Leveraging Thought Leadership Live Featuring Mitch Joel and Ron Tite

Hey there and welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on our LinkedIn Live. And today my guest is Mitch Joel. Now, normally, if you listen to the podcast or any of the podcasts or any of these things that I do, I rush through the intros and the bios because they're all kind of, you know, world-renowned this, world-renowned that, you know, whatever, cured cancer, Nobel Prize. But I was going through this morning getting prepared for this, Mitch's bio, and I'm actually going to read it, uh, because I think it's, it's, it's awesome. So here we go, bear with me. So Mitch Joel 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's been called a visionary, digital expert, and community leader. He's an entrepreneur, investor, author, trusted advisor, chronic reader, and passionate speaker. I'm going to fast forward a little. Prior to, uh, Mitch spent close to 2 decades building, running, and selling his agency to WPP, one of the world's most valuable marketing communication holding companies in the world. Uh, he was most recently president of Mirum, a global marketing agency. Uh, since 2005, he's been doing 40 to 60 keynotes a year, B2B and B2C, and since COVID has kicked in, He has done over 80 virtual presentations. He's written a bunch of books. He's on the 100 Coaches. He's on the Thinkers50 Radar list, columnist for Harvard Business Review, and on and on and on. So here we are, Mitch. You've obviously lowered your standards to spend some time with us today. So I appreciate that.

And yeah, I mean, am I going to take it as a slight that I'm not world-renowned and I haven't done all those things? Maybe. Maybe. I try to write my bios without adjectives is my main goal.

You're an adjective-less world. So let's start with— You know, a couple things. So you've been in this game of thought leadership for a long, long time in various iterations. Let's rewind the tape back a little bit to what life was like 2 years ago versus what it's like today, right? So that you still have a message to deliver to an audience, but the way you do that and how you do that. So how have you sort of experimented and landed in ways that are working for you and your clients now?

Well, it's a funny question because when the world went sideways, I found that there were a lot of my fellow speakers who would like get a webcam and a ring light and cry out that they invented the wheel. It's like, look at what we're doing here. Uh, you're talking to somebody who has, you know, if not the one of the longest running podcasts in the world, somebody does weekly radio hits and does a lot of broadcasting and had all the gear, maybe not assembled here in my house, maybe disparate between my house and Yeah. You know, my office, which is just a short walk actually down this hill here. So for me, it, you know, it was more about figuring out what works in the content in relation to a broadcast versus when I'm physically there. Your patter, your jokes, your movement, the size of the images, how they play and how they're reflected on a stage is really different than when you're just throwing it to the world. You're not waiting for feedback. You know, I always say that if I'm in a room and someone coughs, I can give you the temperature of the room pretty quickly because of how comfortable and used to that I've become in live environments. And, you know, talking into— staring into a webcam or a camera and doing this, again, nothing new for me. It was the nuance in between making sure that the stories still resonate in that format and how they can resonate. And so, you know—

So stay there for a minute, Mitch.

Yeah.

So I, you know, People that keynote have mastered the craft, right? So if we go back to 2 years ago, when you walked into the ballroom or wherever the event was, there's a tone that's being set. There's lighting, there's music, there's visuals, there's the way you walked in and the, you know, what you might use as an icebreaker or not use an icebreaker.

Opening lines and stuff.

Yeah, your opening lines, the physicality, which was typically a little bit large and not over the top, but you need to be big to get the attention, you know, all these sort of things.

Yeah.

And it took people years and years and years to get really good at it. And quite frankly, almost none of those things work in the world that we're all living in a box that's, you know, this big on a screen. So I think there has been more, you know, the content or the message is more naked, right? You're not wrapping it in theatrics or whatever. And I think it's, delivering content in a way that's more impactful and not wrapped in the music and the lighting and the PowerPoints and the slides and all that.

Well, I could push back on that. I mean, I could push back on that because, you know, what you're seeing is me looking into a camera. What you're not seeing behind the scenes is the multiple computers, the different types of mics, the audio rig, the video rig that I have over here, everything within touch that if I did it like this, you wouldn't see that I'm I'm actually doing it right. Like, I can hit audio cues and I can do a whole bunch of things from here. And when you go back to stage, which I've done— I've been on physical stages since—

Sure.

Not also being the AV person, the light person, the videographer, the person— I mean, there's a lot of roles that I found myself doing that you find yourself doing when you're doing live video that are really alleviated when you get on a physical stage. When I'm on a physical stage, I can really Just, you know, bask in the content and the moment. When I'm doing video, I'm, I'm, I'm not just the person on stage. I'm the person at the front of the house doing the sound.

