214: Nerding Out w/Mitch Joel—On Ideas, Systems, Credibility, and Connections

Hi, this is Charles Michael Davis.

Toyotathon is on, so stop by your local Toyota dealer for incredible year end deals on the cars, trucks and SUVs.

Known for their legendary reliability like the stylish and efficient Camry, the Ready for.

Anything RAV4 or check out a rough.

And rugged Tacoma or Tundra, all with.

Great financing and lease options available to qualified customers.

Visit buyatoyota.com to find out more.

Toyota let's go places.

What's Next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of the Only Move that Matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello friends. I don't normally record a separate intro that just creates too much extra work for the podcast. But in this case I had so much fun interviewing Mitch Joel that I didn't even get to introduce him properly at the beginning and read his bio. Some of you may not need to that at all. It's such a fun, wandering conversation about I ideas, the skill every person must have, why we believe in friend tours, how he produces so much content each week, even his side project podcast about one of his biggest passions. But for some of you, I find having a bio is helpful just to sort of contextualize this person that I'm going to be listening to for the next hour. I also want to read you where I quote Mitch in the afterword to the paperback edition of Pivot because it's wisdom that has really stuck with me ever since he so generously had me on his his podcast six Pixels of Separation when the book launched. A Little Bit More About Mitch Mitch is the founder of six Pixels Group, an advisory, investing and content producing company that is focused on brands, commerce, community and what's next. He has been called a visionary, digital expert and community leader. He's an entrepreneur, investor, author, trusted advisor, chronic reader and passionate speaker who connects with people worldwide by sharing his insights on business transformation and innovation and marketing. He was awarded the highly prestigious Top 40 under 40 and spent close to two decades building, running and selling his agency to WPP, one of the most valuable marketing and communication holding companies. He is the author of two books, six Pixels of Separation and Control Alt Delete, Reboot your business, reboot your life, your future depends on it. That's the latest that was out May 2015 and his new direction is about Decoding the future. He's so prolific. He's so well known as a colleague to so many of us in the writing and speaking communities. And he's just one of those super wise people who sees trends coming really early on. Now here's the excerpt from the Pivot afterwards so afterwards, the paperback edition is something that I wrote. One year later, after the hardcover came out of pivot in September 2016, I had this post launch, Pivot Point, and I went into super Rest mode. I even did a podcast episode on Post Pivots and the Furry Rest Monster, something along those lines. And so it was an interesting exercise to write the afterword almost what didn't make it into the first edition of the book that I worked on from 2014 to 2016. What's missing? Here's the excerpt where I quote Mitch My guiding principle now is faith in flow, a reminder that helps me trust the natural cycles of tension and release, hustle and flow, grit and grace. I listen for what's next, but try not to rush the answer if the plant stage involves putting a pin in one's desired destination a year from now. Entering my post Pivot Rest mode was like hitting the current location button in a Maps app. It spun me back and helped me zoom in on where I was right now, not someplace off in the future where I should be. In the words of my friend and fellow author Mitch Joel, instead of only focusing on what's next, we'd do well to reflect on the equally important question what's now?

And now onto today's show.

Hello everybody. Welcome back. I am absolutely honored and overjoyed to have Mitch Joel here on the Pivot podcast. This is long overdue and probably one of those things I never thought to ask Mitch because I just admire so much what he does and who he is and how he shows up that it's almost like this unconscious shyness kicks in. Mitch, before I read your bio, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Jenny. I'm happy to be here. You're one of my most favorite people, so this is gonna be fun.

Right back at you. In fact, you were so generous to interview me on your podcast Six Pixels of Separation when Pivot came out. That was September 2016, and I got so much out of that interview you interviewing me, that you know this already. But you made it into the Pivot afterward, the special afterword for the paperback edition.

It's fun to see too. Like, that's probably the greatest. I love books so much that anytime I'm asked to blurb or I'M in the book or I'm in an index to me, that's like my. My sort of nerdgasm. Like, I get super excited when that happens, for sure. It's great.

Nerdgasm. I think that might be the title of this episode.

Go for it.

That's a good one. Is that your. Is that your neologism?

No, I wish.

I don't have any neologism. How do you say that word?

I don't know. I don't know either. But I think my forte with words is more like sort of playing with the play on words or coming up with, like, some interesting title. The other stuff I'm not that great at.

See, my issue is I read so much and I even get my news media through the physical newspaper that I bungle pronunciation so often because I'm never saying the words I'm reading, nor am I hearing it. I just. Unless I hear it on a podcast, but I don't. So sometimes politicians names or countries names, or word like neologism.

Well, so the word that I change, there's two words that I change or that I mix up and I don't know what's right. And the word is root or route. I sometimes call it route. I sometimes say root. And then the other one is data, which I will often call data more as a tip to Star Trek. But I feel like that's not how you say Data. Like Data is a character in Star Trek. Data is the right word, but I don't know.

But the real question is, is it GIF or gif?

I think it's gif.

I do, too. I do, too.

I think people who have been on the Internet longer will call it gif. But you know what? That one I can figure out because I can speak to Gretchen McCullough, who's also a friend who wrote. Who wrote a. Really. She's an amazing linguist, in particular about online culture. Like, she's a linguist for Wired, and she wrote a book called oh, my God. Called I'll have to Figure. But she's great. So she lives in Montreal. I will ask her about the GIF or GIF one. Oh, it's called because. Because Internet is the name of her book.

Because Internet. That's great. You're. You're an Internet OG. Let's. Let's be honest. I mean, you have over 700 episodes of your podcast. Seth Godin was recently on to celebrate episode 700 in December. And he said, and I quote, mitch Joel, you are in the pantheon. You are one of the greats.

Yeah, it's great. So when you were saying, is that a word that you made up? I won't even say the word that describes the word you made up. My default is always. I think probably it was Seth Godin. I just stole it. I have been a fanboy of Seth's. Before Permission Marketing came out, I was exposed to one of his books called Survival is Not Enough, which I think even to this day is one of the most underrated Seth Godin books and probably one of the most underrated business books in the world. And I met him in the early days at, I think, Internet World, just before he was launching Permission Marketing. And I just went like ass over kettle into his world, like really immersed myself and became a crazy follower of his to the point where when he started blogging, I was around. And I just remember I would tell everybody who was like, blogging, like, what do you mean? I was like, this is the greatest gift in the world. When you have somebody who is as great of an author as Seth Godin is and you're usually waiting, you know, two, three, four year cycles for book, because that's sort of the cycle of a book to have him giving you free content every day. There is no greater treat and, or gift in the world. And in this strange twist of fate that happens to be my life, which is getting to be friends with people like you and other such moments of luck, I got to know him quite well and we became friendly over the years. And he's just one of those people that I sort of no is a friend and no is always available and yet I will never reach out or bother him. And so whenever I'm interacting with him, I'm always kind of very sensitive to his time and who he is. And even when I explain networking to other people, I talk about boxing in your weight class. Like, don't, sort of, you know, don't, don't try to outbox and ask for things you're not worthy of. And I feel with Seth, because of who he is, I'm always boxing out of my weight class for sure. But he's definitely one of the role models in my life. And when I say mentor, I mean like, even if he weren't alive, I think he would still be a very powerful mentor in my life.

