Some days it’s just easier to stare at the tiny digital clock at the top right corner of your computer screen than to actually focus on your work. Everyone needs a little life-affirming motivation to get through the work week before you can feel the enthusiasm drain out of you in the form of drool dripping from the side of your mouth. This is where the Friday Forward comes in.
Created in 2016 by Robert Glazer, founder and managing partner of the global performance marketing agency Acceleration Partners, on a whim in order to boost the morale of his employees, the Friday Forward has become a beacon of positivity for many people around the world. Every Friday, Glazer sends out an email blast containing intriguing stories and his musings on a diverse range of everyday topics.
For Glazer, it was all about paying the positivity forward in order to make a small difference for his employees after a long week.
“It all started when I changed my morning routine,” explains Glazer “I always collected these stories or articles that people would send that I thought were interesting. I just decided one week, on a Friday, that I would send out a note to my team with a quote or a lesson to see if it was helpful. A lot of it was kind of for me. I was sending them and didn’t know if people were reading them. Then I started getting replies from people within the business from people saying that they really liked them. They were forwarding them to their friends and families and were looking forward to them.”
From there, the Friday Forward spread like wildfire amongst his co-workers and even fellow CEOs from other companies started spreading Glazer’s gospel to their employees. He started to branch out a little bit more and could not believe the feedback he received.
“I started to get a lot more positive feedback than I had anticipated. At that point, I was meeting with some other CEOs and I was telling them about it. So I copied them on my lists and they wrote back and said they were getting amazing feedback from this. So I started including some more people. I was writing the same letter that I was writing to my team but I realized it probably had some external value. So I put some more people on the list and it snowballed from there. Two years later, I have about 35,000 people on the list globally.”
With how insightful these messages are, it’s easy to see why the Friday Forward has such a massive following. You just need to read them for yourself to believe the hype. Each post oozes with passion and you gain a sense that he has a genuine passion for helping those who read his words.
And according to Glazer, his motivation comes from the positive feedback he receives. “I take a lot of inspiration from hearing other people’s stories,” explains Glazer “It’s the responses that I get from people and knowing that it makes a difference that has kept me inspired… Some of it is that people need a little kick in the ass, but in a positive way where people can say ‘look, I gotta to stop making excuses and do what I need to do’.”
