The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 454: Jim Levine - A Conversation With My Literary Agent (How To Write A Great Proposal)

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

Read my new book, The Pursuit Of Excellence https://bit.ly/excellencehawk Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Text Hawk to 66866 for "Mindful Monday" Jim Levine has been a literary agent for more than 30 years. Some of his agency's clients include Ray Dalio, Scott Galloway, Jay Shetty, Gillian Flynn (author of Gone Girl), Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft), Tom Brady, & Giselle Bundchen among others… He also is my book agent and he brokered the deals for my book deals for both Welcome To Management AND The Pursuit of Excellence with McGraw-Hill. Notes: Early in my podcasting career, I asked all authors I recorded who the best book agent was... And many of them said, Jim Levine. "Being an agent is a continuing liberal arts education, it's an opportunity to engage with experts and thought leaders in a wide variety of fields and help shape their work to reach the broadest possible audience." Jim has written and published 7 books and over 100 articles for professional magazines… He's won awards for his work as a writer. He's the founding director of The Fatherhood Project – A 20-year long foundation-supported initiative to increase men's involvement in childrearing in all segments of society. Jim takes us inside the process from book proposal, selling to a publisher, and ultimately getting the book published. "Being an agent is so much more than just selling the book. The relationship is so much more intimate. You have to care." Building a company and a culture of growth... The best book proposals he's read: The Master Algorithm -- Pedro Domingos Welcome To Management Smartcuts by Shane Snow Jim has spent most of his career putting together ideas, people, and money; identifying, nurturing, and marketing talent; and creating projects that make a difference. Jim graduated Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude from Amherst College, winning Woodrow Wilson, Fulbright, and Ford Foundation Fellowships. He holds two advanced degrees in English Literature from UC Berkeley, where he specialized in Shakespeare and modern literary criticism, and a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he specialized in child development and social policy. Advice: Don't think about a job, think about skills you have and challenges you could take on… The WHO is really important - Who you work for... Be a perpetual learner Follow your curiosity Have a wide range of interests What Jim looks for when hiring – Pat Lencioni's humble, hungry, and smart – It's about helping people solve problems.

If you liked episode 424 with Bert Bean and Sam Kaufman, you will love this opportunity. Compass is a division of Insight Global dedicated to helping organizations build incredible cultures. Compass has just launched Culture Academy, and they are opening up the playbook on how a $3 billion company created a massive culture turnaround. Culture Academy is a three-day in-person workshop at their headquarters in Atlanta. Once together, you will work with a group of like-minded leaders interested in learning how to build an excellent culture. Compass gives you a practical framework on how to build a fulfilling culture that drives performance. Go to IGCompass.com to sign up today.

Welcome to The Learning Leader Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. text, Hawk to 66866. That's HAWK to 66866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world will receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive the opportunity to read a portion of my new book,

The Pursuit of Excellence for free if you text Hawk to 66866. Now on to tonight's feature leader of the great Jim Levine. He's been a literary agent for more than 30 years. Some of his agency's clients include Ray Dalio, Scott Galloway, Jay Shetty, Gillian Flynn, who's the author of Gone Girl, Satcha Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, Tom Brady, and Giselle Bunchen, among others. is also my book agent and he brokered the deals for my books welcome to management and the pursuit of excellence with mcgrawl hill a few of the topics we discussed what he needs to see and a potential

client to take them on and why he chose to represent me and then he takes us inside the process from book proposal selling to a publisher and ultimately getting the book published and then how he works to build a culture of growth at his agency. He founded this agency, by the way, and what he looks for when hiring a leader. Ladies and gentlemen, this one is personal to me. It's so good. It's Jim Levine.

