Robert Glazer: How to Lead with Values and Follow Your Inner Compass | Leadership | E10

Summary

Miracle Mentality with Tim Storey

Episode E10: Robert Glazer: How to Lead with Values and Follow Your Inner Compass | Leadership

Released: October 20, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, Tim Storey welcomes Robert Glazer—founder and chairman of Acceleration Partners, best-selling author, and renowned leadership speaker—to explore how leading with core values and following your inner compass can transform both personal and organizational life. The conversation delves into Robert’s personal evolution, his philosophy on values-driven leadership, and actionable strategies for cultivating authenticity and impact in a complex, rapidly changing world.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Robert Glazer’s Path to Leadership and Purpose

• Authenticity in Speaking ([03:41])
  • Robert shares that his speaking style is about being “real and relatable,” not modeled after any specific mentor, but formed through honest self-expression.
• Early Life and Missed Potential ([04:15])
  • Robert admits to “living below my potential” in school, recognizing only later—through experimenting in business and law internships—that entrepreneurship and creativity were his callings.

2. The Role of Observation & Unconventional Heroes

• Influence of Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines) ([05:33])
  • Robert was inspired by Kelleher’s audacious challenge to industry norms, noting, “They made more money than the whole industry for 20 years.”
  • Admired leaders who were authentic both on and off stage—“He just was the same guy,” referencing Kelleher’s consistent character.

3. Nurturing a Miracle Mentality

• Creative Family Roots ([08:08])
  • Robert credits his mother for instilling “an unbelievably creative” mindset, always encouraging curiosity and hands-on experimentation.
• Curiosity and Questioning the Status Quo ([09:46])
  • Robert describes himself as “innately curious,” often asking unconventional questions, which sometimes unsettled authority figures but sparked his unique perspective.

4. Discovering and Articulating Core Values

• The Journey to Clarity ([11:54])
  • Robert’s participation in a rigorous leadership program became a turning point. He realized that understanding and articulating personal core values was crucial but surprisingly uncommon, even among successful professionals.
  • The process: moving from generic “keyword lists” to actionable, personally defined values led to transformative changes in both life and business.
  • “After I figured that out, I started doubling down on things and my business changed and my life changed.” ([12:51])
• The Compass Within ([11:54])
  • Robert’s new book is told as a parable—a story about "Jamie," whose journey to clarity about values is intended as a mirror for every reader.
  • Frameworks and exercises that have transformed Robert’s own company are incorporated to help readers discover their own compass.

5. Societal Drift and the Need for Values

• Losing Connection to Values in Modern Society ([16:00])
  • Robert warns of “tribalism” and polarization, arguing that “we’ve lost this connection to values and rooted principles.”
  • Cites Adam Grant’s research from Originals—the importance of simple, lived values, such as “you take care of people,” particularly in moments of crisis.
  • Leadership is deeply influenced by unexamined personal history, e.g., “If you had a huge violation of trust as a kid…that’s how you show up as a leader.” ([17:00])

6. Practicing Values When Stakes Are High

• Turning Down a Major Client ([20:19])
  • Robert tells of walking away from a million-dollar client who mistreated his team, despite the financial hit: “Living near your values has a cost. It usually has a short-term cost.”
  • Notable quote:

    “You don’t get any credit…when your values are flowing in the same direction [as the incentives]. You get credit when the river’s going one way and your values are uphill.” ([21:24])

• Example of Basecamp’s Stand ([22:40])
  • He shares how Basecamp’s founders were criticized for banning politics at work, but their values-based decision ultimately strengthened their culture and business.

7. From Family to Business: Meaningful Culture

• Corporate Value Disconnection—Enron Example ([25:00])
  • Tim and Robert discuss companies that post values but don’t live them. Robert singles out Enron as a cautionary tale.
  • Robert notes: “I just don’t like BS...I like people who are authentic and are aligned between what they’re thinking, what they’re saying and what they’re doing.” ([25:17])
• Exceptional Corporate Cultures ([26:18])
  • Robert’s research showed only a small fraction of companies (1–2%) operationalize their core values. Cites Southwest Airlines’ culture as a primary differentiator.

8. Leading & Belonging in a Remote World

• Intentional Connection in Remote Work ([28:03])
  • Drawing on 18 years of experience, Robert outlines systems for fostering belonging and culture in distributed teams—emphasizing intentionality and genuine flexibility.
  • “With anything, you need to be intentional. We built systems and processes around that.” ([28:26])

9. Optimism and Pragmatism about the Future

• Outlook on Society & Change ([30:55])
  • Tim and Robert swap travel stories about communities transformed by collective vision.
  • Robert identifies as a “pragmatic optimist”—hopeful, but only if “we need to be realistic about our challenges and talk about them and not politicize everything.”
  • “If people were clear about what they valued, then they would know which battles they actually really want to fight.” ([31:11])

10. Tactical Application: GSD (Get Shit Done)

• Time Blocking and Prioritization ([31:55])
  • GSD, originally dubbed “airplane time,” is Robert’s technique for deep work.

