Nick Pavilidis - Spooky World of Ghostwriting

Louis Goodman / Nick Pavlidis - Transcript

[00:00:03] Louis Goodman: Welcome to Love Thy Lawyer, where we talk with attorneys about their lives and careers. I'm your host, Louis Goodman. Today we welcome Nick Pavlidis to the program. After several years in the big firm civil world, Nick decided to explore other career options. He currently heads authorityghostwriting.com, where he works with companies to build relationships, strategies, and marketing and he does some ghost writing. He is a speaker, a trainer, and a ghost writer. As regular listeners to this podcast may know, I attended Podfest, one of the largest and most well-respected podcasting conferences earlier this year in Orlando. That's where I met Nick. While chatting informally, I found out two things. One, he was the chief organizer and head of the Podfest conference and two that he is an attorney. I am honored to have him on the podcast today. Nick Pavlidis, welcome to Love Thy Lawyer. 

[00:01:15] Nick Pavlidis: Well, I'm honored to be here. Thanks so much for having me. 

[00:01:18] Louis Goodman: I really am thrilled to have you. I was so impressed when I met you at at Podfest a few weeks ago. Where are you speaking to us from right now? 

[00:01:29] Nick Pavlidis: Just north of Boston, Massachusetts. 

[00:01:32] Louis Goodman: Can you tell us briefly what kind of work you do these days? 

[00:01:39] Nick Pavlidis: So the, from a big picture perspective, I help thought leaders, I help business people, I help speakers, coaches, consultants, reach audiences better, connect with audiences and grow their influence, their impact, their income using content various different ways. So I own a collection of companies, including Podfest like you mentioned, that helps people identify the appropriate direction that they want to go into, produce the types of content and information to head in that direction, and then get the attention that they need to attract the right people.

[00:02:12] Louis Goodman: You know, speaking of Podfest, how many people went to that conference? 

[00:02:18] Nick Pavlidis: I think it was a little over 2000 who registered. We generally get between 1500 and 3000 people every year. It's been slowly growing and then the pandemic crushed everything and then slowly grew back up and we're just getting to pre pandemic levels now, which is pretty exciting.

[00:02:36] Louis Goodman: Yeah, I was amazed at the number of people who were there. And, you know, very frankly, the other thing that really amazed me was Orlando, where I'd never been before, and all those huge hotels where they have conferences. And even with 2000 people at our conference, it just didn't seem like the hotel was in any way overwhelmed by conferences. And I think there were a couple other ones going on at the same time that ours was there. 

[00:03:02] Nick Pavlidis: There were, and what impressed me most especially about this, this hotel, is there were crowds, but it didn't feel crowded. They made sure, you know, there's some ways that event organizers try to make their conference feel bigger, fewer chairs, things like that.

Smaller rooms. The approach we take is we want people to feel comfortable spread. If there are two people in between you and the person next to you, that's fine. And so we were just really impressed the way that the hotel helped us create the spaces we needed to make everyone feel like they had plenty of room and be able to accommodate 2000 plus people.

[00:03:37] Louis Goodman: Where are you from originally? 

[00:03:39] Nick Pavlidis: I grew up here in Massachusetts. My law practice took me to New York City and I practiced there for 10 years, give or take, and then I moved back to Massachusetts to take an in-house counsel position in 2013. That was a sort of a stepping stone position. I help a lot of people leave corporate jobs and get into creative jobs that help them support their family in a professional way. And one of the things I encourage people to do is, Hey, you don't think you just need to go right from your big job into entrepreneurship and, take a position that opens up some more time, flexibility, or take a temporary position that's a step in the right direction. And so I spent about two and a half years in-house here in Massachusetts while I tried to figure out what I was gonna do. And eventually I did find ghostwriting. 

[00:04:28] Louis Goodman: Did you go to high school in Massachusetts? 

[00:04:30] Nick Pavlidis: I did, yeah. I grew up in a town called Wilmington, Massachusetts, which is about 25 miles north of Boston.

[00:04:36] Louis Goodman: When you graduated from high school in Wilmington, where'd you go to college? 

[00:04:40] Nick Pavlidis: I went to undergrad at Northeastern University here in Boston. I was a criminal justice major, and then I went to law school at Boston College. 

[00:04:48] Louis Goodman: Did you go directly from Northeastern to Boston College or did you take some time off in between?

[00:04:56] Nick Pavlidis: Well, I went directly, however, Northeastern the program, I don't know if they have multiple programs, but it's a five-year undergrad and they do a co-op program where essentially after your first year, you work for six months. You go to school for six months, et cetera. And so what I did was I took a 10 month period in the middle of my undergrad as sort of my time off.

And I flew out to Los Angeles and bartended on the Sunset Strip for nine months or something like that. And I just sort of. But I took five years to get to law school, but it was in the middle of undergrad that I took that break. 