Jim Levine, so good to have you here on the Learning Leaders show. Welcome, man. Well, I'm honored to be a guest. I'm looking forward to our chat today. Well, I got to start with how. how we got to know each other. So my friend Joey Coleman, who I met many years ago at a mastermind talks event, told me that he would help me get introduced to you. And the reason that I wanted to meet you initially years ago was as I was interviewing all of these authors on my

podcast, afterwards, after we get them recording, I'd say, by the way, you know, who's the best literary agent in the world. Like, if I wanted to try to really give it a go, who should I work with? And so many people, including many who have never worked with you, said, if you can somehow get Jim Levine, you're set. So before we ever met, man, you became kind of a goal of mine. And so when I got that introduction from Joey Coleman and Sarah Stibbitts, who worked with Joey, helped out making that happen, I was so grateful. And then even more so when you decided to represent me. So I just got to say that's kind of the backstory. I don't know if I've told you all of that,

but I really appreciate the fact that you've taken a shot on me. Well, I'm flattered. That's very kind of it. I'm curious, though, because I don't know if we ever talked about this. You know, my proposal, I sent it to you. I'm an unknown author. I have a bit of a platform from a podcasting space, but certainly had never written a book before.

And I know I got recommended by a few friends, but that doesn't, you know, it doesn't mean you got to, you have to say yes, because you're getting pitched every day. What was it if you can remember years ago that you read that and thought, yeah, I want to take a shot on this guy? I think there were three things. One, the topic, welcome to management, just intrigued me.

I didn't start out in a leadership, in a management role. I was an academic for a long time. As an academic, you're often working alone on your own stuff. when I became a manager for the first time, I realized, oh, my God, I'm totally unprepared for this. I mean, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. And I didn't have anybody to look to. I never received any guidance about this role. So one, I was interested in the topic was sort of, wow, I could have used this book way back when.

The second was when I looked at the proposal. the way it was organized, the sort of topics and questions you were addressing and the way you were doing it were just spot on. So it was a topic I was interested in. That in itself wouldn't have suffice because if the book wouldn't have been, if the book didn't look solid enough and offering what I needed, so second, it looked like you're going to deliver on what I needed. and what I think so many other people need. I mean, my sense is, you know, part of my job is helping to develop talent. So if I can find something that will help develop other people's talent in becoming managers or whatever, that's part of my service to the world.

And third, and, you know, very important was you mentioned a few people recommend you do. It was not just Joey and Sarah, but my client, Patrick Lynch-jone. And Pat has been such a really an important influence in my life and in the growth of our agency. You know, he's been a terrific client to work with, we've become friends. But we actually use one of his guiding principles as a foundation of our agency. And that's who to hire, what, you know, who to look for. and you know you write about this and you know that it's the who not the what it's who you hire that's the most important well how do you know who to hire what should you be looking for and our mantra is humble hungry and

smart and that's what we've taken directly from patrick let's joni so as a team when we're going to do a new hire we get together and we make it very clear you know there's on the one hand there's a set of job responsibilities. This is what this person will have to do. But overarching all of that is what are the qualities or characteristics of this person that we're looking for? That is the most important. A few years ago, we were looking for a new assistant. There was a team of people who did the, you know, receiving the applications, vetting people finally came to, you know, me and a small team, my partners. We had a few people, there were down to two finalists. And one of them was a young woman who had gone to Harvard. She was Chinese-American. She spoke Mandarin. She spoke English.

As a student at Harvard, she had interned for the Wall Street Journal where she'd written an article. She was brilliant. I mean, she was like a rocket ship just taking off. The other, was a guy who had gone to a small Christian college that I had never heard of. And, you know, on paper, it was like, well, choice is kind of obvious. But, you know, in terms of, you know, who had achieved more in a sense. But when we interviewed them, it became clear that the young woman who had gone to Harvard was so full of herself. She just wasn't going to fit into our culture.

She might have had the talent, but she wouldn't fit with our team. The young man who we interviewed, one of the, and he had no backman in publishing at all, but we asked him to talk about his work and what he had done. He described working in a department store,

one of his jobs, you know, as a student, and how he just showed so much initiative in helping customers solve problems in helping other members of the team. And there was just a sense, you know, that's what we're looking for. So we hired the young man. It was fabulous. When we didn't hire the young woman, I called her and I said, look, I want to explain to you. You're enormously qualified. But I just want to explain to you why you didn't get the deal.

job with us because maybe this can help you in some other job. I explained to her what our criteria were. She wasn't her lack of talent, but we were concerned that she was too self-referential. She was too, in a sense, smart for her own good and that she might want to be self-aware going into other interviews. And I also told her, look, you're not. If I hear of something that would fit your talents, I will recommend you. But when you go into the interview, try to remember what I just said.