    “You start with your biggest priorities…put the rocks in first, then the sand comes around it.”

  • He cautions against “calendar apps that let anyone take your time…my calendar is very built around when I want to do certain things.” ([32:45])

11. Bridging Knowing and Doing

• From Inspiration to Implementation ([34:14])
  • To become more effective, Robert recommends picking one action and committing to it, rather than aiming for wholesale change:

    “James Clear said, if you get 1% better every day, it’s like 37 times better a year. So I believe people that do one thing…and once you do that and see the improvement, then you’re likely to do the next thing. That’s how the flywheel gets started.” ([34:34])

12. “Hire Slow, Fire Fast”—At Work and in Life

• Alignment over Achievement ([36:03])
  • Robert stresses ensuring alignment of values before hiring or entering relationships:

    “If you hire an employee that doesn’t match your company’s values, no matter how good they are…it’s going to end up in a disaster anyway.”

  • Admits his biggest repeated mistake has been not acting fast enough on poor fits—whether in hiring or personal relationships.

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Notable Quotes by Timestamp

• On curiosity and asking different questions:

  “I had a lot of people say to me in my life, no one's ever asked me that question before. And my answer is always, does that mean it's a bad question?” —Robert Glazer ([09:46])

• On values and sacrifice:

  “Living near your values has a cost. It usually has a short-term cost…But you shouldn't think it's free.” —Robert Glazer ([21:24])

• On authenticity:

  “I like to challenge things, and I just don't like BS...I like people who are authentic and are aligned between what they're thinking, what they're saying and what they're doing.” —Robert Glazer ([25:17])

• On building positive habits:

  “If you get 1% better every day, it's like a 37 times better a year. So I believe that people that do one thing, and it was awesome...that's how the flywheel gets started.” —Robert Glazer ([34:34])

• On regret and having crucial conversations:

  “Your unwillingness to have a difficult conversation only ever leads to a worse and more difficult conversation. It doesn’t get better. You're just kicking the can down the road.” —Robert Glazer ([37:44])

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Timestamp Highlights

| Timestamp | Segment | Topic | |-----------|---------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:41 | Speaking Style | Robert's approach to public speaking | | 05:33 | Influences | Herb Kelleher and challenging industry norms | | 08:08 | Miracle Mentality Origins | Creative influence of Robert’s mother | | 11:54 | The Compass Within | Book motivation and overview | | 16:00 | Societal Values | Tribalism and disconnect from values | | 20:19 | Walking Away from Revenue | Turning down a client to protect company values | | 22:40 | Basecamp Story | Standing for values under fire | | 25:00 | Enron Example | Authenticity and the danger of empty corporate values | | 28:03 | Remote Work | Creating connection in distributed teams | | 31:55 | GSD – Productivity Ritual | Time blocking and priorities | | 34:14 | Implementing Change | Moving from knowing to doing via small steps | | 36:03 | Hire Slow, Fire Fast | Importance of alignment in both professional and personal life|

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Resources & Actions

• The Compass Within (Book): Available at compass-within.com and major retailers.
• Robert’s Newsletter, Podcast, Courses: robertglazer.com
• Six Core Values Questions Exercise: robertglazer.com/6

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Episode Tone

Conversational, engaging, and rich with personal stories, this episode fuses Tim Storey’s motivational warmth with Robert Glazer’s pragmatic, values-driven approach. Listeners are left inspired to clarify their own values and equipped with practical tools to enact change—one intentional step at a time.

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Memorable Closing

• “Walk by faith, embrace possibility, and create your own comeback story.” —Tim Storey ([39:58])

Transcript

[A]

Hello, it's Tim Story. I'm in my podcast studio. I just interviewed an amazing guest. I have a really, really exciting announcement on November 2, which happens to be my birthday. We're doing an event in Rancho Valencia and this is a beautiful resort in Rancho Santa Fe, California, which is in the San Diego area. And this is all a give back. It is us coming to you because we want your vision to come to pass. It's going to be right about 250 to 300 people, carefully curated groups of entrepreneurs, athletes to thought leaders. It's going to be a beautiful group. So that's November 2nd in Rancho Santa Fe. To find out more information, just go to tim story.com that's story s t o r e y tim story.com come on. Come and celebrate my birthday November 2nd and watch your life become more different, better and more magical. Hello, my name is Tim Story. Welcome to Miracle Mentality. Remember, rooftops drawn, spaceships on the ground. It's for the dreamers, the doers, the believers in something greater. In each episode, I'll invite you to rise above the mundane, to push past the messy and learn to live boldly in the miraculous. Every episode will have practical wisdom, spiritual insight, and my guests will explore what it takes to activate your miracle mindset. Remember to subscribe, follow and like. Welcome. My name is Tim Storey and this is the Miracle Mentality podcast. And I'm excited about my guests today. So what happens is that when we book somebody, then I like to do a deep dive into the guests to find out more about them. I learned that from my good friend Larry King. He would really, really study somebody to the depths so he could try to understand many things about them. But I got into studying the guest today that we have, Robert Glaser, and then I got excited for my own good because I was learning so much about what he was teaching on. So let me just read a few things. Founder and chairman of Acceleration Partners, co founder and former chair of Brand Cycle, creator of the Friday Forward newsletter, which reaches over 200,000 readers weekly in over 60 countries of the world. Host of the Elevate podcast, which ranks among the top 1% in business performance and leadership. He's a sought after speaker because, and I'm not just saying this because I'm a pretty good speaker myself. He's phenomenal as a speaker and I love that he emphasizes core values in his leadership training. And he has a new book, the Compass Within. Let's welcome Robert Glaser. Hi, Robert.

