How Small Details Drive Career Performance (and Wealth)

You’ve probably heard the phrase “don’t sweat the small stuff.”

Well, I’m here to tell you to do the exact opposite.

If you want to perform at the highest level, if you want to grow in your role, get promoted, or become a standout in your field, you better sweat the small stuff. 

Because that’s where mastery lives. 

This week, I’m sharing one of the most important performance lessons I can give you. 

Whether I’m talking about writing emails, managing a team, speaking with clients, or building a long-term financial future, the people who succeed are the ones who obsess (productively) over the right things. 

In this talk, I’ll walk you through:

• Why greatness lives in the details (with stories to prove it).
• How top performers think differently about their craft.
• A powerful health and wealth analogy that might just change how you approach your career.

You’ll come away with a better approach for how to improve your day-to-day work and make long-term progress in your profession and finances. 

Just 8:46 and one of the best mental models I’ve shared… 

If you'd like to build a great career and lead a rewarding life, check out some of these other places where I share my teachings:

1. Check out the milewalk Academy, my coaching and training site, for freemiums and premiums.

2. I have hundreds of educational and inspirational videos on my YouTube Channel.

3. Grab any of my four books related to career development, interviewing, hiring, and goal setting. All can be found on my Amazon Author Page.

4. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter (X), TikTok, Threads, and Facebook.

5. Stay in touch with me in your email inbox by joining my newsletter here!

--Andy

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Because the details in anything that you do and being very detail- oriented in the way in which
you approach it and the way in which you analyze it is ultimately what is going to help you build
your skills and become the greatest at whatever it is that you do. And anything that and anything
that you do in your life that you're going to put some effort into is worth doing well. And so what

(00:21):
do I mean by this? Well, if you think about like just basketball, right? it when you think about a
major aspect of basketball is is shooting the ball and that's what a lot of people would would see
immediately or soccer kicking the ball or baseball hitting the ball or whatever it is. But there's
so many facets that go along with being a great anything. So the basketball player has to be able

(00:44):
to shoot in from different angles, different positions, but also has to dribble the ball.
There's offensive strategy, there's defensive strategy, there's conditioning, and there's a
whole host of things that make them great at that. You I think about like skills that I need to build
in anything that I do. I sent you an email this morning and yesterday, the day before and the day
before. You've gotten an you gotten four emails. Actually, you might even four or five emails in a

(01:08):
row from me. Writing is a skill, right? And most people would think, well, if you want to send a
better email, you need to be a better writer. And I would say maybe I don't know writing is a skill
and that's what most people would concentrate on except that writing the email is yes I need to be
good at writing but what makes the email great is not the way I write it. It's the content of what

(01:32):
I write about. It's the manner in which I write the email. Because the ultimate goal for me is not
to write you an email. That is never my goal. My goal isn't even for you to read the email.
My goal is to put a a deliverable together that hits your inbox where you read it, look at it,

(01:53):
and it inspires you to do something. That's my goal. All right. Well, that means I have to
understand or imagine who you are, the struggles you're going through, why you would be reading the
email in the first place, what your goals might be, your aspirations, your problems. That requires
me to think about you. That's a whole another skill. and understanding human behavior. There's

(02:15):
the subject matter of what I'm writing about. That's another skill and so on. Those are all the
little details. And what I think most people don't do in their lives is they don't pay attention to
all the other aspects that make the greatest the greatest. Who understands what I'm saying? Give
me a hey in the chat if you're following so far. This is really, really important. And one of the

(02:35):
things I was thinking about and that you might know about me is I'm fanatical about my health.
And I've always been on top of it, but I've become obsessive in the last few years. And when
I delivered this financial fitness talk originally back in March, so a few months ago, it was part of
a 3-day workshop that I called the life equation. The first part of the of the life equation was

(03:01):
about how time, health, and money affect all the decisions that you make in your life and
how early on in your life you have more time, you have better health, but you have less money and
you get the idea and that changes over time. The next day was about health and the final day was
about finances. And I want to give you analogy about how I want you to consider your finances.

