Elevating your Life by Identifying your Core Values with Robert Glazer

Foreign. What is up what is up in this episode? I want to talk with you about elevating your life and your results and the impact that you get to have on other people. I'll get to that in just a second. I just got back from a Tony Robbins event where I spent five days with the Big Guy and all of my focus is really about impact and understanding how I can help elevate other people and my life also at the same time. So I want to help you discover in this episode your core values and how understanding your personal core values are critical to your leadership and your success and and what you're growing on. And that's why Robert Glazer, entrepreneur who's scaled and sold multiple high growth organizations. He's going to be right here. A number one Wall Street Journal bestseller. A friend of mine. He'll be with us in just a few moments after these words. This podcast is brought to you by the Wire Buzz Team. Now, if that name sounds familiar, it's because I've spent the past decade growing Wirebuzz into a digital marketing powerhouse designed to maximize clarity in complex sales processes so we can help accelerate revenue. And we do this in three phases. Phase one we transform your website to function like your best salesperson and then also incorporate persuasive on demand sales videos. Now your entire team is aligned on messaging and they're injecting massive clarity into your prospect's head. So your site looks great, but it also has engaging content that helps your team sell on demand 24. 7 the next phase phase two we train your sales and marketing teams to sell remotely or in person to expand the impact of your sales team. And the third phase is we develop and run targeted ads to your prospects. Scale those ads to help you achieve more business results. Sign up for the Wirebuzz Company newsletter to learn more about effective and simple ways to improve your company messaging, attract more digital attention, and ultimately make more sales. So what do you want to do with your life and how do you want to elevate your results and the impact that you have on people? And if you're like me, if you're a leader and an entrepreneur, you realize that there are certain things you have to do to lift up everybody else in your organization in order to generate the desired outcome and results that you want. And that's why I'm joined right now by my friend Robert Glaser. He is an entrepreneur. He scaled and sold multiple high growth organizations. He is a number one Wall Street Journal bestseller, author of six books and a Global keynote speaker by Bob Glazer. Welcome to the ToddCast.

Thanks for having me, Todd.

Yeah, always fun catching up with you. And you know, every time I talk to you, dude, you're like spitting out another book, another piece of genius.

I'm on a book diet. I'm on a starvation diet from books for a while. So I can, I can promise you at least a 12 month moratorium.

Yeah, but in the back of your brain because you're prolific and when something cultural happens or there's a shift in business, your brain goes back into where can I add more value and how can I help guide people that are struggling with this problem? Are you in the back of your brain even though you're on a book writing diet already kind of strategizing where you're going next?

I'm always playing around with a few different ideas. I've actually written my next book which is on core values. It's a parable. But, but, but I'm slow. I'm slow playing it. So that was actually a real total. I mean, I've been writing that for almost a year. But because it's just, it's totally different. It's, you know, parable is effectively fiction. It's character development. It's like you have to like, am I consistent? Like, did I say that Todd had a brother here and then didn't hear? And so that's been a good, it's been a good challenge and I think it's an interesting way to present the concept because I think kind of just writing a book around the concept rather than showing the concept probably wouldn't land as strongly.

Yeah, no, I get it. That makes sense. So this is a different type of a book for you. And I know there'll be a day where you're going to release this book after the diet and then I'm going.

To get to moratorium. Yeah. Yeah.

So, Bob, you talk about the value of discovering your core values and. Yeah, that happened for you in 2013. I want to hear that story. But I know you were in a transition period. Why is discovering your personal core values so critical for the ultimate breakthrough and success that somebody's going to have?