[00:05:29] Louis Goodman: When did you first start thinking about being a lawyer?

[00:05:34] Nick Pavlidis: I have an odd answer and the answer is odd because I was in a really bad car accident my senior year of high school where I was dead at the scene. I had no blood pressure, no pulse, unconscious. Had a seizure when they found me. It was, it was not good.

It was a head on collision. I didn't have a seatbelt. The guy was on the wrong side of the road, hit me head on, and it was ugly. And so the reason that impacts my answer is because I have basically no childhood memories. What I'm told from my parents is that every time I used to watch Law and Order and TV shows like that, like I was a big, I wanted to be a lawyer my whole life guy, but I didn't really know what it was all about.

But in undergrad, I still headed in that direction. I took some pre-law classes. I was a criminal justice major, but took some pre-law classes and I was encouraged on, I don't wanna say every level, but basically every level to pursue law. The only time that changed was sometime toward the end of undergrad.

I graduated in 2001 from undergrad and it was the time when the stock market was just getting demolished and the.com burst, and I was really into the stock market at that point. I was like, oh, this is fascinating how this money and business flow works. And so there was a brief period of time where I thought it was gonna take time off to be a stockbroker, but my law professor in undergrad said, just apply to three law schools. And so he's like, just do me a favor, just apply. Like you, you have what it takes. So I applied to three schools. I got waitlisted to two, I got into Boston College, and I just went direct. 

[00:07:09] Louis Goodman: So tell us a little bit about your legal career. 

[00:07:13] Nick Pavlidis: Sure. When I was, I got a, a summer associate job from when I was at BC at a law firm, Aaron Fox Schiff, decent sized law firm. I think it was about 300 lawyers when I was there. It's probably six or 700 lawyers now. They were based in DC. I worked in their New York office. Although I did, I was always, I don't wanna say a rainmaker, but I did bring in business for my first year, and I was more interested in the business side of things than the legal side of things.

I was a corporate and bankruptcy litigator and got to work with people all over the firm. I was the guy who was just almost a little bit too into working, not necessarily practicing law, but I, I even in 2008, 2009, when my colleagues were getting laid off, I was getting productivity bonuses because I was working all the biggest cases.

I was working the most complex litigation. I just really loved that piecing the puzzle part of it, and taking a different approach to the practice of law. Never lost a case. I didn't go to trial on them, but all but like had favorable settlements, won on motions, things like that. Not because I was better and smarter than everyone else, but because I took a different approach.

The same approach I take now when I work with people is I'd get introduced to our clients in a meeting and everyone would say, so tell me what happened. And the client would tell them what happened. And they say, okay, well the law says this, so how do we fit that into there? And it was almost coming at it as what pieces do I have?

And then where can I find the legal arguments that would support my client? I took a different approach. I would get to my clients and I'd say, tell me what you want to achieve, like at the end of this, like not win the lawsuit. Like from a business perspective, what's like, what's the deal? What are you looking to do?

Well, listen, if I can just get 90 more days to make this payment, you know, I'm happy to make it. I don't think I owe it. I think he's a jerk, but I'm happy to make the payment just to move on with my life. I just need 90 days. I'd go into court with the same approach. Opposing counsel would stand up and say, your honor, section blah, blah, blah of this law does this and this, and the, the facts will show and the law.

And they'd sit down. They'd been practicing law longer than I'd been alive. Now, part of my approach was more ignorance than anything. I would stand up my and my father sells sandwiches. My father flips burgers for a living and my mother works the cast register. It's literally two employees at a mom-and-pop shop here in Massachusetts.

I'd just get up and be like, your Honor, I'll talk about the law and the facts and everything, but first lemme just tell you what happened. I'd tell 'em the story of what happened. Then all of a sudden, everything opposing counsel would tell the judge would be filtered through my story. And so I took a little bit of an oddball approach.

My law firm would commend me for my courtroom capabilities, my analytical skills, but they'd always tell me, but the way you write, it's just not lawyerly. And of course it's not lawyerly because I'm telling stories and then I'd come back with the law and, but it worked. And so my career lasted 10 years.

When I was up for partner, I, they told me what partnership looked like and I got in the meeting and they said, listen, partnership looks like this. And it was essentially because you'd go from an employee to self-employed. It was essentially, less money at first and more work and more responsibilities.

And at the time I had a young family and I was just, my wife wanted to, we were living in Hoboken, New Jersey at the time. My wife wanted to move home to Massachusetts. She's from too. And I was like, listen, if I do this, I'm thinking to myself, if I do this, I'm gonna, it's either my family or, or partnership.

I just chose my family and I quit on the spot. And I said, well, what if I do none of that? And they said, listen, you've been here so long. We love you. If you're not gonna pursue partner, we'll take your name off the list and we'll figure out a runway. And so they agreed to pay me for 10 months while I figured out what I would do next, as long as I was available if they need, and I found that transition job.

