Robert Glazer on How to Transform Your Life Using the Compass Within | EP 668

In this episode of Passion Struck, I sit down with Robert Glazer — serial entrepreneur, five-time best-selling author, and founder of Acceleration Partners — to explore his powerful new book The Compass Within. Robert shares why success can still feel empty if your life is out of alignment, and how identifying your actionable core values becomes the starting point for lasting fulfillment. Whether you’re at a crossroads in your career, questioning the culture you’re part of, or simply longing for greater purpose, this conversation will give you a practical blueprint for finding your “compass within” and living by it with courage. Visit this link for the full show notesGo Deeper: The Ignited Life SubstackIf this episode stirred something in you, The Ignited Life is where the transformation continues. Each week, I share behind-the-scenes insights, science-backed tools, and personal reflections to help you turn intention into action. Subscribe🔗 and get the companion resources delivered straight to your inbox. Catch more of Robert Glazer: https://robertglazer.com/If you liked the show, please leave us a review—it only takes a moment and helps us reach more people! Don’t forget to include your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally. Get the full companion workbook at TheIgnitedLife.netFull episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JohnRMilesListen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcastsEveryone deserves to feel valued and important. Show it by wearing it: https://startmattering.com/Connect with John Pre-Order The Mattering Effect: https://matteringeffect.com/Book John to Speak: https://johnrmiles.com/speaking/Keynotes, books, podcast, and resources: https://linktr.ee/John_R_MilesChildren’s Book — You Matter, Luma: https://youmatterluma.com/Substack: https://www.theignitedlife.net/Support the Movement: https://startmattering.com/. Every human deserves to feel seen, valued, and like they matter. Wear it. Live it. Show it. DisclaimerThe Passion Struck podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Passion Struck or its affiliates. This podcast is not a substitute for professional medical or psychological advice.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  From kickoff to the final whistle, trade the biggest moments in football on Kalshi, America's number one prediction market platform. Kansas City takes on defending champions Seattle, currently trading at 41% to win. A $100 trade pays out $244 if they come out on top. Download Kalshi, use code HOOPS to get $25 when you trade $25. K A L S H I. Kalshi, trade what's next. 18 plus only. Restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Kalshi products are not available in all jurisdictions. Prices, values and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see kalshi.com/ regulatory.

• 0:36John R. Miles?

  Coming up next on Passion Struck.

• 0:39Speaker 02

  I am very outcome oriented. I believe in KPIs and dashboards. And we had one of the first remote companies and my friends before COVID were all like, how do you know people are doing work? And I'm like, I don't know. They all have the same number of clients. We have two key metrics. Is the program doing well and they're staying retained? And the client is happy? So if somehow they have five clients and their program is doing well and it's growing and they figured out how to do that in 10 hours a week, God bless them, like they're doing the right thing. We just always had an outcome orientation.

• 1:11John R. Miles?

  Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries and athletes. Now let's go out there and become passion struck.

• 1:54John R. Miles?

  Episode 668 of Passion Struck is here and I'm so glad you've joined us. Whether you're a longtime listener or brand new, welcome. Over a third of you come back week after week, which tells me Passion Struck isn't just a podcast. Together, we're passing the ripple of mattering farther than we ever imagined. And if this show has ever helped you see yourself more clearly or take one small step toward growth. Here's how you can help keep it growing. Share the episode with someone who needs to hear it and leave a five-star rating or review on Apple or Spotify. It helps the algorithm send this conversation to more people who need it. Earlier this week, we explored the science of personality change with Olga Kazan and how you can become you, but better.

• 2:38John R. Miles?

  Today, we take the next step, from clarity to capacity. Because what if the answer to your overwhelm isn't doing more at all? What if the real breakthrough is building the kind of inner and outer capacity that allows you to sustain impact, not just for a season, but for a lifetime? Joining me is Robert Glazer, serial entrepreneur, five-time bestselling author, founder of Acceleration Partners, and the voice behind Friday Forward, a newsletter that's read by over 200,000 leaders worldwide. Robert's newest book, The Compass Within, is a powerful parable about discovering and living by your core values. In today's conversation, we explore why so many high achievers feel quietly misaligned,

• 3:22John R. Miles?

  even when life looks good on paper. We go into the difference between being busy and being truly aligned. We discuss how Robert scaled a high-performance company without sacrificing values or well-being, and how to rebuild capacity across four dimensions: spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and physical, so you can thrive in the long term. If you've ever had the whisper inside saying, "This isn't me," or wondered whether you're climbing the right mountain, this episode will help you find your compass and start charting your own course. If you want to take today's conversation even deeper, you can join us at theignitedlife.net for a deeper dive on today's episode, along with the companion workbook.

• 4:05John R. Miles?

  And if you'd like to watch this episode dialogue, head over to YouTube at John R. Miles. All right, let's get into it. Here's my powerful conversation with Robert Glazier. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  From kickoff to the final whistle, trade the biggest moments in football on Kalshi, America's number one prediction market platform. Kansas City takes on defending champions Seattle, currently trading at 41% to win. A $100 trade pays out $244 if they come out on top. Download Kalshi, use code HOOPS to get $25 when you trade $25. K A L S H I. Kalshi, trade what's next. 18 plus only. Restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Kalshi products are not available in all jurisdictions. Prices, values and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see kalshi.com/ regulatory.

• 5:04John R. Miles?

  I am absolutely thrilled today to have Robert Glazer on Passion Struck. Welcome, Robert. How are you today?

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me, John.

• 5:12John R. Miles?

