Episode 111: Small Actions Turn Into Big Success with Renaissance Man Mark Harvey

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weidell and let's get started. I am excited today to bring you one of my great friends from Snowmass, Aspen, Snowmass, Colorado, Mark Harvey. Hello, Mark.

Hello, Larry. Good to be with you.

Good to be with you. And if you meet Mark, you're going to see an unassuming guy, very pleasant, well spoken. And you would not know, you would have no clue. And you're certainly not going to get it out of him, the life he leads, the accomplishments he has. But you know, he grew up out here. He's ranching now, huge ranch, I'll let him tell you that. He's got, I believe, ranches around Colorado and even in South America. But he grew up, he became, he showed that he had the talent. He went up to Burke Mountain Academy. I don't know if he got a. Did you get a scholarship up there or how did you get to Burke?

No, no, my parents fortunately paid my tuition there.

Yeah. Fantastic. And he, you know, that's where a lot of the world class World cup skiers go to. Most recently Michaela Shiffrin, you know, they come out of that. But went on and skied on the World cup with the World cup skiers. You know, you see that on espn. From that he went on and got involved in an organization out in, what was it, Wyoming up there, Montana.

That Lander, Wyoming. Yeah.

And wrote some best selling books. He can elaborate on that with that, related to that situation out there. He's a film maker. He's got, he's got an award winning documentary, Land out of Time on the environment. So Mark, somebody who has done things like been to these famous movie events around and in fact, I don't know why he didn't keep doing that. But he probably got his fill. But he went to, he's pretty much involved in ranching and managing his ranch now. Huge spread. But also he's a journalist. You know, he's a guest columnist with the Aspen papers. Freelance. He's been a freelance photographer. He's on the board of directors of different charities and I think Echo Flight. And so Mark has dab. He's like me, he's got a short attention span but he's able to back it up and get involved. Mark's a difference maker. Mark's a guy who's got his eyes open to what's happening around him and is not afraid to dive in and do things about it. And that's what's led him to a tremendous life of accomplishment. And you'd never know this because the bulk of his time he's up in the high country running his ranch. So welcome, Mark. And it's just going to be so much fun hearing you talk about your background and the things you faced coming up, coming up the ladder and really finding out what you really wanted to do with your life and where you could make the biggest impact. So I'm going to. That's kind of my bass ackwards introduction, but thanks so much for getting on.

Mark thank you, Larry. And thanks for that very flattering introduction.

Well, when you started, you know, you came from a family of accomplishment, but, you know, a lot of times people say, well, you know, I could do great things if I had those advantages. But the bulk of the time, the kids who grow up with any kind of advantage, they wind up taking it for granted, and they're either intimidated and afraid to try, or they just, you know, assume they're just not going to have to work. You know, they never learn how to accomplish things themselves. They come from a family of accomplishment, but they never turn into a person of accomplishment themselves. But you had a heartbeat inside of you where you wanted to go places and do things and just see what was out there in the world beyond Aspen and Snowmass, Colorado. So talk about when you got started, what was in your mind, what was that first drive and what are some of the things, you know, anytime you try to do anything, things go wrong and you got to overcome it to achieve. So talk about some of those early things in that drive, what you had in your mind that you grew up with and maybe was a formative type thinking and mindset that caused you to keep on pushing through these other areas.

Yeah. Larry? Well, you know, I grew up with a lot of advantages. I certainly never went hungry growing up, and my parents could afford to pay for my education and that sort of thing. So you're. You're absolutely right. I had a lot of advantages. I think my parents always tried to instill in us the idea that we are no better than anyone, that, you know, try to keep your head down a little bit, not be not brag about what you're up to, try to work hard. And my dad especially was just intolerant of slacking off. And I also had some pretty competitive siblings, some pretty competitive brothers and sisters, and that always drives you. And then I got into sports quite early and love sports. And of course, that, you know, adds to your competitiveness. And I think there was a point in my life where I was probably overly competitive and have toned that down some, but, yeah, I just. I feel better if I'm out doing things. I feel better if I'm with people who have energy, and it just makes life so much more interesting. And I guess you asked about, you know, some setbacks. My first big setback was when I was ski racing. I was about 16 or 17 years old in the u. S. Nationals and took a quite a hard fall at 60 or 70 miles an hour and tore my knee up and was immediately facing kind of, you know, is this a career end or so early in my career. And it took, you know, two, three years to get my confidence back, get my leg back, all that sort of thing. And so that was a very early lesson in trying to overcome some sort of adversity. And that taught me a lot.