Wow. Yeah, go ahead. So that was a long answer to the third part of why we took you was because of Pat Lanchone. But Pat Linschione is somebody who's had a big influence on me and on our, you know, the sort of culture we've established at our age. agency. I'm obviously a big Pat fan. He wrote the forward to my second book, The Pursuit of Excellence, super grateful for his counsel and advice. And he's been, I mean, I was a huge fan of his before I met him. And so then sometimes it's dangerous to meet your heroes, and especially the ones who

write books that change your life. And then you do and they're even better. It's pretty neat. It's just a, it's a really cool thing about being able to do this, this podcast. And Pat actually never told me that. So that's pretty cool to hear. He never told me that he had spoken up for me. So I'm grateful that he did that. I'm going to send him a note after this conversation. So I'm curious, what got you into this? Because the other thing as I was preparing, Jim, is I didn't fully realize what a prolific writer you are in your own right, right? I believe you published seven books from what I read. You've over 100 articles and magazines. So you're extremely prolific writer. And you kind of shift.

from that, and I'm sure you're still right, but you shift from that to then putting deals together where you're working with talent, connecting them with publishers, and then saying, okay, here, we're going to get the book deal done. I'm fascinated by the industry of it. And now that I'm more in it, it's pretty cool to see it go down and look at the contracts and actually sign a couple of them myself. What got you into this? What made you want to put talent together with publishers? I think putting talent together or developing talent is just something I've always enjoyed doing. I'm a lapsed academic. I never thought of myself as being an agent. But as an academic, I was a very entrepreneurial academic. I would come up with ideas from big projects, mostly related to children and families and social change. I would go out, write proposals, go out to the big foundations, had some success and pulling in a lot of grants.

And then we had to put a team together. And then we would together do research, write books, develop training programs. Again, I didn't even think of myself as an agent. I was the quote president of the media group, which was the name of my new group. along the way, I get a call from a guy who says, a guy named Michael Rothschild who says, I'd like you to be my agent. And I said, Michael, I don't know what you mean. I'm not an agent.

He said, well, you just negotiated a deal with my wife who was at Brutterbund, software company. And she said, you should be my agent. And I said, well, you know, tell me about the project. He had a really interesting idea for a book called Bionomics, Economy as Ecosystem, that was sort of looking at the economy not as a machine, but as a biological dynamic system. And I'm just curious about lots of things. I'm sort of a lifelong learner.

And I said, you know, that's a neat idea. I went to the president of the college and said, look, this thing came along. I don't want there to be any real or perceived kind. conflict of interest, can I take this on as a side project? And he said, that's fine. And I did it. And we developed a proposal. I sold it. It was really interesting. And I thought, wow, this is something I could do. When I left Bank Street after nine years, I took them as my first client, but I sort of branched out. I was fortunate enough that many of the academics in my alleged area of expertise, you know, child development, family relations,

psychology, knew I had been an entrepreneurial academic, sought me out, you know, could I represent them in their books? And things just grew. And the first client, Michael Rothschild, led to the second client, Jeffrey Moore, who wrote Crossing the Casm. I had no experience formally in publishing. I mean, I didn't, you know, work inside a publishing company. I just sort of, it was just interesting to me. It was the chance to work with interesting people. It was really doing what I had always done as an academic, which was to help develop talent of other people and help them write books or, you know, think of it if I was guiding somebody's thesis. I'd be having conversations with them helping shape their work.

helping them write the manuscript. Well, this was just doing it in the commercial realm. And it just sort of expanded and moved into other topics, business being one of them and management technology. And it just started growing. I started hiring people because I couldn't do the whole thing myself. And as I say on the website, I just think of as a, to me, this job is a continuing liberal arts education. I get to work with, you know, thought leaders like you and others helping them shape their ideas.

And, you know, if we have some success, turning them into commercial products that produce revenue for both of us, but also can have an impact on the world. So, you know, I see this job. It's just really fun. It's just really interesting. I like the intellectual challenge of working with smart people to help them develop. And, you know, I'm a coach, is what I am. I'm a coach to my clients. I'm a coach to the members of our team.

