Robert Glazer, Founder, CEO of Acceleration Partners
Robert Glazer is the founder and CEO of Acceleration Partners, a global performance marketing agency and the recipient of numerous industry and company culture awards, including Glassdoor’s Employees’ Choice Awards two years in a row. He is the author of the inspirational newsletter Friday Forward, author of the international bestselling book, Performance Partnerships, and of the new book, Elevate. He is a sought-after speaker by companies and organizations around the world and is the host of The Elevate Podcast.
https://www.robertglazer.com/
Elevate with Robert Glazer
https://www.robertglazer.com/fridayfwd/
AUTOMATED EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] You're listening to Scaling Up Services where we speak with entrepreneurs authors business experts and thought leaders to give you the knowledge and insights you need to scale your service based business faster and easier. And now here is your host Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt.
[00:00:22] Are you a CEO looking to scale your company faster and easier. Checkout Thrive Roundtable thrive combines a moderated peer group mastermind expert one on one coaching access to proven growth tools and a 24/7 support community created by Inc award winning CEO and certified scaling up business coach Bruce Eckfeldt. Thrive will help you grow your business more quickly and with less drama. For more details about the program, visit eckfeldt.com/thrive . That’s E C K F E L D T. com / thrive.
[00:00:57] Welcome, everyone. This is Scaling Up Services. I'm Bruce Eckfeldt. I'm your host. And our guest today is Robert Glazer and he is founder and CEO of Acceleration Partners. They're a global marketing agency. We're gonna learn about that. He's also an author. He's written a couple of different books, which we'll talk about today. Previously, performance partnerships and then Elevate is his new one. He's also the author of an e-mail list that goes out called Friday Forward. Encourage you to check that out. We'll get some info on that and the end of the program here so you can learn how to get on that. But really itching content. Interesting topics, interesting background. We're gonna talk about culture. We're going to talk about performance, how companies can build capacity.
[00:01:34] I was watching actually YouTube video by barbarously about companies leaving and the two week notice. Fascinating conversation. Fascinating story. It was a beautiful point. We would all get very frustrated if our long term relationships also gave us a two week notice. And so I'm excited to have this conversation with Bob here. So with that, Bob, welcome to the program.
[00:01:52] Experts said you'd be here.
[00:01:54] Yeah. So what are we talk a little bit about background. I know you've been an entrepreneur for quite a while. Tell us the story. How did you how did you get into business? How did you become an entrepreneur? Tell us about acceleration partners and we'll talk about the box and some of the work you're doing now.
[00:02:07] Yeah, I've been unemployable for probably 15 years now. That was actually before I started Exploration Partners that another business at the same time that was I was thinking about expecting one last job. My friend who was trying to recruit me to a place in California said, I'm pretty sure you're almost unemployable. And and I think he was right on that. So I think I've always been very entrepreneurial. Ever since I was a kid, I was very creative out of the box. However, I was also did not have a very high risk tolerance. And those two things didn't really go hand-in-hand. And so coming out of school, I really I gravitated towards I joined a strategy consulting firm. And this was right in Internet Bubble 1.0. And a lot of this stuff was I was in the high tech practice. That's where a lot of Internet stuff started. I ended up getting involved with an incubator and then venture capital. And then when operating a business basically really realized that I really liked fast growing businesses. And then and then even helping them and then realized that for consumer businesses, the real key differentiator and success is if you can acquire customers cost effectively, that really is the ultimate case that that ended up becoming my focus site, my last operating role. I had help sort of come in and grow business for two founders, found that to be very marginalising and then decided I'd sort of start my own consulting firm and work with fast growing businesses, fully intending that I would kind of find one of those businesses jump in with it and run with it. I thought I really wanted to operate. And then realized that all these fast growing businesses, well, they're fun to work with. They tend to be like really like shit shows. And and I really liked having my own business so that I focused on, you know, building my business and my company and that we work with growth stage companies on on customer acquisition. And so it all it all it all came together. And we've been doing this for about SEO.
[00:04:00] I got just my tweets about 13 years now.
[00:04:05] Yeah, that's good. I like that idea. I once said that if I if I want to be part of a shit show, at least I want it to be my show. Yeah.