[B]

Tim, thanks for having me.

[A]

What'd you think about that introduction?

[B]

You know, I prefer when people lower the bar so I can exceed expectations rather than disappoint. But appreciate it.

[A]

But as a speaker, so speaker to speaker, I really enjoy your style when you're on stage. Where did you get your speaking style? For me, I studied comedians. Like, who did you study? Anybody?

[B]

I don't think I studied anyone in general. I think I try to be real and relatable and look, any speaking thing is a performance, but I think it's a matter of just developing the content in a way that it's real. And I probably have picked up things along the way from people, but I can't point to one single person.

[A]

Yeah. So when you were. When you were in high school. Let's take senior year in high school. What were you thinking that you might do with your life?

[B]

Look, I don't know because my. My. My high school and pre high school years were. Were a lot of living below my potential and being told, you know, I was sort of a very entrepreneurial, creative kid. And that doesn't work super well in our classic system. So I think people were hoping, I hope this just kid just gets through college and figures it out. But honestly, that was part of the problem. I really hadn't figured out what I was passionate about. I think I had those entrepreneurial tendencies, but there wasn't a good outlet to nurture them. And then I went to college. I started renting trucks and working in business and like, oh, I like doing this. I actually, I fully intended to be a lawyer because my. I think my dad was a lawyer. But that was the track I went to college expecting to do. I interned in law firms for two years and realized I really didn't want to be a lawyer.

[A]

So, you know, it's been said, I think Dennis Waitley is the first that said it back in the 80s, is that we learn through education, conversation, observation, which I think is good. Give me somebody that you observed, let's say high school, college years, that you saw their life, their lifestyle, and you said, I'd like to do maybe something similar.

[B]

So one of my early, vicarious, I would say mentors was Herb Kelleher and Southwest. And what's kind of funny is I really don't like flying Southwest. I know they're changing, but their value proposition is not to me as a customer. But I loved was how they succeeded by challenging conventional wisdom in almost every way. Like the hub and spoke model, multiple planes. You need a lot of services. And I ended up reading his biography in college and really having an incredible appreciation for how he led. And he just, he was the same guy on stage, offstage, two packs of cigarettes a day, a bottle of Wild Turkey for breakfast, and treated his people really well.

[A]

Yeah, you talk about that in one of the talks that you gave about what he did at Southwest Airlines. And you break down the whole industry, that it's hard to make money in the industry, but yet he found a way to not just do it, but to excel in it.

[B]

They made more money than the whole industry for 20 years. I mean, it's kind of an incredible. And that's when they were not a major, they were kind of a minor.

[A]

Yeah. Okay, so the way you think, do you think it's more innate or is it learned behavior or a combination?

[B]

I think it's a little bit of both. I actually think over the last five or 10 years, I've gotten much better at taking in new information and evolving my opinions. I like to say I have very strong convictions, loosely held. You know, if you ask me, red shirt or blue shirt, like, I'll make an impassioned case for one of those, but it might not really matter that that much. I would tell my team that they're like, don't ask me to weigh in on the shirts if you don't care if it doesn't matter, because I'll have a, you know, I'll have an opinion, but. But I think it was a little bit of both. I've always been very self reliant. I've always tried to figure things out and solve them. And why I struggled a little bit in school is like, I learned by trial and error and by doing. And that's just how I. That's how I learn. I need to get my proverbial hands dirty.

[A]

Yes. So you see by this big background, the podcast is called the Miracle Mentality. So as you know, mentality is a mindset, frame of mind, a perspective. Who around you when you were little, had a, a miracle mentality. Somebody that had extraordinary thinking. Maybe it was your parents, your grandparents, a teacher.

[B]

My mom is one of the most creative people that people have ever met. And she always had us doing projects and melting crayons. And this was kind of before YouTube and making things. And I, I just think that I learned very on how to like combine different things and try. We were gluing seashells and like all hot glue guns and all kinds of stuff. So I think that was a mindset. But it was this just. She's an unbelievably creative person. And I think that was nurtured very young. And I think I'm actually naturally curious. And so that was all that was a good outlet for me because I.