And that's just a role that I feel very comfortable and fulfilled in, is helping to develop other people's talent. It's just, you know, it's great. And it doesn't. you know, there's no physical limitation. So I can keep doing this as long as my mind is, is okay. You know, I have no plans of ever retiring. This is, I've scaled down a number of people I can take on.

How many do you work with? Yeah. How many do you personally work with now, authors? Well, you know, it depends because projects are in, you have to, there's initiating an idea, deciding to take somebody on. Then there's being in the middle of a project. then there's the thing's about to launch,

then after it's launched. You know, at any one time, I'm not working with more than one or two people in a highly intense way to develop things. But you need to think of it as a series of overlapping sign waves. And any time, I'm not working with more people than I can responsibly pay my attention to, because attention is really important.

People need to feel like they're being taken care of. Sure. I remember. And I have terrific colleagues too. Yeah. Yeah. I remember the feeling of getting back your notes and edits, you and the team's notes and edits on both of my proposals and then further work beyond that. It just, I don't know about how other authors are. I know it's such an easy place to where you live inside the material so much that you start like hating it.

You know what I mean? Like there are parts of it that you love, but you're like, God, I've read this so many times. So getting the notes back that then, whether it's arrangement or the way we solved, like, attacked an issue or a problem or how we started a chapter, whatever may be, that feedback from you and your team brings me a lot of confidence because I know a pro has, as they've had their eyes on it and they're making it better. And so I think it's not just about brokering a deal to get the advance and to make sure it gets sold to a publisher, it's making the work better for the reader.

And it makes the author feel better too. And I think that's a really cool part about this, like what the work that you do, it's not just about getting the deal done and then saying, oh, well, let me know when you got another book. You know, there's so much more to it than that. Yeah, well, I'm glad you're appreciated, recognize that because that's a lot of the fun for me and my colleagues. I think it's easy to sort of stereotype or,

maybe the typical the way people who don't know about this job think, oh, that's, you know, that's the guy who makes the deal. It's like a real estate agent selling the house, making the deal. Take the money and move on to the next. That's not what our work is like at all. Obviously, we want to sell projects and make money, but the relationship is so much more intimate and long term. To be successful at this, you really have to care about your client. You have to care about their topic intellectually. I mean, if you're going to be successful and good about this and fulfilled. You have to care about the person you're working with.

And you have to, in my mind, you have to care beyond the one book. I mean, you have to see them as somebody who you can work with and help develop over a longer period of time. So you're helping develop the materials, selling it. But you don't, at least in our agency, we don't disappear. We're very involved. You know, and we also, you know, we have what I like to describe as a culture of growth.

You know, I know you're a fan of Carol Dweck mindset. I'm happy to say that I now represent Carol. And, you know, having a growth mindset is just crucial to me as an individual, but I think it's fundamental to our agency. And one of the things that we've done is that every project has a lead agent, but that agent is sharing his or her work with others on the team. So everybody on the team is not just developing their own work.

They're helping their colleagues, and they're learning from their other colleagues work. So it's, in a sense, the feeling of our agency is more like being back in the, back in the academy, back in the university where you're working with colleagues, you know, to shape something together. And there's just, it's just a, it's a very fulfilling feeling individually. I think it's why, you know, we have very low turnover. I mean, people stay a long time. A lot of people want to work for us. And I think it's because it, I like to think, I hope it's, it's not just because of the money. It's really because people,

feel that they are being developed as individuals and that they are helping develop others, not just their clients, but others on the team and the clients of other people. So there's a real satisfaction when you sell a project, any of us sell a project and we know, hey, yeah, I contributed to that. You know, it's like a football team, you know, in the sense that, you know, the guards and the tackles and all of the, it's not just the quarterback. It's not just the running back who scored the touchdowns. A lot of people who contributed to the success of this, and they can take pride, even if they're not getting the front billing. I love for you to take us inside. I mean, I've lived it now a couple times, but I think people are really curious about how does this

whole thing work. So let's say the proposal's done and it's ready to be shopped and it goes to like bid and you shop it around to different publishers because I remember when you said for my first one. I guess to fast forward, McGraw-Hill had 30 days as part of our contract. I think this is normal right that they had first right of refusal for my second book. And they ended up making a nice offer for the second book. And we took it before we even shoped it. So we did shop the first one. We did not shop the second one because of those 30 days. And they, they stepped up. But the first one, when you said, hey, we're going to get multiple bids. We're going to get multiple offers. you can talk to the people then who make the offers to kind of get a feel for who's going to lead the project with you,

who's going to be your editor, I remember. And I just think it's like a really neat process. So can you walk through not just mine or you can use mine or you can use others as examples of when you then start shopping the proposal, the bids come in and you have to make a decision on who you're going to go with and what goes into that decision. Sure. It varies considerably. But once you're at the point of submitting a proposal, At that point, we decide what's the best way to sell this book?