[00:04:12] It's really like I mean what it is that the companies are fun to work with. I like the work.
[00:04:17] We like the challenges, but they're often terrible cultures and you know, they rap too fast and they lay off. And, you know, we were that those are a lot of people we work with. So we love the work, but we prefer our company I work with in our company. So I I was never even remotely interested in jumping in the end of any of those businesses. Yeah.
[00:04:34] M cruise about this because I think this is one one of the things that differentiates or distinguishes, you know, the kind of people listen to this podcast versus kind of the more startup kind of things as a startup is all about, you know, do I have something I know what problem I'm going to solve. Is my solution actually solve a problem? Can I monetize it? It's like there's really no problem. Solutions fit, you know, kind of problems. But once you get that, then this question is how do I scale this? Right. And I think a lot of companies are a lot of startups end up in this problem of it. We've got a product and we've got a solution. We've got a service that that actually works pretty well and we can make money on it. Now, on a one off basis. But how do I attract new customers? How do I really grow the business then? Is it being in the really kind of the crux of the problem of scaling a businesses, finding customers and some of it strategic, some of its kind of operational tactical, but talks as well in terms of what you found or one of the keys. That you've seen around companies in terms of really grow and scaling the business from the kind of customer acquisition or client acquisition side. What are the things that people sort of typically get wrong and what are the things that you've seen as being kind of good practices or best practices around successfully being able to scale this out? Because I think that that is that is a problem that most the people on the show listen to shower are facing. It's like, how do I scale the business?
[00:05:41] Yeah. And it's interesting that people from the startup world, the people from the scalp, words like get together, have to have coffee. You know, once I figured out how to scale and not make money and the others figured I had to make money, it was not a scale that can solve each others problem. But it's interesting if I'm looking at this, not from we do just all my experience at a 10000 foot level. I think that a lot of companies actually figure out one thing and drive that thing to success. It's kind of like if a business is going to work on social, I tell them, like figure out which one works and do that one really well. Don't have a mediocre presence in a bunch of them. What I've seen a lot of these companies is they don't diversify. And then their problem is they then they raise money. They act like that can go on forever and they kind of have to grow and then it stops working. And so there seems to be this sweet spot of like understand that one or two things really are going to are going to work and lean into those.
[00:06:34] But but also test new things, you know, figure out a new one. Diversify. Because eventually one of those core things stops working, particularly if it's like Facebook or something else where it's a bidding market. And, you know, right now, a lot of people who have built their models on Facebook are finding that prices are up considerably with all the controls and stuff now. And it's made something that was a great return on investment, fundamentally unprofitable. And if that was 80 percent of your acquisition, you're in trouble. So I think you want a couple really strong channels like you want enough diversification so that it's kind of like you don't have a customer that's 80 percent of your revenue. But you also want to recognize that it really will be the 80/20 rule and a few things. In fact, our whole marketing plan from this year was actually stripping down, figuring out the 80/20 and because we do a lot. And it was like we're gonna do half as much and double down on the stuff that we actually know and can prove that it's working versus we think it might be working.
[00:07:29] And how how do you know that it's working?
[00:07:31] I'm I guess I'm curious what the other metrics are, the data evidence that you collect to be able to say, hey, look, this this channel, this process, the strategy, this acquisition strategy, this campaign, you know, this one's working. This one's not. How do you how do you tell?
[00:07:45] So we're B2B like probably many or listeners and we're pretty advanced in this room. So we have a full Marketo solution, which is a CRM that then goes into Salesforce. So every piece of content or channel or a bant or interaction is captured in our system. We're able to look at sort of lifecycle and multi-channel touches of a client.
[00:08:06] So we know that they came to an event and then they downloaded a white paper and then they filled out a contact form six months later and then they talk to our our sales team. So we were able to look in that. And, you know, we did a lot of things. You know, we tested a lot of events and, you know, look back period on that.
[00:08:22] You know, you can't judge an event by the event. You've got to judge the event by like six months later because, you know, you could have 10 great conversations and go nowhere. You could have, you know, if what you thought was the average conversation, then someone calls the next day.