[00:10:56] Louis Goodman: So what did you do next? 

[00:10:58] Nick Pavlidis: Well, I called the only client I had in Massachusetts. I had a long relationship with them. I had known them since law school and I. I called her up and I said, listen, I just quit my job. She didn't believe me 'cause I was all gung-ho firm guy. I had a literally the only person in a 300 plus lawyer office to have a corner office who was not partner.

Like I was part of that fabric of that firm. It's an amazing firm. I'm still friends with the people. There just wasn't right for my family at that point. And so I called her and I said, listen, I quit my job. I need you to hire me as a lawyer. And she's like, I can't. This is June of 2013. She's like, I can't.

And I was like, what do you mean you can't? I know how much money you spend on lawyers. You're gonna save a whole lot of money because you're gonna hire me directly and I'm gonna, I'm gonna save you five times what you pay me? And she's like, yeah, but I already set the budget for this year. And I had anticipated that 'cause when I started talking to them, I was like, all right, let's figure out a runway. I knew what I was gonna do. I knew I was gonna call her and basically force her to hire me to get me back to Massachusetts. I didn't want to go to somewhere else in New York. I didn't want to go to California. I wanted to go to Massachusetts.

And so I said, well, listen, here's the thing. You don't have to pay me till next year, and you haven't paid next year's. You haven't made next year's budget yet, have you? And she's like, no. I said, I already negotiated, they're gonna pay me through it. I didn't know it was gonna be 10 months at the time, but they had already agreed before I left that room that I'd get paid through the end of the year unless I did something stupid, which I wasn't gonna do.

And so I said, you don't have to pay me until next year and I don't care what you pay me. I told her why I'm doing this. I said, I'm gonna start some sort of side hustle. I don't know what it's gonna be. You know how hard I work. You tell me the hours you need me to work, give me my nights and weekends.

If there's an emergency, call me. I'll come in. I want my nights, my weekends, so I can do some type of side hustle. I need to be more present with my family. So I don't want email on my phone. You'll have my cell phone number if something happened. This is 2013, so it's not as ridiculous as it is now to say no email on my phone, but still at the time it was relatively silly and, and I said, and I don't care what you pay me.

So she, she agreed to hire me starting in 2014, and I took $125,000 a year pay cut, but they threw in a company car just to help so I didn't have to buy a car. I worked there for two and a half years while I figured out what I was gonna do next, the last year, of which I had discovered ghostwriting, and then found my first ghostwriting client in December of 2015.

And then quit that job in August and went, essentially, I gave them three months notice. So I quit my job in August, stopped working in November. Haven't come back. 

[00:13:30] Louis Goodman: Now, I am very interested in the ghost writing aspect of your career. I don't think I've ever talked to someone who was a ghost writer and Sure also who was just so upfront about being a ghost writer. Yes. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that. 

[00:13:49] Nick Pavlidis: Yeah. You know what's the most interesting part about me A be Me being a ghost writer is in, I don't know exactly when it was. It might have been 2021 or so. I get a phone call from Boston College Law School, went to a top law school.

It's not a Harvard or whatever, but it's a top tier law school, very well respected, especially here in Massachusetts and on the East Coast. And I get a call from, from BC. The only times they had called me before were to ask for money in a, and I don't mean that in a negative way, but it's, Hey, we're doing our annual giving.

Would you like to donate this time? It was, my name is, and I forget the name of the person. I am from Boston College, BC Law, Law School Magazine, whatever their magazine is. We'd love to interview you and feature you in BC Law Magazine. I'm like, well, I'm not practicing law anymore. They're like, we know.

That's why we want to interview, we wanna feature you as a ghost writer. And I didn't realize that, you know, this, like, I knew ghost writing was an interesting thing. It's, most of it's not talked about, but it is, even in the legal world, it's intriguing. It's, and it's become in especially in with, with, I don't wanna say big business, but especially with busy entrepreneurs and business owners, it's become a key position in people's companies. In fact, I have, granted, I am an attorney by trade, but I have clients who call me before they call their lawyers or CPAs to say, is this consistent with where we're heading together? I have this opportunity.

And so I didn't know what ghost writing was when I first got started, but I was in what's called a mastermind group, and I don't know that I know you, you may, you may know about mastermind groups just by nature of you being active, a networker, a business owner and things like that.

But a lot of people, even the, the term mastermind group is new to them. And if it's new to, 

[00:15:41] Louis Goodman: So tell us, tell for, for people who don't know and yeah, I mean, I have some familiarity with it, but you obviously have a lot more than I do. But for people who don't know, tell us what a mastermind group is. 

[00:15:51] Nick Pavlidis: Sure. I mean, it, it's a concept that comes out of the, or it traces back really, really far, but it became well known in 1937 in the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

And essentially what Napoleon Hill pointed out is all of the most successful people in history had a small group or a large group, but mostly a small group of trusted colleagues, friends, peers, they gathered together on a regular basis, who gathered together on a regular basis to help each other become more successful, whatever that means.

