Will Bachman 00:01
Hello, and welcome to Unleashed the show that explores how to thrive as an independent professional. I’m your host Will Bachman. And I’m so excited to be here today with Bob Lazar, who is the author of Friday forward, inspiration and motivation to end your week stronger than it started. And Bob was on the show on episode 262. Talking about his previous book, elevate and it’s great. Bob to have you back. Welcome to the show.

Robert Glazer 00:29
Thanks. Well, good to be here.

Will Bachman 00:31
So really inspired by your book, which is a collection of some of the pieces that you send out in your weekly email Friday, Friday forward. Some listeners may be familiar with it, maybe subscribers, but why don’t you give the capsule on, you know how the Friday forward emails got started?

Robert Glazer 00:51
Sure, yeah. I mean, it got started as just a note that I had gone to pretty intensive Leadership Program. God convinced that, you know, changing my morning routine was, was going to be important. And part of that suggested routine was was writing and reading and ideally, you know, reading something positive and take some time to think some of the things that we were giving us positive reading weren’t really my cup of tea, they were a little too rainbow and unicorny for me. So I decided to sort of combine the activities a couple months later and just start a note to my team. On Fridays, it was called Friday inspiration. And I sent it for weeks or months. And I wasn’t sure if anyone’s reading it. And then I did start to hear comments back and positive things that people told me they were doing, and they liked it. And also interestingly, that they were sharing it outside the company with friends or spouses or siblings or their businesses. I had mentioned the concept to a couple other CEOs. And they told me to sort of put them on the list and they take a look at it, it was under the context of really doing the same thing themselves. And they said, we’ll just send this to our team. So at that point, I thought it might have some some external value. And I kind of opened it up through some friends and family on it. And yeah, it just kind of took off from there, someone wrote an article. This is the only newsletter I read every week in ink, and it got a couple of 1000 subscribers in a week. And a couple years later, there were over 100,000 people in 60 countries getting ready for it.

Will Bachman 02:33
So to give listeners an overview of the book, you have it divided divided into four sections, spiritual capacity, intellectual capacity, physical capacity, and then emotional capacity. And I think that’s the same division that you used in your last book, elevate. How did you come up with that framework? When did when did that form for you?

02:56
Well, I wrote the Friday Ford book, it was sort of resoundingly turned down by everyone, because as you know, told publishers don’t like compilations and, and the person who eventually become my agent said, you know, love these writing loves the story, what’s the sort of What’s the story behind the stories, and actually took some time to really think about why, what is it about these emails that are resonating with people? I don’t know, that are helping them get better. What did I really done personally, over the last couple years to elevate my life? And how was our company growing by how we are investing in our team. And then also like, a lot of the sort of high achievers that I admired, like, what, what were the patterns there, and like all four of those roads led me back to the same thing as I you know, I circled themes and things that I saw. And I realized like, that’s what we had been doing an acceleration bars, we’ve been helping people build their capacity. And we had been doing it across these dimensions. And the Friday Ford’s really all fell across one or more of those, those capacities. So elevate was really the framework of capacity building, I still, I still loved the stories and so I was able to go back and tick sort of the 52 most impactful ones and update them and, and tie them to the capacity. So for people who haven’t read, elevate or who read elevate, and they do, they’re in on the theory, I think the stories give them just some practical examples of this stuff in play.

Will Bachman 04:24
One thing I noted in this book is that just about every one of these chapters, is built around a, you know, interesting anecdote or, you know, very specific person or story and love to know how do you go about sort of capturing those? I’m currently taking this course, from Tiago forte called Building a second brain that talks about you know, this is a whole note taking system. So I’m curious about how writers like yourself, you know, find anecdote Do you do stored away somewhere? Do you take notes and say, Well, this might be useful someday? I’m not sure how I’d love to know how you’re accumulating these these these nuggets, these stories.