[00:08:35] So any time everyone asked me about a bad day, I said, I'll tell you in three to six months or so. So we just look back at the different buckets of events that we did, events that we hosted, content programs we had, sponsorships, all the things like that. And it was really clear for us, like two of the channels drove about 80 percent of the conversion.
[00:08:54] So so those become your core. Now, in terms of, you know, kind of experimenting with new ones, I mean, I like this idea that you kind of put out there, which you always have to have R&D.
[00:09:03] Exactly.
[00:09:03] So so how do you how do you choose? I mean, I guess so. So let's talk about the channels a little bit. What are their other channels that you find people kind of overuse and channels that you feel are kind of underused or are people kind of forget about that may actually be good strategies for customer acquisition?
[00:09:19] Look, referals is the best and I think people oftentime just get referrals and take them for granted. You know, we have a whole program and we put someone in charge of referrals and, you know, meeting with new partners, making sure they get thanked. Making sure we track that we even know. And so the difference between just getting referrals and then orchestrating a whole program around referrals kind of doubled our business from referrals last year. So I think that's a good example of of leaning in. We also try to do things where I think that the tail is long. So let's say we do a dinner with a CMO is in New York City and it's a really interesting dinner.
[00:09:58] And we have a speaker and they share ideas with each other. And two through as they all say, it's a great event. I'm actually not looking for like to get a sale off that like the next day. And because we've created such a great experience for all these people and really gave them something. It might actually be six to 12 or 18 months later. One of those people moving to a company calls us back like remembers that dinner.
[00:10:17] So those are the things that. Have a long tail when you go to an event, when you sponsor an event. When you go to a conference like those, the things that like either they work or they don't work. Right. And and so I find that pretty binary. Versus if you create experiences, if you add value to these other types of programs. Someone on our team like went to a dinner, like a private dinner with a with a bunch of private equity guys in their portfolio companies, you know, 18 months ago and 18 months later, that turned into two referrals for us. So it's the type of thing we like meeting all of those people at that dinner. I never joined the business, but doesn't end up as a zero sum game. Now, having your name on a banner and event, if you don't walk away with something, it's pretty much a yes.
[00:11:00] I mean, there's some branding like seven days. Yes.
[00:11:03] We really try to do the things that are more evergreen and that and that like give us a longer window of success rather than, you know, we spend the money and it's like paid search. You either spend it and you get the return or you don't get now.
[00:11:16] And how in terms of kind of tracking success on those things, because how much do you have to kind of have a plan going into it saying, OK, well, these are the desired outcomes, this is the timeframe, we're gonna look into it.
[00:11:26] And then how do you kind of track and capture the data so that you actually you can you can look at that evidence or you can see that correlation with what we have a five person marketing team and a five person system.
[00:11:36] But tell me this many people you have the conflict that you want between marketing's tracking and everything. And sales is trying to take credit for everything and like that. You know, now and this is a good lead versus you didn't convert it. So like if you have incentive systems and programs in place, you will naturally get to that. But we try to track everything. You know, we try to look at where it came from. And like I said, if most people. Vast majority, we have a ton of content out there and they interact with our website when they do that. You know, that interacts with our Marketo CRM system. And, you know, we're able to stitch together everything that they did. By the time they figure out a contact form. So, you know, we understand how they interacted with our with our content.
[00:12:16] Now, yeah, I mean, I think that's the hard part is that it becomes or the transformation, I think. And yeah, I've seen CEO struggle with this.
[00:12:25] You know, they're very good at the early stage and just kind of winging it and seeing opportunities and making deals, you know, but then things become more process and more systematize and you start having to define the procedures and having steps and S.O.P.
[00:12:37] Use. And then you went click that around and make us. How do you do you see or do you think that there's some leaders and some CEOs that are just more able more and sort of naturally able to make that transition and for others, it's harder?
[00:12:49] Or what's what's your observation?