(03:22):
So, when I think about my health, you might think about, oh, well, um, you know, hey, I want to lose
weight, right? Any doctor tell you that you're too you're too fat, you're too obese, you need to lose
weight, right? It'll go easier on your heart and your cholesterol will go down and all this other
stuff, right? Well, there's a lot to you losing weight to become healthier. And when you look at

(03:43):
what goes into that calories, even if you don't understand that much about the metabolism and all
this stuff, but you'll be able to follow this calories, the amount of calories that you eat
is going to determine your weight. The 150 lbs or whatever it is that you are, right? How much you
take in is going to determine how heavy you are. And of course, what most people do when they try

(04:06):
to get healthier is they starve themselves and they try to eat less calories. That would be what
I would call the big thing that they want to do. Except that when you really look under the hood,
there's the calories that you take in that makes up your total weight. But there's macronutrients,
protein, fat, and carbohydrates that determines your composition. That determines what the 150

(04:28):
pounds looks like. And that might be pretty good if you can if you can understand that. But the
other element is well how do you feel or how do you perform when you're walking running swimming
whatever it is that you're doing your performance in your sport well that's incumbent and dependent
upon your micronutrients the is the magnesiums the electrolytes the vitamins the minerals the

(04:52):
potassium the sodium well there's all that too and if you're not paying attention to that that's
what's really actually going to help you perform and when you think about money. What most people
do is they think about the big stuff, the calorie count, the income, and they think, "I'll just earn

(05:12):
more and then I'll be I'll be set." And that's not that's not true because you're probably just
going to spend more. Lifestyles creep, right? You're going to buy the bigger house when you
make more money. That's what most people do. And again, they don't accumulate wealth. They
look rich on the outside, but they're not really wealthy. And then there's the second aspect that
those macro that anal an analogous macronutrients not the proteins, the fat and the carbohydrates,

(05:38):
but what what determines your composition is your spending patterns. Can you get on defense? Do you
actually have a budget? Do you understand what you're spending what you're spending on that
matters? What you're spending that you're wasting? But what really really makes you wealthy is the
performance and the micronutrients in this analogy are your investments. Where are you putting the

(06:04):
money that you're saving and what are you doing with it? I assure you if you're tucking it in your
mattress, you will never accumulate wealth. You won't because your money won't be worth tomorrow
what it is worth today. And if you're hanging on to it, that is not a recipe to get wealthy.
That's just hoarding. who understands what I'm saying? There's more there's more to this than

(06:27):
just making more money. And I would argue with you that any of you on here that are listening
to me can become wealthy on the salary that you currently have. It's true because I'm telling
you that economic security is not a function of income. It is not a function of intellect. It

(06:49):
is a function of behavior. And if your behavior is not dialed in correctly, you will never accumulate
wealth. You won't sleep at night because you'll be worried about how to pay the mortgage. And
so what what we're going to talk about today is the behavioral aspect. Yes, we're going to talk
about some of the investment patterns and you can ask me questions about all that good stuff,

(07:09):
but I want you to know that's really, really true. And if you don't believe me, the math is simple.
If you manage to say, if you're 22, all you 22 year olds out there, if you managed to save $10 a
day, literally $10 a day for 30 years, you'd have a million58,000. A,58,000 if you save 10 bucks

(07:34):
a day. But the real kicker is you will only have needed to save and invest less than 110,000. 1095
to be more specific. That's $300 a month. That's 7075 a week. And I don't know where you get that,
but I'm guessing that you can probably squeeze that out from something you're spending currently.

(07:59):
And if you actually became what? Disciplined because you had the behavior dialed in that says,
"I'm going to take the 10 each day and invest it or the 50 or 100red a week." And wait, and that
that means whatever you're earning right now, if you could actually make it and let time be your
friend at an average rate of return of any 30 year historical average for all for all time. Those are

(08:25):
the numbers. Now, double the number, triple the number, or what about when you can invest
$100 a day? Just think about that. So, a lot of people say, "I'm not sure where the money went."
That's true because you weren't tracking it. But what I would say to you is you're not sure where
time went because time is your best friend when it comes to earning uh and accumulating wealth.