#35: Jon Finkel - Writing & Publishing 10 Books

Alright, welcome to another episode of Cyber Patterns. Today we have a very special guest on, Jon Finco. He's the award-winning author of Hoops Heist, The Life of Dad, Jocks and Chiefs, The Athlete, Hard Over Height, Mean Joe Greene, and more. His books have been endorsed by everyone from Mark Cuban to Spike Lee and Kevin Durant. He's written for GQ, Men's Health, and the New York Times, and much more. I learned a lot from this conversation about writing, getting articles published in magazines, and getting books published. Really enjoyed this conversation. The fire alarm is ringing right now in my apartment, so I'm about—

but I hope you enjoy.

Yeah, so, uh, first couple questions. Um, so I was reading your career bio, talking your way into a PA job. with Jimmy Kimmel and, and, uh, that show. How did, how did you do that? Respect the hustle, respect the finesse. So what's the story?

Um, so I actually, my job was at the lot, so it was called Hollywood Center Studios. And so I just moved out there after college. You know, you're just kind of hustling. I was sleeping on a friend's couch and somebody knew somebody who could, you know, basically I was unloading trucks. That was my, my job was just, uh, when a studio show would end or they were taping something, I would unload the set, load the set. I was strong, you know, whatever. That was it. I could pick things up that were heavy with my main job. And obviously I wanted to write. I had things I wanted to do, but I had heard from a lot of people like, just get, get on a lot, like just be where things are happening, meet people, talk, whatever. You're not going to get some big writing job right out of school with nothing for you. And so I was doing a bunch of shows and one of the shows that I was setting up You know, there was a show called Mad TV that was on for a while. You're probably too young for it, but it was, had Frank Caliendo and some other people on it. They were leaving and they shared, the set was switching over to The Man Show. And the one office that the two hosts of The Man Show were Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla, and then their executive producer. And so my first thing, they were the first guys there 'cause they were the stars of the show. And my first job with that show was honestly loading, building the desks, putting the stuff up. And Jimmy was there like every day. And, you know, I'm a sports fan. I had on my Red Sox hat and he's— Jimmy's a Mets fan. And we would just shoot the shit about sports every day. What was going on in the summer was mostly baseball at the time. And, you know, over a couple of days of that and, you know, making little jokes and whatever, I finally was like, hey, I'd like— I mean, I don't have any skills, but I want to write. I want to do this and that. Like, can I do something on your show? And instead of, you know, I said, I'll just carry stuff for you guys, carry stuff for everybody else. And they were like, yeah, that's how— I mean, we need PA. You know what a PA is? And I didn't know. It's a production assistant. It basically does every single thing possible, from getting lunch to coffee to running, at the time, video across town or picking up celebrities for the show. Pretty much a gopher. Um, but that's where everybody starts, especially if you want to do in Hollywood. And that was what I did. And, you know, I, I'm grateful for, for being able to do that.

Nice, man. Yeah, I find taking the, the jobs that like Nothing fancy, but you just get to meet people and that's—

Yeah, I mean, most of the job ended up sucking. I mean, I had to go to, you know, I'd pick up coffee and lunch and, you know, at one point Carolla was getting his house redone and I spent like a week there waiting for the cable guy because he didn't want to and just, you know, calling him, hey, this is what's happening. Oh, we're building this. Like, you know, you just do whatever you need to do. You kind of work for those guys. And then, you know, I got to spend a lot of time in the writers' room with, you know, Dave Damashek and Sal Iacono and all those guys and Got to know them a little bit and how that works. And so it was, you know, like, it was like $60 a day or something, but it was extremely valuable to learn how that stuff goes.

No, that's, that's really cool. And, um, you were writing for Comedy Central as well, correct?