Absolutely.

Just from his work. Like, I don't need to physically interact with him to benefit from who he is completely, 100%.

And you and I are so similar because I would also consider Seth a friend. Uh, he, he even I'm in his acknowledgments. And this is marketing, which just about had me faint, like, fall beside myself. I couldn't believe it. Like, what if I possibly brought this person who I admire so much? I still haven't asked him to be on the podcast. I get so shy. I will never. He did blurb Pivot, I will say, but I am the same way. And even in Pivot, I talk about friend tours and the importance of networking among your peers, because I don't really think it's appropriate to always be trying to reach up, up, up, or pull those levers of the people you know that have the most, the biggest platform. And so those are often the people that I reach out to the least. And not everyone would agree with that. They would say, you got to go for it. You just got to ask. And so many people will say, yes, but I'm very protective about those relationships.

Yeah, I'm the same way. So when we talk about that 700th episode, one is, I don't like to celebrate those milestones. I've never been good with that, with birthdays, anniversaries. Like, I'm just not a person who's like, let's mark this one moment. It's probably a fault of mine, but I did think about it, and I was like, if I just sort of blow through it, I just don't know if I'm paying the actual show the respect it deserves. And then I really grappled with what did I want to do? And then I came up with that idea of let's talk about the state of podcasting. And I thought, who would be really interesting to talk to about this? And the reason I chose Seth is because with his Akimbo podcast and he does a podcasting workshop and all the stuff he's doing with the Akimbo workshops, I felt like he was really moving in a different direction from one where he was like, it's all about my blog and writing words. And he's really embraced podcasting. In fact, he's, like, quoted in many articles talking about how podcasting is the new blogging type of thing. And so that became more of the catalyst. And I always think that he's being gracious with me and very nice with his time. And I always feel like I don't deserve the time. But in this instance, I thought it was a topic he hadn't really talked about in detail. And for me, it was a great conversation. I think it just came out amazing. And I think Jay Acunzo actually had me on his show where he goes very mad and he talks about. He has a podcast about podcasting and talking about podcasts and he sort of dissected. Yeah, and he really dissected that show with me on as a guest at the same time. And it was fun to self reflect on how the questioning went and where we went in that show.

It was fun. I loved that interview. I've now listened twice and I didn't let my podcast app indicate the episode was finished because I'm saving it to listen even a third time.

I have a couple shows like that where I sort of listen to them and I'm like, I don't ever want this show to end and I want to be able to come back to it. And I would say, actually, in the past month or two, since we've been in this whole COVID 19 seclusion, I tend to go for longer walks. And there's been a real good handful of shows where I've been like, wow, that was just something I need to get back home listen to so I could take notes and focus more on some of the ideas. So it's a treat when you come across a show like that. It's just the greatest thing.

It really is. And especially when some of the conversation is like, really a challenge I'm grappling with or something I want to wrap my head around. And that's what I heard you doing in that episode too, as well, which is what are we doing here? So I was trying to work backward 700 plus episodes in. When did you start? 2006.

I would have to look, but. But probably. But the math is fairly easier. It comes out every Sunday morning. And since starting, I never missed a weekend a week.

Incredible.

So it's, you know, I don't. I'd have to look at where I'm at this week. I think I'm 722. Yeah. So you would divide that by 52 and you'd figure out exactly how stupid I am. No, no.

You know what? Now I don't feel guilty. I was thinking, what a bad podcast interviewer. I couldn't even. I forgot to go look at the original date. But if you don't even know, then I'm going to give myself a pass.

But. No but. And you should give yourself a pass because you and I have spoken a lot offline about sort of how we create and again, milestones and how long and how many numbers. And I do a radio. I do a radio hit every Monday where I sort of do like this digital Media catch up that includes like an app of the week. And I said something on this Monday's episode like, you know, we've been doing this for a couple years and I, I think I went back after and it's like seven or eight years that I've been like on radio and I don't, it's. I always laugh when I say stuff like that because it's like how stupid can you be to not really know how much time and effort you put into things. But on the other side, I really fashion myself especially as I've had more and more time to reflect during this sort of self isolation business, that I'm really more of a creator than anything else. I'm not the promoter, I am not even really the editor because I tend to just be put my thoughts out there based on the mood I'm in. And I think you're very similar that you're just really producing and thinking about what to produce next. And because you like, as I have multiple platforms, it's almost overwhelming when you, when, when anybody else looks at it and when I think about it beyond just the creating, it is overwhelming. I mean it's quite a bit. So, so that's where I kind of like that. It has a certain innocence to it that I find quite charming.

Definitely. And it's funny because I have this big thing about integrity and never lying and not even white lies to the annoyance of people in my real, you know, who are surrounded by me. And sometimes I feel bad. I'm thinking, oh my gosh, my listeners are going to think I'm lying because I'm overestimating, underestimating how much time I've spent on certain things because it does all start to blur together and.

Yeah, and you want to, you want to give yourself more time to, to like I do that too. Like I think I, I don't lie, I just embellish because I don't know.

Right. And it just, it is a blur. And I think you and I are similar too in that we get to things early and therefore it just evolves over time. It's not this. And I'm not really paying attention to the metrics very much either, if at all. And so similar to you. I just hit episode 200, so I bow to 700. But I thought to myself, all I'm going to do, I'm not even going to say in the episode, congrats to me. It's episode 200. I recorded a special, almost like your business poetry. It's called flow and it Was just a such a different type of episode. I set it to music, it's shorter. It's meant to put people in a different state of thinking and being, and that's it. I just. So it was 200, did something special and keep moving. But I mean, I'm the type, I wouldn't, I would never even organize a party for my birthday. Like, that alone is just, hey, everybody, look at me. It's my birthday. I don't know. I have friends who have organized weekend trips for their birthday. And I think to myself, wow, I admire the skills around that. And yet I would never ask people to, like, get on a plane for my birthday. Although they might think that it's fun. They might think that it's fun.