[00:12:50] Having worked with companies in the space, I mean, if you're a true CEO, they should be all for systems, right? Because they take the place of individual failure and don't take the place of people, but they take the place of like people breaking down, you know, the system. So I haven't seen a really good CEO, you know, not be in favor of scale process unless they are controlling all of these things and they are a micromanager. If they have a head of sales, they want their head of sales to have a process and a playbook and all these things, because frankly like that also de-risked the head of sales and makes it more repeatable. I think the problem is when they're substituting their knowledge for all these functions, but we we try to have a core process for foreverything. And what we say is it's kind of like like open source software in terms of like we have a best practice for everything. You should use that. If you have a way to make it better, then improve the process for everyone. Like we don't want to say like we don't ever say this the process. Just follow it. It's follow it if you don't have a better way because this has been proven to work 9 percent of time. But if you can make it better, make it better and we'll upgrade the software.
[00:13:53] Foreveryone Yeah, I like it. And so tell us about the client clients you typically work with and what you're I guess what programs are you generally working with them and what kind of results are you generating?
[00:14:03] So so we're sort of a big fish in a small pond in terms of our industry. So we work in the affiliate and partner industry, which is about 20 percent of all e-commerce, just not as as discussed. So instead of buying a Facebook ad or buying a click or an impression, we build partner programs or as they're now called, you know, it's been called affiliate in the past where we go recruit tons of partners, use a tracking platform. And the clients are kind of large enterprise retail brands. You could think of like an Adidas or a Target or a Newberger or an eBay or someone like that. And they go recruit hundreds or maybe thousands of partners who sign up to be part of their program, who get access to their catalog. They agree to sort of a CPA part. So a cost per action. So maybe a percentage of sale, a qualified lead or otherwise. Those partners can market and do whatever they want. It's all tracked through the tracking platform and then the brand only pays for the outcome. So instead of paying for the advertising, they pay for the outcome. So kind of we kind of build and manage these programs. And, you know, there's a large push towards as brands are going direct and everyone's going direct on rather than branded advertising and brand marketing, really performance based marketing. So there's a big shift into dollars in our areas because our our clients actually pay their marketing spend. After they get the sale or the lead, so I have an agreement.
[00:15:22] So as an example, you could sign up right now and become an affiliate of Amazon. Now we're done with the podcast. You could link to my book in your podcast and make five percent if someone clicked on it and and bought it.
[00:15:35] So, you know, you're you're they're paying you after they after they get the sale. So, you know, it's a pretty good way of allocating your marketing dollars.
[00:15:45] Yeah, man, it's. I like that idea that it's performance based. Really. I pay for results, not for kind of activities or for impressions and things like that.
[00:15:52] There's there's some risk sharing. So, you know, you provide your materials and strategy and stuff that the publishers can use, but they take a risk. They use their space and you're kind of in it together.
[00:16:02] Now, do you see that as being kind of a growing trend or more companies looking for these kind of these kind of marketing programs that are more people from.
[00:16:10] Yes. There has been a huge we've been huge benefactor. In fact, as I've hung out with some of my friends who made brand agencies last year, they're having pretty tough years. This stuff all swings. And they were like all of our budgets going to the stuff that you're doing now, because if you think about it. So let's just even take like Procter and Gamble, you know, maybe a few years ago, their budget might have been in banner ads or, you know, they're not selling stuff. They're budgeting for the channel. So they're they're giving money out there and doing more brand advertising. Well, now, if they have a Gillette, you know, direct shave club subscription service, you know that that budget is shifting from brand advertising to, you know, direct market advertising and deployment space. So the majority of the brands out there are going directly to their customers. And so the budgets are shifting from brand to performance. Yeah.
[00:16:55] Any thoughts or insights for folks that are on the sort of service based companies, whether professional services or other types of services, you know, opportunities that you see that they could use in terms of this performance based marketing, you know, whether they're programs or strategies they can play internally?
[00:17:10] Yeah, measurement. I mean, I know I worked with the great PR firm few years back, really liked them. And they'd always send us something saying this was equivalent to X thousand dollars of spend in a magazine. And I was like, but you wouldn't have spent 10000 hours in a magazine like how many people saw it or clicked on it or interacted with it. Their metrics were just so old. Like it was ridiculous to be sending. It was like kind of equating online news to inches of ad space in a magazine. So I think people need to make sure they upgrade their their metrics and understand that, you know, people are looking to see results. You know, first interaction, I mean, clicks maybe, but they're looking to understand how people interact with their stuff. And I think the standards and thresholds are just increasing there. So if you're if you're not using metrics or you're really using OLD-SCHOOL metrics, you are probably going to be called to task on that sooner, if not later.