Yeah. So what I did was, um, you know, again, everything in the media landscape changed, but back in, you know, it was early 2000s, uh, I was pitching things for The Man Show. You know, I was young. I had no idea what I was doing. Even looking back now on the skits that I was pitching, they were just crap. I mean, I, I was like, this would be funny to me and my 3 fraternity brothers at 3 AM. Like, you guys should think this is funny. And some like little lines would get in here and there, but nothing good. And then, um, they did a show after that that you may not remember, you know, called Crank Anchors, where it was puppets doing crank calls. And I worked on that show. And throughout all of that, I had met, um, one of the people who was executive producing the website for Comedy Central. And so at the time, all these companies were trying to build online magazines on their website. In addition to their shows, there was an idea and it ended up being correct, but it was that sort of pivot to video thing later that like Comedy Central could also be like the hub of all comedy. So I got hired for Comedy Central to write for, you know, I pitched a million things over and over that got turned down, but I eventually got hired to write like a column. I honestly don't even remember the name. It sounds stupid because it was like the biggest deal in my life at like 23. But But it was a column basically like what comedy movies were coming out and why they would be funny. And, you know, like, like you'd expect from Comedy Central. And so, yeah, that was, that was the job that I had there.

Josh, you— and so how'd you switch over to, you know, writing long-form books and that kind of stuff?

Yeah, my issue with writing for even Comedy Central, even pitching the skits to The Man Show and other places, was honestly just ego. Like, every time something got through, I was like, that was my joke. Like, I wanted to do that. And I'd always wanted to write books. I mean, my whole background reading, I read it. As a kid. I always wanted to write for maybe a Sports Illustrated, or I was big into fitness, so Men's Health, Men's Fitness, or those kind of places. And so I realized early on that like there's one path, and I don't know if I would have been, you know, successful where you kind of write for TV shows or sitcoms, but you're very much in the background of things. You know, you write a joke for someone else to be funny. Again, no problem, you get paid a ton for it, and I was trying to do that. But I realized I like owning my voice as an author, and I liked being in my own space. So I'm going to do this and I'm going to write about this. And that was kind of where it came from. So I started, you know, changing my mentality of I don't know if I really want to be like the writer for, you know, back then Everybody Loves Raymond or King of Queens, like amazing jobs. I'm sure those guys are all millionaires and went on to write movies and all that. But I wanted to kind of write under my own name. So I started pitching at the time Men's Fitness and Men's Muscle and Fitness and Shape. And all these magazines were out in L.A. and Woodland Hills. And so I started old school before you could even really email people. I would write, you know, write up a pitch, print it, put it in an envelope, send it, and then hope somebody would email me or, you know, I'd get a phone call. And incredibly, I tell the story a lot, the first one I sent, I mailed an article for Men's Fitness, which is against all possible odds. I had no bylines. I just had a really good idea. And then I went 0 for my next like 30 pitches, but I did get that first one.

Nice. Nice. I, that's funny. I was writing jokes for bored Elon Musk. He's just like a big Twitter guy. Got my first one in and like just zero for like 10 after. It was unbelievable. Yeah. I mean, I feel that, man. I'm ghostwriting right now for founders and VCs and it's a cool feeling. Get paid great, great conversations. But like, man, I've been dreaming of having my name on a book since I was like 7 years old.

You know? That's, it's all ego. I've done, you know, every time I've wrote a book, I did a million interviews, podcasts, I've been on TV shows and all that. And they always ask versions of like, oh, when did you want to know? And I was like, well, I read more than anyone I knew growing up, at least. It was sports books or whatever, but that was what I was into. Then I eventually grew to like all kinds of fiction and nonfiction. But it is ego and you want that. But it's also, there's nothing wrong with becoming a— there was no word for if you were a creator, we didn't have the umbrella of creator. You know, I'm 44, so it's like not old, but I spanned the, you know, the era of like magazines were king and like getting your name as a byline in a magazine mattered. You know, when I got my first cover story in Men's Fitness, I think 2003. So I was like 25 with a national cover story. I was on Tiki Barber at the time and I did, you know, a series of COVID stories on athletes for them. And it was a humongous deal. And for me, like you just said, my name was on it. Anyone, I'd go into a Barnes Noble, they're flipping through it. John Finkel, right there, cover story by, like I did the whole feature. I wrote the COVID lines. Like it mattered to me to do that. And you know, you weren't categorized as like, oh, he's a creator and what he does is these things. I was just a writer and I still think that way. And now, you know, there's a million other ways to do it. You can do it on Twitter, influencers, TikTok, whatever the hell you're doing. But at the bottom, you know, of it is a craft. And I wanted to have writing be my craft.