And so it's essentially, it's almost like a networking group, but a networking group is more about handing out referrals. There's part of that in the Mastermind group, but a mastermind group usually it's a paid group. Many times it's a paid group. Everyone pays a thousand, $2,000 a month.

You get into a Zoom once a week, and then two or three times a year you get together in person with essentially the sole focus of helping each other become successful. So if there are 25 people in a group, you don't have to worry about what I'm, what am I gonna get out of it? Because the other 24 people are all coming to the group saying, I’m here to help Nick become more successful, or Louis become more successful. So you walk in there knowing there are 24 people who, whether success means to you a better marriage, a better relationship, better relationship with your kids, getting in better shape, better health or bigger business, smaller business, more streamlined business, whatever that is, they're gonna use their connections, their wisdom, and their encouragement and accountability to help you get there.

And so I was in a mastermind group. In 20, well, I joined it in 2014 and, or 20, yeah, 14. And after about a year or so, year or two, I met this lady who was a lawyer, turned ghostwriter. I said, what in the world is a ghostwriter? And she's like, well, I help people write books. How do you do that? I'd never, like, I'd written a little journal, but I, I never really turned it into a book or anything.

And she's like, well, they tell me what they want to do, and then I help them organize it and put it in book form. And I was like, well, how much do you charge for that? And she's like, I charge $20,000 a book. And I was like, how long have you been doing it? She's like, two years. And I'm like, how many books can you write?

She's like, well, right now I'm writing five. Well, how long does it take you to write a book? She's like, six months. And so I'm doing math in my head and I'm like, all right, that's $200,000 a year that can feed a family. So, and, and she's like, but I, but that's, you know, entry level pricing. I do it through an agency where I get, you know, this list, I'm on a listserv, and, and they charge a whole lot more.

And then when they get a client who wants a business book written, they send out to their list of ghostwriters. We all bid on the project and then sometimes they get, sometimes I don't. I was like, that's the part I don't like. Like I don't want to be relying on other people to feed my family. And so I researched everything I could about ghostwriting and it's basically helping people create content.

Sometimes it's books, sometimes it's articles, sometimes it's nurture sequences, automatically sent emails that are that's what's called Evergreen. So they don't expire. It's not like, come listen to my live webinar next week, 'cause that will be irrelevant two weeks later. But it's, you know, here's three principles to become a better leader at your law firm.

Those will never expire, right? And so what we do is we work to understand what some person's business goals are. And the first question I ask is, listen, where are you, where do you want to be? If I were, if I were. If you were to reach out to me and say, Hey, I wanna grow my law firm and I want to, I'm thinking about writing a book or articles or, I don't know, I'm thinking about writing some content to get more attention.

The first thing I would ask you is, well, what do you want ideally? Forget 'em, no one's listening here. I won't tell anybody. But if you had the ideal law firm three years from now, what would it be? And you might say, you know what, Nick, to be honest with you, I really don't like my job. And if that were the case, and if this sounds too specific to be made up.

It's 'cause it's not, I had a lawyer call me a few years ago and they said, I wanna write a book about real estate law. And I said, well, what do you like about real estate law? And he said, well, I don't really like it. And I said, well, I'm not gonna write your book with you because if we, if the worst thing that can happen, if you write the wrong content, you write the wrong book, is for it to be a runaway success because you're gonna attract the wrong attention and you're gonna hate your life.

And so I wanna write a successful book for you. So if, if you want to explore with me something else that you really love, even if it's just a side hobby, where you want to be known to be, you know, a mindset coach who practices law. I'll help you write the mindset book, but if you need to write a book that's connected to your business, because sometimes it's hard to justify taking the time to write a book or attention to write a book when you have shareholders or partners or whatever who rely on you.

So right now, the, the ghostwriting world has almost flipped, where there's a lot of opportunity because there's a lot of noise out there, especially with artificial intelligence. It's great for ideation. You can, you can produce some short pieces, but, but it creates a whole lot of noise online. So really effective and effectively planned and strategically placed content is even more valuable in the marketplace.

And so I'm getting a lot of attention from me who, from people who, they wanna write a book, but they wanna write the right book. And I always tell people, don't write a book that just documents where you've been write a book that gets you where you want to go. And then, so we choose the right book, and then we use the content creation, whether it is a book or an article or any other type of content, sometimes the hardest thing to do is network for people they know. If I just had a great referral source, if I had a great CPA who always worked with people who could write, who needed wills and estate plans put together, we had a great collaborative relationship. I could double my business without having to spend any time or money marketing.

And so what I do is I plan the right content. Whether it's an article or a book or email, and then I say, okay, who are these centers of influence, Louis, that you need to know, that you need to have in your life for you to be getting the business you want, getting the referrals you want, and let's just say it's, you know, it's a tax attorney and you want referrals for some, for other work, and you're gonna, you need a good tax attorney in your network, or it's a CPA or whatever.