Yeah. So it's interesting. I had this epiphany a few years ago when people would read my bio when I was speaking or at something that sort of everything they listed was after this kind of period in my life around core value discovery, literally everything. And while I've done a bunch of different interesting things, I think that if you want to look at where the inflection point, it's kind of the ACV after core value period. And I just think that, look, a lot of our life is around making good decisions and more decisions than bad ones. And I think a core value, understanding your core values, is the ultimate decision making framework. Both with what should I be doing or not doing day to day, that kind of keeps me out of trouble or keeps me in my zone of genius. And then I think there's this concept called the big three. There are a couple huge things in our life which is our chosen vocation or place of work, our partner or the community that we choose to live in that if we don't make those decisions in a core value aligned way, they have a very low chance of working out. And those are, those are painful ones. Right. When you find you're living in the wrong place, you've married the wrong person, you're in the wrong career or working at the wrong company. So I think, I just think it's a tremendous amount of clarity and it gives people the permission, particularly in leadership, to be who they are. Like, we're not trying to, it's a discovery thing. We're not trying to change anyone. This isn't like, what do you desire to be aspirationally taught? This would be. If I actually forensically went back and read all of your report cards and everything, those same patterns would be there from you were 7 years old, them saying, Todd does this and Todd likes to do this and Todd doesn't like that. And I mean, I've worked, done this work with a lot of leaders in our company, a lot of different people. I like to get real and vulnerable with people and if they're willing to go there. It's amazing to me how much of the challenges in modern day leadership or management or interpersonal skills go to deep core value things which inherently go to formative life experiences. Like we are, we are haunted or whatever the word is by a lot of these things that we haven't dealt with or we haven't realized. And sometimes when people put it together, it's like this awesome epiphany watching it on their face as you sort of like, it's like the cobbler's kid thing. Sometimes you have to help people put really together in front of them what's super obvious.

Okay. I, I love everything here. There's so much to unpack when, when you're talking about core values, it seems like it could be a theoretical construct that might be, might be hard for somebody at first. Listen to be able to digest. Can you explain like what your core values are? And then from there we can kind of start to think about it for each of ourselves. Like, can you guide us first?

Sure. So, so first and foremost, core values are kind of your non negotiable principles. Like this is the sort of, you know, the bright line test for you. The example I would give is if you're in, if you have a race car, a really nice race car, and you take that into a tunnel and the tunnel has a white line and then a wall, right? If you turn off the lights, your car is probably going to drift to the right, it's going to hit the wall. You're going to go, oh, that sucks. Like screeching, pull it off. You're probably going to get through the tunnel, but your car is going to be beat up and look like crap. Right? The, the sort of understanding your values would be turning on the lights and being like, where's the white line? And where do I kind of stay away from the wall. So my own values are health and vitality. Find a better way and share it, which is what I'm doing on this podcast. And sort of my dominant value, self reliance, respectful authenticity and long term orientation. A lot of things that have always been me and uniquely me and I'm super happy and engaged when I'm doing these things and I'm super uncomfortable and frustrated when I'm not. I think the opposite. Things are always really interesting in terms of you want to know something's a value. The opposite is the inherent nature of violating a value. So it shouldn't feel good, right? So Todd, if I knew one of your values, what I often would do is kind of create an avatar of the opposite. And like how does it feel? Like if you're talking to like this person as a part at a party and you're like, I want to punch them in the face. Like that's sort of the, that's sort of, that's sort of the reaction to it, right? And if I took my health and mentality, like I don't, I don't like being part of things that are inherently like unhealthy. I've never been the person who drinks from 7am till 9pm and then gets up and does it again the next day, like find a better way and share it. The opposite of that would be just like doing the assembly line, doing the same thing every day, you know, just being super consistent and not messing with everything. Not, not me. I self reliance. Like I'm incredibly Like I drive myself to the hospital unless like I can't, like if I need something, like I just. So people that are super dependent, you know, it can be very frustrating for me. And then, you know, long term orientation again, always, you know, people are kind of trying to drive a, trying to bust through kind of a loophole. Like that's never been my group. And then the last one, respectful authenticity. Right. I really don't resonate well with people who are either disrespectful or inauthentic. Right. I think that's a unique combo for me of like, how do you have challenge people and have dialogue and discussion but like always maintain kind of a healthy level of respect. So those are mine as a process to get there, but they're kind of non negotiables. We're in an interesting time in the world and our culture right now where people talk about values a lot and their values are a little more malleable than to me, a value doesn't change. And it doesn't change if you see it on one team or the other team. Let's just use orange and green at this time. Like you can't, like. And so I think a lot of people are getting themselves caught up or they're willing to swallow some cognitive dissonance to be okay with one thing here and not here. But truthfully, like, the value should not move and it should have a. Like, values have a cost, right? Like, values have a cost of moving away from a relationship that doesn't really align with your values. Firing a client, which we did, million dollar revenue, that was a huge hit because it just didn't. When we looked ourselves in the eye, they just did not align with our values. So if they don't cost you anything, then, then they're probably not really values.