  I usually like to start these episodes out by asking people about their background, but I want to take yours a little bit different. Most people don't have a rock bottom moment. They typically just wake up one day and wonder, is this really it? Is this what my life has come to? Why do you think that quiet question is so common? And why do you think it's so easy to ignore?

• 5:37Speaker 02

  It's a great question. I think that a lot of times we're just really influenced by external perceptions of what we should do, who we should be, what we should like, what we should like learning. And we learn that, look, we're training a puppy right now. And you learn very young, there's either treats or there's like bad dog, right? I think society does this to us and is looking for us to conform to certain things. And those systems, they serve a lot of people, but not everyone. So I think you learn to play the game. You learn to do these things. And then whether it's at 18 or 28 or 38 or 48, I think a lot of us have that moment that you're talking about being like, look, this isn't me or I don't want to be doing this.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  And I think at that lowest point, there's just a real disconnect with what you value. Because when you're doing what you feel like you're supposed to be doing, man, it's hard at some times, but you just don't, I don't think you have that bottoming out dread feeling. You have that I need to do this and push forward feeling.

• 6:42John R. Miles?

  Having core values and living by them is two different things entirely. And I remember I was in this position, I was a senior executive at Dell at the time, and I was faced with a huge decision. I was leading the largest project in the company. We were spending about 150 million a year on it. And I inherited this from my predecessor who had been the CIO and had been promoted to be president of one of the business units at Dell. So he was running about a $20 billion business. And I, after examining it and bringing in a couple of experts to make sure my sounding

• 7:26John R. Miles?

  board was correct, we realized that we were going to implement this thing. It was going to cost about three quarters of a billion dollars by the time we were said and done. And it wouldn't fulfill 50% of the reasons that we were installing it. And so I had this defining moment that I could either go along with the crowd, keep doing the implementation, or I could stand up for doing what was right for the shareholders of Dell, but it would probably put me in the target line site of that president. And I made the decision to recommend a different solution.

• 8:08John R. Miles?

  And ultimately, it ended up costing me my job because he ended up going after me. And I remember about 18 months after I had left, I got an interesting call from the CFO

• 8:21John R. Miles?

  saying ultimately, I was right. And that person at that point was asked to leave the firm, but it cost me a lot. But looking back, I don't think I would have done it any other way because to me... Doing what is right has always been a foundational principle of mine. But my point for bringing that whole story up is core values, if you really live by them, do lead you to have to make some very difficult choices in life.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  It's funny, I'm working on an article for HBR and we get on this and it's an excellent point. Core values have a cost and it's usually a higher cost in the short term, particularly when you're putting your boat upstream. They don't look when the water's coming downstream and your boat's coming downstream. Like it's great. You don't get a lot of credit for that. But I'm talking in this article with particularly about what the base camp guys did in 2022 and they abolished politics at their company and the world came after them. And this is the height of cancel culture. And they were like, look, we'd rather just shut it all down than be in a toxic politically environment company is not what we want. And the mob came after them and all that stuff. And two years later, they're record profits, record happiness, tons of people who don't

• 9:34Speaker 02

  want politics and the work applying. And a lot of companies that got into this performatively and lost their focus are having a lot of problems. So it's a great point. There's a cost, right? And it's not easy. But the analogy I always use is so imagine like a sports car and what was it? You're the sports car. And this is why you got to know what they are first. A lot of us have a sense that we're values oriented, but we don't know how to articulate them in a way that is helpful from a decision-making process. So if I have a sports car in a tunnel and I turn off the lights, I'm going to drive down, I'm going to drift to the right side wall, I'm going to smash on that wall, I'm going to pull back to the middle, I'm going to overcompensate, I'm going to go left wall. I'm probably going to get through the tunnel, but my car is going to look like, well, this

• 10:18Speaker 02

  is a PG show, it's going to look like crap at the end, right? I'm going to get through. That's how a lot of us operate. But if I turn on the lights and I see the yellow lines and I know that those are my values, I just, I stay away from the wall to begin with and to get in the center lane. And most of us know and recognize our values from when they are violated and we know that feels really pretty. And look, we, sometimes you have to do it and you can maintain it for a little while. But like to do that in the long run, it really, you give up something, kind of a big part of yourself. And I think you start to not like yourself in a lot of ways.

• 10:55John R. Miles?

  Robert, thanks for sharing that. And today, we are discussing your new upcoming book, The Compass Within, subtitled, "A Little Story About the Values That Guide Us." And as I was reading this, in some ways, it reminded me of Robin Sharma's The 5:00 AM Club and him telling a parable. Why did you take the approach of creating a parable and a story to illustrate this book?

• 11:22Speaker 02

  It's a great question. And so I have to go back to the genesis of when I figured out this formula for myself for figuring out your core values and actionable core values, I then started training and teaching our leaders on it. And I built a really good process. And we were able to get these breakthroughs. And I wrote this book, Elevate, and people would ask me, and they'd say, okay, I'm all in on the core values. How do I do it? And I was like, there's not really an easy answer. But I've been working on this process. I turned this into a course. Couple thousand people took the course. And I have all kinds of notes on people that have changed their lives and made different decisions. I was like, I really want to get this to a lot more people. And I had written some books, and it would be a book, but I'm just not sure people are going to pick up and read

• 12:05Speaker 02

  a book about core values. And I love that book. I love The Goal. I love Pat Lencioni's books. I've always resonated with the parable format. My daughter was challenging me to do something hard and write fiction. And I was like, I wonder if this would work better if I created a character and I showed this. And then at the end, I told everyone what they saw and how they could implement it in their own lives. So it's interesting. I have friends and stuff who've read the book. It's not out yet, but they're like, I felt like you were talking about me today. Or there's a lot of people can see themselves in the character because we run into these things in our lives regularly. But I definitely just felt it worked better as a show, not tell. The tell's at the end. But I think

• 12:46Speaker 02

  everyone will relate to some aspect of Jamie's life, who's the protagonist in the story at some point.