Sure.

The person in the videographer chair. I'm the person behind. I'm doing and controlling everything. And that's all while worrying that the internet connection is somewhat stable.

Yeah.

So I would even argue that, you know, when done properly and done well, To me, the physical stage, it was more of a reality after doing so much video that the physical stage is really easier in terms of an entire—

That's interesting.

Cohesive production. Absolutely. Way more.

So probably less of a cognitive load on your multitasking, you know, when you're doing a web-based presentation.

Yeah.

Thinking about all these other variables. When you're on stage, there's more flow, there's more in the moment, there's more—

Yeah. I'm not worried that if the lights go out or the video screen goes out, if they're like— I don't have any of those worries. And I'm only doing one job. Even right now, I'm doing 4 jobs. And I think when your brain is given the space to just focus on the content, it's a different experience than when you're currently going, okay, make sure you're looking at the camera, make sure you're still showing up down here.

Sure.

Make sure this mic is still— like, there's a lot of moving parts that even though I'm comfortable and confident it's going to work and I've set it up that way, It's still a cognitive load for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. So what are you seeing or feeling or sensing relative to clients? Right. So when we think about it, I think a lot of people froze when COVID hit and said, oh my, I'm a keynoter and words matter. If you define yourself as a keynoter and that definition meant I need to be in front on a stage at an event or whatever, and that world didn't exist for a while, that's a holy cow moment. Right. And I think you sort of have to redefine who you are and how you deliver value to clients. What are you finding clients are looking for that's the same and what's different in this market?

I don't know. If anything, my perception, and this is a market of one, so take it with whatever grains of salt you like, is that this idea of an event, we're going to get our clients together, we're going to get our entire team together. we're going to be a part of the association and industry trade and gather people hasn't changed. Sometimes they're doing it physical, sometimes they're doing it virtually. The case study I would tell you is I recently spoke for a rather large trade association and we were talking about disruption and innovation, which is my keynote stuff. And they were rambling on about how they're really based off of this one event a year.

Sure.

And suddenly they were doing these 45 digital events. And so what's the analogy? The analogy is you went from being a conference producer to a content creator.

Yep.

Really, that's what you're seeing some of them do. Being the digital person that I am, why weren't you doing this before? I mean, there's no—

well, so stay with that for a minute. I think a lot of these, you know, when you look at— you look under the hood at the business side of speaking Right, there are corporate events. Company X brings you in to talk to their people, their clients, whatever. And then there are association events, and then there's open events, but there's B2C, we'll leave that for a moment.

Sure.

But the associations, when you look at their business model, you're exactly right. They tend to be fairly small businesses with some exceptions, with a typical staff. And pre-COVID, whether business was up or down 5 or 10% a year, they might blame the venue, the weather, a little bit of the marketing, but it wasn't these radical shifts. And if the event went well, which they typically did, 'cause that's what they do, Rinse, lather, repeat. And it's interesting to your point that it took this to get them to rethink how else can we convey our message, deliver value, engage our audiences. So, you've done content across so many modalities. Give us some insight there.

Well, I mean, if I go back in my tenure, I sat as the chair of the board of directors for the Canadian Marketing Association, which is a fairly large association up here in Canada where I live. And I mean, we're going back over a decade, and even then they were realizing we can't rely on this big national convention as the only thing. And they really started expanding on their education programs, their online programs, the webinar programs. And they were in a position when COVID hit, I believe based off of the marketing, because I'm out, to, to really keep the community together.

Mm-hmm.

I think where it impacted many organizations, and we're going beyond trade associations and corporates, just regular business, is really not that this was an acceleration or a realization of technology and all the opportunities. I really think what happened at a macro level during the pandemic, and I call it the Great Compression.

Mm-hmm.

So, what happened in this Great Compression is one, there was an amplification. So, this is stuff we knew. Again, other associations had been on this path for over a decade. It amplified to everybody. We need to be more diverse. We need to think about ways in which we service people. Are we just a conference or are we a content provider? So, that amplification was very obvious. And then, what you had is a distribution model. And the distribution model is just, well, everybody from our youngest of young kids, if you were fortunate enough to be able to go to online learning, were suddenly digitized. And then, you had your eldest of elderly, whether you were sliding iPads under their door to FaceTime with them or teaching them how to order—

Sure.