So it's so fascinating, man. As I'm, as I heard you mention these core values, health and vitality, I was like, okay, check that's. You find a better way and share it.

I was like, yeah, that's my, that's my dominant one.

Right. When I heard that, I was like, oh yeah, you friggin nailed that one. Self reliance, long term orientation and respectful authenticity. I see all of this in you, but when you get to long term orientation, does that mean a consistency on the value so they don't, they're not changing in the wind?

Well, yeah, there's a meta sort of thing on that I guess as well. But for me, like I'm just always looking at what's the long view of something like inherently there are a lot of ways to make money and do things where you can drive, like I said, you can just take it out an opportunity and you just know it's going to disappear one day. Like I never been comfortable. I'm always kind of look one of my struggles very frankly right now in business in the last year or two, I'm usually someone working on the next year or the next couple years, the plan. It's been very hard in business to get ahead of a quarter or two now because it has been so up and down. One board meeting is then the next quarter. The board meeting is about something totally different. It's been hard to actually play in the long term world because we have had so much supply and demand chaos in the last couple of years. And so I've identified that like that's, that's, that's frustration. Like I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't like having to play the short game. I like, I like playing the long game.

Right, okay, I can see that that makes sense. And as a leader I identify with that. Now take me back to 2006. It was a breakthrough moment in your life. And what I really like to do Bob, on this todcast is make sure that we can learn from successful people and what they went through and identify breakthrough moments. Because often in our lives when we're going through that breakthrough moment, we pout like the entire time this is crap and this is all going wrong and can I get a break? But when we look back in, we look back at our lives, it was a straight line and we were being set up for success, not failure. So how was quitting your job in 2006 a breakthrough moment for you?

Yeah, I mean, so that's interesting. So if you look on the values in terms of again that sort of self reliance, that was sort of a value that I was violating because I, I had a lot of better ideas. I had some ways I wanted to do it. Like I had a distinct opinions on thing but I wasn't taking the risk to sort of do it myself. So that was the first inflection point, like deciding to jump off the cliff, you know, throw the parachute on and start stitching it, you know, through that. I think the other real paradigm shift was after I went to that pretty intensive leadership thing you mentioned before in 2013, realized like how much kind of values drove leadership and realized I was a values driven person. I really believed, but I couldn't articulate them. I could sort of describe it, but it's not helpful to you, you know, if you don't have that rubric, it's not helpful to you. So taking six to 12 months, figuring that out, being to have those five things on my desk and then eventually find a better way saying, there's no process to do this. So, like, what did I do? What did I figure out? And working with that with people on my team. But that was another inflection point because coming out of that, once I was like, here are the values. I was like, okay, need to double down on this stuff and need to get rid of this stuff. Once you're clear on your values, it's very clear the cost of sort of out of alignment. Whether again, your relationships are out of alignment, your work, the things you're doing, your commitment to double down on Todd and stop with Sally, because Sally's one of these unhealthy people who's super dependent on other people and always complaining and the victim and like, that's just not. That's just not where I want to spend my energy.

And you always come across to me as somebody who's all in. Like, you're all in. In family, you're all in. In work, you're all in about making sure that you can share a better way and teach that to people. Now, clearly you had to have moments of fear and doubt in 2006. You were, without a doubt, supposed to take a leap and you were assuming the risk. You opened up acceleration partners back then. But how did you. I mean, you know, you were. You were a brand new young entrepreneur. How did you get them?