• 12:55John R. Miles?

  So you open up the book with a question that I have to say, most of us try to avoid. What if success still leaves you empty? Because that's what it did for me. What was the personal experience for you that sparked that question?

• 13:11Speaker 02

  I never fit into a lot of these systems, right? So I was actually a kind of gross underachiever for a lot of my life because I was an entrepreneurial, creative kid who just didn't like school and was bored. And then when I put it all together, I ran really hard in another direction and it still wasn't me. And it really wasn't until I was invited to a leadership retreat and we got into this. I realized, wow, I'm very values driven, but I don't know what they are. And so if I'm going to change how I lead and live in my business, like I gotta figure that out. And that sort of sent me on this six month odyssey and really changed everything for me.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  And I'm trying to help people realize, again, there are a lot of mountains and there's good reasons to be on mountains and not. And a lot of people spend a lot of time climbing something that just doesn't matter to them or won't bring fulfillment or happiness. And I think really, if you can, I made a lot of changes in my life. When the values were clear, it changed the types of policies I had in my company, who we hired, friends that I doubled down on and acquaintances, friends that I moved away from. Cause I was like, huh, here's what I want. And these people don't serve that and these people do. And that's where first, as you, I think you made this point astutely, like first you need to know how to encompass and to read it, and then you need to go in that direction.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  So there's, living by your values is important, but if you can't articulate clear, and I talk in the book, one word values, I don't think work. Like in terms of actionable book or values, they need to be more than one word. They need to be differentiated. They need to be able to describe a behavior or a decision that you want to do or not want to do. So first you have to identify them and then you have to live by them. It's really hard to live by them if you don't know what they are.

• 15:00John R. Miles?

  True to that. Well, I want to go back to Jamie, who's your main character you brought up earlier, because Jamie appears to have it all, but he's quietly unraveling.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:10John R. Miles?

  And I think that's true for many of us. We live in what I say Henry David Thoreau got right a century ago. We live in quiet desperation. Why did you choose to tell this story through the lens of quiet success or quiet desperation rather than dramatic failure?

• 15:27Speaker 02

  I love that question. God, I wish I had gotten that into the book in some ways because I always say this a lot. You have that friend who was like fired from their job and then they went on to start a hundred million dollar company. And you hear these stories and it's like, when it's good enough, no one ever makes a change. It's really only when they're forced to or when they're, when it's bad. And so if it's okay enough, like you can go on for a while, but that has consequences. Like I know someone who refused to make a hard decision and they were in a situation that was really not aligned. And they took the easy route and it's, they've been paying for that for the last seven years, right? For those two years of kind of coasting. So Jamie's wrestling with what I call the big three.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  And this is where I think the core values and decision-making have the biggest impact, which is who you choose as your partner, the vocation you choose or the place that you want to work. So that could either be the, the type of work you do or where you choose to do it. And then one I think a lot of us forget about, which is your community. All right. And if, if those do not reflect your values, my experience is that they have very little chance of success. And those are really important things. Obviously we understand the partner, but even the community. So let's say you had a health scare and your health is really important to you. And you're in an area, you live in Newcastle, England, and in Newcastle, England, like people go out drinking six nights a week.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Right? It's going to be really hard for you to live in that culture and go out six nights a week and not drink. So you're either going to do something you don't want to do or do something that's hurting you. And so it's very different than living in Park City where everyone's, there's a six o'clock hiking club. So I think we forget about our environment and our community and how much that reinforces the things that are important to us and how hard it is when there's not alignment there.

• 17:15John R. Miles?

  Yeah, and I want to focus on that word alignment because in chapter one of the book, you describe this feeling of unspoken misalignment. And I love that phrase. How does that differ, do you think, from burnout, which we hear a lot, or dissatisfaction? And why is it so dangerous?

• 17:33Speaker 02

  I think it's the logical, the misalignment is what leads to burnout and dissatisfaction going on for a long time. It's probably the logical conclusion of misalignment. Because again, if you think about Edison or people who worked on, like, he worked on 10,000 things that didn't work, but he was so motivated by what he was trying to do that he just didn't care. So I think that's why we get burned out. When we're doing, like, when you are doing something aligned with your values, it's hard, time slows down, it's difficult, you're putting up a fight. When you're doing something aligned, like, time flies, it's natural, you're happy to do more. This is the stuff where you're like, for your friend, let me do that for you. I love

• 18:14Speaker 02

  planning trips. Let me just do that for you. And that's not the stuff that burns us out. So it's not the time, I think it's where and how we're spending the time and whether we realize, well, we're doing that with things that are aligned, right? A lot, the best goals that you've set are long-term goals, and they're goals that are aligned to your values, right? A lot of people have a goal of some sort of secondary home. And I've always said, be really careful. Like, why do you want that? Is it a trophy of achievement? Or do you visualize this family and family dinners and this family place and getting together and community is important? Well, if that's what you vision in that goal, then you would not put your marriage

• 18:53Speaker 02

  and your family at risk, working towards that second home, because it's not going to deliver what you were looking for.

• 19:02John R. Miles?

  Exactly. And that is so true. There was a point, as I was reading early in the book, where I went back to my own career again. You were talking about Jamie's performance review, and after that review, he walks back by the company's core values on a lobby wall, which are things like respect, integrity, when as a team, clients first.

• 19:28John R. Miles?