Yeah, I definitely feel that, man. I was— I tweeted a while ago, like, thank God I realized I'm not a CEO or founder. I'm a writer. Because, you know, my whole life I thought I was going that path. I went to business school. I thought I was going that path. And I'm just a lot better writer than I am, like, a tech— like a business person like that. You know, I still am a founder to some degree of my media company and ghostwriting or whatever. But yeah, writing is just too much fun. You know, so yeah, for sure. No, yeah, I got you. But I'm curious, uh, yeah, with magazines, do you, do you still write for magazines now?

I don't, you know, it's, it's mainly because they're gone, you know. I wrote for them for so long and it used to be so much fun. And I knew, you know, all the editors at all the big magazines. I wrote for, you know, GQ for a long time, or for Men's Health for a long time, or for, you know, um So many magazines don't even exist anymore. Details and Gear and, you know, all these magazines that aren't here. And Men's Fitness was my go-to and Men's Journal, which, you know, that's— Men's Journal is still around. They absorbed Men's Fitness. They absorbed somebody else. But really, it became a matter of, as I got more successful, thankfully, it became a matter of time and money and ROI. And, you know, when I started in magazines, a good freelancer once you worked your way up, you could get $2 or $3 a word. So $2 or $3 a word for a 2,000 or 3,000-word piece, all of a sudden for a couple weeks' work, you're making $6,000, $8,000, and it makes a lot of sense. And you have to work your way up. You're starting out usually at a quarter or 50 cents a word, which again, okay, front of the book section, you're reviewing a book or doing a quick interview for 300 or 400 words, you know, it's 50 cents a word, it's $200. But you're only, you know, back then it's okay. Like that, hey, $200 was probably like $1,000 now, but like still a couple hundred bucks. But you could make a living doing all that. What I realized was it wasn't a good living, and you either had to be on staff, which is where I went for a while. I was on staff at Muscle Fitness for a long time, um, or honestly copywriting, ghostwriting, as you've learned, you know, before I did. That is where if you want to make real money as a writer, you know, you almost like support your journalism writing career with copywriting, ghostwriting, ad writing, that kind Oh yeah, 100%.

I'm like, until Cyber Patterns is, you know, my full-time gig, like I'll be ghostwriting like crazy. So the goal is, you know, next couple years to be able to tone down the ghostwriting and just tone up the Cyber Patterns. Yeah. I'm curious, what's your writing process like? Are you some one of those guys that goes 6 hours, 7 hours straight, 4 hours or whatever? Are you? Like for me personally, it's like write for an hour, go for a walk, write for an hour, go for a walk, you know?

Yeah. So my, you know, I have two kids, they're 9, 11. I coach both their teams. Like I have, my writing patterns have completely are on like a makeshift time zone. So like, you know, it used to be, I was not really what you're talking about. I was very much like a late night, like just, put the Red Sox game on and write from like 9 to midnight or 9 to 1 and get all that stuff done. But I've always written. So my, you know, when my job was writing like for magazines and all that, that was my job during the day. You do a lot of screwing around and calling people and, you know, 80% of your time in a magazine office, it's like a frat house. You're throwing a football around, figuring out lunch, like brainstorming ideas. And then you travel. I used to travel a ton for stories and do all that. Now I'm very much regimented. I'm sure the 25-year-old me would be like, What a dork, like, for the now 44-year-old me. But like, my day is pretty simple. Like, I get up at about 5:30 to work. I work out. I have a garage gym. It's really important to me to get that— what you're talking about— have to get my exercise in. I cannot just get up and sit. It'll drive me crazy. My back hurts, all this. Like, so I get up, I work out, get the kids ready for school. So I do like an hour workout in the morning, usually lifting, jogging, sprinting, whatever. Then I bike my kids to school, actually, which they're, you know, it's about 2 miles away. I come home. Uh, and I don't get on the phone or anything until after all this is done. So I come home, have a smoothie. I usually, I have a, we have a lab. I walk my dog. So that takes me all the way till about like 8-ish, 8 something, usually 8, 8:15. And then like, I will sit down and figure out what I have to do. So I do a lot of different things. So I'm a creative consultant for a couple of companies. So I have that work, bulk work. Um, and I do a lot of like for those companies, a lot of work on their editorial calendars, probably similar to what you do. Ghostwrite some emails, all those things. And then I have several books that I'm in various stages on. So I'm ghostwriting, helping one NBA player ghostwrite his book, which we're almost towards the end of. I am ghostwriting a book with a big Silicon Valley CEO guy. And then I have my own macho man biography that I know my own career that I do in the middle of all that. So I used to try to just bounce between, and I found that becomes terrible, especially when I have my own books that I want to write. I cannot capture the voice and things like that. So what I really do, it's stupid because it's my own head, but I do like a my time, their time type of thing. So like I really try to use, depending on how much or if there's deadlines, the morning and afternoon, I just separate them. So either the morning is all client work or the morning is all what I'm working on for me personally, or the afternoon, it could shift one way or the other. And occasionally I get screwed over, especially not screwed over, but occasionally this idea gets screwed up because like for the Macho Man book, I'm interviewing hundreds of people, all these old school wrestlers and his cost. So if somebody's available at 10:00 AM, I'm not gonna be like, oh, this is, you know, I'm actually working on this other thing. So that is where I do that. But I do the only, you know, discipline I try to have is this morning I'm finishing this client's whole thing, top to bottom. I'm not gonna do one article and then do this interview. Like, I just find the energy sucks. I end up kind of getting annoyed because I'm not finishing a thing that I wanna finish. And sometimes it's not perfect, but the big break for me is like lunch and getting the kids from school. So I've worked from home for years now. I'm sure you do too, because of what we do. And so it's great. It makes our lives a lot easier. We don't have to pay for aftercare. I'm home, especially now that my kids are older. So basically when I go get them around 2, that next block from like 2:30 to 5, really till I coach soccer for them, 2:30 to 5, 5 to 10, is either that block of all me or all client work.