In some cases, we decide, look, I just know who the perfect editor for this book will be. And if you as a client, you know, we do this in collaboration and the consent of our client. But if you're okay with that, let me submit it to Editor X. Because if Editor X likes it, I think you'd just be a great fit. And if we can get the right money that meets your goals and your needs, you know, I don't think we need to take this out to many people. And sometimes that works and it's terrific and works out for everybody. And that's the most efficient way in the sense of doing it.

Other times, we have to decide, well, should we then just send this to just a few agents, excuse me, a few editors, or should we submit it widely? Again, it depends on the nature of our assessment of the project and who, it's, it's, we're matchmakers, you know, so it's like, you know, think of it as dating. You've got a friend, you want to introduce the people, you know, do you say, I got just the right person or it's, well, you know, I got, there's three people I can think up who would be perfect. You say, well, no, actually, I don't know.

Let's just, I'm going to. I'm going to put you on Match.com, we're going to find a ton of different people out there. We have to first decide what's the approach we're taking. If we've got multiple editors interested, then we have to figure out what's the best way to close on the deal. And there are several options. Sometimes you come out of meetings with editors,

and it's just clear that a certain editor in publishing house would be the right fit. And in that case, what we do is we figure out what we need or want. We go to that editor and try to make a deal before going to auction. If it's not clear that there's a preferred publisher, we set up an auction, many people think that the best way to get the most money in an auction would be to have what's called a round rob an auction, Kind of like selling a painting you've seen, you know, in movies, Sotheby's, you know, raise your hand, $5, $10, $15, whatever.

And that whoever is the left that standing at the end gets the painting. And sometimes we choose that approach, especially when the client says, look, all of these editors are great. I could work with any of them. and let's just do a round robin. But I only want to do a round robin if I'm confident that I'm going to have two publishers who are going to duke it out getting us to a high level. For example, let's say there are five editors interested.

And if one of them would be willing to spend, let's say, hypothetically, pick a large number, or $500,000. And the others are all the highest they would bid is $100,000. If I have a round robin, we're going to end with four people at 100. The person who was at 500 can now buy it for 110,000 because they have to have a 10%, do 10% better. So we'll be leaving a significant amount of money on the table.

So part of the agent's role is to figure out. And a lot of this just goes based on experience. There's no, you know, it's kind of like a game of poker, really. Who's got, well, who's holding what cards and what are they willing to put down on the table? A lot of this is just experience and being able to advise the client on which path to take. If we don't do a round robin, we do what's called a one-time best bids auction where publishers get one shot. And the way we conduct those is we always reserve the right of the client to select the best offer combining not just money but other factors. We don't want things to be driven solely by money unless that's what the client wants.

So in that case, they can often be a, we've had Best Bidge auction where the spread has been 35, 50, 75, 350. So it's, you know, it's just crazy that, you know, how people will value intellectual property. There's a third one where we sometimes, if we have a ton of interest, we've had situations where we've had, say, 15 or 18 publishers interest in the project. We'll combine, we'll have multiple best bid rounds that will say, we'll, you know, we're going to have an opening round. And from that, we will select five. those five will move on to the next round. From those, we'll select three.

From those, you'll have a chance to, then we'll either move it into a round robin or continue with the best bid. So there are many ways of doing this, and a large part of an agent's role is to know which path to follow and recommend to the client based on the agent's understanding of the marketplace. Wow.

