BLS Interview with Michael Levin, Part 3

Read Part 1 about Michael’s process in helping writers and Part 2 about Michael’s Shark Tank experience.

Derek: Michael, we talked about staying motivated, staying hungry. How do you stay passionate about what you do? How do you avoid that fat cat syndrome and getting lazy?

Michael: Oh my gosh, every time I might plan a book with a client, it brings up a lot of fear for me. It brings up a lot of terror because low self-esteem kicks in and I say to myself, “What on earth can I contribute to this person? She’s so successful. He did this, he did that, he’s a billionaire. What on earth?.” And then I start to remember, if they can plan their own book and write their own book, they wouldn’t have called me.

You mentioned some of the things on my track record, I have a really great track record. I’m 57, it’s taken all this time to do all that stuff and then once I get into the car and I start to listen, and I realize, “Oh, you know something? I can do this.” Then I find a book and I find the title, then I find the chapters and you know, in what they’re saying. And 45 minutes into the car, I send them over the plan for the book and nine times out of 10, they’re just flabbergasted. They’re like, “How did you do that? How did you find that?”

Derek: Wow.

Michael: The main thing is that, I stay a little bit afraid and I stay very, very hungry. The other thing is tI have a balanced life. I run the Boston Marathon, for Dana Farber of The Cancer Institute, I’m active in my religious community. I blog for Huffington Post about cultural events here in Boston, about the ballet and the opera, whatever. I write for the New York Daily News, I have an online column for them about whatever comes into my head. I think my goal is no unpublished thoughts, the main thing is that I do a lot of stuff that is not work related and I obviously do a lot of stuff with my kids. I’m home for dinner every night, you know, nine business nights out of 10.

I hang around the house in the evening and I’m available to them. So I have to compress what I do, into the work day because there’s all this other stuff that I want to do. I think that by sharpening the saw with all that other stuff, getting enough rest and taking care of myself, you never really get bored. So I don’t have advice for people who are bored because I’ve never been bored, so I wouldn’t know what to tell them.

Derek: [laughs] That’s great, I can relate to that. I will add one other thing from my experience working with you. Even with your accomplishments and I know that you’re a confident guy but there’s some kind of humility about you that makes you approachable and easy to talk with. I personally experienced being wowed while we were on the conversation, you say, “Check your email” and I checked my email and I said, “Hey, you got that out of what I just said? That’s pretty powerful.” And again, I’m a guy that writes copy and writes good copy but not in that way. So you’re an amazing talent and you being approachable and motivated and hungry, that little dash of humility at the right times, I think is really powerful. It was for me in making me more comfortable and not being intimidated with talking with somebody like you.

Michael: Well, that’s nice and talking with somebody like you that makes me laugh but Derek, let’s tell the truth. I’m 57 years old, I’ve been sober for 24 years, a day at a time. Now what does that mean? It means that my life was a smoking pile of rubble by the time I was in my early 30’s. I had no relationship, no money, no job. I know you want to get to the question of how the business started. Through the process of cleaning up, I met a man who has been my mentor now for 22 straight years.

He sat me down at a Dunkin’ Donuts, he owned four of the top restaurants in Boston, he said, “Look, I know that you creative people cannot do your best work if you cannot pay your mortgage, your rent or put food on the table. I’m going to show you how to start a business” and he took out one sheet of paper and said, “You’re going to offer writing classes, privately here in Boston. And you’re going to rent a space somewhere. Let’s figure out what the expenses are. Let’s figure out how much we need to make a month, let’s see if there’s still time for writing, let’s see how many hours it’s going to take.”

And this process I’d never even heard of, which I’ve repeated over and over for other people. So the thing is like this, if I start to get carried away with myself, it does not take me very long to remember that I was- by then I had a law degree from Columbia Law School, I had published three novels with Simon & Schuster. In 1993, ’94, that winter, I was on heating systems with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts because my income was below thirteen thousand dollars and in Massachusetts, they will not let the poor freeze to death.

Okay, I can look at the resume and I can look at the fancy clothes and I can look at the home, whatever but the reality is, I know who I am, I know what I am and I know where I was then. I know that I could revert to being that guy, you know. I have a friend who says, “I’m a hundred beers from the penitentiary and I’m five vodka tonics from destroying my family.” So when you’re constantly walking on that edge in life, humility kind of comes easily because you know better than anybody else just what lurks. So that’s something I never, ever lose sight of, thank You God and as a result, I’m able to be very grateful to show up in the world.

And if I ever got to the point where I’m making a good living from doing the thing I love the most, which is being around books, planning books, making books happen and talking to smart people, learning, people like you, people like your listeners. If I ever get bored with that, if I ever get bored with having a decent marriage, four wonderful kids and coming home to them, being their father and having their respect. If I ever get bored with that, then just shoot me. What more would I want?

I have a billionaire client and I said to him, “What does it mean to you to be a billionaire?.” He said, actually, I’ll tell you what two of them said. One of them said he only had about 400 million, 20 years ago [chuckles] . I said, “How does it feel to make 400 million from a standing start?” and he said, “To a billionaire, what I have is dimes.” Okay, I love the guy but that’s not my attitude. The other billionaire, I said, “What’s it like being a billionaire? What does it mean to you?” and he said, “It means I can do anything I want, within reason.”

[laughter]

It turns out that I’m not a billionaire but I can do anything I want, within reason and so can most of us. I mean, look what happened, we were speaking the other day, there was this attack in Brussels, we live in a crazy, crazy world. Any day you make it safely home to base and your kids did too, you had a good day. You know, people are like, “Is this all there is?”, well what more do you want? What do you think is out there?

