We were lucky to catch up with Sanjay Burman recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Sanjay thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Often the greatest growth and the biggest wins come right after a defeat. Other times the failure serves as a lesson that’s helpful later in your journey. We’d appreciate if you could open up about a time you’ve failed

Failure is the best lesson a person can have. I have a PHD in it. What is really amazing about failure, is that you gain the wisdom, but people forget about it the minute you have success. My failures in business and personally usually end up as a funny story I share in talks because it makes the other people feel comfortable about their own.

I have tried to put deals together that blew up. They sometimes would not only cost me time and effort, but actual money as well! However I noticed that those who helped me or were the ones I was working for, didn’t really hold that against me. The next time I would approach them over something, they jumped on board. It was more about the drive and persistance they appreciated and supported. I think the only way a failure will cost you in the long run, is if it’s by dishonesty or fraud. Those two are almost impossible to overcome. As smart as he was, even if Madoff was alive, out of jail and allowed to invest, who would agree to putting money with him? If Lance Armstrong said he wanted to race and agreed to a blood test daily, who would sponsor him? But no one really covers Robert Downey Jr’s drug addiction days anymore. We love those who have failed by circumstance but get back up and prevail.

I can remember going into a nightclub when I was in college and seeing a very pretty woman with her friends. She was obvioulsy a regular as she knew everyone. But my friends were trying to convince me to go and talk to her. Everytime she would walk past me, I’d overthink it and back out at the last second. Finally around the 4th time, she walked past me and my friend pushed me to go. She was talking to someone and I politely pulled back slightly to wait. She suddenly turned to leave and I reached out to tap her shoulder, when my hand went into her hair. As I pulled my hand back, her head was whipped back as well! She turned around angrily, and the first thing I did after closing my shocked jaw, I turned to the big guy next to me and said ‘Why’d you do that?!’ and turned and left. My friends shook their heads disappointingly. But the fact remains, she will never remember that story, my friends might remember if I remind of them of it, but the one I asked out without hesitation and was able to have a casual conversation due to not having a chance to overthink, is the one they all remember meeting.

Sanjay, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I started at 14 getting coffee for a woman who was a high-up executive with Toronto Film Festival. She let me bombard her with questions and taught me about the movie industry in exchange for being an intern and running errands. That led to becoming a segment producer at 16 for the CBC Newsworld. By 21 I was an agent for Canada’s largest talent agency and headed up my own division called ‘packaging’. The job of putting a book, screenwriter, producer, and director together, and selling the whole package. This got me interested in the publishing side and how deals are put together. By representing authors, I was able to see how the industry worked. By 23 I had packaged E! Network’s first film, Best Actress. I left being an agent and found an orphaned script called Spider. No one wanted to make it, so it was given to me to see if I can do something with it. Seeing how dark it was and to be honest, a little weird, I knew only one director getting attached could breathe new life into it.

Now, having been suspended for selling my high school to Pepsi (which is not allowed apparently), I lack the typical social etiquette one is usually born with, and therefore not afraid to take an opportunity when it comes. I sat in front of David Cronenberg’s home on a Wed night for 1.5 hours waiting for him to come home. When he pulled in, I jumped out and exclaimed it must be fate! I handed him the script and told him Ralph Fiennes was on board (he wasn’t). I then raced home and contacted Fienne’s agent and told him Cronenberg was on board (he wasn’t). Luckily both loved the script and when they met in person, I gulped very hard. Luckily no one became the wiser as to how I got them both on board, but the film no one wanted went on to win TIFF and an award at Cannes Film Festival.

The film world was still exciting but it takes a very long time for projects to come to fruition, if ever. Johnny Depp’s people called me one night and told me he liked Spider and has a project he wants to get made but it has stalled. The project was about Shakespear and the idea that he didn’t write his own plays. I negotiated for a writer of mine to re-write the script. Everyone agreed. Suddenly the director asked me to look at an email. My client had gone around me to avoid paying commission on the job. I was hurt, mad, and betrayed. I told my father. He calmly told me that I had become very arrogant, deceitful and this was karma. If I continue to live life this way, these types of events will keep happening. At that point, I agreed, closed my laptop, and was out of the business.