And then the way that you get the advance and you get part of the advance when you do the deal and you get the rest of it when you turn it in or there are different ways from an author's perspective. And then the goal of an author, at least for me, I know most authors is to try to out earn the advance and then you start earning royalties after if you out earn the advance. Jim, how many people actually out earn their advance? I've heard the number is very low. It's very low. It's between one in four and one and five. Wow. So the publishers basically say we're going to place a bet on you and we know we're going to lose four out of five times and we're okay with those odds. We're okay because the one we hit, we're going to kill? Or like, how does that, how does that math and wait?

That's, that's, you got it. Okay. That's the way it works. It's a, I teach, I teach a course in the NYU summer public. institution on the role of the agent. And at the end of it, I say to all the students, welcome to the casino. Because, you know, that's really what publishing, whether it's publishing or think of it in movie, entertainment, you know, any of this stuff. It's, we've, you know, we've turned into such

of a kind of a blockbuster economy for intellectual property where there's one book that will just, or one film that just goes, crazy. And, you know, many publishers work on that model. But there are other publishers who just, their economic model is we're not going to pay huge advances. Our model is over the long term. We'll pay modest advances. We have to find the right authors. And we hope over the long term, books will succeed. Publishers succeed with a combination of two things. One is the blockbuster. But the other is what's called the backlist. That is the book that keeps selling and selling.

Your books, Ryan, are backlist sellers. They're the sorts of books that you don't expect, you know, a million people right away to buy welcome to management. But over the years, as you've gotten every year, you've got new people coming in to be managers who need that sort of guidance. So your book is what I call an evergreen title, a book that it will always be relevant and that will continue to be on the backlist. And in the long term, publishers stay in business because of the backlist. And agencies, same thing with agencies, the more you're able to develop a backlist so that going into the next year, you know you can predict you have a certain number of titles that sell regularly. and are going to generate a certain amount of revenue, that helps keep you in business. And, you know, you still, every, every year is, it's, it's, we're like a startup every year.

I mean, we got, but to the extent that you can take some of the hedge some of the startup risk by having a backlist, then you as a publisher or as an agent are in a better economic position. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's always great to launch big and I certainly try hard. But I spoke with another author named Rob Fitzpatrick about this. And he's like, I'm going to go hard to sell a certain number with my own platform and myself. But then the book needs to be good enough that word of mouth keeps it rolling. And I think that's what I'm proud of when I look at the sales, see them come in where there's some big pops here and there are some weeks here where it's like, oh, wow, okay.

Like this thing is still going. And it's years later. That's why I want to do for the rest of my career is because can continue to both publish, evergreen podcast episodes as well as evergreen books that they're not really have anything to do with the current landscape of the day. There are things that you could read many, many years later and they'll be useful for you, whatever the topic may be. So I think that that's the, I'm, Jim, I got a couple super superlatives, like some quick ones that I'm curious about because you've had such a incredible career. I mean, for those who don't know, as part of your agency,

because I know you have different lead agents on on all of these books. but you've had the likes of Ray Dalio, Scott Galloway, Tom Brady, Giselle, both of them have published books through your agency that you guys have represented. You mentioned Lynchioni and now Carol Dweck and Jay Shetty. Gileon Flynn from Gone Girl, that was a cool one to see on your website. Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, like so many people. I'm curious, it may not be any of them. What's the best book proposal you've ever seen?

That is a really interesting question. Okay, let me explain it this way. Okay. It is very rare for us to get a book proposal that is just ready to submit to a publisher. And again, this is part of an agent's role that I think it's important for people to understand. I mean, your initial proposal was great, actually. I think we did very little work on that initial proposal. you're a rarity.

I mean, I'd say. I got a, by the way, I got a ton of help. I asked for help of authors like Ryan Holiday, Sarah Stibbitt's helped. And there are many who had published big time books who I went to them. Michael Hyatt, there are some others that I went to them

and said, can I see yours and use them as models and kind of took the best, this is what I do with a lot of stuff in my life, but I took the best of what I found from like, I don't know, six, seven, eight different really impressive authors. And I, and they, they were kind enough to send me their proposal,

which I know some people are, you know, cautious with that. And then I thought, oh, I like that. I like that. I like that.