No, I'm with you. That's the horror of it. Like, I, I, I like, would feel guilty inviting people to, like, weddings and stuff like my wedding, because I was like, I don't want them to feel like they have to give a gift. Like, that's the level of which I have that same sort of. There's probably something really deep in there in terms of parenting and how we, our self evaluations and things like that. But it is true that, like, this is like, you know, one of the truest things, which is lately because we've been in lockdown. I've been asking people who've said no to my show as a guest, you know, they had books that were really big or coming out that were just sort of might have become big. And I thought, well, now I can reach out, it's a couple months later and sort of re. Initiate, maybe they would say yes. And I've been having a lot of success in getting some really great names on the show that, you know, been published and that are still coming out. And whenever they pass me to a promotional person or an admin and the person says, like, how many people listen to your show? I'm always like, I don't know how to answer that because I don't know any of my analytics. I've never logged into the Google Analytics for my blog. I have never looked at the analytics thing on the Libsyn tab in the dashboard. I just use that to upload the show, which is the podcasting hosting platform for those who don't know. But. And I kind of let them know that I go look. I don't know. And I don't want to look. And I don't. I understand why you might be asking because you maybe never heard of me and who is this person? But Just take a look at the show and get a vibe for if that's something this person wants to do or not. I don't and I don't like, I just refuse to answer that. And I, or I'll jokingly tell them, look, I will look, but I will triple at you. I will have no idea whether I'm lying or not. You know, just as a way to sort of be like, who cares? It doesn't really matter.

I can't say that I've encountered it yet where a guest, a potential guest assistant has asked me, but on principle I would not want to tell them my numbers and therefore I would probably be stubborn about like, if you're going to ask me that, then you're not. You don't deserve to be on my show.

I don't have. See, you have better self esteem than I have. I'm more like, yeah, that's a good question. And it's probably really bad and I'm not going to even look because that'll probably depress me and make me want to stop recording the show. So that's same thing.

Same thing. That's why I hardly ever check my metrics and even now, but. But I can't say that I never have. But it's very rare. I remember when Pivot launched, I would check Amazon once every couple months to see the rank or to see that sales and I had some authors that were refreshing every hour.

Oh, that's different.

But I want to ask you, I want to ask you, okay, so I'm so impressed that you've never checked your Libsyn podcast listener stats. What then gives you a sense of traction and momentum versus, oh, you know, how do you know when you need to do something differently and. Or how do you know when things are really working and you have that sense of traction?

Well, in this sense, it's going to sound sort of altruistic, but I don't know and I don't care. It's not why I do it. I don't know. I don't know if it's got traction. I don't know if people like it. That's not why I do the show.

So why do you do the show?

Well, I do the show because I have questions or I'm passionate about a book that I read or I like the person and individual what I've seen in terms of their content and I feel like we would have an interesting conversation. And selfishly, I feel like they will help me with the problems I'm having and answering My questions, because I'm not really asked. You know, my background was in journalism, and a lot of the things you do in journalism are to inform the audience. So it's sort of this weird dance of, like, I know a lot about this topic, and I'm going to interview this artist and they're going to say the things that I know that they're going to say because I'm already a fan and I know, but now I'm going to inform you who may not know as much as I know. And that's kind of the way journalism works on one level. On the other level, it works from. I have no idea who this person is. I was assigned this story, and what I uncover is going to be what you'll learn about in the process. I never liked that form of journalism because I really want to learn, and I don't want to learn as the person is learning. It's a weird thing for me. I just don't like that.

What I like is ways in which I can get smarter. And the only gauge I have is when I stop recording and I go, that was a really fun or interesting conversation. I learned a lot. I think it was engaging for that person, too. It was challenging for both of us, and I hope people like that. But like we said earlier, I'm already thinking about the other 10 guests that I got to record and move on to. And it's been, I would say, if anything, from a broadcasting perspective, a form of social proofing. It became this thing that I was doing back when I had an agency. It was part of the agency, my, you know, six Pixels of separation, which is the name of the blog and the podcast. And it was a way to social proof to show people that were looking to hire us. Look, we don't just build platforms and digital stuff for people, but we actually do them, and we've done them successfully. And it worked when it transferred over to me when I sold the business about six years ago and I left about two.

I sort of just saw it as part of my continuation of my journey, which was I was freer to interview less about marketing, less about digital, and more about business thinking strategy. So it's opened up a lot in the past couple years, and I gauge the success by how interested I am in having these conversations, which is fun because I can also. So just say, no, I don't need that, or I don't need to speak to that person, or that book didn't really inspire me that much. And I don't necessarily want to just Promote it.

To promote it 100%. When people suggest themselves for my podcast, almost my head turns askew because I do the interview so much on intuition, just the timing. And I have to get this intuitive hit that this is the next person and they're welcome to send me their book. That's not a problem. But there's no way I can answer in the moment unless it's just this instant. Yes, yes, yes, you come on the show.

I've never responded well to a pitch to be from someone who wants to be on the show, and I have, as you know, we can probably talk about text expander, but I have my own sort of form reply back that's very kind and personal, but it's basically like not that interested. Which is a tough thing to say because I don't want to really make anybody feel rejected, but I would even push it further and say that I carry a backlog. So I, at any moment could have between five and 15 episodes, sort of in the can. When you do weekly, that's your months out at that point. And I think that it's not even that intuitive in the moment of who inspires me and who do I want to speak to. But I actually look at it almost like being a dj. Like, when it's time for me to prep the show for Sunday, which is usually on a Friday, I do it. I actually look at all the conversations and look at the week before and the week before that, and what kind of diversity can I add? What type of, like, how would the flow of it feel like you don't want to. I want to make it feel like it's really a good flow. Not to keep people from episode to episode, but just because I feel like that's a sort of subtle art of creating a great show. It's like, what? And I don't know, like, you know, I could probably pick someone who I want for next Sunday, right now, on a Tuesday that we're recording. But come Friday, it might be a completely different vibe. So that's where I become even, like, hyper intuitive. So it's not just who the guests are, but in what order they go.

I've never heard anybody describe it like DJing, but that's so true.

I used to make mixtapes, and I do playlists now, and I think it really does. I mean, yes, there is a certain skill in just accumulating hours and hours of great music and just hitting shuffle. I love that vibe too. But I also really still enjoy a good playlist, and that's my Music background. And I think that it matters which songs go where on the album and how the album flows for an artist. And all of those things, to me matter. It's like writing a book, right. Which order the chapters go and you're playing a dj, right. The content was written. It doesn't take much to sort of shift stuff around if you're using Scrivener or however you write. But it is an art to DJ it properly. And I like that art, like, it's part of the skills that I like.

I also find that there are times where I've gotten three months in the can of the podcast and it doesn't really work. So I then realize all these episodes in the can and my life changes, I change. Or just the anecdotes I would share might be different. And so there is a point of diminishing returns on systems and planning ahead.

Yeah, I mean, I'll take your advice on that because I typically deferred that when I was in organizations to people who have a better taste for that. My forte was more about.