Food, they'd become digitized. And then we saw, because of business closing and the realities of that, that, you know, everybody realized, oh, people can work from home and can work on their mobile devices and can and can and can. So to me, this wasn't some great revelation. It wasn't some, uh, continuance of, of speed of technology adoption. We had it. It was simply this amplification and distribution. So you saw Maybe some of the trade associations that were too reliant on one model, recognizing that often through forced innovation, you find new business models.

So stay there with forced innovation. So, so now let's go to your world, your domain expertise on innovation. And I like the concept or the languaging around forced innovation, because when we talk about innovation in the workplace, we're usually thinking about we control it, right? We're going to come up with a new innovation to serve our clients better, go to market differently or whatever. But ultimately, COVID was a forced innovation, right? This concept of going to the office 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, rug pulled out from under us. This concept of kids going to school at 8:00 AM every day pulled out from under us. And humans are pretty resilient.

Yeah, Peter, I think going as an adjective isn't where my headspace is at. When I think about forced innovation, I'll give you a real tactical example. We have a local sushi restaurant where the chef is like Iron Chef celebrity books. Everyone knows them, wants a selfie with this person.

Sure.

50-seat restaurant, 2 servings a night maybe. But the whole point is to have the experience there.

Sure.

How it's plated, how it's presented, how it comes out. Everything is orchestrated like a symphony. So COVID comes and they're shut down. Now, suddenly they start doing takeout and delivery. Is this how the chef would like their food?

No. Right.

But they need to survive.

It's not on brand.

Right.

Right.

They're forced to do this. Okay? So that's one aspect. 2 is they started doing a thing called Sashimi Sunday where you could do a subscription model and every Sunday, you would get a package delivered very, very fresh to your home that you could, you could prepare. Then on top of that, they started showing up this chef in a Zoom, basically like a virtual meet and greet to teach people about or just to hang out. So, you've got delivery and free pickup. You've got online learning essentially. Exactly. Right. And then, you've got a subscription model. That forced innovation came with 3 new models of ways in which to engage your community and do business. Now, the tragedy of the moment is as things open up, do you collapse those 3 and take them away or do you run with them understanding that these are new ways to connect my brand or my business with its audience or its customer. And so, mine is less about you're going to work, you're not going to work. It's more about how did you interact with that customer throughout this experience? Did they like it and would they like to continue it? I'll give you another really quick example. I sit on the board of the local library, very engaged with it. I love it. So, we were doing curbside pickup.

Right, right.

Obviously, forced innovation, right? Librarians got to run around the library, find the books for the people, take Sure. Run them out to their car or whomever. Then when they bring it back in, the sanitation of these books, all that stuff. And now we're in a place as we reopen where it's not feasible to do it. And I'm fighting hard to say, keep it. People liked it. And so there'll be probably a median, you know, a median of it.

Maybe certain times you can do it that way or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or there'll be a table out front and book will be left there and just come in and grab them. So there'll be something that's done, but it forces a new way for them to engage with their audience.

Right, so net-net, you know, it's this forced tests and experiments, right? Libraries are not known for being particularly creative, innovative.

Actually, they are. No.

But, okay, well, it depends on how far back you go. But my point is, of all these new bells and whistles and ways, and you mentioned the sushi restaurant, there's, you know, telemedicine, all these other things, Which one of these will become permanent fabric of the way we now interact with our doctors? I can't imagine going back to the default system being the waiting room. It sucks for the patient, sucks for the doctor. Yeah, that's what—

yeah, people are raging against the vaccine passports up here in Canada. We're very accepting of it. And to see that in my Apple Wallet, and then to think that I could have my other vaccines in there, or a health record where if I'm going to see a specialist they have access, or I can give them access to see history, and I'm not waiting for doctors to fax or paper So, I mean, my passion for that whole telemedicine as well, just simple automation. Like, why would anybody sit in an office with other sick people in the waiting room? Just text me and I'll be there.

Exactly. So I think those things will obviously become— so I think there's some obvious things that will become permanent in the way we do things where we'll look back in 10 or 15 years and say, yeah, remember when you didn't feel good and you had to go to the waiting room and sit next to a bunch of sick people? How stupid was that? Like, you know, or And the doctor was always behind schedule, and he was stressed out, or she was stressed out, or whatever.

Appointment-based was huge too. I mean, we had the passport office shut down. And normally, you wait hours at the passport office. Here, you would call, which seemed bizarre, and they would call you back. You'd make an appointment. And I walked in on my date and time. I was in and out in 10 minutes. And my reaction was, maybe everyone's mental health would be better. Maybe it'll be a bit slower. Maybe it'll be frustrating for some who need access. Maybe you can then layer in Premium payments, which they sometimes have, where you pay more to get access faster.