So what we'd do is we'd reach out to CPAs who network, who we know to network, or someone who you're trying to build a relationship with and say, hey, I'm writing a book. It's on estate plan, and I'd love to quote you in my chapter. There's a chapter on working with a CPA, and I'd love for you to share three tips on working with a CPA when you are preparing your estate plan.

Would you be interested in being featured in my book? Of course they're gonna say yes. Now instead of reaching out and saying, hey, I'd love to get some referrals, I think we can do business together. You're reaching out saying, I'm writing a book, right? Can I feature you in my book? Right. I can't tell you how many times that has gotten my clients' actual business before their book ever comes out or their article.

I'm writing an article. It's gonna be on my website. I'm gonna post it on LinkedIn. I'm submitting it to whatever publication I already write for, and I'd love to quote you in it. And so you use the, you first, you decide the right content and then you use that content opportunity as a way to get the attention and referrals even sometimes from people who would never respond to the cold email or the cold LinkedIn message saying, I'd love to connect.

And so that's how I've been able to build it to such a point where people actually, I'm working with a guy at Disney now. He runs there are for in Walt Disney World. Lot of people, you know this, I mean, it's not, it's not not public, but it's not something that people just regularly know. There are essentially 11 divisions of Disney that work on the backend of Disney.

So construction, horticulture, landscaping, pest management, manufacturing, engineering, things like that. And there are, of those 11 divisions, four of them are each run by one person. So one person runs this one, one person's one that runs that one, one person's one the third, runs the third and runs the fourth.

The guy I'm writing for runs the other seven, all of them, which essentially combines for about 40% of what goes on behind the scenes at Disney. And so I'm working with him writing a book about leadership and I get to interview all of the people who help him at Disney. I mean, it's amazing. I go to Disney World backstage for work and they pay me to do it.

It's ridiculous. I can't believe it's actually happening, but it does. And I got that just by helping other people. So I actually don't market. I go on some podcasts. I just go on podcasts to show people what's possible with their world and with their experience. And, and sometimes people say, man, I love what you're saying about getting into ghost writing.

I don't wanna get into ghost writing, but I'd love to talk to you about potentially writing a book or potentially writing some articles or doing some content marketing. But this guy, I've worked with him for a little bit and he's, ghost writers aren't hidden much anymore. He actually put me in his book.

He goes, Hey, write in this chapter, you know, Nick Pavlidis, who's the brains behind this book, and helped me organize my 30 plus years of experience into these concise business lessons, had an experience, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, so, so I'm in the book. I have another client who I'm actually gonna talk to right after you and I get off, and he helps financial advisors sell their advisory practices.

Sure enough, in chapter three we're talking about masterminds. He wrote a note, Nick, can you please add your experience with mastermind groups in here? And so ghostwriting has become a way for people who are really busy to, if they work with someone, an experienced or even a dedicated, someone who's not experienced, but they're willing to work their tail off to learn, talented writer, to help expand their reach into areas they wouldn't otherwise expand into. So people who would never listen to a podcast but would write, would read.

[00:25:17] Louis Goodman: Tell me a little bit about how you got into organizing Podfest and the whole pod casting world that you were very much a part of. You know, since that's the way we met each other and I was just so impressed by that conference. I've, you know, been to conferences over the course of my life and I just have to say that that one really stands out as an amazing experience in terms of the things that I learned and the people who were there, who were in general, an amazing group of people who were a lot of fun to meet and talk to.

[00:25:54] Nick Pavlidis: Everything I do is basically the same formula. So I run eight businesses. I run two software businesses that are designed to help authors and podcasters automate a lot of their income, create digital marketing funnels, send email sequences, things like that. I run a program called Ghostwriter School where I teach people how to become ghostwriter.

I run authority ghostwriting where I help people create the content and spread it. And everything started with Authority Ghost writing, and so there's those four. I also run a program called Secret to Scale. It's a business to help business owners scale their businesses. I run a publishing company called Morgan James Publishing.

I have Beantown Books, which is a bookstore that helps people drop ship. It's a real bookstore, reports to all of the bestselling agencies, but it's designed to help authors sell books on their website, but deliver them through a bookstore so they don't need to spend $10,000 on inventory, they can just send a order to a bookstore on through an automation and deliver their books. They can concentrate on serving their clients or reaching more customers. And then I have Podfest and it all started with the ghost writing business. And I am, I don't know if, like, it may be a mental condition that's not healthy, but I have this obsession. I'm obsessive curiosity.

I have an obsession with helping other people become successful. And so I have a one sentence business plan for everything I do. That's if I help enough people become successful, I never have to worry about my own success. And so when I was ghost writing, I would get hired and people say, well, now how do I publish this thing?