[A]

Always find it interesting to see how somebody arrives somewhere. So I'll give you an example.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So you take the NBA when Magic Johnson was playing Larry Bird and Michael Jordan, you had three different basketball players from different parts of America. Right. Different styles of game, but yet they're doing the same thing, which is basketball. Me and you are teaching leadership in completely different ways. So I'm from Compton, California. I'm an inner city kid. I think a certain way, I teach a certain way. And that's why I really. Besides wanting to study who you were for the sake of the podcast, I then went on and on and on and on because you started teaching me so many things. I'm trying to get into your mind on how this started, because I think that you're thinking outside the lines. So where did you get this kind of thinking?

[B]

Yeah, I was always asked a lot of questions, and I had a lot of people say to me in my life, no one's ever asked me that question before. And my answer is always, does that mean it's a bad question? Because I think it's a good question. I think you don't want to answer it. So I had a lot of innate curiosity. I just wasn't interested in any of the things I was learning about. One of my keynote speeches, I don't know if you saw, I start with all my report cards, and they're all terrible, and they all say, he seems very capable, but we can't motivate him to do anything from first to sixth grade. And it wasn't really until college when I finally got done with the prereqs, I went abroad. I realized, oh, there's business and marketing, and I love these things, and I'm good at them. And I kind of came back and something just flipped, and I became a voracious learner, and I went from kind of an underachiever to an overachiever. And I spent a lot of time trying to figure out a better way to do things. In school. It was don't. It wasn't don't figure out a better way. It was like, follow the damn playbook. Right? Which wasn't her story, is every time she asked me to clean my room, I rearranged it or I painted it. So those things were always there. They were probably nurtured, but they were also sort of suppressed by like, you know, suburban education conditions. And I think finally when they came out, that was really the inflection point.

[A]

I find that with a lot of creatives that they went somewhere and discovered something. Like some musicians that I work with, they went to foreign lands and learned different types of music or work with different people. The fact that you went abroad, I do think that that probably shook up your thinking in a good way. That's what happened to me as well. I remember going to Sweden for the first time to speak on leadership in schools when I was 20 years of age and I'd never been to Sweden and I'd never been on trains. I did find all these different little cities and it gave me a growth mindset, as Carol Dweck says. Now you have a new book, the Compass Within. Tell me a little bit about this book.

[B]

Yeah, so this is a little bit of a journey over a decade of. I was lucky enough to be invited to a pretty rigorous leadership program. I went to it, I thought I was going to learn how to become a better leader and all these tactical things to do. And really like the first couple of days were this big mirror which was like, who are you? What do you value? How are you going to lead from that? And I actually realized I was very values oriented. I knew as values oriented, but I couldn't articulate what those were. I had one word ideas or generalizations or the same stuff that people says say to me today. So I went on sort of a three month, six month kind of journey after that to figure out these core values. And I just found keyword lists and I was like, no, no, I need things that are like actionable and describe who I am and help me. And after I figured that out, I, I started doubling down on things and my business changed and my life changed. In fact, it was like three years ago, I realized someone was reading my bio and every single thing they read came kind of after that core values moment. So I brought that curriculum back to our company and our leaders and I said, we're gonna, we're gonna help you figure out your personal core values. It was tied to my book Elevate. Like if you wanna be an authentic leader, you're gonna lead from this place and you gotta understand what drives you, you know, talk about your upbringing. These things are deep. We carry em with us. They show up in our leadership and either you're driving the car or someone with that other wheel is driving the car and they're swerving it all over the road. So I had like 100 people. I trained through that, and I loved it, and we had great outcomes. And then people kept asking me, so, how do I do this? So I took that curriculum. I made it into a course. A couple thousand people took it. And then I get these notes from people all around the world. I don't do anything without this awareness now. Or I took a new job, or I, you know, change relationship or something like that. So I was like, I'd love to get this to more people. I know a lot of people won't jump into a course, and I'd like to write a book on this. But I just had this vision, like, this very visceral thing of, like, going into Barnes and Nobles, and there's a book called, like, on values, and no one wants to read it, and everyone walks by it because the topic of values just seems so, like, I don't know, aloof or vague to people or platitude. And I love Pat Lincioni, and I really loved some parables I read, and my daughter kind of was joking with me one day about your whole world is nonfiction. Let's see you write a fiction book. Because I'm always challenging that. And it sort of just clicked. And I was like, what if I showed this to people? What if I took the framework that I've developed and sort of lit it up with characters that people could see themselves in, and then at the end, I'll tell them the framework. But I think I could make people interested in this topic that way, because my goal is to help a million people figure this out. And to do that, I need an avenue that's sort of just more accessible for them to get into the content. So that's sort of how we landed here. So the book is a story about this guy named Jamie who's going through some issues with what I call the big three, which is your partner, your community, and your vocation. And Jamie's like a reflection. I think most people have read the book, like, have thought. They're like, I thought you were writing about me. Or I had this discussion, or I've had this boss, or I've had this thing. And so he's just a vehicle, and he meets a mentor, and the mentor helps him figure out his values. And at the end, I kind of walk you through that framework that, over 10 years now, really works to help people figure out their core values.

