The Little Stuff Matters Most: 50 Rules from 50 Years of Trying to Make a Living - Rilegato

David Rensin has coauthored eleven books and five New York Times bestsellers, including Chris RockÂ’s Rock This! and Tim AllenÂ’s DonÂ’t Stand Too Close to a Naked Man.

And, by the way, they loved it.

Much has been said about me since I started in the mail- room at the William Morris Agency in New York fifty years ago and worked my way up and out as an agent, consultant, TV packager, movie and television producer, motion picture studio head, and talent manager. Some of it is even true. But I think producer Lynda Obst, writing in the Los Angeles Times, got to the heart of me when she declared, “Bernie Brillstein is a way of being in work. It is rapture in work.”

We’ve all got to make a living. What’s the point if you don’t love your work?

Because I love what I do, I’ve tried to be smart about it. I’ve paid attention to the lessons of tradition and kept my eyes on the new. I’ve celebrated my victories and made the best of my mistakes. I’ve solved problems with common sense instead of fancy theories.

I guess I did all right. I’ve personally guided the careers of Jim Henson; John Belushi; Gilda Radner; Dan Aykroyd; Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels; John Larroquette; Martin Short; Rob Lowe; Wayne Brady; my first client, Norm Crosby; writer/producer Alan Zweibel—and many others.

In 1992, I cofounded Brillstein-Grey Entertainment with Brad Grey, who now owns the company and has taken it to new heights. Among the many clients are Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Adam Sandler, and Nicolas Cage.

The company also produced shows like Just Shoot Me, ALF, NewsRadio, Politically Incorrect, Mr. Show, and the current sensation, The Sopranos.

Along the way, I had the idea for Hee Haw, helped get The Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters made (and Dangerous Liaisons, among others, when I ran Lorimar Pictures), got my own star on Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame, won an Emmy, and got to know Jiminy Glick personally. Go figure.

Not only have I managed to survive and prosper, but I’m happy. My greatest achievement.

But I could never have done any of it—and kept it going—if I hadn’t remembered this: In business as in life, the little stuff matters most.

Outcomes rarely turn on grand gestures, high-flying concepts, or the art of the deal—and more often on whether you’ve sent someone a thank-you note.

It’s the truth.

Success is almost always about the basics. You stay in the game by playing by the right rules. Manners. Smarts. Open eyes. Counterintuitive thinking. A lot of knowledge about what you do. To me, truth comes through life experience. Common sense. The wisdom of trusted friends.

But how do you get that knowledge? I always looked to the past, to people who’d already learned the lessons. I got what I had to know to survive from the street in an era when one still had the luxury of time to absorb and grow. Now everything is too fast-paced, too corporate, and this bedrock of wisdom is being lost. It shouldn’t be.

I try to do my part to perpetuate tradition. For instance, at my company I’m now the guy the kids—and I call everyone “kid,” even if they’re older than I am—come to. My office door is always open, and rarely a day goes by without someone wandering in to ask for advice or to talk about a situation. I’ve lived long enough, watched the wheel of life turn often, and paid attention. I’ve seen the same act again and again, no matter how much it looks like it’s changed. That’s probably why—not because I look like Santa Claus—that people always ask, “What should I do, Bernie?”

That’s fine, as long as no one wants to sit on my lap.

When someone selling a movie script, or themselves as an actor, or their service as an executive producer on a TV show, asks me, “What’s the right price?”—a question that you hear no matter what business you’re in—I tell them the right price is whatever they’re willing to pay you, and whatever you’re willing to take. How much do you need the job? How much is your mortgage? How badly do they want you?

I remember a bright, promising kid who was so focused on what someone else in the office was doing and earning that his own work had suffered. Suddenly, he thought he might get fired. I told him to take a seat on the couch, made sure he had a glass of water, and said: “One big problem with business today is that everyone wants to know what the other guy makes, what he’s up to. You should mind your own business. By ‘minding’ I mean paying attention. You can’t do business if you don’t focus. You can’t make it big if you keep looking over your shoulder at the guy behind you, thinking, ‘He’s getting awfully close,’ or at the guy ahead of you, thinking, ‘Why don’t I have what he has, do what he does?’ Worry about yourself. I don’t mean you should be a selfish ass; I mean that too many people want to be someone else: They want the other guy’s job, his clothes, his car, his girlfriend, his salary. They want to be him. But if you want to be someone else, you can’t be you. And if you’re not you—as scary as that might seem at times—you have no chance.”