And the answer was, I don't know, but I'll find out. So I started building relationships and one of the relationships I built was with a pub book publisher called Morgan James Publishing. They had been in business since 2003, published a lot of really good books, and had a pretty good reputation. And then they'd say, well, how do I, you know, how do I sell more of these things?

And that's when I started learning about digital marketing funnels and digital marketing. So I wanted to be able to either control or at least influence everything a business owner, thought leader, author would need to become successful. And when I got into Morgan James publishing, Chris Krimitsos, who is the founder of Podfest and also an author himself, a self-published author, again, maybe not again, but there's nothing wrong with self-publishing.

He did a great job self-publishing his book, but he started noticing Morgan James and some of the books that were coming out and some of the people who were talking about it and he just, he just watched a little bit and I became friends with him because I started sponsoring Podfest, especially in COVID when I knew it was a tough time.

So I was more of a sponsor and an attendee. I supported it for many years and when he saw some of the things that we implemented at Morgan James, he called me and I'm new to Podfest. He called me in September of 2023 and said, I saw what you do with Morgan James. I love what you do with the books that you've helped write.

You think you could do something like that with Podfest? And we talked a little bit and I said, I love Podfest, but frankly I was afraid of screwing it up because he had built something really special. The people who, a lot of the people you met in 2025 were there in 2023 and 2022, and I didn't wanna screw it up.

And so I said, yeah, I mean there's lots of things I think we could do together at Podfest that would be make it really special. But I don't wanna screw it up. So how about this? He wanted me to come in for 2024. Why don't you buy the company and I'll work for a little bit and then it's yours.

And I said, that doesn't feel right. I'm happy to buy into the company, but why don't we do this? Why don't I help you with 2024 Podfest and see if we like working together and if we like working together, then maybe we'll work together instead of me just buying the company and you moving on.

He was a little just tired, like COVID beat people up in the event space especially. And so we worked together for 2024. I said, listen, don't pay me. Let's just work together. I love this stuff anyhow. I'm happy to do it and let's see if we can make an impact together. And, and 2024 became really, really successful for Podfest. I got a sense of the people, even deeper than I had before. And so we quickly negotiated a deal where I'm now the managing partner and CEO of Podfest, and he's in charge of marketing. He's completely re-energized and in 2025 was super successful. And so I got into it just by being active and being helpful in the marketplace and being helpful to him.

And for me it was a next logical step because a lot of the things that my authors were asking, well, how do I now get more attention for this more, and I can introduce them to podcasters. I can help them start their podcast. I can give them access to all these information and if they help podcasters, if they're the right person, I wouldn't just throw anyone on stage. I can even get them on a physical stage here now at Podfest. 

[00:30:34] Louis Goodman: If a young person were just coming outta college and wanted to kind of get into the business world the way you are currently in the business world, what sort of, I mean, first of all, would you recommend that they do that? Second of all, what's the path?

[00:30:52] Nick Pavlidis: Sure. You know, I wouldn't necessarily recommend the path I took, although it was there. I still benefit from being a lawyer. Reading documents is certainly helpful, but people still do say, you know, I trust you a little more because I know you're an attorney. Which is odd. Usually it would, might come across jokingly the other way, right. But we're like, I'm not sure that I trust you. You're, you know, but if someone were coming out, what, what I would encourage them to do. I would encourage them to create a situation where they're not desperate and then carve out time to be really, really strategic and move into the direction that they're curious.

So get a a day job. I always call, like for writers who wanna transition from being an attorney or a CPA or an accountant or whatever they do during the day into ghost writing, the number one, there were two things. I was literally telling my barber today because she's been asking me about ghostwriting for a while and she's like, do you think I could do it?

And I said, listen, there's two things that separate the successful people from the people who struggle. And they both are really around desperation. And so, number one, don't kill the golden goose. So if you're coming out of college, live a simple life and find something that's relatively reliable, that funds that life so you're not making decisions based on need.

You're making decisions on the long term, and so if you have a day job, when I was practicing law, I worked as a ghost writer from 8:30 PM until whenever I fell asleep, and I didn't do it every night, but there wasn't a week that went by when I didn't have four or five nights when I went upstairs into the attic and worked on my ghostwriting business for at least an hour.

So what I would tell them is, take care of the four walls around you so you're not taking clients that you should not take because they want to pay you $50 for 10 blog posts, which won't pay you. How many articles will you have to write for that to support you? So say, be able to say no to some work.

So if you're looking to get into entrepreneurship, number one, get that boring job or get that job that doesn't have to be boring, but get that golden goose. Step one, work that and be present when you're there. Be the best employee at that job. Then when you leave that job, take some time for yourself, but then carve out some time where you are gonna work consistently at building and learning lessons the hard way, but learning lessons in a way that doesn't take you out because you have that day job that's gonna take care that's gonna it's, that's gonna fund your future business by allowing you to make mistakes and allowing you to make decisions based on the long term. 