You know, sort of visioning paths and products and services and making sure the right mix of clients were there. And I don't. It's one of the things I respect most about our relationship is that you're so good with systems. It's. It's almost like I'm almost envious of that because I look around at my office and I'm like, I have like an 8 and a half by 11 notepad. I've got a small Moleskine, I've gotten a smaller field notes. I use index cards. I have Evernote, I'll type notes in IA Writer. And I'm like, oh my God, if somebody could just. As much as I try to create a quote unquote system, I feel like the chaos is the system for me. And that's not going to work if you work with me or for me.

The chaos is the system. That's a good quotable.

Well, I just made it up, so it's all yours.

I know. See, I get very, very flattered and honored. It's really a joy if someone like you can say, oh, I appreciate your systems, or I've learned something from you about systems or software or something, I'm so just joy in my heart. And yet when I think about, oh, maybe I should create more along those lines, I think to myself, systems are so boring to other people. You know, like, I always hesitate to go that route.

Well, so your system might be boring to somebody that. That could Be true. Like, I don't, I don't know. But a lot of times when we look at other people's systems, we improve our own or we tweak our own. We may not adopt it fully, 1, 2, 3. But we may take point 3 and be, oh, I do that this way. It's one of the reasons why I love to talk about being anti Seth Godin because it's something Seth hates. But like, you know, what type of pencil do you use or what notebook do you use or when do you type? Or do you like coffee or tea or what music do you like? Like, I love those sort of how people write type of, of articles and even books. Like I've read books on that topic and it's not because I need to use their system to do my thing or to copy them. I just think that there is art. It's almost like I love looking at paintings, but I really like looking at people's studios more. There's something about that that I find very romantic, you know, so.

Yeah, well, the next time you're in New York, you can see the difference between my office and Michael's art studio next door.

Good.

Yeah. Well, there is a big difference in. But, but now that all being said, you know, Seth Goen talks about being an artist and I, I really do prescribe to that and I do, I think the environment that we choose to work in, you want to be like, I'm certainly mobile. I, I've been known to sit in an airport terminal when those were things we did and just be on the floor sort of trying to finish something out. And I can, I can write anywhere. But I do like having certain places. Like I have a separate office from my home that's about a seven minute walk from where I am now. It's more of a studio. It's myself and my business partner at home. I definitely like having my specific cup with my morning coffee with the music on in a certain way. So I, you know, you sort of realize when you're, when you're ready for your best or when you're at your best versus when you have to. But I would argue that some people's work environments are pretty cool and better and more interesting than artists environments. But that's just me.

Well, going back to systems for a minute, I would love to know after 720 plus episodes both how you prepare for a guest who's about to come on your show. And I know you interview a lot of friends and people you know, so I wonder if the prep Is different if you're starting fresh with somebody. So both how you prepare and what do you think makes a great interview?

Yeah, great question. So there's a huge difference between someone you know and someone you don't know. Because from my taste, shows that are usually better are those where the guest and the host have a certain level of familiarity. I just think it's more interesting because there's an energy, and it's almost like you want to understand the inside sort of story a little bit. So I do think there's a difference between the two in terms of how I prep. It is, you know, this is one of those do as I say, not as I do, because the way I do it is not the way I would recommend other people do it, but people who don't know beyond the 700 episodes. I spent close to 10 years interviewing lots of musicians, rock stars and entertainers for a whole bunch of magazines. Some that I published, others that I wrote for, others that were for record companies and biographies. And I sort of built a system because of the frenetic pace at which we were both publishing back then and just the nature of how that business was rolling in the late 80s and 90s into the 2000s. So what I do now is I basically consume as much as I am interested in about the person. Sometimes it's reading the whole book, sometimes it's skimming it, it's Googling, it's YouTubing, it's Instagramming, it's Twitter, it's Wikipedia. It's sort of just like, what are they up to? What are they about? If there's something that I'm nervous I won't remember to talk about, I might take a note. But in general, when I have somebody on my show, I have a blank sheet of paper, 8 and a half by 11, with their name at the top, the date that we're recording. And I will have usually written underneath it the names of their books or if there's any sort of pertinent like stuff like that that I just don't want to say wrong by accident on the show. Maybe there's that one or two note that I want to make sure I don't forget. Otherwise, the page is blank. We have a conversation. As we're having the conversation, I'm actually taking notes and writing questions off of what they're saying. And what's weird is, by the end, I have this sheet of paper that looks like questions that you would prep for an interview. Like, it's not. There's nothing really else to it. I don't really prep differently for friends or people I know versus people I don't know. But I'm very cognizant at the top of the show that I try to create a sense of familiarity or comfort for them much quicker because it's easy for me on my show to say like Jenny, like how long have we been friends? And like even that will make it will create a level of comfort for everybody, I think yourself, the listener, the guest, all that stuff. If it's somebody that I don't know, I might ask a more complex question that makes them realize this person really understands the work I'm doing. And this isn't just a one on one conversation. I'll also let them know usually in the run up to the show, like right before we record that it's super conversational. It's not Q and A. We're going to go back and forth that I know you don't know me, but I'm an experienced business person. I've been doing this a long time too. So it's not really an interview. It's a conversation about the work you do. Even in saying that, it sort of loosens the interviewer versus guest, which I always try to avoid. I want it to be, I really do want it to be a conversation. Did that answer your question?

Oh yeah. I love how you just put that. And in fact, because I was going to ask you how do you quickly create that rapport and just hearing how you phrase that, because I usually say too, this can be very conversational. But I love how you specifically say, I'm a business person, this is a conversation more than an interview. Or this is a conversation, not an interview. Just that distinction alone is so good. And also letting them know it's not going to be 101, just tracing back through their book, that's a fossilized form of their ideas from five years ago.

Yeah, nothing made me crazier because I did so many interviews for both of my books, Six Pixels and Control, alt, Delete. But Control, alt, Delete was the harder one because I built it as this book that was cut in two. It was sort of like part one was control, alt, delete your work. Part two is control, alt, delete your life. This idea, like how do you reboot work and think about it more digitally? How do you do the same for your life? And I think in the first half of work, I don't even remember now, but I think I had my sort of five ways. And you do these interviews with Radio stations or whatever, nice enough people. But they would be like, what are the five steps? And I would just be like, are we doing this? Am I going to have to, one, pull out the books, I don't even remember them, or two, what's the point? There is the book that has all of them. And so can you just choose one that really inspired you? And I hate laziness. I hate lazy content, I hate lazy interviews, I hate lazy conversations, I hate laziness when it comes to this because I have a massive amount of respect for the publish button. And regardless of the fact that we can shoot out a tweet or an Instagram photo, I think part of my flaw in building a bigger audience is in the fact that I respect it too much. Like, I won't do five ways to build a better brand. Like I could. And it'd probably great. People would probably love it. I just can't do that. Just not. So it's out of respect for the button. Like, it's out of respect for publishing.

