Your Network is your Net Worth 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 to Mitch. Joel. How you doing, Mitch?

I'm great, Larry. How are you?

I'm fine. And I just found out you're up in Montreal. And how's the weather up there?

Summer everywhere, so it's great. No complaints. We complain when it's too cold, we complain when it's too hot. It doesn't matter where we are.

It does get a little colder than usual up there. But somehow you guys have learned how to survive and thrive.

Yeah, we just all come down to Palm beach for the winter. That's what we do.

There you go. Yeah. And congratulations on your achievements. You've been getting things done for a long time. You were the founder of Six Pixels Group. It's an advisory content producing company focused on brands, commerce and community. Is that still ongoing?

It is. I mean, ultimately, Six Pixels Group was an incorporation that I had to pull the trigger on because prior to that, I had built, with three other partners, a very fairly successful digital marketing agency that we sold to a large public company called wpp. And then when I exited that business, I needed a place to hold all of my speaking events, my book publishing deals, and those sorts of things. So it really is more of a holding company for my activities that I have with a business partner. And we're on the verge of launching a new startup, which I'm not. I'm in stealth mode, as the business likes to say, but super busy on that. And, you know, still very actively out there speaking, doing my own podcast, Creating in the media, Radio hits, all those good things.

And your podcast called Creating the Media?

No, no, the podcast is called Six Pixels of Separation, which is the same name as my first book. Yeah. And I think it's the longest running business podcast in the world. I started broadcasting in 2004, five every Sunday and haven't missed a beat. Haven't missed a Sunday since launch. So I think it's the longest consistently running podcast maybe out there.

Congratulations. And how long will that be?

Well, let's do some quick math here. 2005-20, 22. So you're talking a long time.

That's a long time. So congratulations on that. And the, you know, looking at your bio top 40 under 40 award, what is that?

Yes, every year. I think it's every year in Canada and other regions, they do this top 40 under 40 list. And many years ago, because I'm currently not under 40, I was nominated and really excited to be chosen to be a part of it. And I really loved the event. I loved my other peers that were awarded that award that year. And some of them become lifetime friends who've gone on to tremendous success. More importantly, I decided to get actively involved. And so I remain on the. I don't know if it's a board of directors, but selection process committee and involved with the organization to this day, so helping to pass that award along to other young, successful people. And it's not just in business. It could be in academics. It could be in health sciences and beyond. And as I'm sure you know, there's. There's nothing greater than being able to give back and be active in bringing forward the next generation of great leaders.

Right.

You know that. And I was. Before we got going, we were talking about this podcast and you said yours works same way. You know, the idea of passing it on. And there's a lot of talented people out there.

Yeah. I mean, yeah. The greatest fake of my life is the fact that I get to spend an hour here and there speaking to some of the greatest thinkers in the world. And I call it a fake because then I just publish it. I mean, truly, the publishing is the gateway for me to just have an excuse to read an interesting book article or concept and then reach out to that thinker and say, you want to be on the podcast?

Yeah. And the thing is that you know what you're talking about. So that's why people love to talk to you. Talk about launching one of the first search engines prior to Google even being out there.

Yeah, I didn't launch it. I launched. You know, I helped. I was a part of a metasearch engine called mama.com, the mother of all search engines. And at the time, there wasn't Google, but a young entrepreneur where I live here had come up with this idea of taking what there was from the search engine base at the time. It was places like Yahoo, AOL, AltaVista and others, and aggregating them into a better search result. And, you know, this was very early days, and we were coming up, I was helping run the sales team. So we were doing things like, well, telling companies if you chose a particular keyword, we could then target your ad just to those keyword searches. Or, you know, know, we had developed internally, our technical team had developed the ability to rank searches based on any variable, one of them being a dollar which became the ad auction platform. So a lot of these very robust multi billion dollar based revenue models that we see today were created in this small company, as others were doing at the same time. But just being a part of that and seeing the opportunity and the growth in search and even just connectivity in the web before, like I said, before Google existed, it was a really amazing time to be alive. It was just very fortuitous. A lot of privilege, a lot of luck and a lot of timing.

When did your. Just to kind of get the sequence, clear my head. When did the book six Pixels fall into that cycle?

