Jacob Warwick: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah. Let's do it. So there's a very famous musician who was born the same year as me, for those super sleuths out there, who had a tour, a billion dollar tour and a documentary. And the director of said tour was a hot commodity in Hollywood. Every agency wanted to sign this director. This director didn't want to just do movie documentaries, right? Wanted to start producing actual movies. That's the dream. Right? So every agency wanted to sign this hot director who just did this billion dollar deal with, people already know who it is. So my client, the agent asked me like, "We got to sign this. It would be stupid to go to any other agency. We've done this, we've done that, we've represented Julia Roberts and Matt Damon," and all this, just naming, name dropping, right? Now, this is actually a problem because if we're leaning on logic and credibility, we're losing. We need to sell the future and own the emotion. So she just asked me, "How do we close this deal?" And to me, this was very simple. I said, "If you already had the job, who would you introduce him to? If you already had it, the deal's already signed, so put yourself in the position that you're already doing the job." That's why an interview process, if you treat it like you're consulting, you're doing a value exchange and you're increasing your value and you're asking the right questions. If you feel like you're on the outside and you're having to say, "Well, look, Lenny, I did this and I did that, and did you see I have three million words written? Why wouldn't you want to be the guest?" I don't care about what you've done, I care about what you'll provide my audience. Right? So in this deal, we get into the meeting, it's a big day. And I said, "Schedule the appointment already, work with the assistant, schedule the appointment with whoever it is it needs to be. It needs to be a big name person." So we go into that interview and inevitably the conversation goes, "Why should I sign your agency?" So my client says, "What are you doing on Friday? I cleared a lunch with your assistant." And he says, "Well, I guess I'm going to lunch." And she's like, "Great, I'll have you meet Steven." And he said, "Steven who?" And she said, "Steven Spielberg." And then some form after that, it was, "Where do I sign?" Because the meeting was already set with Steven Spielberg. For somebody who wants to get into film production, what better meeting to have. So for the other agencies, they're like, "We're the greatest thing. We've represented this director that did this media tour and we did that." They lost because we sold a vacation and we made it a reality right then and there and the value was clear. So there's both this mindset shift of I'm going to try to actually help you figure out where I can be helpful and where the problems are and then start actually thinking about how to fix this. And also there's like, try to even do it. It sounds like you could just do it.…

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