Sure.

So, all of these provide tremendous opportunities.

Opportunities.

And the question on the opportunities is, will they be maintained? Because the human aspect of it can't be denied. And when we really think about what's been happening, it's not like people aren't going to concerts now because they realize they could watch it streaming on YouTube.

Right.

It's not like people aren't going to restaurants because they started getting really into Uber Eats. And so the question mark that I'm constantly pushing out in my socials or in conversations that I have for my podcast is around this idea that it's funny to me. I use the word funny. It's funny to me that we have some sort of perception that work is going to be the one that's fundamentally changed. Like, now we're not going to go to the office. Now we're— well, everything else that we reopened and changed our habits on, we completely raged back to. And I'm really curious to see. I mean, now we're in a bit of a holding pattern because of variants and where the world is at. And there's been a lot of articles recently, not just on the great resignation, but on this idea that basically every major corporation has quote unquote canceled back to work until they really see where things are going.

Yep.

But when work does come back, the conversations I've had with people who are working on more of a skeleton crew at the office, they say that the people who are showing up are definitely benefiting from being there in person. And It'd be hard for me to argue with it because you're fighting against centuries of optimization of the workplace. This is nothing new.

None of this is new. Well, but I think scale is a piece of this. I want to go back to what stays and what goes. So you mentioned the sushi place near you. If they only seat 50 and the world goes back to normal and they can fill those 50 butts in seats twice a night, like you said, that's capacity.

But if he's serving 3 times that on takeout and delivery, If he can handle it, right?

If they can change their operation to support that and subscription and learning, the question becomes, you know, what do you have the scale to do, right?

Or will, or will and desire.

Or will, right, right, right, right. Interesting. So what's your gut? I wanted to spend a couple minutes as we start to get ready to wrap up in a few. Where do you see specifically for events, speaking, etc., there's been a lot of chatter In the thought leader speaker community of it's coming back, it's not coming back. You know, we had pre-Delta, remember Delta? That was so quaint. That was so a while ago, like Q3, Q4.

How is 2021 still in?

Yeah, right. Yeah, Q3 and Q4, you know, events were lit up and then everything got pulled back and now we've got the new one. I think what's happening right now is companies have now done the ultimate A/B test. We lived for 2 years, in essence, without in-person events, with some exceptions, but off by 80-something percent. They've actually done the math. So if you were back in your agency days as an SVP or managing director and you used to go to 12 conferences, which wouldn't be unusual, 10 conferences or whatever, now the organization has done the math and said, you know what, Mitch, pick 2, because every time you leave the office, now we know the true cost. It's $5,000 fully loaded to get on a plane. Your productivity goes down. Pick the 2 that are most important. And to me, and this is where I want to get your thought, is we can deliver content plus or minus this way, and there are pros and cons to it. What I haven't seen done as well is how do we get connection and how do we get community as well this way as we do when we're all in Las Vegas for 2 days together or Scottsdale? Any thoughts on that?

Yeah, lots of thoughts for sure. I mean, one is I do see some of my peers going— they're doing their little year-end wrap. now and live events are back. And I've been out on the road and I've been doing a lot, and I would tell you that live events are not back. I think that people are gathering because they're passionate about gathering. They don't really care what the content is. If you told them it's going to be Donald Duck on stage, they would—

Exactly.

—show up and pay as if it were—

Anything to get out of the house.

I could tell that there was a desire for that connection to be with one another. That was the primary driver.

Exactly.

There's no doubt about that. And I also think about the world, and I've always thought this way. It's interesting. So school would be a great example of this. We had some kids on Our Found Kids, they're now adults, that got accepted into colleges and universities during the pandemic. One of them was Harvard. And the question becomes, does this individual, this young adult, go to Harvard in the middle of a pandemic? And my answer was, take a gap year, and unequivocally no. Because if you consider Harvard to be simply the exchange of information from these professors to this student—

You're missing the boat, right?

I would argue that's probably about 10% of the experience. I think the other 90% is the network you're building, the people you're connecting to, the living on your own, the social—

Life skills.

The life skills, the real business thinking, the ideation that happens over coffee at 2 in the morning or other objects or other, uh, Other influences, whatever it might be.

Yeah, right.

So when I look at live events in relation to the content side of it, my side of it, I've become very cognizant that in this last moment, this last little burst that we had to end 2021, it to me wasn't about the content at all. And that's— I'm belittling my own stuff. I'm saying—

Sure. Yeah, yeah.