  And he scoffs because he realizes that he hasn't heard them spoken aloud since orientation. And it created a memory for me of two different scenarios I was part of, both of them Fortune 100 companies. I remember my time at Lowe's and when you would walk into the new headquarters in Mooresville, the visitor entrance had the core values at the top of the ceiling. But for Lowe's, everyone lived by the core values. And I remember in our executive meetings, Robert Niblock or our chief human resources officer would always bring up a core value during our meetings.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  It's not that it's on the wall or not on the wall, it's that where else is it?

• 20:13John R. Miles?

  Yes, and they would always talk about it. They would give examples of people, even at a store level, who were living it. And then I went to Dell, which I mentioned before, and Dell also had core values. But during my time there, I don't think I ever heard any of them amplified. And it was amazing the cultural difference I saw.

• 20:36John R. Miles?

  It all leads me to the question, why do you believe core values have become decoration instead of direction in companies?

• 20:44Speaker 02

  Well, even before social media, we've become very performative as a society. People do something, they see someone else doing it. The famous story, which is talked about in the conclusion in the book, is that the height of their fraud and everything. Enron had core values of integrity and honesty. That's not what got you promoted at Enron. What got you promoted was probably taking huge risks, stabbing people in the back, making as much money as you can, like what the culture rewards. And so I was just a disbeliever in core values for years because I saw this crap on all the walls of all the companies I went to and no one behaved by it. But as I really dug into extraordinary companies and companies like Southwest, which has a core value of wow our customers

• 21:27Speaker 02

  and their employees have taken people home on Thanksgiving and done crazy stuff for them. I realized, oh, there is some difference here. There's a difference between saying the things and doing the things, right? United Airlines had these core values of we fly friendly, we fly right. And then their employees dragged a guy off a plane and bloodied him rather than giving him $700 for bumping him. And Southwest was rerouting someone whose kid got sick on a flight. No, there was no instruction manual, it was just like, this is who we are and this is what we do.

• 21:56John R. Miles?

  So I went from being a skeptic to being a believer, but also understanding that very few people, you know, had it done in the way that you're talking about with Kohl's and more of them had the sort of Dell version of these are things that we put on the wall in our lobby.

• 22:15John R. Miles?

  I hope you're loving this conversation with Robert Glazer. If this resonates with you, join us at theignitedlife.net where you can download the workbook and join the conversation to start building real connection in your life. Thank you for supporting the partners who support the show.

• 22:33Speaker 00

  From kickoff to the final whistle, trade the biggest moments in football on Kalshi, America's number one prediction market platform. Kansas City takes on defending champions Seattle. Currently trading at 41% to win, a $100 trade pays out $244 if they come out on top. Download Kalshi, use code HOOPS to get $25 when you trade $25. K A L S H I. Kalshi, trade what's next. 18 plus only restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Kalshi products are not available in all jurisdictions. Prices, values and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see kalshi.com/ regulatory.

• 23:34John R. Miles?

  You're listening to Passion Struck on the Passion Struck Network. Now, back to my conversation with Robert Glazer. I'm smiling because you brought up wow. And that was what we talked about all the time at Lowe's, especially in the stores, was delivering wow customer service 100% of the time. And how do you get that across all the channels that a customer interacts with? Because you can wow them in the store and then they call up to get support on the phone and you get a disgruntled worker and that becomes how they see the company. So it was really important for people to understand that. And it's so amazing when you meet a value-based leader.

• 24:15John R. Miles?

  In the book, you highlight a woman named Stacy as someone who was a value-based leader, someone who mentored. Shielded her team from toxicity, handled the most difficult conversations with clients with composure and grace, and then she suddenly resigns and Jamie is beside himself. Why did you choose to create that scenario? Why was that so important for you to show that wake up call?

• 24:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, because look, we hear all the thing like people don't leave companies. They leave their leader and I've been in a lot of situations where the leader, it's often the other way. Like it can be both ways, right? There are subculture in a negative way or there are subculture in a positive way. And you know, what Jamie had to see in this story without giving it all away is like, what was the actual culture of the company versus he happened to win the lottery and have a great leader? And at the end of the day, they had shared values, but those values weren't shared by a lot of the leaders in the organization.

• 25:19John R. Miles?

  And that I think is what happens to so many people. Do you think in the companies that that you've been in, that there's a difference between the old guard and the new guard when it comes to core values? Do you find that one set seems to live them more? Because I definitely found that to be the case at Lowe's that you had a larger amount of old guard who really believed in the company mission. And so they helped the new guard adapt to that philosophy. Whereas in other companies I've joined, so much of the old guard is gone, that there's no one who is keeping the legacy going and making that a primary talking point, even at lunches, coffee meetings, things like that.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  It's, I think it depends. These things get transmuted from top down, but at some point in order to scale, they can't just live with the top five or seven leaders in the organization. It's actually the middle managers who carry that forward and reinforce it. When we were growing our company pretty quickly, people were like, look, are we going to lose the culture? Are we going to be different? I'm like, that's up to you all, right? We're living these things and hiring them and reinforcing it with you. If you don't do the same things in your team, that's where it'll fall apart. So really it is that. Right? And so for every company, it's like they have the things they sell evade and they reward. Some of them are explicit, some of them are implicit, some of them are the things on the walls and some of them aren't the things on the walls.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Right? Like one thing I'm really careful about and when I'm talking to company leaders around around their corporate values is like, look, if you just reward AIS ass in seat time, just raw input hours, that's what you're going to get. You're going to get a workaholic culture. That's what Marissa Meyer had at Yahoo. But that's not great results sometime. I'd rather have a rigorous outcome oriented culture that says, look, you, John, you did the right 20 hours this week. Let's all celebrate, John, man, he made the right calls and the right thing and he had five million in sales. And not Stephanie, who worked 80 hours and made 400 calls and had no sales.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  But man, Stephanie really burned the midnight oil. Like I'm empirically telling people be like Stephanie or be like John, one way or the other.

