The Values ROI: Building a Multi-Million Dollar Business Without Losing Your Soul

Some entrepreneurs build big businesses. They scale fast, break things, and eventually find themselves exhausted at the top of a mountain they didn’t really want to climb.

Then there are the rare leaders who build businesses that work, not just for the bottom line, but for their teams, customers, and themselves.

The gold standard for that second group is my friend Robert Glazer.

Robert built Acceleration Partners into a $35 million global marketing agency, recognized by Fortune, Forbes, Entrepreneur, and The Boston Globe. He’s a #1 Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author whose frameworks have influenced giants like Airbnb, Adidas, Uber, and Target.

However, when Robert and I catch up at masterminds or talk shop behind the scenes, it’s not the accolades that impress me. It’s intentionality. Robert doesn’t leave success up to chance. He is a systems thinker who realized early on that your culture will design you if you don’t design it yourself.

His secret? A deceptively simple idea: Values drive everything.

Why Real Culture Starts with Core Values

Almost every office has a “Core Values” poster in the breakroom. Integrity. Teamwork. Excellence. In most cases, they aren’t much more meaningful than the wallpaper.

Robert realized early on that many companies talk about culture, but very few actually create it. In most organizations, values do not affect decision-making. The opposite approach was taken by Robert. He treated values as operating principles.

Not only did he write them down, but he embedded them in the company’s “OS:”

• Hiring decisions. Regardless of your talent, if you don’t align with the company’s values, you won’t be hired.
• Performance reviews. People aren’t just judged by their KPIs, but also by their values.
• Promotions. To move up, you must be a standard-bearer.

In a world where values have become the “rules of the game,” leadership becomes infinitely easier. Everybody knows what a “good” decision looks like, so you don’t have to micromanage.

The Danger of Trying to Be Everything to Everyone

Among Robert’s most profound insights is that companies fail when they try to appeal to everyone.

An excellent analogy he uses is the college search. There are some students who thrive at a large university with 50,000 students in the middle of a bustling city. Others want a quiet mountain campus with 1,000 students. Both are merely different environments for different people. There’s no “better” one.

The same should be true for companies. A fast-growing, high-pressure startup isn’t “bad,” nor is a steady, work-life-balance-focused agency. The problem arises when an organization claims to be one thing and acts like the other.

According to Robert, organizations need to be radically transparent in the following areas:

• What do they value?
• How do they operate?
• Who thrives there?
• Who won’t?

Everyone benefits from this level of honesty. In addition to attracting the “right” people, it weeds out the “wrong” ones as well.

Culture Is What You Reward, Not What You Say

Here’s the brutal truth Robert shared with me: Your culture is defined by what you reward.

Putting “family first” but promoting someone who stays in the office until 9:00 PM every night is instead a culture of “workaholism.” Your real culture is “revenue at any cost” if you keep your top salesperson despite mistreating your staff, even after they claim to value “integrity.”

Look at Enron. Their official values include integrity and respect. As we all know, that didn’t end well.

Robert’s solution? Develop tangible behaviors to operationalize three or four core values. By rewarding behaviors aligned with your values, you can create a self-correcting system.

The Leadership Shortcut: Solving Value Conflicts

Value conflicts are often the cause of leadership challenges.

When two employees argue about a budget, they believe they’re arguing about numbers. Yet underneath, one might value “financial security” since they grew up poor, while the other values “Innovation and risk-taking.”

Knowing these hidden drivers allows you to see disagreements as opportunities for clarity, rather than personality clashes. Changing this dynamic alone can transform a toxic team dynamic into a high-performing one.

The Investment Lens: Why Values Matter in Deals

As a Lifestyle Investor, Robert’s work resonates with me. Typically, people evaluate deals based on:

• Market size
• EBITDA and margins
• Growth projections

I agree with Robert that character and values are the ultimate leading indicators.

Quality and consistency of reporting are two “tells” Robert looks for. Transparent, regular updates (sharing both the good and the ugly) signal integrity. Reporting that is vague or overly optimistic is a major red flag.

When you make a “great” deal with the wrong people, it will eventually turn into a nightmare. On any given day, I’d rather have a “good” deal with someone who shares my values.

How to Partner with Private Equity (The Right Way)

As a result of Robert’s efforts, Acceleration Partners was eventually able to recruit a private equity partner. Instead of just looking for the highest check, he looked for a partnership.

Among the criteria he uses to determine if a recapitalization or exit is successful are:

• Aligned incentives. When the company succeeds, everyone should benefit.
• Two-way due diligence. Robert performed extensive reference checks on the PE firm. In order to learn how other founders reacted when challenges arose, he spoke with others they had backed.
• Cultural continuity. Partnerships can last for seven or more years. But those seven years will be very difficult for you if your values do not align with your board’s values.

Finding Your “Compass Within”

Robert pivots from organizational values to personal values in The Compass Within. Most of us don’t have a personal code of conduct. Our big life decisions are based on what we believe we should want, not on what truly drives us. As a parable (think The Go-Giver or The Five Dysfunctions of a Team), Robert helps readers see how values affect real-life career and relationship choices.

According to him, values matter most in three areas:

1. Vocation. Is your work a reflection of your soul, or is it merely a source of income?
2. Relationships. Is there a fundamental vision for life that you and your partner share?
3. Community. Are your values reinforced by your environment?

The Six Questions That Reveal Your Core Values

Robert’s most practical tool for clarity is a six-question discovery exercise designed to reveal your life’s recurring patterns. As simple as it may sound, the highest highs and the lowest lows are the best times to reveal your values.

Using these questions to reflect on your financial history has been a game-changer for me as an investor. Rather than focusing on your “best job,” consider: What made it great? Was it the founder’s radical transparency or the 10x return? Was it the asset itself, or the peace of mind provided by a world-class operator?

Then, flip the lens: What was your worst investment, and why did it really fail?

Most investors blame the market or the math. When you dig deeper, the “failure” is usually a behavioral one. When the numbers dropped, did the founder stop sending updates? Did they avoid accountability? Those patterns reveal more than a spreadsheet could.

As you look at your “investment wins” and “investment scars” through this values-based filter, trends begin to emerge. When you compare your best partnerships and your most stressful deals, you’ll find they have certain characteristics in common.

Robert often says that the real test of someone is not how they act when the wire hits, but how they behave when the deal gets messy. When you reflect on these six questions, you stop investing in “projects” and start investing in partners who are aligned with your North Star.

The Real ROI: Clarity Creates Freedom

I respect Robert because he doesn’t just teach this; he lives it. His business is massive, but he also has time to be a present father, a prolific writer, and a high-level thinker.

That’s the “Lifestyle Investor” dream: Clarity creates freedom.

Knowing what you stand for helps you make better hires, better investments, and better life choices. It’s not just about growing a business; it’s about growing with it.

Key Takeaways

• Values are the operating principles. Hire, fire, and promote based on core values, not as decoration.
• Repel the wrong people. Be honest about your company’s strengths and weaknesses. Being a “perfect fit” for some is better than being a “mediocre fit” for all.
• Culture = rewards. If you want to see what your real culture is, take a look at who is promoted and what behaviors are celebrated.
• Identify value conflicts. Often, workplace “personality issues” are actually deep-seated value conflicts. Don’t focus on the person, focus on the value.
• Due diligence is two-way. Be as thorough in your interviews as you are when you are looking for investors or partners.
• Reporting equals integrity. Assess the character of your business partners based on their consistency and transparency in communication.
• Clarity creates freedom. The ultimate tool for making decisions is your personal core values. Your vocation, relationships, and community should align for you to achieve success.

Featured Image Credit: Ann H: Pexels: Thank you!