[00:33:26] Louis Goodman: Well, I just kind of have a follow up on that, which is what do you think is the best advice you've ever received? And or, and you could answer this either way, what advice would you give to a young person who was just kind of starting out in this world?

And maybe you've already answered that, but mm-hmm. What do you think? I mean, just kind of a, the advice follow up question. 

[00:33:52] Nick Pavlidis: Your mindset will take you farther than your skills. So you can have the most talented writer in the world. If they are not confident or if they are too competitive in their brain where they're fixed minded, they think one client for them is not a client for me. They're gonna struggle. 

You will get what you give out. And I mean that as a mindset, as an energy. There are these people that just walk into a room and suck the energy out of the room. No one wants to be around them.

But then there are people who get into a room and everyone wants to be around them because they know it's gonna be a positive experience. Your mindset, your approach, your professionalism, your consistency will go a long way. So the number one piece of advice, it would be to tell people to be consistent, be professional, take care of that golden goose that's taking care of your family, and you can figure out the talent.

Like when I train people on how to become ghostwriters, I said, don't worry about the how to write things. Like in my program I have all the how to write things, but you could train yourself on how to write a memoir, how to write a business book, how to write a how to book, all the 1500 different pieces of content you can write, and then your first client hires you for something else. Or, you can learn about how to treat people well, how to be professional. 

[00:35:08] Louis Goodman: And how has this career fit into your family life and your family life fit into the career? 

[00:35:15] Nick Pavlidis: Yeah. I was fortunate when I practiced law, fortunate and unfortunate. I was unfortunate that I was super busy. I worked a hundred hours a week.

I was fortunate in some ways that I did a lot of litigation, which would give me months at a time where I didn't even back then from 2004 to 2014 or 13-14, when I was in the law firm. Where I didn't really need to be in the office for extended periods of time, so I did a document review from St. Kit's once, so that was, that was nice. But when I was practicing law, my family always came second. And what I mean by that is even from a mindset, mental perspective, my wife would call me and say, Hey, my cousin's coming to town in three weeks. You want to have dinner? And I would answer, that sounds great as long as I don't have to work.

What I realized is if I had enough time, I would make everything work. I maybe missed a handful of dinners, like special dinners, like I missed dinner a lot, but I missed a handful of my cousins coming to town dinners in 10 years. Yet, every single time my wife asked me about those, I reminded her that it was less important than work. So when I was practicing law, I didn't set great boundaries around it and so my family life struggled.

The first book I ever wrote when I mentioned earlier that I had a journal and I hadn't written a book, when I decided to become a ghost writer, I put it into a book and I called it Confessions of a Terrible Husband Lessons Learned from a Lumpy Coach, and it was this tongue in cheek thing of self-assessment of me during the first five years of my marriage and how you can do all the big things, right? You can provide, you can work hard, you can be gentle, you can be faithful, but if you do enough of the little things wrong, your family life's gonna struggle.

And so it really did struggle for the first 10 years, even today, you know, I have two teenagers now, 15 and 13, and so there is a lot of intensity at our house where the kids aren't getting along from time to time and things like that. But I coach them. I mean, I play sports with my son.

I coach my daughter's softball teams year round. She's a very, very competitive club, travel softball competitor. And I coach her. I coach her a club team for practices a week. I'm at dinner every night, so my family life has become better. I work basically the same amount of hours as I did 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 hours a week, but there's only so much that I need to be in the office for, and so I can sit upstairs when everyone's going to bed and write, and I love what I do so much that when people ask me, are you working? I have to pause for a second and say, oh yeah, I am. I am working. 

[00:37:45] Louis Goodman: Let's say you came into some real money, you came into a three or four billion dollars. What, if anything, would you do differently in your life? 

[00:37:51] Nick Pavlidis: Well, I probably would run my businesses slightly different. For example, with Podfest. We are really focused on independent podcasters and so the idea that the principle I talked about earlier, when I say if I help enough people become successful, I never have to worry about my own success.

And with Pod, the people we're focused on are the independent podcasters. The more helpful we are to independent podcasters and the more independent podcasters that come into our email list, into our Facebook group and to our events, 'cause we do 50 events a year with just one big one, in Orlando. The rest are small meetups around the country, virtual events.

We have one in Asia every year. We have podcast Asia. April 1st, 2025 is this year's podcast, Asia and Manila Philippines and so if I came into a whole lot of money, I would invest a lot of it in making Podfest a destination for independent podcasters, independent of money. It's really hard for me to think that I would do less because I'm so obsessed, almost with helping other people break through their mental barriers to become successful. And so, but I'm also really, I have a hard time not wasting money, but wasting efforts. So I would want to be real efficient and focused on what I do. So I would still do it and not just throw money at things, but I would create and execute models that help individual authors, individual podcasters, the independence of the world, get the opportunities that other people use money to access.

