Esther Fedorkevich: What it Takes to Write a Book, Get it Published, and Get it out to the World

Episode Summary: In this episode of the L3 Leadership Podcast, Esther Fedorkevich is joins us to discuss her journey in entrepreneurship and publishing, offering valuable advice for aspiring authors.

About Esther Fedorkevich: Esther Fedorkevich is the founder of The Fedd Agency. She launched her career in 1997 as a salesperson for a major book publisher. Within six months, Esther sold a million dollars in products. From there she went to work for Dave Ramsey, a New York Times best-selling author and television host with a nationally syndicated radio program. She worked in the publishing department, selling and marketing Dave’s books and other projects, and fell in love with book publishing. When Esther was pregnant with her first child, her entrepreneurial spirit was charged and decided to venture out on her own, selling books and ideas as a literary agent. 

Esther founded The Fedd Agency in 2003 and began investing in authors. Her first client came to her for help when William Morris could not secure a book deal, even after pitching it for two years. With her innovative intervention and her acute business sense and selling skills, Esther got the author a three-book deal within two months. Esther continues to hone her innate marketing and sales talents, coupling that with a passion for selling life-changing books. Esther firmly believes she doesn’t just represent authors, she represents and builds futures. 

Using her natural entrepreneurial sensibilities, Esther also negotiates deals for film, television, and other derivative products. Additionally, The Fedd Agency offers agency guided publishing and audio book production services. Esther lives in Austin, TX and has and two rockstar kids, Alexi Jane and Paul Gregory. In her spare time, you can find Esther shooting hoops, swinging a golf club or tennis racket, reading, or cooking gourmet meals for her family and friends.

Her favorite book is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

Key Takeaways:
1. Esther shines a light on the nuances of writing, publishing, and marketing a successful book.
2. She shares her professional journey of selling over a million dollars in book products within six months to leveraging her talent as a literary agent and founding Fed Agency.
3. Ester talks about her entrepreneurial upbringing and how that has been instrumental in her current success.
4. She talks about why she believes everyone has a book inside of them and why people should consider writing their own.

Quotes From the Episode:
“I look at a book sold as a prayer answered.”
“Believe in yourself, keep working, keep dreaming, keep creating, and  keep developing new ideas.”

Resources Mentioned:
The Circle Maker

Connect with Esther Fedorkevich:
Website | Instagram | Linkedin

Episode Webpage: https://l3leadership.org/404
L3 Mastermind Groups: https://l3leadership.org/mastermind
L3 Leadership Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/L3Leader/
Follow us on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/l3-leadership

Transcript

Doug Smith: 0:07

Welcome to another episode of the L3 Leadership Podcast, where we are obsessed with helping you grow to your maximum potential and to maximize the impact of your leadership. My name is Doug Smith and I am your host, and today's episode is brought to you by my friends at Beratung Advisors. We also recorded this episode live from the new Birgo Realty Studio. If you're new to the podcast, welcome. I'm so glad that you're here and I hope that you enjoy our content and become a subscriber, and that you can also watch all of our episodes over on our YouTube channel. So make sure you're subscribed there as well. And, as always, if you've been listening to the podcast for a while and it's made an impact on your life, it would mean the world to me if you'd leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever app you listen to podcasts through. That really does help us to grow our audience and reach more leaders, so thank you in advance for that. Well, leader, in today's episode, you are in for a treat.

Doug Smith: 0:51

You're going to hear my conversation with one of the top literary agents in the world, Esther Fedorkevich. If you're unfamiliar with Esther, let me just tell you a little bit about her, because she's amazing. She is the founder of the Fedd Agency and she actually launched her career in 1997 as a salesperson for a major book publisher and within six months she sold over a million dollars in products. From there she went to work for Dave Ramsey and eventually founded the Fedd Agency in 2003. Esther firmly believes that she doesn't just represent authors. She represents and builds futures. Using her natural entrepreneurial sensibilities, esther also negotiates deals for film, television and other derivative products. Additionally, the Fed Agency offers agency guided publishing and audio book production services. In our conversation, you're going to hear her talk about so much. You'll hear her talk about her upbringing and how her family, way before Shark Tank was the thing, actually played a version of Shark Tank together and they all started businesses when they were very, very young and were very successful, and you're going to love hearing about that. You'll hear her talk about her strategy for getting a meeting with anyone, including Elon Musk, her best advice for aspiring authors and so much more. I just think you're going to love this conversation. But before we dive in, just a few announcements.

Doug Smith: 2:00

This episode of the L3 Leadership Podcast is sponsored by Beratung Advisors. The financial advisors at Beratung Advisors help educate and empower clients to make informed financial decisions. You can find out how Beratung Advisors can help you develop a customized financial plan for your financial future by visiting their website at beratungadvisors. com that's B-E-R-A-T-U-N-G-Advisorscom. These investment products and services offered through LPL Financial, member of FINRA and SIPC, Beratung Advisors, LPL Financial and L3 Leadership are separate entities. I also want to thank our sponsor, heni Jewelers. They were jewelry earned by my friend and mentor, John Henne, and my wife Laura and I got our engagement and wedding rings through Henne Jewelers and had an incredible experience. And not only do they have great jewelry, but they also invest in people. In fact, for every couple that comes in and gays, they give them a book to help them prepare for marriage, and we just love that. So if you're in need of a good jeweler, check out HenneJewelers. com. And with all that being said, let's dive right in.

Doug Smith: 2:57

Here's my conversation with Esther Fedorkevich. Well, esther Fedorkevich, it is an honor to have you on the podcast. You've been named the top literary agent in the world, at least as I was researching you. But I thought an interesting place to start as I was preparing for this is. You have a really, really unique upbringing and I believe you're one of seven children and when I think I heard you say that your family before they were a shark tank. You guys had a version of shark tank in your family. Can you talk a little bit about your upbringing and what that looked like shark tank in your family?

Esther Fedorkevich: 3:29

Okay, so my parents had seven kids in nine years. So we're pretty much here apart, right, and they were entrepreneurs. So my dad came. They were, we were first generation Ukrainians born in the US, but my dad Ukrainian parents came to Argentina. So my dad was born in Argentina. My mom was born in China from missionary family. Anyway, they band up. My dad drops out of eighth grade, out of middle school, and comes to America on a visa to make money and send it back to his family in Argentina. So that's what these kids. Can you imagine our kids doing that? Now? Think about it. Hey, we need money. Will you go and work full time and send the money back to your parents? Well, so that's what they did.

Esther Fedorkevich: 4:19

And my dad started, like, in construction from the bottom and grew to the one of the biggest builders in New Jersey and developers and he literally taught himself so as an entrepreneur. And he, he, when you, when you grow up poor and you grow up um missionary family, they say, America, money grows on trees. Right, Everyone's like, oh, money grows on trees, you can do, you can make whatever you want, you can do anything. And so we grew up with dreaming big and believing we could do anything and accomplish anything. So as a young kids, my dad instilled entrepreneurship and all of us starting businesses, no matter what they were it could be from selling bubblegum to chicken eggs to whatever right we would start businesses. And the board our board of advisors was our family.