It was about people's need or want to finally congregate. And be together and socialize. And I think going forward, what that's going to do is put tremendous pressure on the producers of content, the me's and you's of the world. Because if people are going to sit together in a ballroom, 400, 500, 2,000 people, it better really be relevant. It better really be actionable and tangible. And I think that we didn't realize how, how big of a bull run we were having prior to the pandemic, where you could give a keynote on you know, showing what people did wrong on the internet or, or, or whatever. Like, like, and I'm not belittling that. There's a lot of great speakers.

Well, I used to love—

to me, like, people really want value. And that was in the feedback I saw basically even off of my presentations was, you know, people saying, I needed it to be more directly related to my industry. Now these happen to be industries that would be very, very specific and hard for me to optimize. So that's the thinking that I really think thought leaders have to reflect on is my fee aligned in a world where people don't really want the content right now? And B, if they're really honing in on it, it better be a bullseye. Otherwise, it's not worth their time. They would much rather be in the hallway having more coffee, hanging out with their peers, and doing a mastermind.

And I think the bar has been raised. And it's funny, I've been asking people a form of this question for a while. If you think about some of the best conferences you've gone to over your career, What are the things that you take away? And 95% of the people has nothing to do with, you know, Obama spoke or, you know, world-renowned speakers. It's that was the conference that, you know, Mitch and I met at the bar and we've stayed good friends for 20 years. Or that was the conference that, um, you know, so, you know, I was able to hire so-and-so away from my competitor. It's always the human people stuff. And it's almost like they totally forget about whoever they saw that was so world-renowned and standing ovation and all this sort of other stuff. So I think, you know, I used to— I'm sitting in Las Vegas right now, actually. I used to wander the halls when I was at events and just pop into other events and go, Sure. There's kind of a template. Like, there's the actuaries over there, and here's the IT guys over here, and here's Oracle salespeople over there, and we're all kind of doing the same thing. And is it an excuse to come out and party and drink? I don't know. But I think that connection piece is the missing piece.

Yeah, and in virtual, you know, where, you know, they have breakout rooms, they've done a lot of things to try and make it work. But the truth is, it's still very situational, meaning you're still in the same— like, so if I'm receiving— if you're speaking and you're giving a keynote now, Peter, I'm receiving it. Now, if I'm interacting, like I'm, you know, again, looking into the camera and interacting with you, if suddenly we're in a breakout room, there's 4 people, my situation didn't change. I'm still in my socks.

Right.

I'm not like going to another part. We're not going for a walk. We, we tend to— we as humans think very binary.

Yeah.

Oh, you know, like we're not network— there are many ways to network online that don't involve anything like this. For example, when I share a piece of content, whether it's news-related or whatever, and I ask a question, that's a way that I'm connecting. I'm seeing who's aligned with this, who's not. How does that, you know, trigger a thought from somebody else to come in and add value to that. That's a very powerful form of networking, but we don't associate it with that. I would argue that that's the main way we network online. We find people providing content that is aligned with us or is of interest to us. These are people that are either smarter than us or peers of us, and we want to play within those sandboxes.

Yeah.

That's very powerful networking. And I've made personally some real friends that when we are in our protein forms, is a profound friendship, but it's not networking in the traditional way. So, when we think of networking, we think of how do we get people to congregate? Well, sometimes in text, how we congregate is very different than how we do it if the camera is on. Often, you know, what we saw during the pandemic is people didn't necessarily even wanna show their environment. Like, that's a brand—

Right.

It's all a branding thing. You had the plants behind you. Right, right, right. You had whatever you had.

Right.

And many people don't have the privilege I have.

Sure.

And they don't have a great apartment or a great home. And, you know, they've got dogs and kids barking and, or they're, you know, mad at their spouse or on the verge of maybe their marriage falling apart, and suddenly they have to bare it all because they're working out of their bedroom because their spouse is in the kitchen. There's a reality of what this was that isn't how do we network. And when you talk about that networking piece, I think digital connections are fundamentally different than physical ones, and that's the challenge.

Yeah, no, they are fundamentally different. Well, this has been phenomenal, Mitch. I appreciate your time. I appreciate your insight. Made it easy for me because you're such a great interview.

Thank you so much.

Any, any, any final thoughts, final words of wisdom?

No, thanks for inviting me. I mean, this is a topic that's obviously near and dear to my heart, so I'm happy that we had this conversation and hoping we can do it again sometime.

Yeah, I hope so too. Thank you so much. Have a great New Year.

And to you.