Robert Glazer 05:11
Yeah, I mean, my brain fires all the time. It’s something comes and something goes. That’s that’s one of the things creativity is that that’s not something I lack of ideas. So yeah, you know, what’s interesting is I’ll, you know, sometimes something just happens. And now, because my brain is wired that way, I think I’m looking for them, I’m listening a little more. But yeah, I keep a pretty long Evernote. Or actually one note, now list of concepts or ideas, but the winning formula seems to be when like, there was a concept that I had already thought of, or is interesting, I want to write about, and then there’s a story or an anecdote that happens or something and it sort of brings it to life. So a lot of times, something will happen, and I’ll go back to that. I’ll be like, Oh, yeah, I wanted to write about this, like, feedback of one thing. And then something like, like, perfect example. So the notion of feedback of one, which was the Friday forward from last week, which was actually surprisingly more popular than I expected. feedback on something I had heard in the past, it was interesting, or whatever. And then I actually got, like, some personal feedback of one a couple weeks ago, from a fighting for reader that I thought was much more to do with their personal preferences, then then what actually, most Friday for readers would want. And I was gonna kind of ignore that feedback. So it was like the perfect way to bring those two things together.

Will Bachman 06:39
Yeah, let me let me ask you about a specific example. So there’s a really there’s a chapter really like about called world class. And it’s about in muraco, who talks about the favorite one? Yeah, that’s a really cool one. So what was the story behind that? That chat that that that Friday forward? issue? So did did you kind of come across her story and then save it away from somewhere? And then, you know, eventually pull it out? Or do

Robert Glazer 07:06
Yeah, well, that one I actually heard. So excellence is a pretty common theme. And I had had a very popular other one that’s in the book on excellent about the plumber. Daniel. Yeah. So so. So again, like I might, I I’m probably like, I listened for that. And so I heard her interviewed a lot, very long interview. And that was like a story she told. And so I went and sort of research the story a little bit, and it you know, tied into some notes and some other things that I had. So I actually happened to hear her tell that story first person, I just thought it was like, a perfect example of, you know, what that principle?

Will Bachman 07:46
And in a case like that, is it you hear it on Monday? And you say, oh, okay, this would be good for this week, and you bang it out? And then that’s that Friday, or did you hear it?

Robert Glazer 07:56
I don’t write them until that week, but I have them sometimes I have them mentally stacked. Okay. So I don’t I don’t start writing until Sunday on Monday, it’s a pretty, it’s a pretty rigid process at this point, that actually is one of these kind of, you know, have knock you know, Keystone habits where like, it just it becomes a habit that sort of forms other habits. I don’t, I don’t need any reminders, it’s just kind of like, Sunday, or Monday is God’s day. But sometimes I have them like virtually stack or in my head two to three weeks, I’m like, oh, but timing wise, this one would be better. So I’m actually like, through a stack at the end of this week. So you know, barring barring something, triggering an idea the next week, I will go back to my sort of, like, idea list that I’ve been holding on to and then I’ll pull something from one of those.

Will Bachman 08:46
So you maintain a running idea list of Oh, this is a

Robert Glazer 08:49
core I’ve got about 70 or 80 things on this list that are were some are story or an anecdote or something where I’m waiting for the missing piece but it’s funny, I don’t get in back I don’t get very deep into them. Like I I kind of feel like Friday for the little like law and order. Like if you read from the headlines you never run out of you never run out of topics.

Will Bachman 09:12
And yeah, I’ve experienced this myself, you know, just if you have an outlet where you’re publishing regularly, you tend to be these more observant and you’re kind of more aware and you’re out there looking for things so I think you actually have more ideas that have you experienced that since you started

Robert Glazer 09:31
Yeah, like I said, I think your antenna goes up for it and but even people around me Will joke like I’m on a over the hill Soccer League and we came back one you know one week and they’re like, oh, we’re gonna be the story of perseverance if people send me stuff you know some of the Daniel the plumber story was actually sent to me by a reader the the maryclaire King one on bad week was actually sent to me by someone and those guys You’ll love this. So, so I get some help from the community. But yeah, I do think the antennas just a little higher for me sort of. It’s almost a subconscious thing.

Will Bachman 10:12
reading the book, it seems to me like you have that you’re quite active in, you mentioned several times about that you’ve been at a conference been at this event, you talk about that you were at a mastermind dinner in New York City, and one of the chapters talk about going to a getting clarity session at a where you met Philip mckernon. Those are maybe just a couple examples. But are you regularly, these pre COVID? We going to, you know, just making sure you’re getting exposed to new ideas, tell us about your sort of process or set of conferences that you’re going to social events that you’re going to, and why you why you do them how you choose them.