Esther Fedorkevich: 5:08

So when we had an idea, he taught us how to do a business plan. He was our financier, so he would finance our business plans if we got all the votes, but then we would have to do all the work. So that part is we would have to do all the work, but he would give us the money. And the board was all of my siblings who would be like that's the dumbest idea or that's awesome. Right, yeah, let's do it. Or I want to get in with you on this idea. How about we go 50, 50? We would do deals all the time, give people what jobs they would do what we would do, and that's how we grew up. It was literally our own before Shark Tank. It was our own Ukrainian Shark Tank and we literally started businesses and fell in love with business from a young age.

Doug Smith: 5:53

When you say a young age. So I have four kids under seven. Things like this interest me greatly. How young were you guys starting?

Esther Fedorkevich: 6:01

So my oldest brother was 10. And so think of it like the youngest, youngest two weren't doing anything. But he had an idea. We lived in this big house. We lived on my dad. It was a developer, so the house I grew up my whole life was on Esther court. My name is Esther.

Doug Smith: 6:16

He named it Come on.

Esther Fedorkevich: 6:18

A whole life. I lived on Esther court, so we they have a date. My brother was 10. Any idea to do a carnival in our backyard? And we set up high jumps. We brought out mattresses on the high jumps. We a carnival games with my mom's dishes where you throw pennies in everything we should. He charged that tickets from Walmart and people would buy tickets to play our really ghetto New Jersey home games and we went into our attic and found all of our old toys and that's where the prizes that they would win if they hit something big. You'd have to ask my brother, josh, but I think he was like at 10 years old he was right racking in like 510 grand on our carnival and everyone from the school and we were all his worker bees getting paid nothing. Literally it was super fun but we all worked the carnival but they like we would any kind of crazy idea we would do.

Doug Smith: 7:14

And you started. I don't know what age you were, but your first successful launch of that was selling bubblegum. Is that correct?

Esther Fedorkevich: 7:20

Yeah Well, my first was I sold chicken eggs, right, so we had chicken, we lived on the farm, so we had chicken, and we would box up the eggs and go door to door and since I was good at sales and talking and cute, my brothers would make me be the one that asked to buy the eggs and they would be right around the corner, right, I would sell it, get the money, give them the eggs and then give the money to my three older brothers. So it was kind of funny. It's like I would be the face of their company, their chicken egg company, and we did that literally every Saturday. So that was like some people did newspaper route, we did chicken egg route. So I was fine.

Esther Fedorkevich: 7:55

But when I was 13, my dad was teaching us about ROI, right, and he was like you guys, you can't think, because we kept thinking of ideas like let's make a T-shirt for five bucks and we'll sell it for 10 bucks, right, and he's like that's not a big enough markup. So I thought of the idea of a gumball, which was one penny it cost to buy a gumball and you sell it for 25 cents, and so that's the think about any product you can think of now that has a 25 X. Wow, yeah, that's kind of crazy right. I wish I could think of an idea like that now. And so we started a gumball machine business and it just grew and grew and grew and grew. And then I sold it to my brother and he scaled it and just grew it even bigger than what I could do at 13, 14 years old.

Doug Smith: 8:46

That's incredible and, if I believe correctly and when I was researching you, all of your siblings have become entrepreneurs as a result of this correct.

Esther Fedorkevich: 8:53

They're all entrepreneurs. Everyone has their own companies or starting their own companies. Or, like one of my brothers helped start Disney Plus, right. So he actually worked for big companies, started Disney Plus, then he left and worked for another big company, but he has his own businesses too and his own patents and inventions. So even if you look across the board of our whole family, we're all entrepreneurs. We still, to this day, do business ideas together.

Doug Smith: 9:17

Yeah, talk to me about that. I think you say how often does your family meet and what does that look like today?

Esther Fedorkevich: 9:22

Okay, so, as of today now, all nine of us kids are in our 40s. So all nine of us are in our 40s, which is kind of cool, right, and we've all lived. We say we live some life, we've made some mistakes, we've had some failures, and we do five of them, seven of us kids plus my mom and dad, but we do this with just the seven siblings now. Sometimes we involve mom and dad, but it's mostly just the seven of us kids and we five of us are here in Austin of my seven siblings, and we meet once a month for breakfast or tacos at one of our offices and we talk about business, of, as we also have a group text thread of all of us, so it's not just getting together.

Esther Fedorkevich: 10:04

We're like, hey, this business opportunity came. Do you want to invest? I'm going in for 10 grand. Do you want to go in? I'm going to. I have a thousand to give, I have a hundred thousand to give, whatever it is. And we all go in and invest in the same kind of companies If we like it. And sometimes I'll like an idea. My brothers or my sister will hate it Because I don't get anybody liking it, but then it's interesting because I get their opinions, every idea. We get opinion of seven of us deciding what's good, what's wrong, what are we missing? So it's it's kind of cool.

Doug Smith: 10:36

Wow. Well, clearly it seems like your parents did a lot of things right, and obviously they gave you the spark to be entrepreneurs. But I'm curious too, you know, as a father for I know your mom as well you know I'm always interested in how I can raise great families. Is there anything else Life lessons, leadership, or anything that your parents taught you that you think would be worth sharing?

Esther Fedorkevich: 10:56

Okay, so that's a really good question. I heard Warren Buffett say this. I was listening to him in an interview and I'm probably gonna mess it up, but he said something like I wanna give my kids enough right, but not too much. That they don't have to work. Wow, and I think with our kids, what so many parents make the mistake, it doesn't even matter. We don't have to be as rich as a billionaire, right, but we give our kids too much. And where's the balance? Where? Why don't take that drive away from your kids? Let them want that drive, that spirit of entrepreneurship, that they wanna start something or build something and see the excitement, because if you give them everything, they don't have to work for it.

Esther Fedorkevich: 11:40

And I think one of the big values our parents taught all seven of us is work right and so and believe in yourself and dream. And even if our dreams are crazy out there, that's probably never gonna happen, it's still that thing of hope and dream and building and trying. So I think with kids we're always talking about business ideas. We don't do half of them because we find out they're bad ideas. Right, they start off with a good idea and then we're like actually this won't make any money, it'll be a bad idea. But then we have the good ideas and that's what's fun, because the whole family gets to share in the wealth.

Doug Smith: 12:15

Yeah, do you do anything specific with your kids? Like, do you do the same thing your parents did with you as far as them coming up with business ideas? Did you carry that tradition down or how?

Esther Fedorkevich: 12:23

So my kids are the oldest because I got married really young. So my kids have a daughter who's a junior in college and a son who's a senior in high school. So I have a 20-year-old and an 18-year-old and then the next is a 13-year-old, so by the time they had kids. So there's a gap there, right.