I was a brand new father too. So it was, you know, this is all the. It's. It's never a good time moment. Yeah. Look, you can either get there out of frustration again. I probably started too late. I probably was five years of working for other people where I shouldn't have been. So there's always fear, there's always uncertainty, there's always doubt. I think at some point the scale just tipped. And being like me spending any more time helping other people try to figure out how to grow their businesses, that. That marginalizes myself, is just not working for me. Like, it's not working. I've tried it two or three. Like, they're not listening to my ideas. They don't want to do this. I have a better way. You know, I remember my friend at the time saying, trying to get me to move to California and take a job and saying, if you don't take this job, this will be the last job you ever have. I'm not even sure that you're employable kind of today, you know, because I think he already sort of saw that. So look, it's. Which pain do you want to accept, right? The pain of sort of being incongruous or the pain that comes with knowing you're on the right path. But that doesn't mean the path is like flat asphalt. We've all seen that chart of, like, entrepreneurial chart. It's like, you're here, here's the goal. What we expect is the straight line. And it's really a cliff and a bomb and a thing and ever. But you're like, I want to be on this journey. That's a different pain than sitting there every day on a pretty flat road being like, I know I don't want to do this work with these people in this town or be in this relationship. Right. That's a very different type of struggle.

You mentioned earlier about your bio and that there was something there about understanding your core values and that it reflects in. In your bio, which I'm. I'm gonna guess. And then do me a favor, because I love being wrong. It's how I learn. I'm the youngest kid in the family. My sister's never held back. And something tells me you won't. Is there a connection here? Because when you understand your core values, you can then create the future based on those core values, and eventually you end up seeing it play out or manifest inside of your bio. Was that the connection you were making earlier?

Yeah. What I was sort of, the connection I was making was that for my 20 year career, for my whole life, all of the highlights were in a very concentrated period of time after I sort of figured this out and everything came together. So I think those were all. First of all, those were all the things that I think I knew I could be and I could do, but I wasn't because I hadn't taken that leap of faith. I didn't have the clarity. I wasn't frankly leaning into the core value of self reliance. And that's why I never got scared when I get back again. I think once I jumped off the self reliance cliff, I was like, oh, this is where I'm supposed to be. I like being responsible for me and my family and working really hard. And a bigger check comes in the mail like, this is great. And if a smaller check comes, then I just need to work better or harder or smarter or figure out a different way to do it. I never want A check that's the same every week. Again, that's no. That's no fun. So it was, like, very quickly I realized, like, how long I had been probably living incongruously with that. Like, I was a fiercely independent kid. I always, like, I. You know, I walked to school by myself. Like, my parents would probably be accused of child abuse for the things that they, you know, let me do independently, you know, not today. Yeah. I mean, my gr. My first business operation, I think I was 9 or 10, and I took the train. It's called the T in Boston. It's not. It's a very benign train. You know, it's above ground. To go buy now and later candies and then resell them at school. And then my grandmother found out about the operation and shut it down. But I loved that stuff. But then somewhere, the sort of fear or risk or failure or maybe kind of society pushing me down the kind of standard path, like, had me out of congruence with that for a long time. I might have been out of congruence with that one for five or ten years until I kind of went back in congruence. And again, it never feels right. It's kind of like a little bit of a. You know, if it was a cartoon, it'd be like leaning into a buzz saw, you know, trying to not get injured by it.

Where were you first introduced to the concept in your life of having congruency between your values and what you were doing on a daily basis? Like, where did that stem from?

You know, it's really interesting. And my first business opportunity. One of the things I really, is the concept of alignment. And I was taught it as a consultant at 23 years old. Like, what does organizational alignment look like? Oh, well, you have a strategy or goal, and then you get these people focused on it, and then you get those people working on that. And, like, even if these people at the bottom don't know what they're doing, everyone's supporting kind of the overall. So actually, the alignment sort of concept was. Was really interesting to me. And then the quote that really brought it home for me, I think that at that retreat in 2013 that I saw, which was Gandhi, which was happiness, is when what you think, you say and you do are all in alignment. And I actually think that's how you could describe a good culture of a company. Like, what's a good culture? It's not something that tries to be everything to everyone. It's like. And I was like, I know so many people who think one thing and say another thing or they say one thing or do it. Like that's a lot of work like to do that. Wouldn't it just be easier to say what you think and do what you say? Like it just seems so. We stopped trying. I stopped. Our organization just stopped. It's so easy to try to be everything to everyone, appeal to everyone. I think one of the biggest struggles and why people can't get back to a sort of post work strategy is they're just willing to not be honest about what they want for the organization and understand that a large number of the people aren't going to like that, but they'll go work for the other company that's doing that and all those people will come work for your company because they want an office and those people don't want an office. But you're very busy saying, well, maybe we'll have an office or we'll alternate or whatever. I actually don't think it matters what the strategy is, but put a stake in the ground and stay where you want to be.