Yeah, a lot later. I mean, a lot later. So in about 2000, 2001, I joined two other business partners. We inevitably became four at this digital marketing agency called Twist Image. And when I got there, you know, web was already relevant, but we still spent a lot of time convincing organizations why they need a website. So that's the cycle of where that was in the early 2000s. And again, at the time, you know, blogging had just started. I had come from a background of print magazine publishing and writing and journalism. And I just felt instead of, you know, driving down the highway, knocking on every corporation's door to build a website, that I could leverage my previous skill of writing and publishing to talk a little bit about how that world is changing and transforming and innovating. So again, at the time, 2002, 2003, a lot of advertising media people weren't really writing and creating content like that. We started this blog called six Pixels of Separation, the Twist Image blog at the time. And I was publishing seven times a week. And then within a year or two, that's when I decided to change Sundays. Instead of writing, I would talk because podcasting was very nascent at the time. All of that led to people asking me to speak at industry events and corporate events, which led to the attention of speaking bureaus and things like that. And that's when we. That's when it really clicked. We started recognizing that, wow, you can get paid to do business development, which is essentially what was happening, right? That led to introductions and the book and speaking about the power of podcasting. I had had a guest on my show whose book was to be published in several months. That book was called predictably Irrational and wound up being Dan Ariely, who's now a world recognized authority and one of the bigger selling books in the past, I don't know how many years. And Dan, who was looking at my stuff, said, you should speak to my literary agent in New York City. And I thought, sure, who would? That conversation led to a conversation with Hachette, one of the largest book publishers in the world, which led to a deal on Grand Central. And that led to the book which I think came out, I want to say 2006, 7 or 8, I'm not really sure. So it's quite a while ago.

So it was an organic development of what you were doing. And then you follow that up 2013 with control, alt, Delete and.

Name one.

Of the best business books of 2013. What was the point of that one?

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Notes the world just kept changing and it felt to me like businesses were still in the convince me why I need this versus shifting to this world of how do we move it forward. And so the original premise of Control I'll delete the subtitles, reboot your business, reboot your life really was well, how can businesses really think about this at scale? And I was writing and still blogging and writing articles and contributing to other media outlets and I just wasn't breaking the spine on that book. It just wasn't coming naturally to me. And then in the cliche moment of being in the shower, I realized the book is two parts. You can't reboot your business until you've really thought about how you're going to reboot your attitude and beliefs in what digital is and can be. And that's when it became very obvious to me about what the book could be. And so I broke it up into two parts and I created these things that have changed, these actual functional changes that would be more obvious than let's talk a little bit about the future and where things are going. And I believe that those two applications at the time to a business book was still, again, not something you were seeing cluttering on the bookshelves as you do now. And it was just right time, right moment. And both books thankfully did just great. Really Great. In terms of the big thing was really business development and name recognition. It just kept adding to the portfolio of thought leadership. That wasn't just me being Mitch Joel. In fact, if you look at all the assets we ever put out, it was always tagged along with the agency and the brand of 6 pixels. And so internally, as a marketing agency, we would often say that we're managing three brands. We're managing Twist Image, which was the name of the agency we were managing. Six pixels of separation being what we call the publishing arm of the company. And then this individual. Mitch Joel, in terms of what, you know, where should I be speaking? What value does it bring? What are the tools I should be using to communicate? So again, primarily as a driver for business development and marketing, that just led to being one in which we were generating really solid revenue from as well.

Okay, so let's dig in.

Now.

What have you learned from. What are some things you've learned that are difference makers in developing businesses? Things where, you know, that really started. Let's just go back to the beginning that started standing out to you early on and then you incorporated into your life, you know, because we already said you read books, you talk to people, and then you wind up, you know, elevating yourself, you know, just by the association and the infusion of those ideas. Talk about, you know, there's light bulbs that go on, you know, there's awarenesses and once you see things, you can't really not see them, you know. And so I'm sure your eyes go to. I've always, Mitch, I always, you know, like, you've got the guitars that they're. I've wasted a lot of time and money on guitars and banjos and basses and drums and all of that stuff. But I was all, you know, you get into learning those things and if you get the wrong instructor, they're going to want to teach you every scale, every fundamental, you know, like train you like you're going to be a concert orchestra player or something. And. But what was always in my mind was what's in the mind of that lead guitar player? You know, how do they see the fretboard? Because it's very simple, you know, like B.B. king, you know, things like that. There's a few notes and, you know, the way they hear us, how do they hear it? And so in your, your mind, when you look at businesses, you've from the.