Doug Smith: 12:42

Yeah.

Esther Fedorkevich: 12:42

But every time we get together, we're always talking about businesses and all of us are investing, even the little kids, the five-year-old, six-year-old. They're putting $150 of their own money into a startup that we're investing in as adults. So they'll put $150 or $100. They literally will put their own money, their birthday money, into startup investing and we tell them you might not get this back for seven to 10 years and they're good with it.

Doug Smith: 13:06

Wow, do you?

Esther Fedorkevich: 13:08

Bitcoin came around, all of us did Like I'm telling you, like all the kids did it, and so it's fun, and they're not seeing a reward immediately. And what a cool lesson to teach your kids that you're not investing right now for tomorrow to get the money back. You're investing and you're saying bye-bye to it for a while.

Doug Smith: 13:29

Do you pay your kids an allowance? Do you make them work for their money? I'm just curious how did you guys handle that?

Esther Fedorkevich: 13:35

Do not pay the kids allowance I, so their lives are really full. So I have a son who's going to be a D1 athlete, so with school. They go to a classical Christian school, so with school work, and there's no time for a job. But he does work Like he'll have jobs to do that he'll get paid. But it's different because when they were younger, yes, they worked, but now, as they're older, with school work and like different goals that they have, it's hard to get jobs. My daughter makes money. They be sitting for any of her extra needs, but like their needs that they have on a regular, like their food and their gas and their insurance we pay for right now, but when they graduate it's done.

Doug Smith: 14:18

Yeah.

Esther Fedorkevich: 14:18

They're gonna be on their own.

Doug Smith: 14:21

Speaking of money, I heard you saying in another podcast and we'll get more into your career and what you're doing today that money's kind of always just followed you. It's not really been something that you've had to pursue, et cetera. But we live in a culture where everyone's chasing money. Everyone wants to be a multi-billionaire by 25. What have you learned about money and your life and career? What can money do for you and what can it do?

Esther Fedorkevich: 14:45

Okay. So the Bible verse the love of money is the root of all things evil, right, and I think it's the love of money. When people are working just to make money, I'm a strong believer where the proverb that says all hard work brings a profit, but when people just talk about ideas, mere talk leads to poverty. And I think what happens in our world is so many people talk about ideas or talk about starting a business or talk about how bad their job is or how bad their boss is, but they don't even put the hard work in. The profit's gonna come to you just by working hard, and I think people forget about that. They think things are gonna come easy or they think, oh, this is just gonna come in this world of influencers that get paid crazy money to oppose or this Like.

Esther Fedorkevich: 15:33

Honestly, I'm still a big believer. It's hard work and I know that sounds really boring and really old school, but I've worked really hard my whole life and I just no matter what that profit is. I don't do it for a certain amount of money, I do it because I know God's gonna honor it and I will turn a profit. Now, people who are lazy, or people who just talk about things. And then they wonder why they're like living paycheck to paycheck. You know, I worked for Dave Ramsey for a while. You wonder why these people are living like that. It's because they don't have the mentality of get up and work hard and give like my motto every day as I wake up every day and I'm gonna give God 100% of my time, whatever that is.

Doug Smith: 16:16

I love that you mentioned you work for Dave Ramsey. So you know, grew up entrepreneurial. I'm sure had a thousand business ideas that you could have done, but something drew you to working for them. I'm just curious, you know, how did you get on staff there? What drew you to working for a company versus doing your own thing initially?

Esther Fedorkevich: 16:30

Okay, so I was. I'm not gonna give you the names of these companies, but I worked for huge, huge Christian company at 19 years old, got married at 19, moved to Nashville, worked for a huge company and I was really naive. I've been like they're Christians, they're gonna be awesome, right. And I did telemarketing sales where I was in a cubicle making phone calls every second, selling curriculum and books and they had a campaign going that if you could sell to a new person no, it's first time customer they were gonna pay 30% commission on whatever you sold. So I got remember my motto of how I grew up to work hard. Right, like God honors hard work. So I would get up and be in the office at 7 am, cold calling, telemarketing, like literally call up to call, and I would leave at 7 pm, like get the East Coast and the West Coast in here. At 19 year old I did a million dollars in five months. They only 300, a little over 300,000, and they said I couldn't make more than the president of the company. And then my sales manager boss said you're 19, you don't need to make this much and you have to also remember I'm 19 and I looked like I was 13,. Right, I was like so young and so they weren't they.

Esther Fedorkevich: 17:46

And then I went to my pastor was the pastor of a big mega church in Nashville and I said what do I do Like? Is there age discrimination? Cause I'm young, but I did everything. They said I worked harder than all the other telemarketers, which is like letting things slide and we're making a phone call and going to get a snack and going to like a break room and talking to I mean I literally didn't talk to anyone. I focused and I was like on a mission to get as many calls and cause I knew it was a numbers game, the more calls, the more sales, right. So my pastor said Esther, you can't sue this company. It's a huge company. It's not right to sue this company. God doesn't love that. So I want you to talk to.

Esther Fedorkevich: 18:27

My Sunday school teacher at that time was Dave Ramsey. He was the finance teacher. They brought Dave Ramsey to this private meeting and Dave told me come work for me, I'll never cap your commission. And he goes I'm starting something called financial peace university and I want to know what you did to sell that much. Come work for me and I'll never cap it. And he took. He kept his word, never kept his commission.

Esther Fedorkevich: 18:51

I had an amazing experience working for Dave and I never sued this company and my Dave and this our pastor said God will just bless you, don't worry, what goes around comes around. God's gonna bless you, you'll be fine. And I wouldn't in that that, yes, I was hurt and yes, it kind of I'm like, wow, people can like really like not be true to their word, but what was cool about it was then I let it go, I didn't think about it anymore, I like moved on and now I'm selling the next thing you know, working for the next company. It was really cool, cause I kind of see how God now, looking back 25 years later, it's like oh God, really God was fine with it. You know, like I had a plan, a bigger plan, but it was tough thinking that you're gonna have $300,000 in commission and then not getting it.

Doug Smith: 19:39

So you went to work for Ramsey and you know Dave's made such an impact on so many lives. I'm sure you made a huge impact while you're there as well. Anyone I know who's worked for Ramsey. I always just ask you know, being under that leadership culture, are there one or two lessons that you learned from your time at Ramsey that are worth sharing?

Esther Fedorkevich: 19:54

Well, dave's driven. He honors hard work, right. He's like. He teaches you how to your own PNLs. And the biggest thing, which I didn't know, cause I didn't know I was gonna start another big company like my agency four years later after I started working for Dave, but he taught me how to live, to start a company debt free, with no debt, telling me myself how to get out of debt. That's one thing that our parents never taught us. They never taught us about debt. They taught us about how to make money. They taught us about how to dream big. They taught us how to be entrepreneurs. They never taught us about debt. And so that's the biggest thing I learned from Dave and I will always like. When people with COVID hit or the recession in 2008 hit, I was debt free. It was unbelievable. So I can make it through these times where other businesses or other literary agencies or entertainment agencies were closing their door. I was able to be fine, and I really do owe that to Dave Ramsey.