Right. I know, I know that whole scenario very well because during the pandemic, my agency office in Scottsdale, which was gorgeous and glass and beautiful mountains and our lease came up and my wife and I had a long conversation. My wife was 100% in favor of us dropping the lease because everybody was working from home. And I was 100% against it until a billionaire client of mine had an intervention and he was like, you should get rid of the office. And as soon as a billionaire told me that, I went home and I told my wife, I'm like, I think we ought to get rid of the office. And she was 100% right. But what happened is a lot of our staff was comfortable working at home, but some key people really enjoyed being around the office mix, which I did too. But we end up losing.

They're called extroverts.

Exactly. So it was just, it's just always interesting and when.

Which is okay. Right? I think that's, that's the, you know, like, look, we've decided this is the best choice to the business. If you don't like that or that's not what you need, that's okay. Let me give you an awesome reference. And like let's, let's just all not pretend. Right?

Right.

Yeah.

Well, it, everybody will eventually at some point get to the right place, but you hope that they don't take damage and sour the team. And that's why often removing a soured person quickly is a better decision. Than allowing it to fester.

Yeah. You can't make everyone happy. Right. So I think who's most important to make happy and understanding that always will have a group. Look, we've been fully remote for a long time. When someone comes in and they know that, and they're like, I want to work remotely. And then they realize they don't like it, and they try to change everyone's opinion. We should get offices and all that stuff. Like, no, you should get a new job. Like, 99% of the people here don't want an office. Like, you were told that was the playbook. You thought it would work for you. It didn't. The answer is not to change the whole organization. The answer is for you to change. And it's not a bad. Again, I don't think it's a bad thing. I think if everyone's just a little bit honest about that, then you can get to a good outcome. The person is not a bad person, and they came to a realization that was different than what they thought. But let's not waste all the time and energy changing our organization when that's not what most people want.

Right? Okay, let's. I want to talk about practical experience with core values in your life. When you leaned into your core values, did you see that? That made you a better man. And if so, the better man you became, did that impact your results?

Yeah, if I think about family, friends, you know, where I put my energy, I definitely started. Look, I think part of my concept of capacity building and a lot of this stuff is not just more. Right. It's. It's. It's trading. So there were some relationships. I was like, this relationship doesn't serve me more. I need to. Don't need to break up with it. I just need to stop putting energy into it. You know, one of the things is, like, why are we always like, Todd, we should get together again after we have lunch. And I was like, this was sucked. Right? So it's like, I just have to be like, todd, it was great to see you. Or it's good to see you. Right? I don't have to be like, we should get together again soon. Like, I can. I can just pull energy away from certain relationships. But I'll give you an example of one thing. Like, I felt like when you have this permission to be yourself. So I had add. I have add. I was not.

Brother.