Robert Glazer 10:58
Yeah, you know, that’s, that’s the intellectual capacity realm for me. And, yeah, I mean, sometimes I’m attending growth oriented conferences, or speaking at them. And I have a few different of these kind of mastermind organizations that I’m in, like me that those are almost the best combination of sort of learning and accountability and peers, and some of those organizations bring in speakers that they know will resonate, you know, based on the on the group. So, yeah, one thing that’s interesting is I probably, you know, that’s still going on, I haven’t traveled a couple months that some of the groups are still meeting, you know, online, I did one yesterday, but I don’t expect to go back through as much travel that I did, I think a lot of people are realizing, you know, they, maybe it was a little more than then than they want it to be to be doing but yeah, I just tried to put myself in environments where there’s other great people and learners and thinkers, and people want to discuss ideas. And, you know, that’s where you, that’s where you hear something new or something that kind of solidifies an idea for you.

Will Bachman 12:02
Tell me more about the mastermind groups that you belong to? Sort of what how many people? Are there? Is this an ongoing, regular group with the same set of people? I’m curious to hear about, you know, practically, how those are run and what you get out of them?

Robert Glazer 12:21
Yeah, there are different versions. You know, I think they’re smaller or larger, but it was it was sort of coined by Napoleon Hill. And it’s in a group that’s really about elevating the group and individuals together of people who are on similar kind of values and mission. So you know, there’s groups like young presidents organization, YPO, and he Oh, the forum construct is, is really a mastermind group, it’s actually the same construct that a lot of self help groups use, like a or otherwise, right, a confidential group of peers. So I’m in a couple of those. And then I’m in like, another organization of really kind of just growth oriented people, they have a big event every year that obviously haven’t happened, but the group stays in touch and is always helping each other out and ideas for each other. And then I’m actually I’m in something that Marshall Goldsmith put together a call to 100 coaches, which is, it’s really like an organization of thinkers and givers, people who want to help each other. And I just feel like I’m on the phone, someone once a week with always, once a week, always with someone in that group where, you know, we’re interested, we’re interested in the same stuff, everyone is, you know, wants to help each other one person’s, you know, publishing a book and the 20. Others want to help them, interview them and get it out there. So it’s just, it’s an incredible group of people focus on the leadership realm. So yeah, a few different ones. Even I’ve noticed, you know, I’ve really pushed the concept with my my exact team. So I think everyone on my exact team has like one has like almost like an industry peer group, right? So if it’s the CFO, he meets with a group of these other CFOs if it’s the head culture officer, she has this quarterly group with all these different cultural people from different companies, and they share ideas and best practices and I think they found it like incredibly helpful, you know, to have that kind of access.

Will Bachman 14:20
Want to go through some of the different sections of the book. So in spiritual capacity, you define spiritual capacity in a bit of a different way than then you might often see the word spiritual used, which is, you say spiritual capacity is about who we are and what we most what we want most in life. Building spiritual capacity means truly getting to know ourselves and aligning or aligning our lives based on that knowledge. I found that quite profound. Tell me a bit about how you came to that thinking about spiritual capacity and being spiritual.

Robert Glazer 14:57
Yeah, I always preface Not, not Religious, but but having gone through millions and millions, but maybe 100 discussions with people in different terms, it just, it just was the one that most encompassed. The concept and and you know that it’s this sort of what is your North Star and your compass and I think a lot of people are driving around pretty quickly without that, that figured out. And I think once you’re able to articulate your, your core values, and you’re clear about what you want, a lot of other things fall into place. But most people will go through their life never having done that. I think we all have core values. Most of us can’t articulate them, we just get a sense or feeling when we kind of say like, it’s like, you hit the electric fence and the electric at like up shouldn’t be doing that. Or you get in the zone where you’re doing something really aligned to your core values, and it feels awesome. And you have that sort of flow sense? Well, you’re kind of doing that by feel versus saying like, Oh, these are the things that are true for me, I need to align my life around these principles, because this is going to produce the best result. And when I’m forced to go against these principles, it’s not going to go well. So I just think that’s it, people can figure that out. It is really a game changer for everything that comes after

Will Bachman 16:19
one chapter in that section that I liked was the Breaking Bad section where you talk about being clear about what you’re not going to be good at. Tell me a bit about that. And maybe what are the things that you that you’ve decided not to be good at?