Got you. And how has your organization process changed over, you know, the last 15, 20 years?

Well, for, you know, for books, it's very different. I, you know, my first book, I just posted a thing about it actually this morning because a lot of people have asked me. I'm starting the Macho Man book. It's my 10th book. I've done books on a lot of pretty well-known athletes and teams, and some of them, you know, are pretty, you know, 100,000-word, 400, 500 you know, interview-type books. They're pretty extensive in the nonfiction side. And so I put together like a thread of like, here's kind of how my process changed. The first one, I didn't know anything. I did my first book with Nate Robinson, who won 3 dunk contests and played for the Knicks and played football with Washington and an incredible athlete. And we just met through an article that I did with him. We got along. And again, you talk about full circle. I just talked my way into, you know, I always want to write a book. I had an athlete who actually liked me. Like we got along, we were shooting the shit on emails back then, really didn't text much. And he had this incredible month in the playoffs. And I just hit him up with like, you need to do, like you came from nothing. You're the shortest NBA player to win 3 dunk contests. You were Mr. Basketball and football in college. Like you could have gone to the NFL. Pete Carroll wanted him to play for USC. Like he was recruited by like Wendell White and Reggie Bush, like an incredible story. And he's 5'7". And so I talked him into not telling— I brought the idea up, we talked to his agents, I flew out to Seattle for a week, and that was my first book. And looking back, it probably took me 5 times longer than it should have, because I truly— I was all over the place. I did all of his interviews first, and then I interviewed, you know, his high school teammates and his college, but I had no system. So like when I finally came time to write it, I didn't have any order what I was going to do. I very much know ahead of time, starting like this book with Macho Man or my recent books, like, here's how it's going to go. Here's how I'm going to— here's how I'm going to start. I'm going to— doing all the interviews first is my old thought was like, yeah. And then it's like, well, now I didn't do the research to have the good interviews. I'm just— I'm doing the research after. And I'm like, I should have asked about this and this and this and this. So now I really try to do a front load, like as much information as I can about a subject. So that when I finally get to talk to whoever this person is in their life from that time, it's not a lame-ass generic conversation. It's, "When this happened, tell me the details behind this," or, "The day before this," or, "What was the fallout of that?" or, "Tell me about the meal you had here. I heard that this happened." The specifics are the key to telling a great story, especially in nonfiction. And so those are some of the things that I think I've changed.

Got you. And when you're charging for a ghostwriting project like that, are you, you're charging by the project, I'd assume? Well, yeah.