• 27:33John R. Miles?

  Yeah. Well, I think we've all seen those people who are constantly busy. But as you just pointed out, business doesn't equate to results.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Oh, and that's the last thing you talk about burnout, like that's the win win. Like, how do we get people focused on not the just raw number of hours, which will burn you out, but getting whatever results matter?

• 27:55John R. Miles?

  And that is something that was hard for me to deal with personally at Lowe's. I had a boss who was the chief operating officer who used to show up because he loved the company. He was there for 40 years, but he would show up at five o'clock in the morning and he wouldn't leave most days until seven or eight o'clock at night. And it created this environment, unfortunately, where people felt like they had to work the same sort of hours.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  Do you have a family? I'm just curious.

• 28:24John R. Miles?

  Yep, he had a family and after he moved to the headquarters, after we moved from where we previously were to this new headquarters, he probably had an hour and 10, hour and 20 minute commute each way, believe it or not. So this guy was getting up probably at 3:30 in the morning to come into work. He was a multimillionaire and he lived on a 100 acre farm, et cetera, but.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Curious if his family liked him. It doesn't seem like he was around that much. Yeah, look, we all had a similar story. So I had a, one of my first jobs like was actually a business that was around kind of new parents and the CEO was one of the few people who was not a parent at the time and recruited everyone under this guise of flexibility because we were all dramatically underpaid. And he'd be the first one in and the last one to leave and you could see the resentment growing. And I, early on, I recognized this was stupid. I was a super high performer, but he was getting really frustrated about hours. And we're like, look, we're all not, we're all making very little money. This was part of the sort of trade off. I ran an experiment one week to prove my point and I came in

• 29:33Speaker 02

  earlier than him. I came in earlier and I stayed later and I played games on my computer during that time. And he was much happier with me and my performance. And that changed everything for me and how I lead and how I manage for the rest of my career, being like, this is stupid. This is optical. I am very outcome oriented. I believe in KPIs and dashboards and we had one of the first remote companies and my friends before COVID were all like, how do you know people are doing work and I'm like, I don't know. They all have the same number of clients. We have two key metrics. Is the program doing well and they're staying retained and the client is happy? So if somehow they have five clients and their program is doing well and it's growing and they figured out how to do that

• 30:18Speaker 02

  in 10 hours a week, God bless them. Like they're doing the right thing. I, we just always had an outcome orientation.

• 30:26John R. Miles?

  Which I think is extremely important, but what do you do in the situation that Jamie finds himself in where he, as you write, is nodding in a meeting and thinking, that's not my voice? This is something that I wrote about in my own book that I call the mask of pretense that so many people put on. Why do you think so many people put on that mask without even realizing they're doing it?

• 30:50Speaker 02

  Look, there's, and I want to be honest about this. There's times that you have to do this. There's times when I had a kid and I needed the money and I needed to like sacrifice a little bit on what I really wanted to say and do out of that safety and security. And you can do that for a little bit of time without feeling horrible, but if that becomes your default mode of operation, that is where you're going to have burnout and despair and anxiety and what you said before. So I don't want to pretend like we never have to operate in these environments, but in a perfect world, and a lot of us can't run our own businesses, you would be like, look, this is me and this is authentically me and who I am as a leader, what I want to do, and you take the good and the bad, and that's

• 31:33Speaker 02

  what it is. And when people would come to work on my team, I'd say, here's why you will love working for me, and here's why you will hate it. Here are the things that are important to me. I just believe in doing things better. Like, it's a core value of mine. It's been consistent for a long time. If you join my team and you're constantly like, look, we just can't make it better, or we should just do the same thing, or that's how it's always been. Those are fighting words to me. It's just not going to work on my team. You can be a great person, but there's a different environment for you, and it's not a great fit for our company. Like, we're a, my company was a fast-moving marketing agency that needed people who wanted to act and make decisions and move quickly. It wasn't a consensus-making, slow environment. That's just how the work was constructed,

• 32:16Speaker 02

  and it worked for a certain type of person, and it didn't for another. And we're just trying to find those matches. Like, I have kids going through the college process, and we're clear about this in college, right? There's a large city school with a campus, and then, or in a city with a college town, and there's a smaller liberal arts school out in Maine, and they have totally different value propositions. And they can both be great schools, but probably for different people.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  The only difference is that school is not pretending to be that school and that school is not pretending to be that school. We oftentimes, in business or otherwise, just put out these signals and try to be everything to everyone. At our company, at my line, as always, we're just trying to find the 1% to 2% of people who align to our values and how we work and the right people for us. I'm going to assume that 98% are not.

• 33:06John R. Miles?

  I'm smiling because I was in Maine last week and I drove by many of the small Maine.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're beautiful. Colby College, Bates, all these things. But if you want a Texas, it is a totally different value proposition, right? It's not a right or a wrong.

• 33:22John R. Miles?

  Oh, I have a daughter who's a senior in college and I remember when we were going through the college selection process, she ended up going to University of Florida, but we looked at some very small liberal arts colleges and Ivy League schools as well. And to her credit, UF felt the most like it fit her value system.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  It's a great school. Yeah.

• 33:43John R. Miles?

  So I want to jump to chapter two. It's titled "The Whisper." What does the whisper represent and why is it so easy to ignore?