Doug Smith: 20:53

That's such a cool story. I'll come back to Dave and the transition to your new agency, but I do wanna ask you've been in your career, got to spend time with, you know, some of the most influential people on the planet, dave being one of them Steve Furter, tim Tebow, you know Tim McGraw, et cetera. And I heard you say on a podcast which I love this, I'm a big believer in this you said, if you gave me two or three weeks, I could get in touch with anyone on the planet and have a meeting with them. I guess first I would just ask is there anyone that intimidates you or that you would like to get to that you haven't gone after yet? And then, how do you? What is your actual process if you were going to start today to try to get a hold of someone that most people think you couldn't?

Esther Fedorkevich: 21:32

Well, I'm a big believer that you can get to anybody. You can't quit, right, remember, you have to keep going and you have to be smart about how you get to them. But yeah, there's nobody that I think that's somebody I couldn't get to and you got to be aggressive about it. You got to work hard and you have to have a system about it. My system usually is I find out if there's any connections, anybody that I know, even if it's a six degrees of like this person knows this person, that knows this person. We have LinkedIn today, so there's a lot of ways through connections on LinkedIn. We have social media, which is so much easier. Like I can DM somebody that they don't know who I am and mention a couple of names in the DM and I could be lucky that they DM me back. Wow, so we I'll tell you one that I'm right now I think I'm one degree away is you know?

Esther Fedorkevich: 22:25

I'm in Austin and one of me with Elon Musk read his biography, super impressed, had a couple things, and I went down that trail and I think I'm one person away from meeting with him. So it's like and people be like that's so hard to get Not really Like I'm now talking to one of his best friends who's making the connection and? But it took me eight different people, wow, connecting me to eight other different people, and then you're testing that one, that one, that one, that one to get to him. So there's nobody you can't if you really want it, but there's got to be a reason. I'm not trying to get to Elon Musk, to just get to Elon Musk, right?

Esther Fedorkevich: 23:00

What's the reason? So that when he there's a reason that he would say yes to meeting with me and I think that's the kind of thing as you're looking at, who do you want to meet with? What's, what's the reason for it? I don't ever have a reason. Just because I'm a fan, right, like I don't want to go meet I don't know Justin Bieber, because I'm a fan of Justin Bieber. It's like it would be a reason for me to meet with Justin Bieber. So I'm saying, as you think about those things is like, what's the reason and why do you really want to meet with them? And if it's a good reason, they'll probably want to meet with you too.

Doug Smith: 23:32

So that's phenomenal. So you get the meeting. I'm curious and I'm sure a ton of people try to get to you as well, just with your background and what you do. When you get a meeting with someone, how do you make the most out of it to make sure that you you honor, respect their time but also accomplish what you are accomplished? You may only get 10, 15 minutes, maybe more. I'm just curious how do you handle the meeting?

Esther Fedorkevich: 23:55

Okay. So when I was younger, in high school, there was like there used to be these big, it was cassette tapes back there I'm really aging myself now that I don't really like telling the story so we would listen to cassette tapes, right. There was no podcast, there was no internet, there was no social media, there was no cell phones, right, but we would like there was these like convention conferences, and I went at 16 years old and heard this guy, zig Ziglar. Have you ever heard of him? Oh, huge fan.

Doug Smith: 24:25

Yeah, of course I was so.

Esther Fedorkevich: 24:26

Inspired, I bought. I bought Spades $700. I remember exactly how much it was.

Esther Fedorkevich: 24:34

And bought his whole cassette series and I was just single night and I think that's kind of what people are doing now with podcasts, right, we have so much, but back then it was cassette tapes and it was this guy inspired me and he was amazing and anyway, he has this one thing that he says he's like you can get everything in life you want, right, if you, if you just help enough people get what they want, do you remember that you get?

Doug Smith: 25:02

help yeah.

Esther Fedorkevich: 25:03

And that is that is how you connect with people is you get anything you want? You got to help people get what they want. So usually our calls is I'm helping someone get what they want and then figuring out the right time for me to ask for what, what I want.

Doug Smith: 25:19

Love it. Thank you for sharing that First what I want.

Esther Fedorkevich: 25:22

Usually. Usually it's it's me getting them what they want, then they'll give me something.

Doug Smith: 25:28

So I don't know if you want to share this on the podcast now because you haven't had the media. But Elon, like how would you? You know I'm going into a meeting with Elon? How will I know what Elon wants so I can serve him prior to him?

Esther Fedorkevich: 25:39

you know, whatever my objective is, Well, I'm in with Elon on a total separate company. We have an invention that we think Tesla's going to buy from us for about three, four billion dollars, and it's a patent. We signed it. We took some years to do it. He never thought of it. He's missing it in his cars and it's me and my brother and we feel like it's so huge. So my going to him is I've invented this, going to change his life and make him tons of money, and that's why he wants to meet with me. I'm solving a problem for him. That's why he wants to meet with me.

Doug Smith: 26:16

Amazing. Thank you for sharing that. I'm fired up and I yeah.

Esther Fedorkevich: 26:18

It sounds like you'll get the meeting I can't wait to see, I don't want anyone to steal it, but it's a real. I'll tell you later, but it's a really good invention.

Doug Smith: 26:26

I look forward to it changing the world. So kudos to you and your brother. That's awesome. I want to dive in. I'm sure everyone wants to hear about the publishing world, but before we dive into that, just briefly. You're at Ramsey and at some point you decided to jump out on your own and start the Fed agency, which is your agency that you do now. Can you talk about that transition and the launch and what that was like?

Esther Fedorkevich: 26:47

Yes, I was doing for Dave, we were. We started self publishing before people were self publishing. So I have a love for books. I love her story. We're doing all financials type of products and I got I was 25.

Esther Fedorkevich: 27:00

I was pregnant with my daughter and I said I don't want to just do financial books anymore and we did this book called total money makeover which and we did a huge campaign. It was so fun it was, and learning from the best, like Dave, was really great for me because then when I had to go and start my agency and find clients, like I saw how it's done on the highest level to know that that is, that is a possibility for my authors at some point in their life. You know, even if their first time. You know when I'm starting as a young agent, and so I gave birth to my daughter in August of 2003, formed my company the next day and literally the next day and it was. There was no turning back from there. And then what has it been? 20? This past August was 20 years and we've had over a hundred New York Times bestsellers, represented over 2000 books, and it's been really it's been a fun ride.

Doug Smith: 27:55

Yeah, well, let's just talk about this. Just in general. Do you believe that everyone in the planet has a book in them and should publish a book before they die?

Esther Fedorkevich: 28:04

Yes.