And when you, what, at a young age and a lot of people, you know, a lot of athletes, in fact, probably most of them, that's what happens. They get derailed along the way. What were things you had to sort out in your mind? What were people telling you, and what did you latch onto as, you know, like, central thoughts that kept you on track?

Well, I remember the ski patrol that picked me up off the mountain said some pretty drastic things about my leg. He said, you know, I don't know if you'll ever be skiing again. You probably certainly won't be competing. And that, you know, that hits you pretty hard when you're that young and you have designs on becoming a great ski racer. So, you know, the. The beginning, it was, you know, I sort of felt devastated, but almost immediately I started exercising that leg, and almost immediately just started working out every day and going to the physical therapist, and. And I happened to have a physical therapist who was, you know, sports driven. So he's like, you know, you're coming back. There's no doubt you're. You're going to recover. And so I think you just. You have to get an idea in your head that you can recover from these things. And if you have an idea, if that idea is strong enough, then you can do just about anything. If the idea is weak or if you give up, there's not a chance. So it really comes from having a positive vision in your head that you.

Can do it, and being able to give that gift to other people, to get them to believe in themselves and to get back on track basically is a. I mean, that person turned out to be a kind of a pivotal. Have a pivotal role in your life, sounds like.

Yeah.

And when you face that thing. What. Even though it's slow recovering from injury, your confidence does build gradually. To me, I've always felt like the only kind of confidence that was, that's worth anything is the confidence that comes from achievement. And those day to day daily rehab achievements may not have seemed much to the outside world, but to you, you were in the process of developing and rebuilding your confidence and your mental toughness that you've pretty much drawn on the rest of your life, wouldn't you say?

Yeah, and I think sometimes you really got to break it down into little steps. I mean, I don't want your listeners to believe that I'm any superman with this stuff, that it can't comes easier, that, you know, I have some sort of fantastic mind control. Sometimes you got to break it down into little steps. Sometimes when you're, you're feeling like something's not achievable or you're feeling hopeless, you just got to take one little step. And maybe it's, you know, maybe it's only working out for 10 minutes, maybe it's only, you know, writing some goals down, maybe it's only making a phone call. And in other days you can, you have a huge amount of energy and you really feel good and you can really do stuff. But I think there's plenty of people who have had big setbacks and they sometimes feel hopeless. And I really think, I believe in action, even if it's small action. And you have your good days and your bad days and on a good day, you know, we can all do great things. But it's the bad days where, you know, the rubber hits the road and you got to break it down into much smaller goals. Little things that you can do that day.

Yeah. And you know, I remember, I remember when I was in, did the expansion move up to North Carolina, I'd have a whole list of things that I knew if I was going to get where I wanted to go, if I was going to build the organization that I wanted to build, all these things had to be done. You know, little things, big things, boring things, exciting things. I knew there was a certain amount of tapes I had to listen to, paperwork I had to do, people I had to contact, which was the valuable, you know, the prospecting, marketing side, that's a valuable thing to do. But I had all of these things down in my. When I'd wake up in the morning up there. Of course I had a wife and two kids I had to feed and I was on commission. I knew if I wasn't Working. We were going to starve to death. So some days I just could not get myself to prospect and go eat a big bowl of rejection again, you know?

Right, right.

You know, it's just like, nah, today, no, not this morning, you know. And so the deal is, I knew I had to manage my. I had to kind of trick myself into activity. And I said, well, as long as I'm working, I can get myself to do this right now. And, you know, you know, and what I'm doing right now is going to have to be done sometime, so I can go ahead and get that out of the way. And so it is, you know, it does come down. The thing about how you eat an elephant, and that is one bite at a time.