I was not great. Yeah. A large club of entrepreneurs. I was like, you were probably not good at sitting in class and tapping my feet and doing all this stuff. And actually as a result, I didn't learn very well in that environment because I wasn't engaged and I didn't like what I was learning. I, you know, these back to school nights, every year you go, the teacher gives a speech, you go to the classrooms. Like I'm like, I'm sitting in that classroom. I'm not even in the building. Like I'm in some other thing. I just can't sit there. It's like bad flashback for me where the teacher talks about all this stuff. That's just whatever. I trust the teachers, we put my kids in good schools. Half of the thing is about all the different ways that parents can check in on the work every day. And I was like, I don't need to check your blog and this and that. You're a good teacher, I'm going to let you teach. So I just gave myself permission to stop going to those. Like that doesn't make me a better parent. I'd rather go on the ropes course with my kids or do something that's about finding a better way than go pretend to sit through something that I can't sit through and I'm not interested in. So again, just a small example, but I think I felt like, well, a good parent goes there. No, that's not really the thing that I'm good at. And so my wife enjoys going to it. She talked to the other people. Again, I'm not going to try to convince her not to do it because it doesn't affect her in the same way as me. But I mean every time I go to those things I'm like, oh, it's like bad flashback to me to like my own schooling.

Okay, I love it. I know the feeling. I actually think as a speaker and you and I are both award winning speakers and we hit stages and we impact audience and see the transformations in their lives. But as a speaker, I think a bad speaker makes it painful for the audience. A great speaker, like a great teacher inspires people and they don't even know that they're sitting there learning because you've made it interesting. Maybe you don't have attention disorders. Maybe the teachers just sucked.

Look, I don't. Look, there's a lot of. Again, there's a lot like what do I like? I like new and interesting and engaging. So even it doesn't matter. Think about what a lot of religious services and stuff are. They are the repetition of the same material. Like go and sit down and hear the same story. And like I just, that just doesn't engage my brain in the same way. So going to the same back to school and knowing it's going to be the perfunctory thing and the same thing and the over, like, it's just not how I learn. It doesn't, it doesn't engage me like a brand new concept, a brand new speaker, you know, in the religious context. Someone said, look, we're going to talk about totally new material this year on this time. I'd be like, all right. Yeah. So I always liked the more of the sermon when they kind of took the hey, pop culture plus historic law equals this lesson. I always found that fascinating because that was more storytelling.

Yeah, me too. And super relevant. And the best classes I ever had were the ones that applied it back into something that was relevant. And yeah, relevance is one of those secrets if you want to hold somebody's attention. You know this as a marketer, it's like it needs to be personalized and relevant if you want to command somebody's attention. And if it isn't personalized and relevant, they'll check out on you and they won't convert. I mean.

Right. And you know what's interesting about that? And you might have had this experience, but I think a lot of people with sort of inattention add entrepreneur, they have this inverse period pyramid of like doing worse in 101 classes and then doing better in school as those classes got smaller and more interactive. Really struggle in a lecture style class at just being talked to for hours.

Yeah, absolutely. Look, since we've been friendly, I know that you've always prided yourself on having a company culture that develops talent from the inside. Like why is that important for you? And what led you to prioritize developing internal talent inside your organization? Where does that come from?

So this goes a little bit to my new book, Elevate youe Team. And unfortunately I thought of this analogy after I wrote the book. So I've used it to talk about the book, but it's not. Yeah, so it'd be in the lost pages. But the last 10 years of high growth. Look, when the company was growing, I had a choice, like do I want to grow it in a way that's fine, fun and like working with all these people, or do I want to like churn and burn through a lot of people? Well, that since we weren't venture backed and we didn't have any mandate, like that's not what I wanted to do. So the analogy is like, and I think this is kind of where a Lot of hyper growth has been. And I think the playbook is going to change because it's not going to work anymore. But imagine that if NASA is commissioning a module to Mars and Todd's the, Todd's the, you know, the leader of the contingent going to Mars. Well, they plan the mission, the thing flies, it lands, videos, things are on. Turns out the capsule made it to Mars, but Todd and his entire team are dead. Right. So do you think people are really going to be jumping up and clapping and celebrating that the vessel made it, but all of the people are dead? I think that's a little bit how startups have operated. We're like, oh, we got to the goal, but we burned through everyone, you know, along the way. And so that became part of my intellectual curiosity. I'm like, how can we help grow people? How do we help them? Let's grow because our people are growing and like we're growing with them. And I want to, I want to, I like these people. I want to grow with them. I don't want to replace them every, you know, 24 to 36 months.

