Leadership

Revenue = reputation + reach: Acceleration Partners CEO Robert Glazer on marketing, leadership, time management, and more

August 25, 2021

Revenue = reputation + reach: Acceleration Partners CEO Robert Glazer on marketing, leadership, time management, and more

Robert Glazer

Founder & CEO of Acceleration Partners

CEO of Acceleration Partners Robert Glazer discusses how he handles time management, leadership, marketing, and more.

Leading an award-winning global marketing firm, sending weekly emails to his 200,000+ subscriber base, writing multiple bestsellers, prioritizing family and friends...CEO of Acceleration Partners Robert Glazer juggles a lot. On the latest Walker Webcast, he sits down with us to discuss how he handles time management, his approach to leadership, marketing, and so much more.

Two themes that arise several times are his dedication to his core values to guide every decision he makes and his approach to remote work. If you are interested in taking a course on these subjects, visit his website and use the code "walker" at check out.

Robert Glazer is the founder and CEO of Acceleration Partners, the recipient of numerous industry and company culture awards (including Glassdoor’s Employees’ Choice Award), and a bestselling author.  What started as an email to a small group of employees, Friday Forward, has turned into a larger-scale inspirational newsletter and bestselling book.  Bob is also the author of Elevate and international bestseller Performance Partnerships.  When he’s not working, you might find Bob outside skiing, cycling, reading, traveling, spending time with his family, or overseeing some sort of home reno project (assuming he can get the materials at Home Depot today!).

To get the ball rolling, Willy asks Bob to explain affiliate marketing and what Acceleration Partners does.  The company creates relationships between merchants, affiliate networks, publishers, and consumers.  To define the work of affiliate marketing simply, it involves paying for an outcome.  Acceleration Partners offers particular value to clients by incorporating software, managing interpersonal relationships with partners, and much more.  It has worked with many big-name companies and in various areas of the world, and Bob specifically shares about the experience of partnering with Uber.  He also shares about the similarities and differences between working in the US and elsewhere.

As Bob has navigated different settings and company expansions, he’s developed a commitment to two things: finding the right people to lead in each market and maintaining a consistent culture across the company.  The company places a premium on its team, and even though it has been remote for 14 years, the team is still eager to resume some in-person interactions with peers and clients.  

Turning to Friday Forward, Willy and Bob discuss its beginnings as a weekly email to employees, and how Bob’s aim in writing it is to impart value to readers.  This is, ultimately, a form of lateral marketing, as Bob ends up helping his company without directly trying to do so.  One of Bob’s recent topics was how revenue equals reputation and reach; as he explains to Willy, Bob believes that companies doing good work should share it to expand their reach.  There are, unfortunately, companies that take a “pay for play” approach, but applying for authentic awards, making use of case studies and referrals, and hiring outreach/marketing employees are better approaches.

Willy also asks Bob about some of his other writings and their subject matter.  The conversation covers Bob’s use of time and balancing of priorities, his practice of time blocking, and his use of a “stop doing” list (which even applies, in a modified way, to clients).  Bob is highly committed to and driven by a set of core values in personal life as well as in business, and he believes that environment is one of the major factors for change.  So, he works hard to surround himself with people aligned with his values.  He is also careful to demonstrate empathy with a focus on others’ problems rather than his own.  

Turning to the experience of a virtual workplace, Willy and Bob discuss the tools needed for employees to thrive and employers to lead well.  It is important, Bob reiterates, for workers to have in-person interactions; however, this is not an absolute, as some companies have tried to argue.  Bob holds that, at this moment in time, leaders need to take a position on transitioning back to the physical office, and simply go with it.  Before the conversation ends, he also shares with Willy thoughts about employee retention, creating a culture where it’s okay to fail, his tool for determining personal values, and his book recommendations.  

Links:

Learn more about Robert Glazer and Acceleration Partners
Access Bob’s course for determining core values
Learn about Bob’s books, Friday Forward, Elevate, and Performance Partnerships
Check out the books Bob recommends, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) and Chasing Daylight
Learn more about Willy Walker and connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn
Learn more about Walker & Dunlop and Driven by Insight

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