Be Willing to Go Long & Go Deep: Even When It Seems Like It’s Not Worth It with Mitch Joel

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell. I'm talking with Mitch Joel and he's sharing his insights from running an agency, but also he's the founder of Six Pixels Group and he speaks, he writes, he's got two bestsellers. One is Six Pixels, the other Six Pixels of Separation, the other one is Control, Alt, Delete, both best sellers. And he's got the longest running, would you call it business podcast?

Yeah, business, yeah.

Longest running business podcast out there. And he's learned some things along the way, doing all these things. And we were talking, he was making the point about, I like the way you put it, Mitch. Being willing to go long and deep even when it seems. How did you say? Even when it seems wrong or when it seems a lost.

Neither of those. Just in the point where most people would say, you know what, I'm going to look for another job, try to solve, try to solve it, see what the real resolution is. And again, you know, a lot again. Seth Godin had this great small book called the Diplomatic and it's when do you stop and when do you keep going? And again, I was like this before I read it. The book was just very validating to the way that I think. But there's a lot of power in that, in just sitting in it and not just quitting because there's the opportunity next door, which may be more money or more status.

You look like Seth a little bit.

Yeah, Seth and I. Well, Seth and I share. I mean, I've been very fortunate to get to know Seth over the years. In fact, we shared speaking bureau for a long time. And I would jokingly tell them that I was the white, bald, Jewish version of Seth Godin, meaning the exact same thing, the cheaper version usually. But we often do joke about that.

And so when you go, you know, a lot of things that impact us and really we're difference makers in our career. We kind of ignore as we are on our way, climbing the ladder, you know, trying to establish ourselves. Something somebody says, something somebody did, convergence of circumstances or something, you know, we just kind of took it for granted and run, ran with it because that's all we knew how to do. But upon reflection, the reason I wrote my book and the reason I do this podcast is like I had a really serious cycling accident about 14 years ago, shut my butt down and I'm Sitting on the couch and television, watching television. I'm sure there's good stuff. But not with commercials. Not with commercials. Because somehow the commercial, the intelligentsia of marketing with TV commercials is that once is not okay, in fact a thousand times not okay. The same commercial's got to be played hundreds of thousands of times, preferably in the same 30 minute show. And listening to, watching like the commercials repeated right on cycle one, right after another, the same commercial, I said, I gotta do something different. So that's what propelled me into, you know, Twitter and Facebook and writing and the podcast and other things. But you know, in that process it made me, you know, the self reflection, which is, I know what happens to all of us when we're reading. You basically have a conversation going with somebody new and they challenge you to think of something, they're educating you. But one of the light bulbs that went on is like, I'm sitting on a whole lot of knowledge that I would have never gotten if there had to been like four or five people that came along and did something, said something, helped me out, they saw something in me and you know, had a smile, had an encouragement at the right time and made me want to do more. On giving back, you've talked about the fact that you've always done a lot of community service and you've also talked about learning. Reading and learning is not enough. You got to put it into action. You got to pass it on to other people. One of the things I say, Mitch, is that you can't win without the fundamentals. But what you do with the fundamentals is where you start to have a chance at greatness. It's using the fundamentals, not just learning the fundamentals. And so, and part of that is when you start explaining to other people, it causes you to get more mentally organized in what you're really trying to say. Otherwise they'll give you that dull look and you're not going to get the response you want. I'm sure you look back in your upbringing and you saw some, upon reflection, you can see some things that were difference makers for you. Any that jump into your mind.

I mean, there's so many. I mean, you know, where does one start? Or you know, is this nature or nurture? Is that the question? You know, it's very hard to know.

What specifically was the nurture. You know, see, I've got to ask you questions that you're not used to.

Getting, you know, and look, I'd love to say that that's true. I think over the years I'VE been asked pretty much anything I can be asked. I often reflect on what is nature and what is nurture. You know, the nature aspect is I grew up in a family with four siblings, with three siblings. We grew up in a community that had more, at least optically, to me than we had, which created a drive for me. And it wasn't a drive driven by physical items or financial gain. It was simply me looking at these other people and thinking they're not that different from me. They're not smarter, they're not more educated, their kids aren't. We're all in the same environment, which means that that's attainable. So when we talk about communities right now, and America in particular, and Canada is not absolved of this, where we look at these communities that are truly suffering, if there isn't even the belief that there's an end because everybody's in that cycle of discrimination and povert, it's very hard to break it and be, oh, I don't want to say it's systemic. I don't want to say it's this. It is. It completely is. And so, you know, to quote Shawshank, Redemption, right? Hope. We're talking about. What are we talking about? Hope. I. The barrier for me to see success wasn't a big level of hope or a leap because of just, just dynamic exposure of luck, you know, genetic lottery, etc. Etc. So you're already starting on third base, you know, now whether you take advantage of it or not, you can go back to second, you can get knocked out of the game. Lots of things can happen. So there's the nature of that environment. There's the nature of seeing peers, family, succeed, not succeed, the dynamics of that. And then there's the drive. Give every kid you have a million dollars. Some of them will blow it and become drug addicts. Some of them will take that and turn it into a billion. Nature, nurture. Larry, you tell. Right. Like, we. It's hard to know. So the lessons, I don't. I mean, my big thing is even when we talk about people talk about best practices and case studies, I don't know how practical they are. I don't know if I believe in, like, my path is like, how is this possible that you're going to take anybody? Even, you know, even if I look at my own siblings and look at these completely different career paths and charter and we all grew up in the same house, so I don't know that any of the things I've learned are really transferable. What I do believe is that the things I've done, if somebody else hasn't done them, can't hurt if you try them. And so when I think of that, it's analogous to dieting. I could lose. I definitely put on my COVID 19. I took that seriously. I put on my COVID 19 and should I go Paleo? Should I go carb free? Should I go. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Just choose one. Because what's going to happen is by choosing one, your habits are going to change. And by your habits changing, you'll, your, your body will change, your physicality will change. And I believe it's that exposure that most people don't realize they want the hack, the productivity hack, the, the listicle article, the Mitch, just be the five things I need to do. And the answer is if you almost do anything, it will probably be better than where you are. So I don't know that my path is unique. I don't know that my path to success was charted and defined. There's a lot of privilege, a lot of luck. There's definitely work that went into it. There's definitely new ways of thinking about it versus how maybe others would have thought of it. But I don't know if these are learnable lessons that are going to add value to someone else. I just don't believe, I don't know if I believe in that.