So for, for like, it's funny. I, so there's the, my, my book on Masha is like, I said, my agent got it. I have, I have, so I have like a full writing career where I have an agent and we, I have to traditionally publish book. It's a proposal. It's gonna be out in stores. That's a whole, that's like my, that's to me, that's like my writing career, like my front-facing writing career. So that's just an advance. And then royalties and all the typical stuff that you get from working with the publisher. Ghostwriting, I do it just by project. It depends on a couple different factors for me. The number one factor is how much time, you know, I've had projects that they're not in a rush and it's like, hey, I'd love to do this over the next year and we'll schedule an interview every 2 weeks for an hour and eventually get there and there's no big deal. Other people are like, I want this out whatever, Christmas or something. I have 6 months, can we talk every week? Can we talk an hour or twice a week. I kind of try to avoid those now just because they become very much, as you probably know, just all-consuming. And I don't— the one thing I can't really do is just focus on one thing for like a month. And now I can do it for myself. Like, I've kind of set up that for the writing period of Macho in the spring. Like, I've kind of been blocking out windows of a month or two to really— I mean, it's not gonna— it's gonna take more than a month to write it, but, you know, to really do that and dedicate day after day after day to it. Um, but yeah, so the ghostwriting, I charge by project. And then, um, with like consulting and things, a lot of times it's a contract or it's retainer— isn't really the right word because it's not waiting to do work, but basically a monthly rolling over thing based on the, you know, statement of work from the beginning.

Got you. That's fascinating. So your first book, um, you didn't write a prior book to your first ghostwriting book? Because right now, okay, yeah, right now I'm in the place where I'm ghostwriting, you know, founders, VCs, and it's like, how do I turn that into a ghostwriting book contract? Am I, do I have to have my own first? You know, that's right.

Yeah, no, it's interesting. You know, what I found is the credibility from, so I had bylines which were like, so the reason I could convince somebody like Nate Robinson who at the time, you know, now people listening, it's like, oh, that guy. But for a while, he won 3 Dunk Contest. Like he was a name. He was a star. He had a Nike contract. He had his own Nike shoe. Like it was a name. The reason someone like that whose agents represented at the time, Kevin Durant, all these big name guys, was because I had this credibility list of bylines, right? So when they asked, who's Jon? He hasn't written any books. It was like, oh, but he has like 25 cover stories in Men's Fitness and Men's Health. And here's his story on you know, Karl Malone and Tiki Barber and Roy Jones Jr. Here, I overwhelmed them with, I've interviewed 50 athletes of his caliber. I know how to do this. I've read these books. Here's how to do it. Here's how, here's why I know I can do it. Right? So that was probably the one way. I think when you build up a credibility base, you know, foundation, you can easily transfer over because all you're really doing is extrapolating. And that first one is key. The best thing to do is build up trust with somebody who's worth having a book. And sort of convince them about their benefits to having it. The issue there, as you know, with ghostwriting is getting them to understand, or maybe they already understand economics on their own, that it's expensive to write a book. It's time-consuming to write a book. You're not gonna just do it. Of course, there's people I know who've done their first version of that for dirt cheap or even free or even offer to do it for free or even just a percentage of royalties at the end. Because once you have that first one, it makes your whole life easier. So you're— that very first book has a different cost-benefit analysis than any other book you ever do. You have to get one done. And so, you know, I can't make it for you at whatever money you make, whatever you need, but there's a case to be made that if you're making plenty of money doing all the other things you do and someone who's of note who doing their book will matter, and you can see all the doors that'll open having done it, you know, you're not— what are you gonna do? Like not do it because you're not making X, Y, and Z? Like just do it. I mean, take 6 months, 9 months, do it. And then that's, you know, that's just your time equity over, you know, actual equity, you know.

Big facts. That's, that's what I've been living by, is like sacrifice the, the long-term or the short-term, like, you know, money for the long term. And like, that's how you build a fucking reputation, you know. Um, yeah, I've been fortunate.