Doug Smith: 28:07

Okay. So if that's true, if someone feels like they publish it now.

Esther Fedorkevich: 28:12

do I believe every book's a bestseller? No, but do I believe everybody has a story to tell and should publish a book and put it down and writing 100%?

Doug Smith: 28:22

Yeah, and I feel like I read some stat that you know 95% of people want to write a book before they die, but I'm sure the statistic for many people actually do is way lower than that. If people feel like they have a message in their heart to write, what should they do to start?

Esther Fedorkevich: 28:36

Okay. So there's. You gotta be be honest with yourself, right? When someone says I'm going to sell a million copies and they have 10 friends on Facebook and Instagram, right, I have no clue how they're going to sell a million copies because they haven't built any transactional audience. But there are books that you're supposed to just write and tell your story for your kids, your grandkids, your great grandkids, your great great grandkids to know about you. And I mean, I wish, don't you wish, doug, you could have your great, great great grandfather's journal or writing of what he was going through, what was happening in the country at that time. Anything like that would be amazing. So that's why I think everyone should write a book, what they've been through, because, as the generations happen and go past and past, books will stay around forever and audio, like now, we can put on audio and you can listen to their voice to take the time and do it. But it's not everyone's not supposed to sell a million copies. It's very hard to sell a million copies.

Esther Fedorkevich: 29:33

I believe in the power of books. I don't look at a book sold as a book sold. I look at a book sold as a prior answered and I think if we can put great content out there and change a lot of lives and my authors write great books and I'm able to help them on the marketing and branding side and scaling that, we can do a lot of good and reach a lot of people. I always say my favorite thing it'll never change is when I get a letter in that your, my books, my author's book, is translated into a different language. Then I know we've arrived right, because that's something we couldn't have done on our own.

Esther Fedorkevich: 30:09

That was just God.

Doug Smith: 30:10

Wow, you talked about writing a book for your kids or your family, which is one thing. And then obviously, some people do want to have huge platforms and write the million dollar or the million copy sellers, but people can also write a book just for credibility, right? Can you talk to people who maybe their goal is to sell a million copies, but they can use a book to increase their business in other ways.

Esther Fedorkevich: 30:32

Okay. So I had a financial planner come to me. She was taking investments of a million dollars or more right, that was where her size of her business was, and we did a book for the purpose of growing her business and building credibility for her. She ended up moving 10,000 books, but the best part is her agency grew and now she's taking minimum of two and a half million, had seven more employees and has, you know, did 10X in business.

Esther Fedorkevich: 30:58

So a lot of times a book is, first of all, it builds credibility for you. Do it right, Don't do it the cheap way. There's so many people online that sell you self publishing. That's a joke. That is not going to. It's just not going to help you. Call my office.

Esther Fedorkevich: 31:12

I know the good, other good people that do it. If we can't do it, we'll have other people you know that we trust to do it. But publish right, you know, and then, as you get it out, use it to grow your business, use it to grow your following, use it to just grow your legacy. However you're looking at it, it doesn't necessarily have to be a book that gets in Target or Wal-Mart, you know, or on shelves where you're in the airports it would be nice, but to do that you have to be one of the top 30 titles that everybody wants and is everyone looking for. So we do a lot on Amazon. We're where Amazon Ninja's over here, so we really know how their algorithms work and how to move books and have people find books on Amazon. So that's a big strategy for us here.

Doug Smith: 31:57

Yeah, so talking about different routes people can go so they can self publish on their own or find you know various people who will say they can do a good job. I believe your agency also offers an agency assisted publishing and then traditional. Can you talk about if someone's processing, hey, I have my book, or I want to write a book and want to, you know how? Do I even know what path I should go down?

Esther Fedorkevich: 32:16

Okay, so traditional is all about platform. So you have to have a big enough platform that a traditional publisher will pay you to publish, to publish your book. It used to be different back. You know, even five, 10 years ago, before social media was what it was, you could get a book just because you were a great writer. Now, even great writers need to have a platform and have to show a publisher how they're going to sell. The problem with traditional publishing is it takes long. So right now I'm selling books that are coming out in fall of 2025.

Doug Smith: 32:48

Wow.

Esther Fedorkevich: 32:48

That's a long wait. And so what's happening? And we have a another side, called agent managed publishing, which is a hybrid model where the author owns 100% of their book and we service it and create a great book, but they own it. We're having huge influencers with millions and millions and millions of followers not wanting to go traditional because they want their book out in six months. They don't want to wait two years. They don't know what they're going to say in two years. They know what they want to say now, and so they rather own it. All. That's what a lot of people are doing now is they want to own all their own content so they can do e-courses and master classes and they can do movie deals or documentaries or I mean it just goes. The list goes on and on.

Esther Fedorkevich: 33:35

So traditional is not for everyone, and traditional is not like it used to be in traditional publishing, where you needed them more because of how you buy books today and you can get your book on Amazon and look if you, 90% of all books are sold online. What are we talking about here? You know, and that's including when you include audio sales in there, because audio is all digital Audio is. It went up 347% in the last two years Wow. So think about that when you're really looking at books. It's like you can do it yourself. The problem is you're going to have to have some money. You're going to have to invest it. It's going to be a business for you, or you can wait and do it traditionally and help have a publisher, help you scale it, but at the end of the day, it's up to you. You're still going to have to work that book.

Doug Smith: 34:17

Yeah, on the agent, assistant or I forget the word you used for it Like if people are looking to make that investment, what does that typically cost? Range rise for them to do that and get a book out in six months?

Esther Fedorkevich: 34:28

It depends fiction, nonfiction, children's book but it could be anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000. So it really depends on where they're at and also know if they're writing themselves or do they have a ghostwriter. So when you have a ghostwriter, there's ghostwriters that are 10,000 and there's ghostwriters that are 10 million. So, like, like the guy who just wrote Steve Jobs and Elon Musk's book, you know he's, he's probably the one of the most successful ghostwriters and I think he starts at 5 million.

Doug Smith: 34:59

Wow.

Esther Fedorkevich: 35:00

It gives me an idea of like ghostwriting is a whole nother side. And then it's like who's going to tell your story? And a pastor can't just take a book, sermon series and transcribe it and think it's going to be a good book. It doesn't work that way, so it's got to get a writer involved and make it right. But that's where it's just like buying a car. I always say you know, you buy a car, you want leather seats in it right, going to cost you a little more. You want, like the heated steering wheel is going to cost you more, right, you want. So all that is kind of in a book is the same way. You got to look it in and say, look, what's your budget. And then what can you do? What's the best you can do for that budget? And we really help authors work in a budget and say this is where I would spend it if that's what I have.

Doug Smith: 35:42

Got it and you talked about the importance of platform and I'm sure whether, whatever route you go, platform is important. Can you just talk about, like, when you guys are looking for someone with quote unquote a legit platform, that it's like, hey, this is someone we should consider? What kind of numbers are you looking for typically?