And because the intention shifts subtly toward how do I get more clicks? And it's no longer about your intention for the idea itself. That's what drives me crazy about the clickbait lists, headlines, etc. But they work.

I think I'm more evil than that. Like, I. What really bothers me is the fact that people get a lot of traction off of stuff like that. And I feel the content is very hollow. It. There's not a lot of protein, carbs and minerals in it. It's really unleavened. You know, there's just nothing really in it that's gonna give you anything unless you really don't know anything. And that's in general, the issue I have with a lot of content is that I recognize that there's this sort of dummies guide to, or, you know, the how to get started on. That's great. And there are times when I need that for sure. I mean, I hop on YouTube almost every day looking for one on one instructions on a myriad of subjects. But when it comes to business and content, I don't want to be that person. Like, you know, right now it's very common to see our peers giving webinars on, you know, how to think about your employees, you know, how to really care for them in this time when they are working remotely and everyone's scared. And I kind of look at that content and go, if you're an executive and you don't already know that, I think your business is pretty doomed. Like I'm always like, who's that content for? Like I. So a lot of it is that. And then I fully recognize that there's this massive market of people who are just switching jobs and maybe they're first time entrepreneurs and they don't know how to deal with this and that's great produce for them. But when I look at that content as an executive, I don't get much value from it. So I'm always like, I need to create the content.

That I need to read, which is like, why write a book, Write the book that you haven't read yet. That's the whole sort of the thing there. And again I can be very harsh on it because when I want somebody to talk to me about, let's say, that topic in particular, I want that person not to have an opinion. I want that person to have demonstrated in the marketplace that they've done this super successfully. And then to make matters even more complex, I want that person to be amazing at communicating it to me in an engaging and compelling way. I love that perspective, but it's a tall order. Like I look, you and I speak for a living, or used to speak for a living. Well, hopefully we'll be back to that. But I would get on stages with some amazing leaders from brands that you and I would be like, oh my God, I can't believe we're going to see this person talk about that brand. And they're so bad at talking and presenting and communicating in that forum. Doesn't mean they're bad leader, doesn't mean they're not successful, doesn't mean they haven't built a world class brand, but it does mean that they haven't mastered that skill. And so it's almost like the triple threat, right? It's like that person who can sing, dance and act. I kind of want that when it comes to content that I would consider to be a bit more 101ish. So then I want to hear it from someone who's really done an amazing job at it. And that's just my own sort of selfish way.

I love it though. That's such a great way to phrase this. Triple threat of thought leadership, if you will. And Even for me, 10 years ago I had this allergy to being a motivational speaker that if all I did was speak about speaking or some kind of meta pyramid scheme of my own life where I was not actually doing anything but just sort of like motivating people, that was going to drive me nuts. And I think partly why I'M hypersensitive to it. But also what you said about business leaders being able to speak clearly and effectively. I've. I've done this thing where sometimes I try to bring people who are not published authors onto the podcast, of course, because I don't want to be an echo chamber. And yet I've noticed some of them do just fine. Some of them, I have to do such intense editing because they're not used to speaking in this format. There's a lot of ums, they don't have clear ideas or able to clearly communicate. So as. As talented as the person may be irl, it actually doesn't always translate right away. And it is a skill to be able to talk about what they know.

It's the sort of most powerful skill, if you're going to ask me, and I've written about this and spoken about it, but that piece of content didn't resonate enough to sort of make it to the top. But I think about this all the time. I have young kids. I see people that I mentor out of university. I see startups. I don't expect everybody to have the same level of communication skills that I have after just even the 15 years of doing a lot of public speeches. But I remember sitting in a boardroom and then saying, we're going to go around the room and introduce ourselves and maybe add in one thing that you found interesting. And I would watch it going around the room and I'd be sitting there as the lump in my throat got bigger and bigger. And my wife says that I get cotton balls. It's like my mouth is suddenly filled with cotton balls and everything's dry. And I'm sort of like, you know, licking my lips and trying to find some. Some sort of moisture to get the words out or the clearing of my throat and the nervousness and the anxiety in the stomach, that whole thing. And it took, you know, me as a professional, I was probably in my late 20s or 30s before I started understanding that actually, the people that I look to the most, it's not that they're the smartest. It's not that they have the best businesses. It's not that they built the most unique brands. It's been them being compelling in their communication. And that's when I realized that while I'm good at the written word and sometimes good at speaking because I'd done radio for a bit, that it would serve me well to get way more comfortable being able to stand up in front of a group, no matter what the size and cogently explain something like in a really compelling way, like really cogently. And that, I believe is, is the skill to study, whether it's in elementary school, high school, or continually. I think that if I had more of those opportunities. Think about public speaking or how it was when we were younger, it was like you wrote this thing out, then you printed it out on cue cards and then you stood and read from it. You looked down, you looked up, people were just staring at you, you had no idea what you were doing. We fell into the feedback loop that that is some form of normalcy. When it's not like the hardest, you know, the hardest thing to do in the world is. The hardest thing in the world to actually do is to stand front of any size audience and read to them something you wrote aloud. Well, because the way you write is not the way you speak. And doing it is very, very hard. And even when I watch authors of fiction do it. Well, an example would be Neil Gaiman, who does it really well. I'm like that in and of itself is the art form, not just the fact that he wrote those words, but it's the fact that he could read them so well. David Sedaris would be the black belt level of that type of ability. And if you, if you watch David Sedaris in Masterclass, which I've done, and I think it's a fantastic series, he's really clear on how each night that he reads it, he'll go back to his room and print it out on paper and look at how one section goes into. He'll take notes while he's reading it. When did somebody cough? And like to him, coughing is the death of an idea. Right. It's like worse than nothing. It's like people are. And so you start seeing as he. And he goes through iterations and iterations of it and you start realizing, well, maybe it got better over the 12 versions in 12 nights. But it was pretty amazing at the beginning. But it was less about how amazing it was to read and more interesting to see how the performance of it comes out. And people, I think executives often forget that they're performing every day when they walk in, they're performing. People have to feel like you've got this or if you don't have this, that we're part of something together, but we understand the path and it just always cycles back to the same thing. It's a long winded way for me to say communication is very important.