Robert Glazer 16:34
Yeah, I struggle with that for a while, I think the more is more approach there still, I still struggle with it. But, you know, that actually aligned a lot to the the sort of feedback of one which is like, if you’re trying to make everyone happy, you’re not going to make anyone happy, I think but once you’re clear on what you want, you’re okay to not make the wrong people unhappy. Which is, I, I believe in these things, I believe in this mission, I believe in this product that serves this purpose, like, you know, Southwest, which was an example and they’re, you know, they have a value proposition that’s very different from maybe, you know, delta or Singapore Airlines. And the ideal customer for one should not like another. So yeah, I mean, for me, and the thing is that, you know, just stopping doing things, outsourcing things. I always one of the examples I’ve give is like, I was very kind of add kids, like, traditional school wasn’t very engaging for me hard time sitting in class, like, didn’t learn well, in that environment. Like, I kind of stopped going back to school nights, years ago for my kids like, it’s like, right back to being in school for me for not paying any attention to every one out of there. And I’m like, it just doesn’t add value for for me or for them. So like, I just give him a I’ve just given up the guilt on that and say, Look, that’s just not that. There’s so many other ways I can be there for my kids, except for going back to school night.

Will Bachman 18:07
Yeah, I mean, I, when I read that chapter, I reflected on some of the things that I’ve decided not to be good at. One of them is Twitter. I spent about four months this year, just spending a lot of time reading Twitter, and then I took a couple courses on how do you build a following on Twitter. And I decided there that it like a lot of people that I really respect, say, oh, there’s so much value. I love the conversations. I’ve met so many friends here. And I respect that, but I wasn’t able to kind of figure that out, or it seemed like it was just too much of an investment. So I said, Okay, I’m gonna take a bit of a break from Twitter, because it just seemed like, wow, it’s a really a lot of work to get to, you know, several 1000 followers even

18:49
right, and that’s the right decision for you. It doesn’t mean it’s the right decision for the next person. Oh,

Will Bachman 18:54
yeah, absolutely. No,

Robert Glazer 18:55
if you’re clear on what your goal is, and what you want, if your goal is to become a social media, Maven then probably need to figure out Twitter.

Will Bachman 19:03
Oh, yeah, that’s right. I mean, I’m not going to definitely, I mean, I have a pretty large number of connections on LinkedIn, I post there regularly. And that, that, you know, that maybe format or the nature of it just sort of suits my personal needs more I like, it’s fascinating. I could spend hours just sitting there, you know, reading the feed, but all the political news especially was just, you know, give me make me anxious. Well,

Robert Glazer 19:28
yeah, one thing I’ve heard from a lot of, like thought leaders, big people lately is like, they they use social media as a creator as a way to share ideas and stuff, but they just don’t consume it, which I think is interesting. And there’s, they realize that there’s a cost to all the time on consuming it, versus saying, look, I this is a place of content distribution for me. Well,

Will Bachman 19:53
I think that was my original idea. But what I least what I learned is and I think you can do that If you’re you know, Daniel Pink or Malcolm Gladwell or something, and you already have a following, but if you enter it and you start with zero followers, or you have your, you know, five close friends follow you or something you can post on there all day long, really fantastic content, and just no one’s going to engage on it. So it’s a little bit like,

20:18
a full time job. Yeah, do that. Yeah.

Will Bachman 20:22
Um, let’s talk a bit about intellectual capacity. And there you have one that you talk about life hacks, and you almost might call them anti hacks, because you have this long list of them. It made me laugh out loud, like, your writing hack was right every day for years. So like, that’s, that’s the hack. Tell me a bit about your, your perspective on all these life hacks that are out there?