Now the one thing I would say is with that person, whoever it is, now you have to make clear that if they know they're not paying you or whatever, that this is— you're doing this for them. You intend to get paid a whole lot after this. You do not want them going to say like, oh, this guy Jason Levin will write your books for free. That's the— that is not the case. The case is I'm doing— I trust you, you trust me. This is a test case for me. I know I can do it. I think we'll do a great job. But after this, if anybody's interested, my fee is X. Yeah, gotcha. You don't want to get trapped And, you know, into— and it's happened. I've had to— I've got wised up because, you know, a lot of NBA players after Nate's book came out, you know, and I love— I think I got paid okay for the time, but I definitely, from the people I talked to and reached out to, it was on the super low end because I hadn't written a book before. And, you know, and I ended up telling Nate, like, look, you know, we're buddies, we're friends. Like, this is, again, this is all 2012. Things have completely remar— you know, changed for me, thankfully, from a success standpoint. But at the time, I was like, hey, if anyone reaches out, like, you know, let me talk about like how much it is because I plan on— I want to make more. Like, I've learned more, I'm better, I'm a more experienced writer. I want to raise my rates. Just like when you get a new contract, you ask for more. I don't want to be stuck at this after my first book, keep making that money. And he didn't really care at all. He said that didn't matter to him. But it was really his agent I had that conversation with. I was like, hey, you know, I'm not now like the dirt cheap writer for NBA guys. And so, and also I was, you know, $30,000. So now, you know, I look back, anybody who's gonna look me up, they're gonna at this point know that I'm not, you know, on the low end of things.

Got you, got you. So that's all the, the main questions that I had. That was, that was a really big one. Um, was, was thinking about that, and now I really have some stuff to think about. I have like 2 or 3 potential names that I could potentially do that with, so got to think about it and See what happens. But, uh, I'll follow up in a bit and see.

Yeah, let me know. And any advice, you know, I've done— I've had all of the discussions you could probably have with— luckily, um, just because of the world I was in with those magazines, you know, you get exposure talking to high— realistically, just like high-value people, high-net-worth people, people who have a different calculus than your average person when it comes to what they're gonna spend their money on. And again, it has its pitfalls. You can't just ask for a ton of money cuz someone has a ton of money. I mean, but also they have different, you know, there's, there's social credibility involved. There's you being able to tailor things specifically to them. You know, it's really, it's really one of those things where you're, which boxes are you checking for this person and how many can you check that you legitimately will deliver on?

Yeah, 100%. Just one last question, I guess pitching to, You know, I've pitched to Wired, got some responses and stuff, so I'm like, I could get into any Web3 company at this point, but I haven't broken the Web2 barrier really, and I'm trying to figure out how to do that. Do you have any advice for just like sending pitches and that kind of stuff?

Yeah, for sure. So I, I've spoken to a ton of colleges. I used to do it a lot. We moved to Florida. We used to live in Texas. I used to speak at SMU and TCU and all those schools. And even here I just spoke to Central Florida and things like that. And so I have a whole— I put a course together largely because of questions like this. I'm not selling that. It's called Freelance Fortune. It is not very expensive, but it does— it tells you literally every— so I was a writer for all those magazines I mentioned. I wrote for the New York Times, wrote for all these places. And then eventually you get moved into the editorial slot where you are now on the receiving end of pitches. And I have a team of writers underneath me doing all these things. And again, I realized I didn't really like that part of it. I wanted to write for myself. But I had assigned thousands of stories and read hundreds of pitch notes. So I have a whole thing on there, but for your question of like how to break through, the number one way to break through, especially if you know, it used to be even hard to find the editor's name. I mean, you get a masthead look, but you can actually even now, every editor has a Twitter, like it's pretty easy to get in touch. The two easiest ways to actually land a pitch with someone is to piggyback off a successful pitch with new information. So, you know, the old version was different, but the new version would be, I saw this story had X number of retweets and likes and da da da da. It fascinated me. I did a deep dive on this one part of it, and I actually found the person who was an expert in this area. I would love to ask, you know, interview them for you as a follow-up to this really successful piece you had. That is a complete slam dunk for an editor. You're providing new information on an already successful piece. You have the, you know, if you're, as long as you're, you know, a competent writer, which you are, you have the easiest in ever to get that story. You found the person already. Why me? The question always is from editor, why this person? Well, you already have the contact. You've saved them time and energy. This person's gonna add a lot of value to the story. That is the most tried and true method to get into any magazine ever because they've already approved the story. You're just giving them more information that's valuable to their readers. All they have to do is basically approve like the sequel to the story that they're, you know, and maybe the writer's already working on some version at which some places will say, unfortunately, just assign it in-house. But either way, they're easier to have that you've already, especially if you've already contacted this person and what it's gonna be. So that is, that's just like pitching 101. Like, you know, I always, when people have never even pitched before, I'm, they're always like, where do I start? I'm like, don't start. You don't like make your life easier by starting with a proven commodity for them. Like, you don't, don't spend, I mean, eventually you have to spend the whole time telling them why you're great and why you're the person to do it. But if you can start the relationship with, I love your magazine, I read your magazine, I love this article, I loved it so much, I wanted to learn more, and when I was learning more, I found information for you. I mean, it's gold.