Yes, well, and I think it's helpful for People to hear because you are a very successful both business person, I mean everything, very successful, everything. Man, business person, writer, podcaster, author, speaker. And to hear you used to get caught in mouth or nerves. Me too. When I was in college, my heart would pound out of my chest just to introduce myself to our small group of the breakout of a big lecture room or something. And then I used to get hives. I turned bright red. That's why I took the training job at Google, because I knew that it would help if I want to be an author someday. So at Google, my first year there, I trained every day, day in, day out, talking about AdWords. But it got me to be less panicked in front of a room. So it's not. It doesn't come necessarily all the way naturally, though I'll say. I did speak at my high school graduation as well. But I mean, nervous as hell. I just, I liked the writing and I have a journalism background too. But that's my own tangent.

My worst, the one that really brought it to the sort of, you know, to the surface for me was I was doing a lot of charity work and I actually worked as a professional in a charitable organization. I was the editor of a magazine that featured young people. You know, where I live in Quebec, there's a big difference between the English population, the French population. We had a lot of these, the Anglophones moving away because French is the predominant language here and it's enforced by law. It's very different than even Paris and France. And we were trying not to have a brain drain in the province and in the city of Montreal. And so they were publishing this community organization, was publishing this newspaper. Basically it was online too, that was highlighting young people and what they were doing professionally in the hope of inspiring others to stay. So it was a very cool initiative. But you would be involved in very interesting meetings within that organization because I was working on this out of the communications department. And again, you'd be going around the room to like a lay volunteer meeting. And these people were like all captains of industry. And I'd be like, oh my, it's going to come to me like, what do you do? I write the newspaper here. I just felt like this is just not good and I don't even deserve to be at the table. And that was a really good training ground for like, how do you build confidence and say what you do confidently when you really are. Back to where we were originally talking sort of the boxing in your weight class. Clearly I wasn't boxing my weight class in that room. But I needed to be there and it did. It really inspired me. And it also made me strive. It made me strive to want to be like them. Have that level of success, have that level of respect, have that level where the community is calling you in for your opinion versus, like, you're here and being paid. So there's a lot of stuff that comes from our ability to look at moments where we don't feel good or we feel quite inferior in an environment. It is. We have a mutual friend and Alyssa Cohen, and she talks about the struggle being more of a puzzle. And I found that. I find that very illuminating, that idea of, like this problem. And it's my problem and it's my business or my idea against this to suddenly become a puzzle that I have to solve. I really like that analogy. And I reflect. Even though it's a new concept from her to me, I've been reflecting on it a lot and seeing, like, actually when I've been most successful, it's when I put all my emotions and energy aside and just focused on it being a puzzle.

I love that perspective too. And this takes us full circle to connecting with friend tours or people we admire. And this might be my stubbornness and it may be a flaw or a blind spot, but I would rather instead of me reaching out to someone five leaps ahead, like Tim Ferriss, okay, I am not going to reach out to him. It just motivates me to be great. So great that he is inviting me on his podcast. You know what I'm saying? Or he, he is excited to say yes to coffee or not. You know what I mean? So I just like, somehow it's not comparing despair, but there's a level of I just get motivated to be. Be so helpful or interesting or innovative that the people I admire are just as excited to connect with me as the other way around. Does that make any sense?

It does, it does. But I do think sometimes you have to game the system a little bit. You know, I really do believe that you have to game the system a little bit. So the example that I'll use, we can use Tim Ferriss, which is a good one.

Yeah. Tell us in what way?

So I've met him and heard about him many times. In fact, I was in that earlier circle when he was really trying to get the four hour workweek out. He was speaking to a lot of bloggers. And in that sort of, I'll call it, I use the word all the time and I know it's a bad word that I use, but I call it the zeitgeist. I use the word zeitgeist all the time.

My dad shortens it to zeit. The Zeit.

Yes, the zeit. And I didn't sort of like really burrow into the relationship like others did, but there was a moment where there was this Mastermind event Jason Gaynor puts on early days. And I was able to interview Tim live on stage. And he didn't know me, but I had known him. And I don't know if he knew who I was or anything like that, but that gave me just an inch that when his book was coming out, the other book, I forget which one it was that I felt okay to reach out and say, hey, can you be on my podcast? And again, this was. He was. Fame is sort of moving towards where now I would say super famous. But it gave me a bit of. I love grabbing inches where I can. And I think those are good examples of you could wait and you could say, I want my stuff to be so great that they call me. But I also do think that if there are ways for you to get inches a bit ahead, it's almost like those fast forwards in the Amazing Race that they're helpful. You want to try and grab them when you can. So there are instances when they need. And if you can identify those instances where you are being quite benevolent and helping, it's powerful. It's powerful. So I tend to jump on those moments where I see a bit of a fast forward.

Well, definitely aligning with when it's helpful to them. But let me just rewind for a minute and unpack this a little more. You are already at a place and a status in the industry that Jason asked you to be the interviewer, in that case, invited you to the Mastermind forum. I forget what it's exactly called. Mastermind talks. Okay, Mastermind talks. And again. But. So you already had, in a way, you had already demonstrated expertise to the point where you conducted the interview. And then to me, it makes sense. Like, I wouldn't hesitate necessarily to circle back after that either.

No, there's. I think there's a lot of luck in timing. There's like, I, you know, I don't know how many podcasts were out and how many people were in Canada, but.

That'S foresight because you were podcasting.

Right. But I, I don't want to discount the vow, the value and power of really being lucky. And I do think that, you know, people go, oh, you know, you know, when you put in a lot of effort, you Know all that. I think that's true. But I also do think that I've just been really, really privileged beyond my obvious, you know, white male privilege of having a lot of really good luck in timing. Like, a lot of it. And so again, if we were to fast forward to, let's say, that same situation a year later, I don't know if that would have been the case.

Gay Hendricks has a new book. He wrote the Big Leap, which I loved, and he has a new book out about luck. I feel like you should have him on your show. I want to hear you interview him about luck.

I would love that to make that happen.

Okay, great, I'm on it. No, this topic, I think luck is its own entire conversation because you're so right. And isn't it kind of a paradox that so much of what happens in our life, including our birth and our family of origin, is pure luck? And a lot of the little steps you take along the way are helpful too, to position you for that luck.

So, yeah, I don't know how many types of luck there are, but I think there's sort of what I would just call the genetic lottery, for sure. Right. Because the only real difference between you and I is space and time. That's the only difference between us and a homeless person. Somebody who's born in a third world country, someone who's currently living in war torn. You know, if you have a child, it's like, what are the odds of that child being your child and not being, you know, in some refugee camp somewhere else? It's space and time. It's just that there's that luck. There's also just sort of on top of that, then luck of geography. I think there's luck of education, which all of this is aligned to privilege, for sure. But then I also think there's like this weirder luck of just like you can't trace it type of thing. When I think back to that job, we talked about where I was working within this community. That's where I met, I mean, almost all my current connections from my existing. My previous business partners, but I still call them my existing business partners to my wife, to certain people who introduced me to other people that I could directly correlate back to that one job and institution. But what got me there. And then I think about, you know, having success in the publishing and magazine business, but then being burnt out by it and wanting to just sort of lay low, take that job and spend time working on my. Like, there's all these things that are Just so strange in terms of timing and opportunity. You have to capitalize on it for sure. You have to be able to convert it for sure. But I just really think that luck plays a much bigger part. And again, it's. It's tough to say because we want to take credit for being smart and good and all this. True, true, true. But I think it's way more luck than we want to ever admit to because it would be hard to admit it.