Robert Glazer 20:49
Yeah, so the, there’s one on that the life hacking is. So I’m split on this one. Like, there. I’m a big believer, and I talk a lot about the 8020 rule. So I think there is finding like the few things that matter most, but, but but, you know, the, the hacking as So to me, that’s like a good hack, like, and, you know, Tim Ferriss spent a lot of time I think, in a lot of disciplines trying to figure out, like, what’s the 20%, that gets you 80% of the outcome. Like, I’m not sure it’s a hack, it’s more of a smart focus. But but the example, you know, the story of someone who, related to what we just talked about, hired a social media consultant. And, you know, they were talking about, like, how to get more, you know, visitors to the content, and they give him like, 15 things that they could do, not one of them was with, like, write good content. And so I, you know, all these shortcuts that are designed around to the sort of world class or get around, like actually doing the work or doing a good job, like, you know, they tend to be a little bit of a snake oil stuff that people that people sell. So, there is definitely some truth in the 8020, or optimization are things that help make good things. But I mean, a book is a perfect example, I give this example to people a lot. So people put a ton of work into the launch of their book, because, you know, momentum is momentum. If you make lists, then you know, more stores stock more books that are on lists. And and and there’s definitely a flywheel effect. But you can spend a ton of money and have your book have a first grade first week, and it could suck. And then you know, when that’s done, no one will ever read it again, and it’s gone. Similarly, you don’t have to have a big first week. But if it gets out there, and some of the books, you know, that have built up over time, like how Allah rods Miracle Morning, if they’re good, though, they’re sort of build themselves up over time. And they’ll do really well. But obviously, if you’ve written a good book, and you can optimize this launch, that would be the best of both worlds. So I think that’s sort of a good example of both of those principles.

Will Bachman 23:03
Moving on to the physical capacity section, in the environmental effect. Chapter, you have this quote from BJ Fogg, which I love, and I’m a big follower of hers, you know, his the tiny habits. Yeah. And the quote is, there’s just one way to radically change your behavior, radically change your environment. Talk to me a bit about that, and maybe some ways that you’ve changed your physical environment.

Robert Glazer 23:29
Yeah, I think there’s a simple premise, which is, if you want to do less of something, put yourself in environments that reduce it, if you want to do more of something, put yourself in environments that then increase it and, you know, let’s say you want to cut back on drinking, and your friends go out to the bar five days a week, like, it’s going to take a lot of work to go out to the bar and not drink with them versus not going out with those friends. So yeah, I mean, I, I try to constantly adjust the environment. You know, I don’t want to eat something, I just, we just I don’t buy it. I’ve learned world’s world’s best dieting trick, like don’t buy it if you don’t want to, don’t want to eat it and try to schedule and do things that I’m more inclined to do the things that I want to do and less inclined to not otherwise. So, I mean, I schedule in when I want to do my exercise and stuff, or else it’s not going to fit itself in but I think that Yeah, think about like where you live or, you know, you go on a vacation that’s an inactive place. Because if so, you’re likely to be active. If you go on a cruise ship, you’re likely to be sedentary. So I think there’s just there’s a lot of decisions that that you can make about the environment based on the outcomes that you’re looking for. And a lot of environment is the people that you’re that you’re with to so tight emotional capacity, but I think that’s something we can all pay attention to.

Will Bachman 24:58
Yeah, I mean that Chapter you resonate with me and that quote what we’re following. BJ Fogg and I took his tiny habits, courses free course, which I recommend, if you just, I think Google tiny habits, you can you can get it. We we started just, I don’t love to eat vegetables now I know I should. I don’t Yeah, love the thumb. But we started, just make, you know having some cut carrots and celery and fennel and peppers and so forth, laid out for you early in the morning so that they’re there at lunchtime. And then lunchtime. Now I basically just will typically eat raw vegetables, maybe a little bit of hummus. And because it’s just already there, you know, it’s sitting out, it’s the easiest decision. So, and I found that, you know, with my office, if I my mom office is all messy and so forth is my thinking is messy. So kind of,

Robert Glazer 25:55
yeah, I actually have done a similar thing in the past someone recommended, like, on Sunday night, like, when you get all your groceries, like cut it all up, prep it like so there’s no work and then yeah, it’s the reason why we grab snack food is because it’s easy, right? versus if you have a bunch of cucumbers or whatever laid out, then you might be likely to grab those.

Will Bachman 26:15
Yeah, absolutely. In emotional capacity, you have a chapter on with gratitude, tell me how you have worked to kind of develop or you get a greater appreciation of gratitude in your life.