Yeah, that's the exact opposite of what I was doing. So I was trying to find it.

I've been on the other side of it, that, believe me, it shows them. It does all the things an editor wants. Shows initiative. It shows that you read their work, which I'm telling you, surprisingly, you get a number of pitches, a majority of pitches, and the people have never looked at your magazine or your publication, your blog. It's absurd. I used to be my number one thing. I got to the point when I was at Men's Muscle and Fitness where I would just, I would just write back like, you know, if you wanna succeed in this business, You've got to read the publication you're pitching for extensively, not just like, I peruse your magazine, or I saw last month you wrote about this, here's this. You gotta know whatever, cuz you get stuff and it's like, dude, it's in this issue. Like the thing you pitched is in this issue. It happened, you know, it happened all the time. That, so that, that's the way to do it. Provide value on top of value. Probably the easiest. I think that's, I have a slide somewhere in there. I'm doing that. And then the other one is, be the thing that they don't have, meaning you can be the guinea pig or you can be the new thing they have never heard of, right? So the other version of that piece is, I have been reading Wired cover to cover for years and years and years, and I've seen you've covered this, this, this, and this, but for some reason you have not touched upon this thing. I happen to have spent my free time becoming an expert in this thing, and these are the 3 people you need to know. Wired, it could be who knows what. You talk about— and I've gotten Wired— actually sucks, I don't get Wired print anymore. It was the last one that I kept getting and I finally just stopped. But they're awesome. It was my favorite magazine for years and years, and now their online presence is incredible. But yeah, introducing them to something new, but you have to establish it by saying— and I really can't stress this enough— the more detail you use, if you say, if you started off with I have this really cool idea about X. Have you heard of it? You will not get shit. If you start off with, I noticed you talked about this in February, this in May, this in January, and your author so-and-so wrote this amazing piece here, but in reading all those, I did not see anything about this. I actually spent some time learning about this, and I would love to write the article. I think it's a perfect complement to those pieces I mentioned. That is an article you will hear from, likely get assigned.

All right, well, I'm gonna go do that.

You'll sell the piece, I promise.

I've been reading Wired since I was like 12, and, uh, I was even surprised I got a response from them. So I feel like I'm one—

well, that's the first part, is getting someone to answer. I mean, even now it's the hardest part. It used to be— it used to be frustrating because the timeline just sucked. You were sending physical mail, so it was like, I, I mean, hopefully I'll get an email. I don't even know who to call to follow up. Hopefully they got it. And I was on the other side mail on your desk of pitches. And it sucked because, you know, you as a writer, I felt every single envelope, I knew there was like someone's wish to like write for us in there. And now email, it's a little less personal. So it's easy just to be like, I'm not going to open these today. But when someone would take the time to do that, because usually they used to have to write it, you'd include clips. So you'd, you know, photograph, you know, you take some copies of your best 2 or 3 articles that match this. But, you know, the rule of thumb is, it's true, like a great writer who gets their work done and is smart and is on time and has clean copy is worth your weight in gold. It will always be that way. So don't think they don't need you. They do have a staff. But that's why the two ideas I mentioned are great, because you're showing new value as opposed to just, I could find anybody to write about why, you know, the CGI in, you know, Wakanda Forever is different than the CGI in Infinity War, whatever. Yeah.

All right, cool. Well, thank you so much for your time. I feel like I learned a lot. I took a lot of notes. So thank you so much. I feel like, yeah, one-on-one lecture. This is awesome.

All right, man. Anytime you need anything or anybody reaches out to you, let me know. I'm happy to help.

All right, cool. I'll keep you updated. I feel like I'll have some results soon.

So you will, there's no doubt. And if it's not wired, it's somewhere else, but that's how you, I mean, that is how you do.

Yeah, trust the process, right?

You got it.

All right, cool. Talk soon. Thank you.

All right, bud. See ya.