Yeah. And I found a really helpful thing is to keep a journal. And what I often do is in the morning I'll write down some things I want to accomplish and maybe even write down what state of mind I'm in. And then at the end of the day, revisit what I did and didn't do. And I. It helps in a number of ways. They've. They've shown that writing stuff down, you tend to get it done more often than if you don't write it down. And also at the end of the day, when you reflect on what you did that day, you might be surprised at all the positive things you did. You. You might have forgotten that you cheered someone up. You might have forgotten that you asked some questions that took you in a new direction. You might have forgotten that you did some research on your next career development. So I find that really helpful to keep a journal. The morning routine of writing down what you want to get done that day in the afternoon or the evening routine of seeing what you did do.

Yeah. Isn't it amazing how. Because I've started the last couple years, I've been doing the same thing. And it can be amazing how by the end of the day you've already forgotten three or four really fantastic things that happened during the day.

Yeah. It's incredible. And when you remember it, I think it actually brings some good energy into the next day because you remember you did something well that you might have forgotten about otherwise.

Absolutely. And how do you keep up with those, your own journal? If you had experimented with. I'll tell you this I'm doing. When my grandmother died on my mother's side, in cleaning out the house, we found like 30 plus years of daily journals she had kept and nobody really knew she was doing it. So I put it together at a 15. It turned out to be 1550 pages.

Wow.

So we've been. We're just about ready to publish that and make copies and hand it out to all of the surviving family, you know, but it's amazing the impact of even, you know, any one life when you're detailed about that in specific, because she had a huge impact, you know, and how. So what's the best way you found of keeping up with that? You keep. You know, because these things add up. You have a program.

No, I just do it longhand in a. In a notebook. I just write with a pen and a notebook, and I don't. I doubt if my journal is going to be as interesting as your grandmother's, but it's. For me, it's a tool. And so I kind of divide it into two. On the left side of the notebook, I'll kind of do the logistics of my life. And. And on the right side, it might be more personal stuff, writing down experiences I've had. It's also a wonderful place to do your whining so you don't have to whine to your friends about things, and it saves your friends a lot of listening to your heartache. So I kind of divided into the left side of the page is logistics, things I need to do, chores, tasks, and then the right side I. More personal reflections.

Yeah. And. Or it helps you get more organized about what you do want to whine about to your friends, you know?

Yeah, there you go.

And the. But basically, it's a way of keeping yourself on track. And that's the challenge for all of us, to keep ourselves on track and not be a victim of the kind of things that happen to us that we see as just absolutely devastating. But in. When you get a different perspective, you realize, oh, you know, this happens to a ton of people. I'm not that special that I had this terrible thing happen to me, you know?

Yeah. I was just reading some. A book by the Stoics, you know, the. The philosophers of ancient Greece. And they talk about the things you can control, the things you can't control, and the things you sort of have control of. And I think that's not a bad way to look at stuff. You know, you have control of the goals you set, you have control of some of your ideas. You have no control of the weather, and then things you sort of have control of. It's like in the ranching business, I sort of have control of what happens to my pasture, what happens to my cattle. And if you look at your life like that. And don't, you know, don't fret over things you have absolutely no control over. I think you'll have a much happier life. And believe me, I've made that mistake of, you know, being upset over things I have no control over. But the things you do have control over and the things you sort of have control over, that's where your energy should go.

Right? And, and you know, that, you know, we look back a lot of times your. Every day, Mark, how we respond is setting the direction for the rest of our life. And we've all seen people that have gotten off track and, you know, we're all capable in our own life. Like you say, I'm. Don't look at me as a genius. I mean, all we can do is live life one day at a time. You know, you have your eye in the future, long term, but like, you got today to deal with. And so at any time, if you loosen control over your values, your principles, the things you believe in, and you somehow get either talked into it or just let yourself drift off on a tangent, you're going to have to, at some point make a big change to get back on track, or that's going to take you in directions you don't want to go. And what happened when you had that knee surgery and devastating accident was that, you know, you had to make. You went through a process of getting back on track and staying in charge of your life. And that we really have. That. We really have that decision to make pretty much every day going forward. And.