Robert Glazer 26:30
Yeah. So COVID-19 has been a really interesting thing in that, I think that everyone’s under a lot of stress, everyone’s under a lot of pressure. I wrote a story that is not in the book. It’s in the sort of mini book. But it was this notion of I think, kind of like uphill or downhill, right? I think you’re gonna have this approach of like, all this, you know, stuff is rolling down onto me, Woe is me, or you can kind of look down the hill and be like, there’s definitely someone worse than worse than me in lots of ways. And I should be grateful. And those are just lenses that you can choose really simply right. And I think the whole notion of gratitude is, is you’re looking downhill being like, oh, like things could be worse, not looking uphill, it was definitely not you saying, Oh, woe is me. I just, I think that’s a mindset. And I think I said somewhere in an elevator, I think, you know, it’s hard to be fearful and kind of grateful at the same time. So if you’re focused on what you have, and fundamentally grateful for that, and how you can give back, it’s very different than kind of opposite, in fact, of, you know, more of a victim mentality.

Will Bachman 27:42
In another chapter in that section, you it’s called rose, Thorn and BOD and I love this practice that you’ve adopted with your family, where you, you talk about the best part of the day, that’s the rose, the worst part of the day, that’s the thorn and the note, something that we’re looking forward to. That’s the bud. I love that idea that practice. Tell me a little bit about how you started doing that, and what it’s like, what it’s like in practice.

Robert Glazer 28:09
Yeah, so So look, I remember as a kid, my parents were like, how your day and it’s like, it’s good. It was like a meaningless conversation. And so I was at someone’s house, and they did this. And I, we started it with our kids. And it just created such more meaningful conversation, which was the Rose was sort of what’s the best part of your day and the thorn was the worst in the bud with something you’re looking forward to. And, you know, a lot of times it was the worst thing of the phone that I learned something that they weren’t telling us otherwise, or, you know, I got no huge fight with my friend today. This guy was mean to me or so and so got kicked out of school, you know, just, those all sounded overly negative. I mean, they’re not all winning, but it just, it led to such better conversations. And again, teaching the kids do like that. Yeah, we all have we have ups and we have downs. And you know, what, focus on what comes next. So I think it’s a good good practice for them, too.

Will Bachman 29:04
So Bob, you you’ve put a tremendous amount of thought into how to build capacity, your own personal productivity and capacity and leadership. Could you talk about the bomb Glazer production function and just walk us through? You know, I’m sure that there’s always variation, there’s trips and so forth. But what might a typical week look like for you? curious to hear how you schedule your your time what your mornings look like, just things that you do to be productive and how you block that out?

Robert Glazer 29:38
Yeah, well, it looks like Groundhog Day these days, right? It’s not going anywhere. Nice and everything looks the same. But yeah, there are a couple of things that that have worked for me. The first is the schedule based on time blocking. So my schedule is done a couple of weeks out in advance, typically And the time is allocated for the things that I want to do. So I’ve sort of created the free time. And each day I’ve created the meeting time. You know, I, someone once said to me, like, I have an open door policy, but I don’t have an open door where you can’t just take my time. In fact, when the sales people and I could reach out, like, can you talk tomorrow? And I was like, No, I can’t talk tomorrow, two o’clock. So that what time blocking is different normally, like you make your hours available, and then people just grab them all like I’ve, I’ve allocated in advance what I need to spend my time on. And I’ve worked with my EA on that based on my priorities. So I feel like, that’s me controlling my schedule, not my schedule controlling me.

Will Bachman 30:43
Tell me Tell me about that. So like, what are those directions that you have? Like, how many hours per day do you have hours per day that you always want some free time each day or hours that you set a

Robert Glazer 30:55
certain percentage of and look for free time is a misnomer, right? I what I can’t, but I’m a natural introvert and talking to people all day long depletes my energy, even if I enjoy it. So when I say we got like GSD time I get stuff done. So it’s not it’s not free time. Like there’s really no free time, it’s all allocated. So that will be like, deliver stuff time, right? I mean, our job is not to be in meetings all day, our job is deliver stuff, I owe someone an article of feedback on a presentation, a draft of a speech that I need to give so that that’s sort of like production time that I need to actually do the work. And then it wouldn’t even be free time. Because it would be like, Oh, this is a break, like a half hour break. Or this is like exercise that day from five o’clock to six o’clock. So or, you know, my kids stuff until part of that is knowing what I have upcoming like, you know, we’re going through a checking cycle now. So I worked with my VA and made sure that I added time to do the check ins, you know, several days before each of them were due. But yeah, I just I’ve allocated and if you want Open Office Hours, great, then you put the office hours, and then that’s when people can come out of the office hours. So I just I’ve allocated all those buckets kind of in advance.