[A]

So I'm loving this because I'm a fan of Stephen Covey. I went to seminary. My doctorate is in world religion. My favorite books of The Bible are psalms and proverbs. So I'm about core values and there's a saying, don't be a visionary heavyweight and a character lightweight. And you're really into this thing about the character thing. So what is it in you that really challenges the fact that we've become a society that doesn't always go back to the core values?

[B]

Yeah, I think particularly at this moment in time, to say that my book is the anecdote to all the world's problems would be a little much. But we are inherently tribal and we are stoking a lot of tribal mechanisms where you, and particularly I think teens and 20 year olds are being just some things that don't make sense, like recruited by people where you're like, that doesn't make any sense. Like they would kind of want to do you harm. And because this tribalism and it's really strong and I think we've lost this connection to values and sort of rooted principles. I remember, you know, in Adam Grant's book Originals, he talked about this study about why, why non Jewish people helped hide Jewish people during the Holocaust and tried to understand what they had in common. And when they interviewed him, they asked, they were like, look, our parents just told us some version of our parents told us, you take care of people. And so obviously that's just what we did. And I think we're losing a little bit of that. I think we're losing that anchor. People are, they're getting caught up in the tribalism and politics and their opinions wish wash all over the place. And in doing this, they've completely unanchored themselves. And I don't even think they know what they stand for anymore. So particularly in leadership too. I mean, the book isn't even really about leadership, it's about work. But having worked with so many people and seen this like this, this is how you lead, this is how it shows. If you had a huge violation of trust in your life as a kid and your default mechanism in life now is to sort people into people you can trust and not trust, that's how you show up as a leader. And it's very disruptive if you don't realize that's what you're doing. For people on your team are like, they like me, they don't like me. I'm in the penalty. Like versus someone being like, hey, you know what? Trust is really important to me. You know, if you're late to meetings, if you miss deadlines or whatever, that loses trust with you. And if you feel this Disconnect, like, come talk to me, because there's probably been a break of trust, and I really operate from a place of trust, right? So person A, who's running around doing this, not realizing it, is going to end up in a performance review, you know, and person B can actually be who they are and, like, let everyone else know about it.

[A]

I'm believing that you're enjoying this podcast, the miracle mentality. And so the best way to help other people is to share it with a friend, a family member, or even a colleague. We work hard on getting the right types of guests that will make your life go from the mundane, the messy, the madness into the miracle mentality. Don't forget, your mindset is yours to set. So make sure and share this with someone else and then tag me at Tim Story Official. That's Tim Story Official. Thank you for making this one of the most listened to and watched podcasts out there in the world. And guess what? Get ready for miracles to come your way. I love this way of thinking. Because isn't it strange that to have core values is something that's different? So to think about, like, the things we learned in kindergarten still work of being kind to people and having character.

[B]

And character is. Yeah, David Brooks. I mean, we've lost character. I mean, parents are more looking at why parenting and leadership have diverged in terms of understanding best practices. There are things that we know are best practices in leadership, and then parents are doing the absolute opposite. And one of the things I say in that book, the best compliment you could ever say to me is, you have a great kid now. You have a great athlete, you have a great student, you have a great painter, but you have a great kid. And parents have just lost this. They've gotten caught up in all this achievement, suburban rat race crap, and they've just lost, like, what actually matters.

[A]

Can you walk us through the story where you turned down millions of dollars from a client because they were violating your values?

[B]