Esther Fedorkevich: 35:59

Half a million on Instagram. It could be the same on TikTok or Facebook, but we're looking at they showed. It really actually is even better if they show that they sold their people something before they have a transactional audience. They talk about that if they sold stuff, if they sold products, if they they're getting them already buying from them. That actually is great for us for a book. A lot of these influencers can have videos that went viral and have 20 million views on a video, but they've never sold anything. That's very different than clicking and watching a funny video versus actually going to that person and buying. So we look at subscribers, we look at people that are invested in them and, of course, we have authors that have smaller platforms. A lot of them have. They have shown that something is transactional in their line. So even if they don't have that many followers, they're selling something to their audience. Does that make sense?

Doug Smith: 36:55

Yeah, no, absolutely so. If someone just starting from zero, which sounds like they'll have a long way to go. But where would you encourage people to spend their time building their platform if they don't know where to start?

Esther Fedorkevich: 37:05

Well, a book helps them. So books a great way. When you have a book out, they won't get a traditional deal we'd have to publish it for them and use the book to grow their business or grow their brand and to start their brand and the book's going to be really great for them. And if that means they, it causes them to have chances to go out and speak, that's awesome. That's what a book does for a lot of people. They get speaking opportunities they wouldn't get before. I also would just think, when you're looking at a book is a book is a part of a bigger thing you're trying to grow. When we do a book for a client, that's one thing, but a lot of times we have a movie or documentary or something, a core, something else that we're building, and that book is just a catalyst for us to do the other stuff that we want to do.

Doug Smith: 37:48

I've also heard that that you love when authors have vision of writing multiple books and seeing each book as a business. Anything you want to say there that would be helpful for people aspiring to write?

Esther Fedorkevich: 37:59

The reason I love that is we work for you, right, so we have to scale something. It's hard to scale one book, and so when an author has multiple books, doug, we're able to scale it. You're giving us something to scale. When the first book does OK, the second book does better. We can sell more of the first book and, as our jobs as agents is, we want to grow your business and help you grow and help you scale. So the more products you can give us, the more chances we have to scale.

Doug Smith: 38:28

I want to dive into sales and marketing, which is on the other side of publishing, but anything else that I'm not asking that I should be when it comes to writing and or getting into publishing.

Esther Fedorkevich: 38:38

No, you did a good job.

Doug Smith: 38:41

OK, great Well, sales and marketing. I was really excited to dive into this because it sounds like you could sell straight out of the womb, so I'll just leave this really really open ended. What advice do you have for people, but specifically authors, when it comes to selling and marketing in their book?

Esther Fedorkevich: 38:59

So I mean you've heard me say this before but really think about a book like a business. So if you were starting a I don't know a laundromat or cleaners or a Chick-fil-A, you'd want to do marketing to people know that it's there, right? You'd want you have to spend money in marketing. And so many times authors spend everything in getting the book done and then it's time to market and they spend nothing and then nobody gets to hear about it. And so I say, whatever you spend on the book is what you should be spending on marketing.

Esther Fedorkevich: 39:29

Really realistically is you need to put money in marketing and you've got to have a team around you. That's why a lot of these authors do launch teams and they have a bunch of people around them supporting them. They do Instagram lives and ask their influencer friends If you believe in the message, help get it out. And so marketing is really crucial to a book and even at like, you create great ads and great reels and great, you can spend some money on that. It's just how do you get your message out and don't just spend all this time doing a book and then it comes to market it and release it and then you're out of money and you can't grow it.

Doug Smith: 40:07

Yeah, you mentioned a lot of different things that people can do. Where do you see the greatest ROI as far as spend comes when it comes to marketing? Is it social, is it ads, is it trying to get media?

Esther Fedorkevich: 40:19

It's all above, but it's social media, right. So everything, and it depends who your demographics are, right. So there's a demographic for Facebook and there's one for Instagram and TikTok, right, and LinkedIn is a different demographic. So it really depends on what your number one demographic is, and then that's where I would encourage them to spend the money.

Doug Smith: 40:38

OK and OK. If I gave you 5 to 15 hours a week, because I'm guessing a lot of authors aren't full time to market and sell your book, how would you spend that time?

Esther Fedorkevich: 40:50

I would do ads and I would do a lot on Amazon. I would spend a lot on Amazon Instagram, probably LinkedIn for you Facebook and we don't have to spend a ton but start with 500 a month in AdBuy's and see what's turning right. The other side is I would ask you if you can speak, what places you can locally speak at and get out there and talk and then have books to sell. I would, and then I would do a lot on Amazon.

Doug Smith: 41:21

And I would love to hear you specifically talk about selling. When you get in front of someone that you want to sell product to, like you're meeting with Elon, what are you thinking and how do you kind of, what's your process for getting the sale?

Esther Fedorkevich: 41:33

OK, so have you ever bought in from an infomercial?

Doug Smith: 41:39

I don't think so.

Esther Fedorkevich: 41:41

Nothing you've ever bought in a product from an infomercial.

Doug Smith: 41:44

Oh, I'm a big Beachbody workout fan. I didn't get him from the workout but from infomercials, but that would be the closest probably I've come. Yeah, I'm boring.

Esther Fedorkevich: 41:53

OK, so don't they do the shakes, don't they have Shakeology?

Doug Smith: 41:55

Yeah, Shakeology, yeah yeah.

Esther Fedorkevich: 41:57

You call Shakeology.

Doug Smith: 41:58

Yeah.

Esther Fedorkevich: 41:59

OK, so a real Instagram post, any of that? That's new infomercial right You're buying from clicking Back. In my days we'd watch it on TV and QDC or home shopping network. So I remember, like any infomercial I watched, I would be sold. So one thing about me is I'm super easy, like I'm like an egg cracker that cracks the egg for you and, with no mess, buy it Right. Most probably inventions that never worked. I would love it because they did such a good job selling about ease of life or they were solving a problem, like the ab roller right or the like the George Forman Grill, like think of the my Pillow guy who's super nerdy but I bought it because it was World's Comfiest Pillow Right and by the time you get it.

Esther Fedorkevich: 42:47

It is comfy. This is a comfy pillow, so I bought. I get sold really easily. So that also is why I think I can sell anything really easily.

Esther Fedorkevich: 42:58

And so when you listen to enough people selling and you listen to enough sales pitches, you kind of know that you've got to solve. What's the problem you're solving? So when you go in and talk to someone, what are you offering them? Is it ease of something? Is it, is it wealth? Is it? Is it making their life? You know, their workflow of their workday easier. I mean you just got to think what's the problem? You know that yourself. Is it helping them cook meals for dinner for in 30 minutes or less? All of this stuff matters.

Esther Fedorkevich: 43:29

And so when you know that and you go in to a meeting, you're sell, you're solving a problem for them. Then their ears you know they listen, they're like what do you have to say? Like this is interesting. So you have to know what problem you're solving and what they need solved. If you're solving a problem that they don't have, you're out the door. So you better do your research and figure out what you're solving for them or what they need.

