An 80-year-old Philadelphia ad-man named Joe Ball mentored a broke 21-year-old at Penn, teaching him that small daily actions compound over time. Joe's philosophy: show up, do the work, be yourself. The speaker learned this riding around the city making sales calls in mayoral offices and mob-linked clubs, watching Joe's face-to-face approach beat email every time.
Anything above zero compounds. I read that line a few years ago and it stopped me cold because it's basically the entire philosophy of the greatest boss I ever had, minus the profanity he would have added for emphasis. His name was Joe Ball, 80 years old, Jewish, lived on Philadelphia's Main Line, owned an ad agency downtown, and Somehow he decided to take a chance on me, a broke 21-year-old redneck from Kentucky who showed up at the University of Pennsylvania with a lot of ambition and functionally no money. I mean, no money. Senior year, I didn't have rent. 5 friends, girlfriends, let me sleep in their pantry, which, if you've never done it, it's exactly as glamorous as it sounds. Canned goods at eye level, dreaming of one day affording a bed that isn't next to the paper towels. A cafeteria lady with a heart the size of Philadelphia let me eat for free most days, no questions asked. She just quietly saving a kid who was too proud to ask for help out loud. And then Joe Ball gave me a job. Picture the two of us riding around the city together, an 80-year-old ad man And his hillbilly protégé hitting sales calls all over the city. Some mornings we'd be in the mayor's office, and later that same morning we'd be pitching a client who very clearly had connections at a gentleman's club that I'm fairly confident was mob-owned. Joe walked into both of these rooms with the exact same energy— relentless, warm, completely undimmed. I, being a modern and forward-looking young man, tried to talk him into embracing this brand-new exciting technology they were calling electronic mail. Joe, however, was unmoved. Jebediah, he'd say, because apparently I looked like a Jebediah to him. He would say, do you think you're going to remember They're gonna remember your face because of an email? Hell no! You gotta get in front of people, make them remember you. I've been working these streets since I was a 15-year-old newsboy. You keep showing up. That's the whole job. He would punctuate every sentence with a hand gesture, and I can see it in my face, I hear it in my ears oftentimes. But I didn't get it at the time. But here it is now, 30 years later, and I get it now. Joe never gave me some grand 5-year plan. He gave me a philosophy: show up, do the work, be relentlessly, unapologetically yourself in every room you walk into. Whether it's City Hall or a club with questionable ownership, and let that consistency compound over years. He wasn't chasing 0 to 100 overnight. He was chasing anything above zero every single day for 65 years of his career until it turned into an entire career, an entire ad agency. And apparently an entire redneck kid he decided was worth mentoring. Wherever you are today, or whatever version of a pantry floor you might be sleeping on, that's not the whole story. That's just the opening scene. Keep showing up. It compounds. Miss you, Joe.