So a competitor tried to stab you in the back? Learn not to make drama out of an incident and let your enemy bury himself.

It’s not always about the bottom line, but what’s at the bottom of your heart.

Do something for the thrill of it all, not for the thrill of having it all.

Understand that there’s a difference between hot and good.

Have an opinion—even if it’s wrong.

Remember that winners make the tough calls and deliver bad news quickly.

God helps Himself, but you’ve got to ask (for that raise).

When your time has come, success will find you.

And for goodness’ sake, turn off the pager and cell phone once in a while, meet friends face-to-face, don’t talk about work, and laugh as much as possible.

It’s not always strictly business, either. Once someone wrote to me asking: “I recently became well known in movies. I am also single. Suddenly, members of the opposite sex are very interested in me. How can I tell if they actually like me for me, or whether it’s just the money and fame they like?”

My answer: “Who cares? Enjoy it!”

Okay, there was more: “Let me tell you something: You could have no money, and you’d still have no way of knowing if they love you for your body, your face, or just you.

“Take the love you can get as you get it. What do you have to examine it for? If you’re a movie star, and someone wants to go to bed with you and you like them? Fine. If they want to take you to dinner? Fine. If you don’t like them, then don’t go out. How are you going to figure out what someone’s real intentions are when they don’t know what their real intentions are? You have to try it before you buy it.

“Of course, if you’re a big movie star, the likelihood is that everyone will want to say they’ve been with you. So yes—you’re probably going to get more charlatans in the mix. If your last motion picture price was $20 million and a gaffer comes on to you, who knows? Maybe you just turn him on, and he turns you on. What’s wrong with that?”

My advice is based only on what’s worked for me, so of course you’re asking why you should believe it will work for you.

All I can offer as proof is that I’m still around after all these years. I’ve been right more often than wrong, and that’s when people start to think that maybe you actually know something.

That’s why the publisher asked me to write this book.

To be perfectly honest, I hesitated at first. I read biographies, not self-help books. I don’t subscribe to esoteric management theories that not only guarantee to make you rich, powerful, and smarter than anyone else in the room, but throw in a way to lose weight while still eating all you want. Imagine that.

I should probably tell you I wrote this book because I’m a smart guy, and that the publisher made me such a wonderful offer that, being so savvy, I gave myself some very important advice: Don’t be an idiot. Take the dough.

The truth is a little more complicated. They made me such a wonderful offer that I thought, Don’t be an idiot. Take the dough. But make absolutely sure you really believe in what you’re doing.

You wouldn’t listen to my advice if I didn’t follow it myself.

Frankly, I was a little leery of doing this book because I’ve never imagined myself as some business guru. Also, the reaction to my memoir was so fantastic that I figured I should quit while I was ahead. (Another good bit of advice, though I can’t claim to have thought of it first. Whoever did, quit, and hasn’t been heard from since.)

But then I remembered how often my show business contemporaries, mailroom trainees, college students, and others called or wrote to tell me they highlight pages in my first book and refer to it when they need a second opinion. Nice. But that first book is nearly five hundred pages long. Who could carry it around everywhere? It made more sense to put my best big ideas into a small volume, a “Pocket Bernie” if you will, that could easily fit into anyone’s . . . well, pocket or bag. No more heavy lifting.

That sold me.

Who could resist performing a public service?

The Little Stuff Matters Most is my collection of in-the-trenches common sense so fundamental that, with all that’s been built atop it, it might seem uncommon. It distills fifty years of accumulated experience, insight, and instinct—in both business and life— into one slim volume of big ideas that’s easy to carry everywhere and to consult anytime you think a dose of clearheaded advice is required. There is no magic here, just unfailing honesty and unflinching directness.

In other words, this book is the closest you can come to having a personal manager on call at all times, without having to part with 15 percent of your paycheck.

Let me put it in classic Hollywood-speak: The Little Stuff Matters Most is like “zesty,...