Let's organize it this way. I think you guys changed some of the order a little bit. From what I remember on the first one and the second one, but for the most part, yeah, it was, it was, it was because of the help of so many amazing people that it,

I think it put it in a better place to be more ready to go, maybe than some. There were two others I can think of aside from yours. So I can really count them on the fingers of one hand. This is over almost 33 years in terms of proposal ready to go. I mean, it's such a rarity. One other was by our client, Pedro Dominguez, for a book called The Master Algorithm.

He's a beautiful writer. It was just stunning. And the other was really interesting. my client, Shane Snow, came in. Love Shane. Shane came in and we just had a kind of a rough idea. We were brainstorming. And really at about an hour's conversation, me asking him questions, him jutting things down.

Yes, do this, do this, do that, do that. Five days later, this is going from a lot. kind of a half-baked, half-formed idea. Five days later, he submitted something that was just, you know, a killer proposal. So that's three times. You, Pedro, and Shane, that, you know, most of them, we spend a ton of time working on to develop. I didn't realize, Shane, but I just had dinner with him last month in New York City. He's the best.

Man, talk about writers envy. I have that a lot. but man, with him, I read his stuff and just think, is there, is there any way I can ever get that good at this? I know comparison is the thief of joy. You shouldn't do it. But, but with his stuff, I love, love him as a guy and certainly as a writer. And I was pushing him. I know he's working on a lot of different projects now. I'm like, you got to keep writing those books. I love smart cuts, love dream teams. He's a good dude. Okay. How about for somebody who wants to write a book? and let's say they actually have a bit of a platform because I know the platform is also part of it.

Like in book publishers, other authors have told me, you know, they don't pay you to write the book. They pay you to sell the book, right? And so part of selling a book is having a platform. I know, let's assume that somebody has some sort of a platform and there's just that that's, that's there. What are some other pieces of advice you'd give to somebody who feels like they have a kind of a life-changing idea for their readers? but they don't even know kind of what to do or where to start or how to go about it. Like what do you say, I'll just go to the self-publishing route. Don't even mess with this of trying to get an agent or what would you say?

I know this is broad, but I'm curious. For anybody who's got, thinks they may want to write a book, my recommendation for the first stop is to get a copy of the essential guide to getting your book published, which is, subtitled how to write it, sell it, and market it successfully. It's written by my colleague, Ariel Eckstutt, who's now an agent at large with our agency and her husband, also a client of ours, David Sterry. It is the most comprehensive, thorough guide to, not just to, what's smart about this book and what distinguishes it from other writing guides. It explains how, the publishing industry works from the point of view of the people you'll be dealing with, editor, publisher, sales, marketing. It's how you can be most helpful to them,

which will in turn enable them to be most helpful to you. So it's, it's, and it's, it's a original trade paperback. I think you can get it for like 15 bucks. It is, it's like 450 pages. it is just the bargain of the century. And it's a fun read. That's like publishing 101. Can't recommend it highly enough. What do you think of the traditional publishing versus self-publishing? Self-publishing is much easier now today because of Amazon and all the other.

A lot of companies, the hybrid publishers are out there to make it easier where you pay them instead of them paying you. And then maybe you keep more on the back end. what do you think of the industry as a whole? We work with some of those publishers. We had a guided self-publishing program for a while. We're kind of realizing for some authors that would make more sense to self-publish or go to hybrid model,

but as easy as it is, it wasn't as easy as it needed to be for them. They needed still some handholding. So we're involved in that. And again, it really, you know, sometimes we'll advise somebody to self-publish and if they can get some success behind them, then we can go and bring them to a bigger publisher. You know, we approach anybody who comes to us to really be honest brokers and tell them how we help, we think, how they can succeed, not just how we can succeed. In the long run, I think that will work to us if we do a good job in helping them succeed. They will be grateful.

Maybe they'll think of us for the future or recommend people. But I just, so we really, it's, it's a very bespoke approach. You know, what's the suit that's going to work for this person? What's the right approach to publishing? There are many out there. And we just try to guide people along the right path. Yeah. Gotcha.

One more is. You've worked with some amazing people. You surround yourself with a great team. You're in the middle of an extraordinary career yourself. What are some, like let's say you're meeting with a person who's fresh out of college, maybe a year or two. And Jim, you know, I want to leave a debt in the world. I want to make a difference.