Yeah, I've always loved it. Like, I've loved identifying the people that are really opening up their wings inside the organization. They want to take flight. They want to seize opportunities that are more than just what their job requirements are. The inside of my organization at Wirebuzz, our director of ops who basically dude runs like everything. She started as my assistant and then I looked around, I was like, you're much more than. I can't even keep you in this position because there's so much more value and that you could be providing to the organization. And I love that when somebody internal claims their moment and they like seize it and they want growth and those are the people that earn the most and they also have the most responsibility, have the most impact on the outcomes. And whenever you bring somebody from the outside in, the culture takes a transition. But if you've got somebody internally or.

It'S a risk, right. They could, they. There's always, there's always a 50% risk that they are not a fit for the culture. Right. Like just, just like you're saying, you're always takes a hit. Some people could be great, but like there's. It's a risk. It's just an unknown. Right. So at least you've eliminated a huge part of the risk with, with a hire and a key role.

Yeah, we, we're looking for, we have an acronym for who is the cultural fit inside of our organization? And we call Them, this is what we're looking for. We call them OKG's, our kind of guy or our kind of gal. And they're the people that just consistently throughout whatever they do in life, they go above and beyond. They serve from their heart. They are clear communicators. They come to work excited and passionate about their work. And we've done an incredible job filling our organization with okay GS. And you can't always find those people, but we sure love to nurture them.

Yeah. And look, I know there is, there is some consternation around this word fit and I know, I know. Like, I think some people are playing semantics because it comes sort of out of Silicon Valley where it's like, how do we hire everyone that is the same? Right? That is not, that is not what you. And I mean like fit. I think an organization has to have some shared values. It has to have some shared beliefs. There can be a ton of people who are ideological different diversity in a whole bunch of different ways. But like they agree to a few base principles that the team in the organization are going to adhere to. Right?

And when you're working with an organization, are you also working with the individual first to figure out what their core values are and then the organization to figure out what its core value is? Is that kind of how the stack goes?

So really great question because they are totally independent and they are different processes and they are totally different and people conflate them all the time. So individual core values are this, the person, the discovery. I have a course on this that 2,000 people have taken. And that's a you thing that you can take for yourself or with you. It also should help you identify which organizations and roles and stuff you might not be a fit with. Company core values are really different. Those have to come from people in the organization sitting down and figuring out what is the collective DNA or the collective best practices and qualities that we want to sort of adhere by or hold up as standards. I mean, ideally you would know both of those. And in a perfect world, people could identify these core values of the company or they're really are the ones that they have on the wall, the actual core values. That's a right. Because a lot of companies have core values that aren't the ones they're stating. And then B, can I self identify that this is a good organization? Again, there is alignment, there's not. It's not identical, it's not perfect match. But like there is congruence between the things that I believe and the Things that organization believes, like this is no different than in any other religion or organization or otherwise. If you have incongruence on the major things, it's not going to go very well. So I think having clarity on both of those allows both the individual and the organization to make a good decision.

Makes good sense to me. Something that you do regularly that impacts me often is your Friday Forward newsletter. And. And I want you to take a moment and just explain to the audience what it is and we'll talk about how they can sign up. But I need to tell you about how it's impacted me and how I've implemented something similar inside of my organization. But what is Friday Forward in your newsletter?