Esther Fedorkevich: 43:53

And when you sell you have to be confident. So I always say this like I walk in, I don't even know what I'm selling sometimes, I'm just super confident and I'm like, yeah, and then they believe me that it's the best idea, because if you're confident and you have good energy, they want your energy. But if you go in there and you are boring, what, what are they going to? Why do they want to have you in there? But if you show excitement and change your voice and get super excited and like, do crazy stuff, they kind of like it because, listen, they have enough boring people around them every day.

Doug Smith: 44:25

Several follow up questions there. My first one is how does your ability to be sold so easily impact your marriage, Like what I'm just trying to like? Does your husband just see like 100 boxes show up from Amazon every day?

Esther Fedorkevich: 44:38

No, but there was a time that he, like when I was pregnant and you're like kind of crazy, when you're like at two in the morning I was like buying everything off the infomercial. So he like took away my debit card and is like you are not buying anything anymore, like this is done, but I was getting these. But I right now we do have another company that we do inventions for, right. So it's interesting that I'm part of invention business because I love things in inventions that people are coming up with their ideas that are new. That's why I love shark tank, right. I love seeing new things that people are creating and it's fun seeing if it works or if you could actually make it work. But anyway, that's like a whole different side. But yes, I'm sold easily, but the people on them, they actually sell really well, like the oxy clean guy.

Esther Fedorkevich: 45:26

He makes it look, anything can be white and clean, and amazing that. Why wouldn't you try it?

Doug Smith: 45:34

Right.

Esther Fedorkevich: 45:35

But he's exciting. Is he boring? Would he sell it if he was like bioxyclinic clean? It could make your thing. No, he's dynamic. So that's where I think a lot of people go in to sell something and they're not dynamic and they're not excited about what they're selling because they don't care about it. So find something you care about, and if you're writing a book, you should be selling something you really care about and believe in, and so make it exciting for the person.

Doug Smith: 46:00

Yeah, you also mentioned confidence. Walking in with confidence, you clearly are very confident. I think I heard you say that, like you're not really intimidated, you don't get nervous around people. I'm just curious, like is confidence something that you feel like you have as a result of being raised in a great home where your parents gave you the value, dignity and worth that you needed to be confident? Is it some of the way you were naturally wired Like? I feel so many people deal with insecurities and desire to have confidence. They just don't know how.

Esther Fedorkevich: 46:28

OK, Doug, how many brothers and sisters do you have?

Doug Smith: 46:31

I have a sister and a stepbrother, so two yeah.

Esther Fedorkevich: 46:33

OK. So when you grow up in a big family and there's seven of us a year apart, you go crazy for any kind of like airtime right, any kind of any parents time to actually get your voice in for one second they can hear you, right? But think, we all grew up confident. We all. We were also our own sports team, we all played sports, so we all were super competitive, but we all grew up confident. We weren't a very confident home and very positive home, but we had to really work to get our voice heard.

Esther Fedorkevich: 47:01

So now when we talk with someone, we don't have to work as hard when you have seven, you know, seven of us trying to scramble over each other to get our voice heard. So confidence, I think and I and I look across all of my siblings Everyone's confident. No one's scared to talk up in public, no one's scared to share their ideas. We're also from Jersey, so Jersey, but I will like confidence wasn't or speaking our ideas, and even if we were turned down or made fun of or people laughed, it didn't matter. We were made fun of every day at home with seven kids all making fun of each other. So you kind of get you let things roll off of you easier, and you're not afraid to speak up, and you're not afraid to be wrong either. You just go for it.

Doug Smith: 47:41

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I guess anything else on sales and marketing. I just want to ask a leadership question and dive in the lightning round.

Esther Fedorkevich: 47:47

No, that's good All right, I'm just curious.

Doug Smith: 47:51

overall, you know you've been leading an organization that you started 20 years 20 plus years ago now Any leadership lesson. Stick out that you were like, wow, when I made this shift in my leadership, everything changed for us.

Esther Fedorkevich: 48:03

Okay, when I learned to delegate, everything changed for me. Really, delegation was hard for me because have you ever heard this saying Jack of all trades, master of none?

Esther Fedorkevich: 48:15

Yeah, so it was like okay, I was a jack of all trades. I was good at everything. I could learn how to do stuff. Because when you, when you're green and you're learning and you're doing it all yourself, you just learn, right, you teach it. It's like it's called street smarts right, you're learning it, you're figuring it out. But when you can bring someone in that actually is really good at this, one thing that you don't like you're learning or doing like I'm doing accounting and I took accounting classes just to learn how to do accounting.

Esther Fedorkevich: 48:43

But it wasn't my number one strength and I hated it, but I did it because I had to do quick books.

Esther Fedorkevich: 48:48

I had to do the books and as the business was growing, it was getting more and more complicated. And then I was, and then I'm like, wow, when I hired a CPA and accounting and a bookkeeper here and a CFO, it was amazing how much relief came off of me so that I could focus doing sales and marketing what I want to do and what I was good at, and let someone else do the financials part, what they're really good at. And so delegation was a big thing, but really finding people in their own individual strengths A lot of people hire people that are like them, like we, like people that are like us, and that's great to have some of those around, but you really should hire people that have a skill that you don't have and then that actually allows you to keep doing what you're good at and leading the way you need to lead, and have these other people building other parts of your company. So that was a big learning lesson for me.

Doug Smith: 49:37

So good, with a few minutes we have left, I want to dive into the lightning round bunch of fun questions I ask in every interview, and the first one is what is the best advice you've ever received and who gave it to you?

Esther Fedorkevich: 49:47

Oh I well, like I said, I have this motto that is, work like it depends on you and pray like it depends on God, From Mark Batterson. Wrote it in the circle maker, one of my favorite books, and so that is my motto. And, like it's funny, I got that right when I started, like five years after starting my agency, and I really have made this my motto.

Doug Smith: 50:11

It may be the same answer, but if you could put a quote on a billboard for everyone to read, what would it say?

Esther Fedorkevich: 50:16

Yeah, I would do that, work, work, like it's good, I like that.

Doug Smith: 50:20

Yeah, I already know the answer to this, but what's one book that's made a huge impact on your life that you find yourself giving away most often, or, you know, telling people to buy?

Esther Fedorkevich: 50:28

so the circle maker.

Esther Fedorkevich: 50:30

It's when I started really dreaming big for my company and I was 29 years old and I believe that I could have the biggest faith-based literary and entertainment agency in the world, and that was my dream and that's what I'm trying to build. And the circle maker I started praying circles around everything my every office, every employee, our conference table, every call. I had and Been pretty cool. So if you haven't read the circle maker, pick it up. And then he has a devotional called draw the circle. That's a 40-day prayer challenge that will change your life. Everybody needs to read that.

