clock. Exactly.

Thanks so much for being here.

Thanks, Gary.

I really hope you enjoyed today's episode and that through today's guest, you heard how important it is to know your why and how impactful it can be in your life and the lives of those around you. Be sure to head over to why institute.com and discover your why today. Remember, the more you know about yourself, the more you'll know about others. I'm Dr. Gary Sanchez and I'll see you on the next episode.