[00:18:05] Yeah. One exercise I always love doing with clients is, you know, taking their best clients from last year and just kind of doing the traceback of saying, hey, where did you know? Where did you get them? What are the activities? What are the events? What are the things you've done? You know, was it because you're both members at a club? Did you go to the same school? Did you participate the same conference? Were you on a panel together? You know, it just kind of tracing those back and sort of seeing what kind of patterns and what kind of correlations can we make.
[00:18:27] And that I can you know, it's interesting to talk. Companies typically don't do that part because they don't think the time in part because it's you're gonna have to dig back into history. But, you know, it can create some great insights in terms of where where are you really getting your best customers and where might you find more of them?
[00:18:42] It's mostly it's mostly referrals in a lot of cases. But they said, you're saying, oh, you got referrals. Great. Did you think that personal knowledge, that person? I mean, it's absolutely amazing to me that people will spend 10 to 20 percent of a sale on a salesperson when they get a referral from someone.
[00:19:00] They don't think of sending them a nice dinner, acknowledging it. Thank you, ma'am.
[00:19:04] You may know our friend John Ruland, you just mentioned really big.
[00:19:10] I gift allergy. And I am also not making it super transactional, but just, you know, letting them know like we're very formalized around that. I just I am so amazed how many people just take these referrals for for granted and or haven't built like, you know, a dashboard out or Adam said, oh, who are my best refers and what did they give me? And turning it into a channel that's managed by someone with KP eyes.
[00:19:34] Yeah, well, the other one is once once you have identified a couple people that are referring business work and I find more people like that. Right. So you start identifying what role do they serve, what kind of capacity that they have, you know, can I find more of them? If you're getting a lot of referrals from lawyers of a certain type, like go find more of them. Yeah. Good. Good advice.
[00:19:52] Just to totally under under appreciated channel in terms of people people acknowledging at least those referrals. Yeah.
[00:20:01] Well any any other strategies, acknowledgement. I mean, you know, the the gift cards, the dinners, the you know, those things are certainly good ones. But is there anything that you've seen in terms of people using kind of unique and innovative ways to provide face?
[00:20:15] Time is really important. Like we have found that someone could be a. They can know about us when we have a meeting, when we have a check in, when we have a coffee or a lunch. We usually see a pick up in referrals right after that event. It's like we're top of mind something else. Just because they've referred to you doesn't mean they can't refer a lot more or you can't be top of mind. This isn't even, you know, bribing them or getting them a gift doing that just to face time. So we have a regular cadence setup on checking in with our partners, connecting with them in person. We always choose. I mean, first choices in person. Second choices, video call. Third choices.
[00:20:48] Audio call. You know how I do. I host drinks once a month at one of my clubs here in New York. And that is that has been key for me, that not only Dianne Feinstein, you know, so I get other people that I do business with and that, you know, promote me in various ways. It's chance for me to sit down and have drinks with them. But because I'm doing it with a couple of folks now, I'm connecting them with other, you know, interesting like minded people. So there's actually this kind of double value. It's like I got face time. But they also get to meet other people and I'm like adding value to the networking stuff and that's spin. I started that maybe three or four years ago, and that's been hugely, hugely beneficial to spending the next week.
[00:21:22] Someone's asking about a coach and then I go every so. So that's all we've seen is that it really, really makes a difference.
[00:21:29] Now, let's talk about some of your content. Are you running a lot? I know you do forums and entreprenuer. You've got Friday forward. You've got the books. Where do you want to start? I'd love to understand more about why the content, what you've developed, what you're most passionate about right now.