Was it you? Was it you? In your conversation with Seth, I'm like a wise person recently said, I think it might have come from your podcast, but that your favorite people that you enjoy listening to are so much more humble than the opposite. Like they're actually talking about the challenges, the. And it's, it's not glorifying failure, but I'm pretty sure it was on your.

Show one way or another. You know, one of the things I tell sort of this two tone story one is one of the proudest moments of my professional life was when I sold my business six years ago with my three other business partners. And we were sitting in our boardroom, in our office, in one of our offices, and we were going through this. I mean, I actually have a picture of the pile. You know, when you sign legal documents, there's the police sign here, that little post it thing, the pile of those was like it was a mountain. And I remember just sort of looking to the side of where I was sitting and I saw my jeans and my sneakers. And I had this immense amount of pride that I was able to do this and sell my business to the number one player in the industry. And I was still wearing jeans and sneakers because ultimately I'm just a heavy metal punk rock kid. That's who I am. And I was so proud that I was able to do it without not being fake and wearing a suit. But some people do it really well. It would just be inauthentic for me. And it went back to a lot of people, my sort of life, which has been very lucky too, which is I've been going to the TED conference for over a decade. And in the early days of ted, you would see like Larry and Sergey and Mark Zuckerberg and all these people who were at the time still Google and Facebook. Not at the level now, but still. I can't believe they're right there. And I would always sort of. It's interesting that they're just wearing jeans or like a Patagonia sweater or like a Lululemon thing. The people that I really Respected from success. And part of success for me is definitely money. They don't really flaunt it or show it. It's not the sort of luxury brand, flashy things. They might very well get into a private limo and hop on a private plane and go somewhere. And they do. But optically when you're with them, they sort of just feel like you, which I think makes me feel like anybody can then do that. And that's a longer definition of maybe humble. Like, I don't know if it's the word humble so much as really, really cool and not putting it in people's faces. I like that about, I like that about people.

To me nowadays, it's the difference between influencer culture and thought leadership or just original. I don't innovation so over hyped as well. But influencer is, look at me, look what I'm doing in my life, look what I'm wearing, look what I'm buying, look what I'm selling for the most part. And then, and then for me, that just doesn't resonate. I don't want to know what you're wearing. You know what I mean? I just don't.

Yeah, yeah. I see it a bit differently where like, like, let's take the speaking business because you and I know it really intimately. Well, I, I never liked speakers whose social platforms are just promotions for the fact that they're speaking. Here I am on stage here. Here I am on stage here. I'm getting on a plane because I got a gig there prepping for my gig. Here are my slides. I always look at speakers like that and I go, I have, I know this person, I've done events with them. I have no idea what work they do. Like, I. And again, it's a personal choice. I would look at my content and be like, everything that I'm producing is about the content that I speak about on stage. Yes, I'll put the odd picture of self promotion. We all do that. But I often find that in the speaking business, all of the content is about the fact that they're speakers, but not about what they speak about. Not about creating more content for that, not about creating more value for that. And it's this very interesting new thing. Like even speaking as a profession seems very bizarre to me, even though it's primarily what, you know, what I do. But I see it more like I have done something to a level of excellence. I have a skill set in being able to present it. And I say that with a lot of humility because it's not easy for myself to self compliment. And I know that I do it well based off of the feedback and the work that I've done and how my career has evolved. But I would never say that like I'm a professional speaker. Like it's a weird thing that like that's like my job. Like, shouldn't your job be building an excellent business and being able to communicate about it well and then having people want you to speak about it? It.

Right.

And the answer is of course that that's true. But again, that's the difference of and it's my own personal struggle, which I've talked about before. I like people who speak from experience versus people who speak from opinion.

Yes.

It's just my own little tweak.

So we probably have time for one more question. You I'm going to give you a choose your own adventure or bonus points if you somehow address both.

Okay. Wow.

Okay. One question is how on earth you produce so much content each week, speaking of ideas and original thinking. And the other question is about Groove no trouble. Your electric bass podcast. I love that you do that. It must be so fun to just geek out with fellow musicians. And I wonder, because that one is so specific and so niche. Not that you even look for traction, but I just wonder what it's been like having that show and what it's opened up for you in your life or your career, given that it is kind of a side path from the main road of business that you are so known in.

Oh, Jenny Blake, I'm going to wrap this one in. Such a good bow. You're not going to. Yay.

I'm hearing that smile over there. It's awesome.

I was in New York City at the tail end of me basically selling the business. Not leaving the business, but selling it. And I was feeling quite creatively unsure, you know, if I'm still. If I sold the business and I'm still in the business for many years, what will 6 pixels look like? The podcast and my articles and my writing and what sort of flow as I know that I was going to take content and segue. I didn't know if I would be able to leave with 6 pixels separation, but I was feeling quite creatively unsure. It's no longer my business. My job is to just grow it, which we were doing. And it was all sort of in this machine to a certain degree. And I'd never done this. But I was going to New York City and I emailed Seth Godin and I said, hey, would you meet me for anything. Knowing full well that he does not take meetings. He does not like meeting people. It's not his thing. But he was like, I would love to, because I don't think I've ever asked in all the years. And I think he sort of was like, I have to be in this. I don't know what it was. I'm probably that you're Mitchell and he.

Loves what you do.