• 33:52Speaker 02

  I think one of my good friends, we've had on the podcast, Connor Neal, who I actually talked to this morning, he always says that really focuses on, I'm sorry, Philip McKernan, I talked to Connor this morning, they're both Irish, I mixed them up. Philip always says that a lot of people travel a lot of miles to meet with him and Philip's kind of a clarity expert, clarity coach, for the clarity that they don't really want. They're in a relationship they know is a dead end, they're in a job they know that's meant they want to do, they know it. It's just like dealing with it is really hard. So it's easy to just kind of push it away. And I think, are we listening to those voices or are we not listening to those voices? And we could tell ourselves a lot of lies. We're really

• 34:36Speaker 02

  good at lying to ourselves as humans. If you want to be employed for AI and all stuff, psychology is the way to go because we do a lot of things that just don't make sense.

• 34:46John R. Miles?

  Yes, and I just, I realized I got the title wrong of your chapter, so I apologize for that.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  I worked around it.

• 34:53John R. Miles?

  Yeah, no, it's the disconnects, but I'm gonna go there because in this chapter, you really bring up something that I don't think people think about enough, and that is their surroundings. And oftentimes, and I felt this myself, I'd been living in the same town here in Florida for about 14 or 15 years, and I just had this spider sense for a long time that the environment just wasn't the right one for me to grow in the ways that I wanted to grow personally. But I think oftentimes, it's difficult to realize those things. How do you encourage people to figure out if their surroundings are right or wrong?

• 35:38John R. Miles?

  And why does that make such a big difference?

• 35:41Speaker 02

  I think like Jamie, if you have the clarity on your values, that starts to really show itself and it starts to be clear. And, and look, I say all the time, like Park City is one of my favorite places in the world. My wife and I plan to spend a lot more time there when the kids run out of the house. Like, when we are there, we are super active. We are walking miles a day and hiking and doing all this stuff and outside. It's not like I can't walk outside here where I live in a suburb. It's not like I can't do that stuff. It exists to me. It's just not the default of what the people are doing and what the culture is doing. And yeah, that's just not the same extent. And so environments are really powerful, right? There's, you drive around and there's towns where there's all political signs one way

• 36:26Speaker 02

  or all another way. Like, I'm, I'm a centrist. Like, I want to have nuanced conversations with people and respectful. I don't want a candidate's name painted on the side of my house. And I want to live in a place where, you know, everyone's pressured to pick a team. So I, I, as you said, I just don't think, I think we forget about this. I think it's, I think we forget about how much we are a product of our environment, our community. And if we're living somewhere that has a lot of the opposite of what we value, and again, you need that clarity, it's pretty draining and it's worth a revisit.

• 37:00John R. Miles?

  Robert, I have a children's book coming out in December and it's a parable of sorts. And I found it very, much more difficult than I thought to write this because at the end of the day, you're playing with about 800 words in a book for four to eight year olds. But I went through this process and I'm wondering if you did as well. In the book, Jamie encounters a person named Jack who becomes a mentor to him. And in my book, Luma, the main character, meets Oliver, who is the sage owl. And I at first had it where Oliver was more dictating the steps for Luma to take in her life.

• 37:45John R. Miles?

  And then I decided, let's abandon that and let's start using this as a way where he starts asking Luma questions to get her to make her own decision, but guides her. And that's the approach that you took with Jack. Yeah. Did you face that same type of dilemma?

• 38:06Speaker 02

  No, it's funny. I've been accused of being Jamie and I have accused of being Jack. There's a lot of truth and true stories, some of which are totally irrelevant in the book. They're just mixed like with fiction because they are fun for me to anchor in there. And my kids are all characters in the books, their names, but they're all non-major characters so that they didn't fight over it, but no Jamie or Jack. But I like Jack for me was this archetype of who is the almost like TV mentor that I would have liked to have. And I would have liked them to talk to me and explain things to me. And it really, it came down to this confident, but humble and Socratic method. And that's who I am drawn towards and the type of mentorship.

• 38:49Speaker 02

  And it was never going to be, even how they meet, right? It was never going to be someone who was more draconian and authoritarian with their advice. And that way he's leading Jamie into the conclusions. And a couple of the breakthroughs, our Jamie pulls it together. Jack just sets the framework for him.

• 39:10John R. Miles?

  As you go through the book, Jamie starts mapping out his real values. Why does it matter, do you think, that we define them in our own words rather than picking them from a list of common beliefs that we see others talk about?

• 39:24Speaker 02

  So I really don't believe in one word values because, and so first of all, I think if they're the non-negotiable principles, they need to be, they need to be unique, right? So things like discipline and self-awareness and trust in family. Like I've heard eight different definitions of integrity. I think they need to be phrases. I think they need to describe. I have this sort of this validator in the book, but one of the key things in that is can, does the opposite cause discomfort, like deep discomfort? Cause that's how you know it's really a core value. And then can you use it to make a decision or look at your behavior? Could you objectively rate yourself on it?

• 40:05Speaker 02

  And most one word core values don't fit that test, but something like include all perspectives or think about the long term, right? It does. I think when you have a three or four of those that are unique to you, that's a very unique blueprint that someone else couldn't say. And they become what I call actionable core values where I can make decisions. I can look at actions. I could say, I should do this, I don't do this. That's the whole point of them. I can say that my community does not include all perspectives. This is a know it all, pick a team and whatever. And I, God, I don't want that. And it's interesting, again, I know a lot about the people I've worked with over the years and I've helped a lot and figure out your values. And I always say, let's imagine like the value of include all perspectives.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  If I know that's your value, like John, I'm never going to ask you to go build consensus around something. I'm never going to be like, John, I need you to go rush and make a unilateral decision. Don't talk to anyone. That's like kryptonite. That's like asking you to do something that's kryptonite. And so when we understand these things, I think it's like the ultimate personality test in terms of what do we want people to do and how would they best operate and communicate?