The next day, sitting in a park, I meet a woman and we started to talk about my life being a waste as I had worked so hard and now at 24, was in a midlife crisis. She told me to take her class. What class? What do I care, I was unemployed. The next day I walked into a hypnotherapy class. Learning how people have taken control of their brain and body function, and have had open-heart surgery without anesthetic, or remembered things from childhood, floored me. I became obsessed with it. Learning day, nights, practicing on people I would approach in the smoking areas of malls just to get experience. I then pursued teachers in Chicago, New York, and UK. Still having the clinic today on weekends, I work with severe addicts, split personalities, and most recently brain aneurysms. But this got me thinking…why should people pay me, when they can learn how to take control of their bodies on their own?

I started a publishing company only for self-help books. I lost everything in the first year. Wrong cover prices, wrong trim sizes, wrong cover art. Back at square one, I was getting dental surgery. I thought $5000 x how many patients per year, this surgeon is doing well. He could be my savior! I walked out with a cheque for $269,000 and was able to restart over again. From there I was able to convince the authors of The Secret, including Bob Proctor, Joe Vitale, John Demartini and Marie Diamond to join my company. The little company no one had ever heard of, was being looked at by everyone once our authors were on Oprah!

I most recently started a streaming bundling sevice that has 500,000 members. We are now at the point of raising expansion investment.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

Tip: when asked to go somewhere or meet someone, no matter how much you don’t want to, do it! Nothing to lose and something will come out of it. In this case, I was asked to go to a ‘raw food’ cooking party. The three McD’s I passed while going there should have been a sign, but nevertheless, walking into a black apartment, with black walls and ceiling, and some awkward space music in the background while a woman is in a rocking chair stroking a cat, should have made me leave, I walked into a party that would change my life… or end it. Friends had met me there and we were served a plate of what looked like grass trimmings. I could tell based on raking my parents’ lawn after mowing it. My friend, now drunk and trying to forget this memory, leans over and tells me we are eating ‘F-ing weeds on a Friday night’. I had to agree. We decided to leave and head to McD’s. Just as I was leaving, a woman handed me a DVD and told me to check it out. Two days later I saw it in my backseat and watched it. It was a bootleg copy of The Secret. I watched it again. Then called my lawyer/friend and told him to watch it. I drove it to him and he was liked it but was confused as to what I was thinking. I’m going to sign these people to my little publishing house.

Once Bob Proctor, Joe Vitale, John Demartini, and Marie Diamond signed on after relentlessly calling, emailing, or in one case, showing up at their home, The Secret went crazy and the authors were on Oprah, Larry King and every publisher was pursuing them. Too bad, we had them. This put us on the map. From there, I wanted to do something without the motive of reward, so we published the Making it in High Heels series. My answer to help girls deal with peer pressures and hopefully lower the suicide rate. It turned out to do more than that, the books were read by women of all ages, then turned into networking events and eventually we started to give women in shelters a night of motivation, networking opportunities and show their lives can change.

Any advice for managing a team?

My success has had little to do with my intelligence and more to do with my ability to find and convince the smartest people to help me. The advice I can give on how to keep a team motivated works for me and hopefully might work for you. People don’t get behind something and stay because they have to, they do it because they want to. Motivation is addictive. If you hire a fitness trainer, for the first week of working out even though your abilities are not very high, the coach is highly committed and excited about your success. If by the third week they have noticed no change in your body and no change to your abilities, they start to question your intentions and desire. If by the 4th week they still see no change, most of the trainers will mentally check out. They are now there just because you pay them. If another client more motivated than you comes along for the same amount of money, the trainer will drop you if time doesn’t allow for them to train both. This is because we are not only motivat-ing, but also want to be motivat-ed!

When working with a team, how many leaders take the time to talk TO the team members? To find out about their individual goals, expectations, life, gives the impression the leader cares. A good leader will remember what they were told and make sure to help the person achieve it. For instance if you are talking to a receptionist and ask about their goals, they might say I hope to one day work in marketing. A good leader will keep that in mind and eventually move that person into an assistant position within the marketing team. This becomes an environment not only for the leader’s goals, not only to make money, but to keep people loyal and motivated within the company for the long term!

Contact Info:

• Website: BurmanBooks.com
• Instagram: @burmanbooks
• Facebook: sanjay burman
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjay-burman-5b892a4/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sanjay+burman