Beginning.

Had this interest and it's developed where you're probably pretty fine tuned in spotting winning patterns, thinking approaches. And so where did this start. What did you start noticing as you're sitting in front of your, you know, podcasting and talking with people more or even in your business?

You know? Yeah, I mean, when I think about, you know, where I started, I actually started in music journalism. And those were the questions that I was trying to understand better. Why is that person on the COVID of this magazine? Why does one band succeed when another doesn't? How do you even create a song? Even those seven notes, like you said, you're very limited, but just the incomparable and just unlimited amount of changes and opportunities. And I believe in those conversations. What I really started to understand is the power of what I would call pure art.

Didn't interrupt you.

Your first professional job was interviewing Tommy Lee for Motley Crue.

Yeah, it's all downhill from there, as we like to say. Yeah. I spent more than a decade interviewing, you know, everyone in the rock, alternative, punk, indie genres for, for many years and still continue to have another podcast called Groove the no Trouble podcast where I interview bass players. And so I've continued that's been over seven years also where I just try to have these fun conversations like I have on six Pixels with musicians and artists. So, you know, getting back to your question, I think one is just pure art. Like there is some method to the madness and there is some thinking that you uncover, you do uncover patterns and trends, but you also become very aware that a lot of the times, even when everything's done right, it doesn't always work. You have the best band on the best label with the best management and all the marketing in the world, and the album doesn't go anywhere. But the real lessons for me come. Come from a couple places. One is reading. I've always put forward the idea that, yeah, you can spend your time on tweets and watching TikTok and all that's fun and great and I do it just as much as anyone else. But really, if you're spending time reading books days on end with one particular author with one concept, it's very hard, whether it's related to your industry or not, to not be inspired or learn or take something powerful from it. So reading is this consumption activity that I feel is still extremely undervalued and in this day and age, almost underutilized. So if I'm interested in something, whether it's cryptocurrency, Bitcoin or Web3 or whatever it might be, I'm first looking to long form content written in particular. Where I can understand this is the learning process. I don't think learning has much value unless you're also communicating. And that's the expression of it. And the expression of it for me came in the fact that anybody now in this world can have an idea and publish it in text, images, audio, video, long form, short form, prerecorded, live. And that's a tremendous power and a gift. Most of us use it for really stupid debates and social media, but the more strategic and smart people, from my perspective, use it as a way to publish and broadcast. And so what's the point of reading and learning if you're not also then taking that information and teaching and sharing it? So the teaching and sharing it then leads to some kind of network or community. And what you realize when people are either following you and you're following them and they're commenting on yourself and you're commenting on their stuff, or you're consuming their content, consuming yours, is that there is no greater thing we can do as humans than to help better one another. And I used to be very involved in community service, and I still am. And even the early days, people say, you're building a business, you're young. Like why most people don't have the time for it. I just knew, well, how do you build a strong business if there's not a strong community around it to support it? It's not going to happen. So that was another fundamental for me that Jeffrey Gittamer would say, who wrote the sales Bible and Little Red Book was selling, that your network is your network. So you take that community and you nurture it into a powerful network. You take those guests who are willing to spend time with you, those stages that you're sharing with other thinkers to build a sense of community and a network. And then you build on that community by helping bring others in and helping them be better at themselves. And then ultimately, at the end of it, you have to take business really seriously. And what I mean by that is not that it's our based or workaholic based or hustle culture based. No, I just mean that you have to know that business is always a game of nickels and dimes. And if you can understand how to manage it and measure it and work within it, you can understand the opportunities of it or the limitations that it's going to bring. So when you ask the question, I'm sorry to ramble, those are the pillars, which is reading, sharing, the network, the community, and then ultimately being really serious about the business that's underneath it.

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