• 41:13John R. Miles?

  One of the core values that I've given myself is this phrase, it's better to ski than to be skied. I think so, so many of us tend to copy the past of others.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:25John R. Miles?

  Rather than focus on originality.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:29John R. Miles?

  Meaning I think we have to figure out what our superpowers are, but then there's a way to deploy them. And I think when you are original about it and you author your life in your own way, it's just so much more powerful than trying to conscript to what someone else has done before you.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm surprised you have a podcast about helping discuss people's passions. I don't know, if I was wording that, I would be like, set your own tracks or something like that. I think that's right. That's a strong differentiate. That's very different than like integrity or trust. I understand very specifically what that means.

• 42:09John R. Miles?

  I think many listeners may see themselves as a Jamie, but there are also people around him who are stuck as well. What advice do you give someone trying to navigate this shift while still in a life that doesn't support it?

• 42:25Speaker 02

  Look, there's getting the clarity and then there's always a time around doing something. And I'm not telling everyone to quit their jobs and go do stuff, but first you want to have this clarity. So if you want to read the book or do the work and the work starts with six questions in the book. If you want to see the questions and the examples and you just do that exercise, you'd be like, huh, I'm starting to see some things here. So those are at robertglazer.com/six, the six questions that start you down that process. But first gain the clarity and then you can think about what does a plan look like? And maybe it's a year or maybe it's two years, or maybe it's you, someone told me they've never realized that they had such a passion for, I can't remember what it was like food or something

• 43:08Speaker 02

  like that. So they joined a board of a company focused on that and they loved, actually, they never realized how passionate they were about education. And so they ran for the school board and something they didn't think they would do. And they were on the school board and well, that wasn't their day job. That fulfilled like a big part of it. So you can get started in these directions, but I don't think you can do anything until you have that clarity. And my goal and my sort of BHAG is to help a million people figure out their core values. That's my. Purpose for the next five years. And I know a lot of people listen to this. Yeah, they'll go back to their job and then some will sit down and do that work. And those are the ones I get these notes from three months later saying, I figured this out and I made some big changes and I did this.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  And I'm so glad that I did it. If you're feel happy in that autopilot mode, that's the problem we were talking about before. Where good enough can be dangerous. And then sometimes what happens is that falls away or that job that paid you great, but that you hated everyone you worked with and you have no connections to goes away. And then it's really hard to recover because you don't have any network. So I just don't see how you can go wrong getting a little bit of clarity on this. And then thinking about where in your life you could make some changes.

• 44:21John R. Miles?

  I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about your podcast. I saw you recently had on a mutual friend Rory Vaden on the show to talk about personal branding.

• 44:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:30John R. Miles?

  What type of entrepreneurs do you like to focus on with the show?

• 44:35Speaker 02

  The show is a combination of people who have built things and people who have, I would say it's a little combination of a Tim Ferriss and how I built this. It's either someone who's got a very unique perspective that leaders can learn from, or something they're really world class at, like in Rory. Or it's someone like Jesse Cole, who built the Savannah Bananas, who will tell us the story of what they did and how they did it. I've had Jesse on a few times and I honestly like, I've learned more from his. He should be like an HBR case study because I think he's seen as a little bit of an eccentric and, but he is very specific and purposeful. How he has built that brand. He has studied P T Barnum and Disney and all of the gurus of entertainment.

• 45:17Speaker 02

  And he knows exactly what he's doing. And it's just amazing to watch his success.

• 45:23John R. Miles?

  No, it is pretty amazing. How does he get the players to do the role acting that they do?

• 45:28Speaker 02

  I asked him if that was a problem, like if they saw it was like ridiculous. And when now he's got his own league, right? But before that, he had college players coming in and he had to convince them to do this. But I think people saw that was the culture and that was fun and that was rewarded. And now it's like you go play on the team because you want to do this. I think that was a, that was an old challenge because he's actually shut down the minor league team. And now he's just building this entire league of his own. It's like the Harlem Globetrotters, except there's a league of teams and the games aren't fixed.

• 46:00John R. Miles?

  Well, it's given a completely new dimension to baseball, which

• 46:04Speaker 02

  Football stadiums, right?

• 46:05John R. Miles?

  Yes. Well, it is amazing because the viewership and interest in baseball has been declining for so long.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  I can't watch a baseball game anymore and I grew up as a Red Sox fan.

• 46:17John R. Miles?

  Well, I think that's where they played their last game, wasn't it?

• 46:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Fenway. And actually, they were at, they were at the Coldplay Show before the Coldplay Show heard around the world. And when Coldplay played Yellow, he sang it to the bananas. It was pretty cool. They were in Fenway. They were at Foxborough in between the games at Fenway.

• 46:36John R. Miles?

  I want to go back to the book because you use an interesting story, kind of a personal one, to close the book. And it happened to do with a playdate that your child was on with another child. And your child wasn't a very good swimmer. This other family ends up on this playdate, taking him to this pool party without kind of telling you. And I've been through this with my kids as well, that kid goes on a playdate. Next thing you know, they're doing something completely different than you thought they were going to do. And then in your scenario, you can't get in touch with the parents. Why did you, maybe you can talk more about this scenario, but why did you choose to use this as the ending point?