[00:39:26] Louis Goodman: Let's say you had a magic wand. There was one thing in the world, the podcasting world, the legal world, the ghostwriting world. One thing that you could change. What? What would that be? 

[00:39:36] Nick Pavlidis: I would, if I could snap my fingers, every human being in the world would immediately get shifted to the type of work that they are called, or born or created, however you want to describe it, to do. And so I would wave a magic wand and have everybody wake up doing the work that. That they're uniquely created to do. 

[00:39:58] Louis Goodman: Can you tell us what is the best way to reach you? What's the best way to reach Nick Pavlidis? 

[00:40:07] Nick Pavlidis: Easiest way, best way is to send me an email, Nick at authority, A-U-T-H-O-R-I-T-Y, ghost writing.

So that's an ING at the G-H-O-S-T-W-R-I-T-I-N-G.com. nick@authorityghostwriting.com. You shoot me an email and I'm usually pretty responsive. 

[00:40:26] Louis Goodman: Nick, is there anything that you wanna talk about that we have not discussed? Anything at all that you wanna put out there? 

[00:40:35] Nick Pavlidis: I mean, I would just wanna encourage the lawyers, right? We have Love Thy Lawyer and I do think that really should start with themselves. And so there was, I coached, like I mentioned earlier, I coached my, my daughter's softball team. And there's this, there's a girl on the team who's amazing young lady. My daughter's 13, this girl, she might be 12 or 13, she's not 14 'cause it's a 12 and under team.

So you, you're either 11, 12 or 13. And, and she keeps saying, oh, you know, I'm such an idiot, or I'm so this, or I'm too that, or I'm not enough that, and she's been saying it for weeks and in practice I called her over and I said, and I'll make up her name. I'll say, Sally. I said, Sally, listen, I need to have a tough conversation with you.

I've noticed for the past several weeks that you've been mean to someone on this team, and I need it to stop. I'm really nice to the girls. I'm like the girls all love. Like there's the tough coach, and then there's me who's I, not demanding, but it's important for them to grow, but I'm also, I have a different approach to things, but I said, listen, you're being mean to someone on this team, and it needs to stop.

And she's like, what are you talking about? No, I'm not. I said, I've heard you for the past three weeks. You called someone stupid. You called someone terrible, and you just have to stop doing it. She's like, who? And I said, I heard you saying things. I said, if you call Sally one more bad thing, then I don't know what I'm gonna be able to do.

And she realized, she's like, oh, you're talking about me? And I said, yeah, you need to stop being mean to yourself because you're amazing and you're gonna do great things for yourself and for our team. But not if you're mean to yourself. We're nice to you. You need to be nice to you too. Just like you're nice to all your teammates, 'cause you really are nice to all your team. You're just mean to yourself and you need to stop that. And so what I would say to the listeners is, you're important too. And sometimes I know when I was a lawyer, I'd go to work because I needed to do it for my family, or I would go to, I would go somewhere because I needed to or I needed to, and I kicked off.

I kicked the can of my dream down the road, whether that's a different practice, a better practice, or in my case not practicing. And so I would just encourage the listeners to when you hear the phrase, Love Thy Lawyer, now that starts with loving yourself. And so be honest with yourself. Be gentle to yourself. Be nice to yourself. Love yourself, and you can head in an amazing direction, even if that means outside of the law with everything that you're capable to do. I know everyone here listening or watching is really smart and really talented, and really driven and really capable, and so you put yourself first. It creates some really, really good tailwinds for the rest of the people around. 

[00:43:10] Louis Goodman: Nick Pavlidis, thank you so much for joining me today on The Love Thy Lawyer Podcast. It's been a pleasure to talk to you. 

[00:43:17] Nick Pavlidis: Pleasure is mine. Thank you for having me. 

[00:43:19] Louis Goodman: That's it for today's episode of Love Thy Lawyer. If you enjoyed listening, please share it with a friend and follow the podcast. If you have comments or suggestions, send me an email. Take a look at our website at lovethylawyer.com where you can find all of our episodes, transcripts, photographs, and information.

Thanks to my guests and to Joel Katz for music, Brian Matheson for technical support, Paul Robert for social media, and Tracy Harvey. I'm Louis Goodman.

[00:43:59] Louis Goodman: Yeah. It's the hotel that's like right across the street from SeaWorld and we're, we're not getting any, any money from this.

[00:44:04] Nick Pavlidis: Yeah. 

[00:44:05] Louis Goodman: What was the name of the hotel? 

[00:44:06] Nick Pavlidis: Renaissance Hotel at SeaWorld. They're across from SeaWorld. 

[00:44:10] Louis Goodman: Right. Yeah. I mean, it was just an amazing venue.

[00:44:13] Nick Pavlidis: Believe me, they're getting a lot of money from me. We're not getting money from them.