Yeah, and I think with setbacks, you know, my knee injury is a small example. There are plenty of people go through much worse stuff, whether they lose a job or a marriage or, you know, major illnesses. I think the trick is to as soon as you can accept the setback and then work from there. Because it's, it's always tempting just to throw a tantrum for, you know, two, three years and, and, and instead of getting back to work to where you want to go, you know what? It's, it's, it's tempting to say why me? And woe is me and, and not even, you know, just fight what happened to you, rather than having a tantrum for two or three days and then getting right back to work. And it's hard to do. I've definitely been guilty of that. But that's one of the great lessons I've learned in life is as soon as you can accept that you have had a setback, and then what are the steps I can do to move from where I am, not from where I want to be.

Absolutely fantastic. And so I appreciate you. I think we've really covered some interesting thoughts and ideas people can use in moving forward in their own life. But as you. How did you come out of that situation and your healing? What was the end of that phase? Where did that lead you to once you came out of that rehab?

Well, first of all, it gave me a little more humility. I mean, at that age I thought it was the stuff, you know, I was having a pretty good early career and. And so I got a little humility out of it, which is always helpful. And, and I, you know, it was, it was just, it's, it's quite interesting. It's not really fun, but it's quite interesting to have to make a comeback. It's quite interesting. And, and I think it really develops you as a human being to have to sort of rebuild, to climb back up, to, you know, to be the bottom man and to sort of. It's like falling off a ladder and climbing back up. I remember when my dad had a major stroke, he, you know, he was a doctor and, you know, very, very educated, well spoken man. And after he had a stroke, he could barely speak and, and he couldn't write. And I remember he got a bunch of children's books out. He relearned the Alphabet, he relearned to speak. He kind of had to go back to primary school and I think that must have been. I think it took some real courage and humility to do that because he obviously had come from a position of being well educated and quite accomplished. And I always admired him for that. I always admired him for taking care of those little steps and getting his speech back and learning to write again.

Yeah, pretty phenomenal. And again, it shows that all of us as we go through life never know what kind of challenge is coming our way. But you can control your response to it. And the quicker you get past the emotional setback, if you know how it works, like you're going to be madder than fire, you may be humiliated, you may be devastated in terms of what you thought you were going to accomplish or the kind of person you thought you were going to be, or the career. But as soon as you get over the emotional aspect of that and can start looking at the facts, you can start to take back control of your life and you show it's only the actions, those steps forward that really show that you are not giving up and you are going to keep marching forward like your dad did. There.

Yeah. I mean, the old analogy is you get bucked up a horse, you get right back on. And in my life, I get bucked off. I've been bucked off this summer, in last summer. And, you know, it happens often.

Yeah.

And I'm not going to lie, I'm always a little intimidated to get back on a horse that throws me into the air. And, you know, the older I get, the harder I land. But if you don't get back on quickly or fairly quickly, it'll just nag at you and it'll become a bigger problem and the horse and your mind will get bigger and more bronchie and scarier. So, you know, that is an old analogy, but it's, it's true. The quicker you can get back on the horse, the quicker you could start taking those small steps back towards who you want to be, what you want to accomplish, the easier it's going to be.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the thing I've always believed in. Faster. Quicker and faster is better.

Yeah.

And easier and simpler. You know, you just.

Yeah, yeah.

You just don't let yourself get caught up in what if. And what if it's just like, shut up and go do it.

You know, it doesn't feel easier. I mean, you know, it feels much harder. But I think if you, if you analyzed it, the quicker you can say, here I am, that was bad luck, or I did something stupid, but here I am. I'm going to take this, I'm going to take action, and I'm going to try to do it as quickly as I can. And I'm also going to try to do it intelligently.

Right. Absolutely. Well, thanks so much, Mark. This has just been.

Thank you, Larry.

Great. I've really, really enjoyed it.

Thank you, Larry. We'll talk soon.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind with me, Larry Wydell. If I've helped you in any way, leave us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. For more information like this, listen to our other Million Dollar Mastermind episodes and check out my Widel Academy YouTube channel and visit us on widelonwinning. Com. I'm the Million Dollar Mastermind. And until next time, go.