Anyways, so he was. He was kind enough to meet with me. And we sat down and he said, so what's going on? I said, you know, I'm sort of like, having this creative existential crisis. And he knew about my music thing. And I was like. One of the things I was thinking about was actually traveling with my electric bass, which I hadn't played in forever, and taking lessons in every city that I'm speaking in, just to sort of kill the day, but also to maybe went up new pathways. Like, I'm not sure. And like, is that a ridiculous. And I started just saying that off the cuff in the spirit of many things. And Seth kept saying, electric bass, Corey. Corey. Electric bass, Corey. And I was just like, you know, maybe I'll do this. And then at one point, I realized we were having, like, two very different conversations, and I couldn't figure out why. And I was like, seth, slow down. So Corey. What are you talking about? Corey. He's like, corey Brown. I'm like, who? He's like, corey Brown is the guy that I worked with at Squadoo. Corey also runs notrevel.com, which happens to be the largest website for bass players I had known. Notreble.com because it is that. And I'd been following it. But I had no idea who Corey was, nor that he was the guy who had worked on Squidoo with Seth. And so I was like, oh, no. I didn't even make that connection. And as we were talking, I thought, wouldn't it be interesting to take the content, like the sort of framework of 6 pixels and apply it to bass players? Because what I discovered in my sort of reattachment to the bass and the. And bass players is there's not a lot of their stories don't get told. Like, whenever there's an interview with somebody famous on the bass. Let's talk about Tony Levin, who's the bass player with Peter Gabriel. It would be like, what gear he uses, what riffs, how he does stuff and how he plays sledgehammer or whatever. But I always wanted to know about him. This is a guy who played in King Crimson. And he does this amazing thing called Stickman with his brothers, where he plays these really interesting stick instruments. And I just thought there was so much more that I wasn't getting when I Googled it or looked for it. And he made the introduction to Corey. Corey, turns out, was a fan of six Pixels of Separation. And so when I brought this idea of that sort of long form, deep conversation, no gear talk, no riffs, no sponsorships, but just about the artist, he was like, let's do this. And so that led, I'm going back now five or six years, I think, to the first episode of Groove, the no Treble podcast, which we managed to get Robert Trujillo for our first episode, who is the bass player from Metallica, which is unbelievable because Robert was doing. Talk about timing and luck. Robert was producing a documentary on a very famous bass player who died very young. His name is Jaco Pastorius, who very much revolutionized the instrument. And that just led to this amazing journey where I do that show monthly. And I claim that we're going to try and build the largest oral history of electric bass players. I don't know how far we'll get, but it's been very successful. And I think it ties into the. How do you produce so much content? Because the same question is, how do you make time to work out? How do you make time to read? How do you make time to cook for your family? How do you make time to do yoga? And the answer is always the same. You make time for the things that are important to you. And my content was never an engine of. It's part of the business and it's part of success. And you have to do this. My content was always a function of, oh, my God, I have all these messy, disparate notes everywhere, and I need a place to put them out. I like writing and I like speaking. I like doing it long form. So blogging, article writing, podcasting, having conversations like this, it doesn't feel like it takes any time for me. And then as you do it more and more, you sort of have that system, whatever that system is. But I have more of an editorial calendar. I know how things are going to flow each week, and it doesn't feel like a lot of pressure or work. It feels like that's really where I'm supposed to be spending my time. So when you're producing a lot of content, it shouldn't be because you have to produce a lot of content. It should be because it's just the thing you're doing. And I think I nailed both questions and wrapped them in a bow for you.

You both certainly did. And what a beautiful bow. Wow. I'm very impressed. Nice work, Mitch. Joel, I'm gonna give you these forks in the road again.

I think we need to give praise once again to Seth, who just became a connector and somebody who, again, like, there's no better word when you have a mentor or somebody, but when they do something friendly and, you know, you and I have known each other for many years, but very recently we've been doing a lot of friendly things for one another. And I know you'll say to me, let me know if there's something I can do for you, and I always feel like whispering back. You already did. You know, you made me feel like, like. No, but it's true. Like, I think friends don't think of, like, what the check mark is. Friends feel very satiated when they help the friend. Yeah. And so even even though, you know, it's more friendly, maybe than friends, I think that that feeling is very empowering. And it's a great lesson for mentors and people who really have those physical relationships with certain people, because it's always. It feels uneven. But if there's some way to make it friendly where you feel like giving was way better than receiving, it's magical. So he does that magically and you do that magically. So I'm appreciative for both of you.

Well, thank you. That really means a lot. And likewise, right back at you. I love how you just described that. And that to me is the magic and magnetism of authentic connections or even authentic content like you just talked about. With podcasting as the one output method that I actually feel like I'm playing hooky on the rest of my business because it's so fun. And on the subject of Seth, I think this episode will be dedicated to Seth and our appreciation for him. Talk about friendliness. I have to share this anecdote because you brought him back so full circle. And it occurred to me at the beginning and I thought, no, I'll just leave it out.

This is who Seth is, I think, to me, in an anecdote that I'll never forget. I was co working at his office because every now and then I'm friends with some people who work in there. And it's just a quick train ride. And he was going to give us a ride to the train station, and it started dumping rain. Just absolutely buckets, buckets. I had left my umbrella in his office and Seth took off his raincoat, this yellow raincoat. Handed it to me and said, here, take this home with you. I'll get it back when I see you next. His jacket. Like, his jacket off his own back. You know what I mean? On a day where it's dumping rain, I just couldn't. It's like, I don't think people can grasp if you only know him from his ideas and what he puts out. He's already so original and unique, but it's like those tiny moments that show character in such an incredible way and show, like, this giving nature. It's just really total magic.

Yes. Yeah, it's magic. And the thing is, when I hear these stories, I'm always like, you're not surprised? Well, I'm not surprised, but I also don't want to create false hope for people who think, you know, because it's these. These people are very hard to reach. They're very, very busy, and they choose the people they want inside the tent, I think really cautiously and carefully, especially as they ascend in the world of fame or success or whatever it is. And I do try to remember what it was like when I needed access inside that tent. I try. I'm not always great at it, but. So when I hear those stories, I also don't want people to be super disappointed. But sometimes it's great, and sometimes you just have to find someone else.

Well, I agree. I wouldn't say, when you're done listening, go email. I wouldn't even really say, go ask.

It for an umbrella.

No. And nor would I say, go email, Mitch. I would actually say, great. I'm so happy that I was going to say to your note about podcasting, I think it's actually perfect for people like you and me because we get to reach out to people and add value through a conversation that's recorded for everybody. The host, the interviewee, hopefully the listeners. I just feel like it's such a giving medium in that way. And when people write to me on LinkedIn and they say, hey, can you help me figure out how to get a job? I'm like, you have 200 plus podcast episodes to catch up on in a book. Two books, you know, like, no. So I would never even say after this unless the guests specifically offers themselves, which some people do. And even that confounds me, perplexes me. I would just say, be grateful for the learning that you can get from somebody, even from afar. And that's already so much like you said, Mitch, about reading and books.

Yeah. A lot of power in finding mentors that have long been dead or have published or have put things out there. You don't have to be in everyone's face. Sometimes it's better to just have those people be in your brain.

Oh, what a beautiful Another beautiful bow. Thank you so, so much, Mitch Joel, this was so fun. I didn't even get to read your bio. We didn't talk about Decode the Future. We didn't even talk about the sickness, as my four year old niece calls it. Wow. We'll have to do a follow up. Mitch, I cannot thank you enough. What a joy to have you here.

Thanks Jenny. My pleasure. Thanks for initiating this. I appreciate you you.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.