So we had a client that was probably one of our top five biggest clients, kind of during our growth st. And this client was pretty terrible to our team. They were just unreasonable. And we have a core value of embrace relationships as a. As a business. And it was coming up for renewal. And we started this discussion again. We said, look, we keep losing people on this team. Not only they quit the account, they leave the company because they're so burned out from it. And we were in a management meeting, we looked around, and everyone was kind of beating around the bush. And finally someone was like, look, this clearly violates our value of embrace relationships. So the question is, are we willing to kind of take the hit? And ultimately we did. We told them we weren't going to renew. It was a big loss. Look, it, you know, had some job implications and having to move people around, but I think people, employees were so impressed and we told them, like, how they're treating people is not acceptable. This violates our core value. We're walking away from over $1 million a year. And I think that made a difference for people. And look, this highlights a clear point, which is living near your values has a cost. It usually has a short term cost. And in this world of all this short term stuff, people want to be on the right side in the short term when they should really be focused on being on the right side in the long term. But you shouldn't think it's free. You don't get any credit. In my book, at least when your values in the river are flowing in the same direction, you get credit when the river's going one way and your values are uphill. And one of my favorite stories of this is actually the guys at Basecamp. And I don't know if you know this story, but look. And this is your personal core values. Not even company. So it's 2022. We're at the height of political activism in the workplace. DH Ace and Jason Fried have built this company doing the exact opposite. Probably why I like them. Of conventional wisdom. They have not raised money. They have a remote work team. They've done all the things that software companies aren't supposed to do. And politics is like taking over their slack channels. And they looked at them and they're like, this isn't who we about. This is divisive. We hate it. We don't like it. We're basically like banning politics at work. And we're going to let everyone know. And this is before Elon Musk owned Twitter. And Twitter was like a vehicle of cancel culture. And they just said to the world, look, you are free to leave and whatever, but we're not doing politics at work. And people came after them like, like, tried to cancel them. You are on the wrong side of history, like. And they're like, look, we're a software company that builds project management software for teams. We think that's what we should focus on. And they were like, look, we would rather lose the company and go home than do this. It's just not who we are. We don't like it. Like, it's great if you want to do this outside of work. So the cancel comes for them, and, you know, they kind of weather the storm, and a week or two later, business isn't that much impacted, even though everyone's telling them they're going to be on the wrong side of history. And, you know, then weeks and months later, tons of applications come in. And it turns out there's a lot of people who'd like to work at a company that's not political. And four years later, they are thriving. They have the best employees they ever have. It's great. And a lot of these other companies that jumped, you know, virtue signaling into political activism are not only having problems with their product and stuff that they didn't pay attention to, but they've made a mess of their culture. And so it sucked for them in the short term. Right. But now everyone's calling them and saying, man, you guys were right. And you did that at the hardest time. And I have a ton of respect for you. And so that's what it tends to look like. It doesn't look. It's not fun in the short term.

[A]

I like your mindset, Robert, because you're looking at the core values of the family, which. The family, as you know, in so many cultures, because you travel as well. I mean, that's the community. I work a lot with indigenous people. I go a lot to Africa. They're into tribes. And there's something about having that group being from the inner city. You better have your group that protects you. And the family is so, so important. So it's like you've taken these ideas from the family, but also into the workplace. And I also love how you challenged some of the bigger companies, even by name. We won't mention them today unless you want to, but you challenged some of the bigger companies by name for almost having this mission statement on their whiteboard of what their core values are. And you mentioned one of them in one of your talks, and then you showed how they did the complete opposite.

[B]

Okay, yeah, that was. I think that was Enron. We can. They're deceased, so we can talk about them.

[A]

It was 100% Enron. Yes. And so is that the revolutionary in you, or what part of Robert, is that in you? The challenges like that?

[B]

I like to challenge things, and I just don't like bs, Right. I like people who are authentic and are aligned between what they're thinking, what they're saying and what they're doing, which, look, I may not agree with it, but at least I'm like, I can respect People who. It's the same like you are, who you are. You're not. I mean, it takes a lot of work to think one thing, say another thing, and do another thing. My journey in core values started with the company core values before I even realized the personal core values. As I was building a business and I was not a believer in core values. I saw all this crap written on all the walls that I walked into these companies. I took pictures of it. No one behaved that way. No one acted that way. But then I actually started to see some great companies, and I started again looking at Southwest and some of the things that they'd done, and Herb Kelleher saying, when they said to Herb, how did you make more money than the Entire airline in 20 years? And by the way, I knew a lot about their model. I knew about the. How they turn planes and the Boeing 737 and the off city airports. And he just said, culture.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I was like, huh. So I went, looked up Southwest core values, and they were really different. And if you hear all these stories of Southwest employees bringing people home and putting them up and doing all this stuff, they were actually just following those behaviors, you know, wow, our customers and show love and things that are. And United was like, we fly, right? We fly together, we fly, whatever. And then United dragged a guy off a plane and beat him up rather than give him $800 thing for bouncing his ticket, right. Versus a Southwest employee, had someone's son who was sick. She took the guy off the plane, rerouted him, sent him to the hospital, sent him a meal, did all this stuff. And neither of their employee manuals had anything about how do you deal with the fact that, you know, you have too many people on the plane, you got to drag someone off. It was something about the culture. So I started to look at companies who actually had core values that sounded different, but they were operationalized in all aspects of their business. And it's probably 1 to 2% of companies, but those are the great companies. They say, look, these are the behaviors that we reward here. And we're all, you know, we've got a little puppy and, you know, how do we train her? It's, you know, treat or. Or no. You know, we're all kind of humans. At the end of the day, we respond to incentives, you know, whether they implicit or explicit around that a boy, that a girl, or don't do that. And so the problem is, in most organizations, it says crap like integrity, respect, and whatever on the wall, but that's not the behaviors, the culture is reinforcing.