Awesome. Yeah. So probably best way to explain is to explain the origin story. So after this core value period and this leadership retreat, one of the focuses, and you and I both know Hal Elrod was on sort of a positive morning routine. And, and actually in this retreat, the person who led it had a different but similar version of the kind of a 10-10-10, 10 minutes of kind of quiet reflection, 10 minutes of writing and 10 minutes of reading something positive in the morning. And so I did that for a few weeks. I really liked it, the reading positive stuff. We had been given some like chicken Soup for the Soul books and quote stuff. And I'm like, this isn't my sort of positive. Like, this is a little, it's not my cup of tea or soup, I should say. So I actually, like, I decided, hey, well, if I'm going to write, like, I had some quotes, I had some stuff I was saving. So I decided to my distributed team of 50, I would kind of start this note about a principle, a story. And I changed the format 100 times and I changed the name. And eventually it kind of settled on this format with a quote. But I didn't know if anyone was reading it. And then, you know, weeks and months later, I find not only people reading and enjoying it, they are sharing it outside the company because they're sending me back comments from, from spouses and brothers and otherwise. And once I realized that was happening, I was like. And they were asking me to add people to it. I was like, huh, I wonder if people outside the organization would be interested. And I talked to some other CEOs and they're like, oh, well, send us yours. And they're like, oh, this is great. I'll just send it to my team. So I put like two or 300 friends on the list. I set it up as kind of a newsletter where people could sign up because I was bcc and I hit send. I waited for like hate mail and like, what the hell are you doing? Take me off this. But I didn't. I got the same response. Those people started sharing it. One or two people wrote articles. This is the only newsletter I read every week. And then a couple years later I'm waking up and there's a hundred thousand people in 60 countries kind of reading this Friday forward every week. So I've continued it for seven years now, every week. The only weeks that I took off was actually to make a point, which was some. In the summer last year when my daughter graduated, we took her away on a trip and I realized it was almost a Friday for itself. Some of our streaks are just for the streaks. And so I was like, I'm intentionally going to break the streak to go enjoy this two weeks with my daughter. But you know, it's become a really consistent kind of positive habit for me too.

It's really good. It's the only newsletter that I consistently read. Thank you. Oh, besides the one that I write.

And you might not read that one. Yeah, yeah.

And then what I noticed is I want to impact my team on Friday more than any other day and I want to send them off. And this is all your inspiration. I'm not. I want to send them off onto the weekend so they can not worry about how much they hate their job and instead they're thinking about how much they feel valued in their job. And so every Friday towards the end of the workday, sometimes between noon and like 2:30 or 3:00', clock, I will, because I'm the video guy, I will grab my phone and I will create a thank you video for key people that went above and friggin beyond this week for our clients or for the team or for me personally or I got some feedback from a client and I want to shower them. And in doing so, I noticed some weeks I'll send out one, some weeks I'll send out five or six. But it's the. Oh my God, Todd, thank you so much for doing this. And I know they go home and share it with their spouse and then it has a abundant effect in their life. And I got that. I stole it from you, brother. But it works really, really well.

Yeah, I mean it's just, it's a time, it's a routine, it's a chance for you to do it in your preferred format and way. But I think again, any of these sort of consistent habits, like it's hard to, you know, I started taking this medicine a month ago and I'm still. I had to put it next to my coffee pot in order for me to remember. Like, it's not a habit yet. Right. So when these things become automatic, they're good, positive, you know, habits for us.

And to sign up for Bob's Friday Forward newsletter, you can go to Robert glaser.substack.com that's Robert glaser.substack.Com when you read it, don't hesitate to email me and go, dude, did you see this about the lobster and the problem they had he had at the restaurant with the.

And then you remember that one? That was a Covid one. Yeah, that was the. That was the meal. That was the meal. The meal that was all wrong. Yeah, yeah.

But always interesting. And thank you for the value and the core values that you're helping us all discover. Robert Glaser, thank you for joining me right here on the podcast.

Thanks, Todd.

Yo, that was a powerful episode. And from what we just learned, it should be obvious how you can now implement these lessons in your life to get to the next level. Now, before you bounce, I just have three quick thoughts. First, thank you for taking me on your incredible life journey. Second, if you receive some value from me and you want to pay it forward, it would mean the world to me. If you left an honest rating and review at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, I'd be incredibly grateful. And lastly, if you share this episode, whether it be a screenshot or a photo from where you're listening, anything via Instagram stories or LinkedIn, Facebook, or any of the social media sites, just tag me and the guest. I'll repost your content and I'll reply back in the comments because I love mixing it up. In fact, I'd love to share your shoutouts in my feed, too. Not only are these shout outs really good for you and for me, but they also help us book more amazing guests because they'll be able to see the reach that you're helping to cultivate. This is a way for you to help contribute to the show. So thank you again for listening and I look forward to earning a regular spot inside that ear of yours. Let's grow.