Derek: Wow, that’s powerful. Thank you so much for sharing that. What’s next for you? I mean, when you have that entrepreneurial itch and you’re busy and you’re obviously busy. Is there something you haven’t done yet that you are looking forward to doing? It could be a personal achievement; it could be climbing a mountain. It could be a place where you haven’t travelled. What’s something that you want to do that you haven’t accomplished yet?

Michael: Yes, that’s a great question, thank you. I mentioned that I started the business 22 years ago, as a day job so that I could keep paying for my own writing. So the thing that’s ahead of me, I just sold a three book deal to a publisher in the recovery field, called Hazelden. It’s the number one recovery publisher in the United States-

Derek: Wow.

Michael: -and anybody who’s listening, who’s involved in that community will recognize the name. I’ve written one of the books and I’ve got to write the next two on the three book deal and they want to build me up as a top recovery author. So being able to share what I’ve learned in that field and they want me to do it across all platforms, we’re going to be starting a blog and a podcast and all kinds of stuff. The idea that I’m able to take what I’ve learned over the last 24 years of sobriety and 28 years since I first sort of landed in that community, in a different fashion. To be able to take all that and turn it around to be of service to other people- If you were to say to me, “What do you want your life to be like in a year or two from now?”, that would be my primary focus and the business would take care of itself.

Somebody would be running it and they’d bring me in to plan the books with the clients but I wouldn’t be the day to day guy. Instead, most of my life would be devoted to sharing the transformational lessons that I’ve picked up and been a student of for many years.

Derek: That’s exciting. So where’s home for you right now? Are you in Boston or are you in Cali-

Michael: Yes, we were in California for years and we have, as I mentioned before, we have four young kids. My boys are 13 and one of their friends had a father who became very successful, he created a bunch of health clinics and he made just a gazillion dollars, which is great. They were building a huge house and they were debating whether to put a- my boys came home and said their friend’s dad is debating whether to put a car wash into the garage.

Derek: Okay. [laughs]

Michael: To build a car wash into their garage and I just looked to my wife and I said, “Let’s just get the hell out of here”, [laughs] I mean, what are my boys going to think life is, if they grow up and they don’t have a car wash in their garage. “Daddy, why don’t we have a car wash in our garage?”, “Well son, your mother and I have different values.” There comes a point where you just- so we’re here in Boston and the weather stinks but the thing is that the- and this where I used to live, this is where I started the business, so it’s sort of homecoming in that sense but no disrespect intended to southern California but I just think that your kid has a better chance of growing up grounded here, than there.

Derek: Yes, I lived in Southern California for many years and I’ve got many friends still there and many families there but I wanted my kids to have a similar change as well.

Michael: Yes, I mean I love it out there, I miss it terribly. I had 24 great years out there. Yesterday I was watching the news at the gym and it said, “They’re campaigning out West.” I thought, “Out West, what is it, the Wild West or Mars or somewhere?.” I mean, it’s part of the United States, “It’s out West, it’s out there somewhere”, no, it’s a phenomenal way of life but the thing is, for the values we wanted, it just wasn’t happening for us. So I’ll go, we’ll go back out there when the kids are grown or whatever but-

Derek: That’s great. So, you’ve got so much going on, if our listeners want to follow you and I know they can Google search you but where would you send them if they want to learn more about you or to read some of your books. I know I follow a blog that you send out occasionally which is- I mean, your writing style is just so relatable, it brings a tear to your eye sometimes, it makes you laugh. You’ve got politics, I remember you had one about Trump recently, I think you had one on the Celtics game, with your child. And I read all those and you know why I read them is because I know that when I open it up, I’m going to get something meaningful out of it and I usually do. With all the junk that we get now and the opportunities we have, to absorb and consume content, it’s refreshing when there’s something you can look forward to that’s not spamming you and that has meaning to it.

Michael: That’s so nice of you, thank you. The website is businessghost, business and then ghost, G-H-O-S-T.com, like Casper the friendly ghost and on it, you can sign up for the newsletter you talked about. I do a weekly newsletter and the Trump thing, I mentioned- I did a newsletter of the very first day of the first Republican debate, when they still had two tiers and 17 candidates. And the thing is called Why can’t Trump Lose? and the bottom line is, he cannot lose because he’s having the time of his life. I’m not going to get political here but if somebody told you that six months ago, that the Pope would be criticizing the Republican front runner, Donald Trump, you’d say, “Is this the onion?”

I mean, it’s just stranger than truth, everything that’s happens and Bernie Sanders, the funny thing is-I do a newsletter every week about, as you said, literally whatever comes into my head, whether it’s political or something with my family or whatever. The interesting thing for me is that, every time I do a sort of a hard sell and say, “This is something we’re offering” or “we’re just using this service”, it’s crickets, I never hear a thing but I’ll write an article about going to the museum with my daughter and I’ll get a note back from somebody I’ve never heard of or haven’t heard from in four years and they’ll say, “I’m ready to do my book.” So I figured, people just like the fact that this is something interesting. So they can go to businessghost.com and if they want to reach me, they can write me at michael@businessghost.com and you know, we’ll talk.

Derek: Michael, thank you so much for being my guest today. I’m honored to know you, to be able to work with you, to get time with you today and I just look forward to how you continue to great things and I appreciate your humility and your honesty. It’s a good lesson to me and it’s just refreshing to see.

Michael: Derek, you’re really nice and I appreciate that and I appreciate you for having me on. I just don’t want the listeners to think that I’m some supernal being that won’t take their call if they want to write a book.

[laughter]

They should just drop me an email, michael@businessghost.com, there’s your hard sell for the day and we’ll get it done for you, so that’s about it. So thanks for having me Derek.

Derek: That’s great. Awesome. Michael, thanks again and enjoy Boston and enjoy your family.

Michael: Thanks, you too Sir, thanks so much. All the best, bye bye now.