[A]

I love it. Okay, I'm going to read a question. In a remote first world, how do you foster connection and belonging?

[B]

It has to be more intentional, right? I've run a fully remote company for 18 years now. The company's been doing that, and so we've gotten pretty good at it. But there are some downsides, right? You miss some of the water cooler moments in training. You missed the. I can go listen to Tim, you know, our venerable sales leader, and just listen to four hours of calls and what he's doing. So you have to be more intentional and you have to create those spaces. But I think what people realized during COVID was it was the great equalizer, right? You and I are the same size square on a thing. No one was sitting above anyone or imposing on anyone. So I think, like, with anything, you need to be intentional. We always found the people who did well in a culture of freedom and flexibility. I think, like, that's a real important part of remote. We wanted people who needed that and wanted that. It wasn't like a fourth on their list. And we built systems and processes around that. And we actually did get our employees together and we put them in hubs and we would go meet up quarterly. And the human connection part's important. So again, we were intentional versus what happened after the great resignation is everyone didn't want to lose employees and they said, oh, you can work from home. But they had no way to support it. You know, they didn't tell the person that, oh, the rest of this team is in the office and you're going to be the little, you know, guy or girl up on the square, and that's going to feel a little bit weird. So this goes back to, like, the think. Say, do, like, do you believe in this? Are you doing it for the right reasons? Are you going to support it? Do you want to make it successful? Or is it just a recruiting gimmick right now so you don't lose people? Because almost all the companies that we lost people to to let people work from home have since rescinded that policy, and we have not.

[A]

So when you look at the future of the world, not just America, because, as you know, the world is bigger than just our country.

[B]

It is.

[A]

And you look. Yeah. Do you see it through the lens of being optimistic about where we could take this thing? Because let me give you an example. Yeah, I'm going to Cleveland, Ohio soon. So I was telling a friend of mine, I said, have they cleaned up that one Area of Cleveland. And he said, tim, you haven't been to that area in about 10 years. It has completely changed. I go, what happened? This company came in, this big investor came in, changed the community. And because both of us travel, we see that taking place in places that were run down.

[B]

Oh, I was just in one last week, and I was like, this was called the combat zone, and now it's like a gentrified luxury area.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Are you more optimistic or pessimistic about the state of the world and can we get our core values together and kind of get in alignment?

[B]

I'm a pragmatic optimist. I think that our best days can be in front of us, but I think we need to be realistic about our challenges and talk about them and not politicize everything and make it impossible to even have a discussion. There are. There are real challenges and real problems. And I do think that if people were clear about what they valued, then they would know which battles they actually really want to fight. Because you're willing to, if it's something you care about, you're willing to take your lumps and deal with a lot of failure, and if it's not, you'll quit at the first sign of struggle and run the other way.

[A]

That's a very, very valid point. Okay, so I'm going to take you a different way.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

G S D. Are you familiar with that?

[B]

I am familiar with that. All right, so I'm in low supply these days, unfortunately, but yeah.

[A]

Okay, so when you say that, I know what it means, because this fascinated me about you. Again, what does that mean to Robert?

[B]

GSD was kind of get shit done, and this was sort of a calendaring strategy, because first I called it airplane time, and then I called it get you done. Because what I noticed when I was building my business and traveling and everyone needed something and they kind of eat up the whole calendar, I was like, look, I need time. I need time to do the work and quiet and whatever. And somehow you all find a way not to bother me when I'm on an airplane and the world doesn't fall apart. Right? So I would put airplane time and then gsd. And I was like, you can't move this. This is. This is mine, and you'll have to work around it. So I'm a big believer in time blocking and that you start with your biggest priorities in your calendar, and you put the rocks in first, and then you let the sand come around it. In fact, like, I work with and coach some leaders and I think one of the things you do is you look at their schedule and like, you can't be a leader. And just those calendarly apps where you're like, hey, just take my calendar and whatever time you want. Like, I would never let anyone do that. Like, my calendar is very built around when I want to do certain things and put my priorities into it. So I used to encourage our teams to even like sync that up time in the morning. So hey, from 8 to 11, like we all have GSD in our calendars. We don't bother each other and we do it at the same time so that we can actually do some work. One of the thresholds that consultants have over employees is that like at the end of the month when you say, hey, I need to pay you again, what did you do? You have to sort of show that it would not be okay to be like, well, I was just in meetings all month. Right. But somehow there's some companies where it's just all they do is they meet all day long. And look, I, I've been in a lot of meetings today. My one note to do list is filling up. Like I need a block of three hours to sit down and execute on that. All that follow up stuff.

[A]

Okay? So Robert, I think like a life coach. So so many of the guys that I coach, they're high level people, male and female, and they've read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. So they'll maybe they'll read a book that's fantastic. Or they'll read your book that's fantastic. But they don't apply what they've learned. Give me a little bit on how we could take it from. Yeah, I know I need to GSD to actually stepping into gsd.