I want to do well. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to that person? To me, for a person starting out, I would say, don't think about a job per se. Think about skills you have and the types of challenges you would like to take on. Because I think you can find, if you think that way, it opens up a much broader spectrum of jobs to consider. People get, I think, so locked into thinking,

I want to be a X or a Y or a Z. And they narrow their focus and don't realize that there are just such a broad range of jobs out there. The second thing is it's really important who you work for. It's not just what you're doing. And if you can find in your first job and then a series of jobs, a mentor, a leader, a coach, somebody who will recognize your talent and help develop it, it, I think that's one of the most important things you can do in your life. I mean, it's something which I'm trying to do is be a good coach to other people.

Whatever, you know, if somebody, young person comes to work for us and then decides they want to go and do something else, that's fine by me. If we've helped develop their talent, I came out of college thinking it's a straight line path. I wanted to be a, I was much too locked into thinking I wanted to be a professor of English. I was going to be tenured by the time I was 30. Man, was that the wrong approach? You know, it's a zigzag. And if you're open to the zigzag and zigging and zagging and zagging with advice and coaching from the right people,

you can have a very satisfying life. Awesome. Jim, thanks so much. much for doing this. I'm really appreciative of not only your time today, but just you as a mentor and a guide for me and certainly for having my best interest with something as personal as my books, both the ones that I've written and the ones I will in the future, man, it means so much to me to care and love you and the whole team put towards them to make them better and then to take it out into the world and sell them for me, man, because

a that's a part of this too, is I want, I want these messages and the things I'm learning to spread and I need help in order to do that. And you're a massive part of that. I'm super grateful for you, man. Well, it's a privilege to be on the show, a privilege to represent you. And, you know, Ryan, your books are books that I give out to other people. I got somebody coming into a new management role now with a new book coming out, somebody who's been in that role, but needs to up their game. You know, those are books like the three on my shelf, you know, the Covey, the Yuri, and the Shade Meng Tang that, you know,

I'm recommending to people because they're meeting that challenge of being managers and they need help and you're the guy that gives it. Thank you. Thank you. I can promise I'm going to, the repetition of writing is anyone who's interested in writing. I know this has to be for anybody, just like it's speaking on a stage, doing a podcast, but regularly. sitting down and doing the work that that's how it gets better. And I say that to you as as almost

a public promise that I am super committed to getting better at this thing that is so hard. But it's so gratifying and fulfilling when you could put a good page together, a good chapter together, a good book together. You're thinking, oh, my goodness, this is useful, I think. And I love that challenge because it's a massive one. And it's, but it's super rewarding and fun and something that I want to continue doing for the rest of my career because I think it's good to always be kind of pushing your edges of what's comfortable and what's not. And I think being original and helpful and entertaining and useful in the written form is one of the hardest things to do. And so I just love the challenge. And again, just grateful for you and the team to have to support me

and all that, man. Keep on, keeping on. Thanks, man. We'll obviously be continuing. this dialogue as we're both for us. I appreciate it, man. Take care. I'm really grateful for Jim Levine and his guidance and counsel and mentorship over the years. I'm grateful that he continues to choose to represent my ideas, especially when it comes to writing books, which is something I hope to do for a long time. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did a few takeaways from my notes. Don't think about a job. Think about skills you have. And and challenges you could take on and take that approach to your career,

as well as focusing on the who. Jim mentioned this that multiple points are in our conversation, the who you choose to surround yourself with, who you choose to work for, who you choose to work with, the companies, the culture, all of that I think is huge. And then what he looks for when hiring,

Pat Linscioni's humble, hungry, and smart. It's about helping people solve problems. And as he mentioned, And he turned down the person who certainly looked better on paper for the one that he found to be more humble, hungry, and smart. And he's built quite an agency using that hiring profile. And then I love how he describes being an agent. It says a continuing liberal arts education. It's an opportunity to engage with experts and thought leaders in a wide variety of fields and help shape their work to reach the broadest possible audience.

Jim is a broker of ideas. a wise mentor that his authors go to for not only book advice but life advice. So that's why I'm grateful to have him in my life. Again, I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did. I am so grateful for you for telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode with the great Jim Levine. It will help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that and because you continue to write reviews,

and rate the show, hopefully five stars on Apple Podcasts. You are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can we?