• 47:20Speaker 02

  Because what I've learned in my life is that when you ignore small fissures of core values, they tend to turn into earthquakes eventually. And to me, that was the sort of, don't ignore your guy. And the story was, my son was, he was pretty young, I don't know, he was six or seven. And he had a friend and we just had seen some things, he had a good friend with the family, where there just felt like there were some values misalignment. But again, it would be really awkward to be like, we don't want you going to Timmy's house or whatever it is. Again, there's always, there was always a cost. And they had gone somewhere for the day and like he'd just started to swim and we

• 48:05Speaker 02

  knew like these folks were big drinkers and hung out with people who were partiers and they said, oh, we're going to this without kind of asking us, which I would never would have done. We're going to the playing at our house to going to this pool party at this house. And I'm thinking like, I don't want my kid like, like this Jolt's drinking here. We're not watching him. He's not a really good swimmer. This is not a situation. And I would have never put another parent in that situation. Again, that's just not a values alignment. And we couldn't get in touch with them. And I regretted making the decision. We couldn't get in touch with them for hours. Like, we couldn't get in touch with anyone. And I, we were absolutely panicked. And I was so mad at myself. And I remember the anger of you blew this. Like, you had all the warning signs in the world

• 48:48Speaker 02

  about this. And you chickened out. And it turned out fine. And someone's phone was dead. But again, I just wouldn't bring home someone's kid hours later. I, there was all the things were not. So that was the end of that. And I just, the mistake I didn't make again, and while that one turned out okay, is not ignoring those, those little radar signs.

• 49:07John R. Miles?

  I had a scenario like this when my eldest child was in middle school. We were living in Austin, Texas. So it's during the time I was at Dell. And he got really into gaming and they would do these parties where they bring their own computer screen and they would play war games. And I dropped him off. I had not really met this parent before. He was the CEO of a fairly large tech company. But something just didn't feel right. And so I tried to get ahold of him. First, my son, then the parent couldn't get in touch

• 49:47John R. Miles?

  with either one. So I decided to drive back to the house. And you know how much testosterone is going on with a bunch of middle school kids, especially if they're playing Call of Duty. And he lets me back into the house. And since I had left, the whole island of his kitchen had semi-automatic weapons, pistols,

• 50:10Speaker 02

  Real.

• 50:11John R. Miles?

  and other things just laid out with ammo just sitting there. And I was just like, what in the world are you doing?

• 50:18Speaker 02

  And the parent was home?

• 50:20John R. Miles?

  And the parent was home.

• 50:23John R. Miles?

  And to bring it out at that time, given what the kids were doing and everything else. I remember my son was so angry at me for making him leave and there were some repercussions for him with those friends, but how improper for a person to do that without asking the parents of the kids if it was okay.

• 50:42Speaker 02

  And like I said, they don't come without cost and that's why people don't make these decisions and you don't get any credit for making it when the stream's going the same way. That's what I said before. When everyone, when your value is free speech and everyone's a free speech thing, you don't get credit. It's when, you know, someone says something that you really disagree with and you stand up for the free speech, even though you disagree. That's when you get credit.

• 51:08John R. Miles?

  Well, Robert, if you could leave listeners with a challenge or imitation after reading the compass within, what would it be?

• 51:16Speaker 02

  Look, you can decide to do the whole process, but my challenge would be just answer the six questions one morning. Answer them honestly on a piece of paper and take a look at those answers and see if there are some trends that may start to explain some things about your life and where you've been successful and unsuccessful. I've watched people post their answers online and on LinkedIn and I think it's always more revealing than people think. And I think it might encourage you to take a deeper dive into that work. And I just, I haven't found anyone who hasn't gotten a benefit by getting more clarity in this area.

• 51:49John R. Miles?

  Robert, thank you so much for joining us on Passion Struck. It's an honor to have you and I wish you all the success with this book launch.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  John, thanks for having me. And book launch is October 14th. And if you sign up and buy the hardcover on the Compass Within website, you can get the course for free. Definitely do that if you're interested, but thanks for having me.

• 52:10John R. Miles?

  That's a wrap on today's conversation. I hope it left you rethinking what it really means to grow. Here are three key takeaways I invite you to reflect on. First, core values aren't decoration, they're direction. When you define them clearly and live by them consistently. They become the yellow lines that keep your car from smashing against the walls. Second, Robert reminded us that capacity is built, not borrowed. True performance comes from expanding your spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and physical capacity, not just working harder. And third, alignment beats hustle. Business without alignment leads to burnout. Alignment fuels joy and sustainable results.

• 52:51John R. Miles?

  Today's conversation reminded me that living by your values sometimes comes with a cost, but the price of ignoring them is far higher. I've experienced this in my own career, and it's why I'm so passionate about helping you get clarity on yours. If today's episode resonated with you, share it with a friend who might need it. And if you haven't already, please take a moment to leave a five-star rating or review on Apple or Spotify. It's the best way to help more people find the show. You can find full show notes and watch the video conversation on the Passion Struck YouTube channel. And don't forget to check out our store at startmattering.com for apparel that brings the Mattering movement alive in your own life. Next week, I'm joined by my friend Joel Beasley, the host of the Modern CTO Podcast.

• 53:36John R. Miles?

  But what we're really talking about is his journey of becoming passion struck. Joel shares how he turned his love for stand-up comedy into reality and the mindset shifts that helped him turn passion into purpose. It's a conversation you don't want to miss.

• 53:49Speaker 03

  I need very difficult things, otherwise I spiral into depression. So if I'm not trying to solve some incredibly difficult problem, then I'm just uninterested in life itself. So early in my career, a lot of those were software problems, building systems, and then it became building businesses. And then I said, okay, well, now I've got to figure out how to solve this comedy problem. I had to set a goal and I had to be careful. Ken taught me that one of the issues with my podcast is I set my goal and I achieved it without having another goal behind it. And once you achieve that like massive goal that you never thought was possible, it's, oh, I thought that would take me a lifetime and that took me seven years, right?

• 54:27John R. Miles?

  Until then, expand your capacity, lead with intention, and as always, live life passion struck.

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