Will Bachman 32:23
And when can you give us a sense of like, how many like what percentages or or kind of how many hours you allocate to different buckets. loved to hear, you know, what you’ve landed on after probably multiple iterations. Yeah.

Robert Glazer 32:38
So I know I’m cognitively better in the morning. So I have a two to three hour least window of like, get stuff done time in any day. Like I will not let myself unless I’m traveling to be booked for meetings eight hours a day, particularly with us all now home and on zoom that the fatigue factor zoom just kicks in much earlier. I think if you’re on video meetings all day long, it’s it’s tiring. So yeah, there’s and then I’ll have breaks in there, like true breaks, like that’s just more of a half an hour, like get outside, I’ll have, you know, an hour of exercise in there. And then I’ll have different meetings, I think, you know, regularly scheduled meetings at intervals and then meetings that need to be scheduled based on on priorities. And, you know, I also have speaking and presentations and stuff kind of throughout that. So, you know, the immovables get kind of scheduled further out and then I kind of like the rocks and sand and then I I use our remaining time to fill in around those as things get closer.

Will Bachman 33:44
And how do you block out the time for for writing for reading for exercise? Do you put all those on your calendar?

Robert Glazer 33:51
Yeah, I mean, there’s this GSD block and like, my in the like only super top priority things can can be bumped. You know, for a GST block, bigger else, I’m giving everyone the time that I need to actually deliver work product. Like I think we forget about this, right? Like, I mean, our jobs can’t be meeting all day. I mean, maybe if you’re a leader, a big team, it is meaning all day, but like there’s a production element to our role that requires time to actually deliver and finish and edit things. So to me that I always had that schedule then

Will Bachman 34:29
I totally agree with with with my team, we meet half an hour a week. That’s it. No more meetings if we had if there’s some issue that like we need to discuss, you know, we’ll have a phone call quick phone call, like five minutes, boom. But you know, yeah, I, I don’t like meetings,

34:45
either. Well, you also you have your regular cadence is right. I have bi weekly check ins with stuff and people on my team. So unless it’s an emergency, like I keep a list and they keep a list and we kick it to that check in because I’d rather sit down for Half Hour, 45 minutes and work through a bunch of things with my team, then, you know, hey, you know, then this, most of the stuff is not immediate, but then just to constantly distract each other and say, can you talk about this thing for five minutes? Yeah, it’s only five minutes. But if I was in the middle of editing, you know, deeply work on editing chapter my book, like, now might take me kind of half an hour to get back into that after that five minute question.

Will Bachman 35:26
Yeah. And it breaks your flow, right. So, you know, we didn’t talk about on this episode. But you know, just before we break, give listeners an overview of what your firm does, we didn’t actually get into acceleration partners who, you know, you’re, you’re doing a lot more than writing the fryer Friday forward email each week.

Robert Glazer 35:46
Yeah, justice, my, you know, night job, and weekend job. Acceleration partners is a leading affiliate and partner marketing agency. So we help build digital partner marketing programs for fast growing and enterprise brands. And we do that on a global basis. So we have 170 people across six or seven countries now. And so those partners promote a product and service of a brand and they get paid, when there’s actually an outcome from that when someone uses or buy the product. So it’s kind of a way of almost thinking of like digital form of marketing, but that has more of a Business Development Partnership angle to it.

Will Bachman 36:33
Very helpful. And where is the best place for people to sign up for Friday for to get your weekly email and to find out more about you?

Robert Glazer 36:42
Yeah, so everything is integrated at Robert GLA er, comm so they can listen to my elevate podcast there, sign up for Friday forward, see the book. If they’re interested in more what we do or how we can help them with affiliate program. It’s probably easier to just google acceleration partners. Most people misspell it and you’ll you’ll find this now it’s acceleration partners.com.

Will Bachman 37:05
Fantastic. Bob, thank you so much for joining today. I really love the discussion. Love your book, and we’ll include links to it in the show notes. It’s been great chatting with you.