[00:21:41] Yeah. So the content for me is is really sort of towards my personal kind of why? And that is trying to figure out a better way and then share it. And what I enjoy doing is sharing ideas that help people and organizations grow. So we've we've tested and tried and Donelle, a lot of unique things that acceleration partners. And when we find something that works or we feel like everyone should, we should be doing, you know. Then I tend to write an article about it. And when it's a much bigger program, like something around two weeks notice, you know, I did a TED talk or our dream granting program that I start thinking about writing capacity building, kind of writing a book about it. And because I just think there's so much potential for both individuals and organizations that are tapped out there. And I am good at rolling things together in a framework that I come from this from the have done it world, not the academic world, but I'm able to sort of package it up so that other people can access it. Whereas a lot of the thinking today is very academic, but isn't necessarily showing you how to how to use it in real life.
[00:22:41] Yeah. Now, so tell us about Elevate. Because I know that's your most recent. I'm really about personal personal limits, personal success. Was it was there a particular experience that that kind of inspired you to actually put this into book form? Does it happen over time? Tell us a little bit of the backstory and let me talk a little bit about what's in the book.
[00:22:59] Yeah. So so Elevate actually started and came out of something called so Elevate actually came out of something called Friday for which was an email that I started. I've also been saying for years now, it's five years ago to my team when we were about 30 or 40 people and distributed. And I just come back from an EO leadership training and there was a lot of focus on morning and morning routine and reading something positive. And I love the concept. But the stuff that we were kind of given a read was a little too rainbow and corny for me. So I decided write something every Friday that was sort of a personal inspiration or challenge thing. I think I called the Friday inspiration and it would just be it would be a story or a theme. And it'd have and then eventually I started adding a quote and kind of had an example. And I just sent everyone the company and I didn't even know if anyone was reading them or paying attention. But I started getting notes back saying, oh, I really love these. I did this or I shared it with my dad or my husband said this to his company today. And I was actually at an event a couple of months after I started. And we're talking about best practices with some other CEOs. And I said, you know, I've been sending this note and I've gotten a great response. It seems like a really good way to just engage with your with your team, people that will send it to us. And so one of the people started his own in that group. And a couple others, like good entrepreneurs said, oh, this is great. We'll just send this to our team every week. And then I wondered if it would have other external value. People were asking me to be added to it. It was just literally a BCSE The old ones I didn't know they were just kind of in my email.
[00:24:30] So I set up a I bought like a 50 hour WordPress Web site and I put the old ones up like on a directory Friday's. I did pick Friday for it because it was being forwarded. And that's a name I don't know. And as I said, the newsletter list I threw on a couple hundred other people and family and friends and expected like, what the hell is this?
[00:24:47] Like, take me off this, subscribe unsubscribe. But then I got the same thing where people like this is great. I love it.
[00:24:54] Fording it organization. And a couple years later, I had over 100000 people in 60 countries signed up for this Friday for it. And so I started a a compilation book about Friday forward stories. And I talked to a bunch of agents and they were like, yeah, no one likes compilation book. And so it's not going to work. And so I just go to self-publish it. But then I talked to an agent who said, yeah, it's true that no one likes these books, but I think. We have a story behind this.
[00:25:20] And you know, our since it started Friday, Ford, our business was really growing and doing well. We're winning all these cultural awards. You know, my life since that leadership thing had had really started to change as I lean into this. And what happened was I sort of sat down and I started writing. I tried to figure what are the themes here?
[00:25:36] And I realized that this strategy that we had used to grow our people and are an organization and win all these awards.
[00:25:42] The strategy that I had used to sort of improve my own life. And the reason and the themes of why Friday for resonated with all these strangers that I didn't know all really revolved around the same thing, this notion of sort of building capacity in others and and the four themes of capacity building, which were spiritual, intellectual, physical and emotional. So the book it wasn't the book I set out to write, but two, three years after. I mean, it's not a long book. So for two or three years I was looking today I think I had like 35 drafts or something that kind of rewrote the book like three times.
[00:26:18] But I really it was like, oh, this, this and this is the thing for me, I think got it like a lot of existing ideas, but are able to pull it together in a framework that was really accessible and I think makes it easy for people to understand where they can improve, how they can improve and where they're kind of out of balance or which area is really holding them back.