Yeah, but there are winning strategies and mentalities. Like if you're playing chess, you know, there's, there's patterns, not exactly copy the same game. Because that's one reason, Larry, if you're.

But again, I'll push back on that. If you're a narcissist, it's not going to work. Like, you won't be able to see the opportunity. So when people say that to me, I'm like, I don't know. I think that there are many people.

You cannot not put out, pass on things that made a difference to you because of narcissists.

No, no, no. But what I mean is.

Everything'S, everything's down the torch, off, off the.

No, I just mean that. And I'll tell you this, I'll tell you this.

I had a, I had a. I won't say who. A young relative of mine, and he was going through a drug thing, in and out of jail, and he never really did anything wrong other than he was just a dumbass. And when he get in front of the judge, instead of being contrite, he would be belligerent. And then of course, you know, they would give him the maximum for nothing. And during that time we would have talked. I was one person he would talk to until I realized he was in the. He was in. He's not that way now. He's made unbelievably total flip. I think it's the beatings he got in prison. But the thing is that I would have a conversation with him and we like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And he would take, because he was in that narcissist mode, he would take it and flip it and use it against his parents. Like, you know, told me this and told me that. It's like, no, you know, so they're not going to, you know, their receptors are not the same as you got to assume you're dealing with someone who is at least neutral when it comes to emotional stability.

Yeah. And I think where I was getting to is, you know, will success result if I do these things? The answer is I don't know. I do know that if you just start reading books and start creating something in content, it will unlock something that will be different than what you were doing before. And I'm off. I often reflect on this story. I'll get back to Jeffrey Gittamer from the sales bible and the Little Red book of selling. I've had him on my show countless times. Lucky enough to become friends with him. He's very funny individual and you know, some would would acknowledge as one of the greatest sales leaders there, there are or have ever will be in the, in the world. And he would reflect on this story about how his dad come home and classic. You know, Jeffrey's older than I am and you can imagine the war era parent coming back after a long day work, taking off the shoes, sitting with the pipe on the chair with the newspaper and the dog and yeah, and he'd always be writing notes, like just taking notes and notes. And Jeffrey recalls looking back and saying, you know, pops, like what are you doing over there? And he'd always say to Jeffrey, I'm doing my homework. And what he was doing was making his to do list for the next day. The people. He's got a call. And you know, it was a lesson to Jeffrey that became a lesson to me that, you know, just because you finished school doesn't mean you don't have homework. That's a lesson I try to teach to my kids, like when they come into this room now because now I don't go to the office as much as I used to. And I've got my notebooks and my Things out. What are you doing? I'm doing my homework. I want them to know that it's not this. This hard thing that they have to do after work is finished. It's a thing you're doing to be better, more prepared. And there's something to be said about the lessons of that. Now, how many people do you know, Larry, that finished school and said, I'm never doing homework again. I'm never reading another book again. I read enough. That's great. And maybe they're very successful, too. It's just another clue from another perspective, another way to think about it that might unlock something that might really be the answer to tremendous success in your life.

Yeah, you have to work out your own success. And that's one of the great things. I can't thank you enough for making that a point, Making that point and insisting on it, because there, you're just not gonna find a formula that fits your life. In fact, even in our business, where we have multiple organizations, we're always figuring things out and copying details from each other. I tell people, look, I couldn't even copy myself what I did exactly. You know what I'm saying? I was, you know, what I did was a response to where we were in production. The people, the resources, you know, the apparent. The time of the year. And it's the kind of thing where it's constant adjustment, thinking on your feet, but you have the end result in line of where you want to go. But you're going to have to be adjusting the rest of your life. Because I've done the same thing. Like, I am sick and tired of learning.

Well, also, I feel like when I look at successful people and what they've done, it feels like they're always the exception, not the rule. And it feels like we believe that there's this rule of success. Like we lump everybody into the same category and call it success. But every story that you uncover, they're the exception. They're not the. So I'm going to, you know, would I bank everything on the exception? No. So what? It creates a different thought pattern. And so that's why I love having conversations like this and then doing them on my own show, too, because you start uncovering so many exceptions. Now, are there underlying skills? There are, and I think we covered them. You know, when you start learning, you can start teaching. When you start learning and teaching, you start meeting and building this network. When you start building this network, you develop a foundational community. And then if you can, add some fiscal responsibility layered on top of that. There's a really good model for anybody. The problem with the model is it's kind of boring. It's the stuff, you know, it's the stuff you literally learned in elementary school, literally what it is. And so we tend to think, well, that that can't work anymore. We need this thing or that. And there are, there's nuances there. Are you in the right physical geography with the right industry, with the right problem at the right. All of those things are very, very true.

All of them. Nobody's going to be able to come in and give you an easy answer, a hack or where you can move forward in thanks for listening to the Million Dollar Mastermind. If you felt there were any valuable takeaways from this episode, please take a minute and leave us a five star review. Your feedback is important and really helps us get the word out to a wider audience. Remember, we have a valuable webinar that is absolutely free. Register for it right now@whitealumwinning.com thanks for listening.