[B]

So I gave a keynote this morning with a company around my capacity mill and talk. And one of the exercises that we do is after we go through it, I'm like, all right, we talked a lot about his stuff for the last hour. There are four categories here. I want you to pick one thing you could do tomorrow and go do it and you'd be better, right? And one thing that if you did in the next quarter, you could be better. And I said, look, I don't. If you walk out of the speech and you tell me you're going to change your life and make everything better. And I changed. I don't believe you. I look at the gyms in January and I can't get a parking space on January 10th. And by February 1st there's plenty of parking spaces. So I believe, you know, James Clear also said, if you get 1% better every day, it's like a 37 times better a year. So I believe that people that do one thing, and it was awesome. They shared a bunch of things. I'm gonna go home tonight at the dinner table, and when someone says, how was your day? I'm not gonna say it was fine. Like, I'm gonna answer the question and we're gonna do Rosebud Thorn, you know, at the family. And so. And I'm like, okay, once you do that and you see the improvement, then you're likely to do the next thing. And that's how the flywheel gets started. In fact, look, when I go to these days or these conferences, and there's a ton of speakers, like, I kind of don't want a hundred pages of notes. I kind of want, like, two things I'm going to walk out of here with, and if I can implement two, that's a good day.

[A]

There's a guy that you probably remember, Robert Schuller, and he'd say, inch by inch, everything's a cinch. Yard by yard, it starts getting hard.

[B]

I haven't heard that, but that's really good.

[A]

I'm going to close with one last thought of yours. Higher, slow, fire, fast. But not only does that work in the workforce, I think that works in relationships. Higher, slow, fire, fast. Tell us what that means.

[B]

I think this is everyone's biggest regret or mistake in the business world. And it's not new logic, but when we're in a rush, when we want something new and we tend to jump in, and we tend to kind of not make sure that that alignment is there. And if you hire an employee that doesn't match your company's values, no matter how good they are, like, it's going to end up in a. In a disaster anyway. So you need to slow that down and make sure it's a fit. As I said, I think you said same same thing in. In. In relationships and commitments, if people ask me, like, what's your biggest regret or biggest mistake? Unfortunately, mine is one that I repeat a lot. But when I had someone I podcast and they said the same thing and they said they repeated it, I felt better. But it's. It's the time between I know I need to do something and I actually do it.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And the time you know, is like earlier. You kind of know after two weeks whether that employee is going to be a disaster and you're going to try to convince yourself for six months that you're going to make it work. Someone was just doing due diligence on a potential investment that I was looking at with them. And they, they brought a couple things to light where the facts weren't quite correct. And so again, my experience is like, that is not good early on. That is only going to lead us to discover more things that are not correct later on. So I've really tried to trust these early warn signals and I don't know anyone who's really regretted cutting something too early that it was the wrong thing. As I tell my kids, I try to tell them and again, just from my failures on this, your unwillingness to have a difficult conversation only ever leads to a worse and more difficult conversation. It doesn't get better. You're just kicking the can down the road.

[A]

You may not know this, Robert, but Billy Graham had about seven sermons and he preached those same seven sermons for about 30 years. This should be one of your favorite sermons that you speak because you're right, it's not only just in companies, but I think it's also in relationships where you could feel like something's going awry and maybe you don't cut the person off completely, but cut them back. Okay, so my guest today, Robert Glaser, the book is the Compass Within. Robert, I appreciate you. I like your perspective, your mentality, your swag, the way you're thinking. If a company or people want to work with you, what's the best way to get in touch with you?

[B]

Sure. All of my stuff, newsletters, podcasts, all that stuff is@robert glaser.com the book is compass-within.com or it's on the website. If you buy it up through the launch week, we're going to send you the course that I mentioned we've been selling for years. Again, I want to just help people figure this out. If you're still a little dubious on this in, in the book and in the character, it all starts with answer these six questions. This is part of figuring your core values. Those six questions are right for you@robert glazer.com 6 Do me a favor, get a coffee, write down those questions, answer them 20 or 30 minutes, look at your answers and you may be like, huh, I didn't realize, like the word respect came up, like across all of these things or otherwise. So I've seen people do this and post them on LinkedIn and stuff, and it's really cool. But just try answering those six questions. But Compass within with Ever Books are sold or compass-within.com okay, I love it Robert.

[A]

Seriously, thanks for taking the time and I'm a fan and you're teaching me a lot and I'm going to continue to learn from you. Thank you for sharing space with me on this episode of Miracle Mentality with Tim Storey. If today sparked your courage or helped you understand why you're created for success, I invite you to carry that miracle mentality forward. Visit [e-mail] that story with an ey on the end. Until next time, walk by faith, embrace possibility, and create your own comeback story.