[00:26:37] At this point, can you give us an example of one of the concepts or suggestions that you are one one that you liked the most in terms of things that are in the book?
[00:26:44] Yeah. So just a quick overview of each spiritual capacity. It's not religious, it's it's sort of who you are, what you want most, what your core values are.
[00:26:53] Intellectuals like how you learn, plan things get better, like how you improve your operating system. Physical is your more like it sounds. You're your personal health and wellness. And then emotional is sort of how you deal, how you relate to other people, the world around you, things that you don't control. And if you think of these as quadrants of a ball, I think as you build each of these areas, it gets bigger, it gets more momentum. If any one of these is really out of alignment, it's hard to have high performance. And when I also looked at all these high performers that I really admired and what they were doing, I found it fell within these these themes.
[00:27:29] So I think one of the things for most people, one of the trainings that we actually do with our leader is that acceleration partners and this goes to spiritual capacity as we help them identify and articulate their personal core values. Because it's really hard to lead in our need authentically if you're not clear about that. And you and I probably know a bunch of people in life like I my example is like if your spiritual capacity is off, but the other ones are really good, you're probably like working really hard and have gotten really good at something that doesn't bring you any enjoyment or fulfillment, probably with some external, you know, parental view of success or the outside world or doing something that you should have done. So for a lot of people, I really encourage them to start with a spiritual capacity, understand their values, what they want, because that really aligns everything else behind it. And now if I know what I want now, I can set my long term goals. I can get more discipline because I'm excited about getting that. It gives me reason to focus on my health and wellness, the type the people I want to relate to, you know, where I'm going to be resilient because I'm really driven and it and it brings all that stuff together. So I, you know, eat each one. I could give you an example where, you know, what is it look like when you get out of whack? But I to me, it starts with, you know, if you understand your values and what you want. You make decisions around that. I have a bunch of friends, you know, midlife crisis status.
[00:28:46] I think the ones are struggling the most have made decisions in the last five or 10 years that really weren't aligned with their values. Maybe they were about money or just got it got easy or was hard to leave and particularly in a few cases where they really stayed in a situation against their values. It didn't end well.
[00:29:03] Yeah, well, and I think people get caught up in kind of measuring success based on some external or other people's set of kind of measures and not having that internal sense of what what is really important to me and what is successful for me spiritually or universally into what is driving my entity. And if you don't have that, I would say yes, there's a difference between work and flow, right? Like work. Work is when you're doing things you really don't want to do, but you have to do and you're doing it very hard. Flow ends when you're you're working very hard on on something that you love in your passion about. And it doesn't does not feel like work at that point. And so I think that that whole idea of the spiritual side is as a great way to kind of capture that. And you're doing a podcast against this as well. Tell us about LNA past.
[00:29:42] Yeah, so an podcast. I interview people really a lot against these teams who are doing pretty extraordinary things in the different capacities and are just sort of breaking the mold of performance and high performance in a different area. So I definitely the last month I've been last six months been really focused too on, you know, almost you can almost categorize each episode according to a capacity or shows. If you read the book and you're looking for, you know, more examples of how do I improve my spiritual or physical, there's gonna be some good content related to that.
[00:30:14] That's great. So we're gonna have time here if people want to find out more about the books about Friday. Word about podcast. What's the best way to get that information?
[00:30:21] Yeah, the good news is all in the same place.
[00:30:24] Everything, everything is now at Robert Glaser dot com GLAAD Yahoo.com. If you Google Friday forward, you'll find out. You can find the podcast there. The book there, Friday for there. And if you're interested in what we do from a business standpoint, that's acceleration partners or acceleration partner Scott.
[00:30:41] Excellent. I'll make sure that those links are in the SCHOENER so people can click through and get that information. But this isn't a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking time. Great takeaways for our folks and a great conversation. Thanks for having me, Bruce.
[00:30:54 You've been listening to Scaling up Services with Business Coach, Bruce Eckfeldt. To find a full list of podcast episodes, download the tools and worksheets and access other great content, visit the website at scalingupservices.com and don’t forget to sign up for the free newsletter at scalingupservices.com/newsletter.