Doug Smith: 51:05

You may have answered this, but I am curious. You've gotten to work with so many people, especially in the Christian side of things, that people would love to spend time with. Are there any of other authors that you've worked with that have significantly impacted your life the way maybe mark in the circle maker have?

Esther Fedorkevich: 51:19

oh, pretty much all my Seriously all my authors in some way. I get to hear amazing story, get to hear about their life, get to see God using them in big ways. Everyone knows Tim Tebow story, I mean obviously was pretty remarkable when he put John 316 under his eyes and over 90, you know, million people googled John 316 in 24 hours. Pretty amazing to see like how God uses that and we were able to do a book from that. I mean, I have stories. I've got a NBA player, jonathan Isaac, who in the bubble stood when everyone was kneeling and Stood for Jesus and it was unbelievable to see like Tens of thousands of people get saved from him being that bold. And what people don't know about Jonathan Isaac is Just a year ago from before that he was in Florida State and struggled with anxiety taking anti-xay e-messon because he was so scared to talk up or speak up or raise His hand in class. And here's God, tell him to stand In front of all these reporters you know for Jesus.

Esther Fedorkevich: 52:22

So like that kind of stuff I hear all the time every author has amazing stories and it's really just really. I tell you've heard this, doug, but we get thousands of letters in of suicides not committed, of people coming to Christ, marriage is saved, of fathers and sons Reunited. And I tell my a business is growing. I mean we just got an awesome one, say, of somebody who's I encourage them to start a business, and then it's like now their business is ten million dollars. I'm like in two years. I'm like can you teach me what you just did? That's impressive, right, I think. And I tell my authors and I tell my staff this, but it's all because of their books, right, and and I feel really honored and humbled to get be a part of getting their story out.

Doug Smith: 53:05

Yeah, well, thank you for for being obedient to the call and the plan God has for your life and the impact that it's making. Just thank you for being faithful. I'm sure there's times Well, I don't know if there are times you've wanted to throw in the town, but I'm sure glad that you haven't stopped and you've continued to go, and I'm just so grateful for the impact.

Esther Fedorkevich: 53:20

Okay, I'll tell you this one thing so yeah like every.

Esther Fedorkevich: 53:24

I believe too many people Quit before their miracle, they quit before their success. They give up too easily and in our culture today too many people don't realize like just work hard and keep going, because when you quit you, I mean you could have been successful six months later or a year later. And I, just because I'm a literary agent CS Lewis, I was reading about him that a lot of people don't know this. But back then, okay, when CS Lewis was pitching Narnia, you would have to hand write. There was no internet, there was no phone calls, right. You would hand write your letters, your submissions to Harper Collins or to Penguin Random House, right, and you would say here's my submission, please take it. He went 600 rounds.

Esther Fedorkevich: 54:09

And I always think about this because I'm like if I was CS Lewis's agent, I would not quit him. I'm like, do you? And I think I would go 600 rounds with one of the best you know writers? And and I don't know, 600 rounds. Working for free is a lot of work, right, a lot of rejections. But what if he stopped at 599, you know, none of our kids would know Narnia. We wouldn't read the grace great divorce. You wouldn't have like. Think about book after book after book of CS Lewis. So if, if he quit, we would have lost right, and I and I wonder if how many people have really lost in life because they just quit too early and they didn't stick it out. So I, if I can encourage anyone here, is do the work and just don't quit. If you're feeling like you're gonna give up, keep going, because you never know when your day is gonna be so good.

Doug Smith: 55:02

Thank you for sharing that. You get to spend time with a lot of great people. I'm just curious when you meet someone that you look up to, I want to learn from, do you have a go-to question that you always ask?

Esther Fedorkevich: 55:11

Oh, that's a no, I don't. I just whatever I feel like wanting to ask.

Doug Smith: 55:16

Okay, what's your greatest leadership pet peeve?

Esther Fedorkevich: 55:20

Okay, my greatest leadership pet peeve are You're gonna. When people talk too much all day long and not work, it like drives me crazy. When they're just talking for hours and hours at the coffee thing or talking to this person, I'm like good to work, right, so I like I don't mind you talking for a little bit, but my pet peeve is like all day long just talking and fooling around and not working. It drives me crazy. I.

Doug Smith: 55:46

Don't know if you have an actual bucket list or not, but if you do, and even if you don't, want something that you've done in your life that you think everyone should experience before they die, oh, Okay, I don't have.

Esther Fedorkevich: 55:56

Everyone answers this question goes skydiving. Do this? Everyone needs to cold call someone, oh.

Esther Fedorkevich: 56:03

Oh, that's a good somebody that they want to talk to or interview or meet Cold call. I cold call people every week that are the craziest cold calls ever, right, and I'll find their agent or fan, find their manager, and I literally just call and introduce myself and they have no clue who I am. Wow. So if you haven't done that, I would encourage you to cold call and practice that, because it's really good for yourself, it's really good and it's kind of exciting when you do get the answer that you get a call with the person You've always wanted to talk to.

Doug Smith: 56:32

It's good stuff if you could go back and have coffee with Esther at any age and you would have actually listened to yourself. What age would you have coffee with yourself and what would you tell that version of Esther? Oh?

Esther Fedorkevich: 56:42

I probably would have told. Just because I'm going through this with my son, he's a senior. I probably told my senior self to go play basketball in college you know and go do it. Sometimes I look back and say I wish I played sports in college. But I Don't really care, like I wouldn't have got to where I am today if I did that. So it's just one part of like I would have told myself to play sports in college.

Doug Smith: 57:05

And last question you've you've talked about the impact that you've made through your work, but you know, one day, at the end of your life, looking back, what do you want to be remembered for?

Esther Fedorkevich: 57:15

Encouraging, inspiring people to tell their stories, so I want to be known for.

Doug Smith: 57:20

Anything else you want to leave leaders with today.

Esther Fedorkevich: 57:24

Don't quit, go for it, keep keep on keeping on right like I honestly I just I would if I could inspire everyone. Just just believe in yourself and keep working and Keep dreaming and keep creating and keep developing new ideas.

Doug Smith: 57:40

Well, esther, I've loved this. It was everything I thought would be and more. Just again, thank you for the impact you're making and everything you do. Hopefully we can do this again sometime.

Esther Fedorkevich: 57:47

Thanks, Ted.

Doug Smith: 57:49

Well, leader, thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Esther. I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I did. You can find ways to connect with her and links to everything that we discussed in the show go to l3leadership. org/ 404. And, as always, I liked into every episode with a quote, and today I'll quote Joyce Meyer, who said this. She said God chooses to use and promote those who know they are nothing without him and who give him glory and credit For all of their accomplishments. Every time you have success in your life, remember to give the glory to God, and I just love that. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Know that my wife Lauren, I love you. We believe in you and I say it every episode. But don't quit, keep leading. The world desperately needs your leadership. We'll talk to you next episode.