#382 Who Is Michael Ovitz?: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Most Powerful Man in Hollywood

0:00 I've done a few of these I had dinner with episodes, Michael Ovitz being the latest one. And I did one with John Mackie, who's the founder of Whole Foods a couple months ago. And John Mackie told me one of the craziest things that anyone has ever said about the podcast. By that time I had spoken to him. He'd already listened to over a hundred episodes of Founders, and he said that if Founders podcasts existed

0:19 When he was a young man. Whole Foods would still be an independent company that since the podcast and all of History Space Entrepreneurs are constantly emphasizing the importance of controlling expenses. He would have put more of a priority on it. Especially during boom times, during good times.

0:35 'Cause it's very natural for a company. And really for human nature. To just not watch your cost as closely. Because everything's going so well. And that is something that history's greatest founders all warn against and fast

0:45 In fact Andrew Carnegie has this great mantra that he would repeat over and over again. He says profits and prices recyclical. subject to any number of transient force forces. of the marketplace. Costs, however. Could be strictly controlled.

0:58 And any savings achieved in the costs were permanent. This is something I was talking about with my friend Eric, who's the co founder and CEO of Ramp. Ramp is now a presenting sponsor of this podcast. I've gotten to know all the co founders of Ramp and have spent a ton of time with them. over the last year or two. They all listen to the podcast.

1:14 And they picked up on the fact that the main theme From history's greatest entrepreneurs. is the importance of watching your costs and controlling your spend. And how doing so will give you a massive competitive advantage. That is a main theme for Ramp. The reason that Ramp exists. is to give you everything you need to control your spend.

1:30 Ramp gives you everything you need to control your costs. Ramp gives you easy to use corporate cards for your entire team. automated expense reporting and cost control. Matt Pawson. Paulson. Who's the founder of Market Bee?

1:41 recently switched to ramp and this is what he said about it. Ramp is the best. The amount of money you will save from unwanted renewals and employees who think Company credit card equals buy whatever you want. Will far exceed the best credit card rewards program. Matt is talking about the importance of cost control. There's a line in Andrew Carnegie's biography.

2:00 That said cost control became nearly an obsession. Ramp helps you make an obsession in your business. If Carnegie was alive today, he'd be running his business on ramp. Take the time to set up a demo. to see this product and you will see why many of the world's top founders are running their company on ramp. Go to ramp.com.

2:19 to learn how they can help your business today. That is ramp.com. One more tool that I wanna tell you about is Vesto. A lot of my friends are using Vesto and I gotta tell you what happened at breakfast a couple days ago. And even more friends are gonna be using it now. So what Vesto does it helps you connect and control all of your business bank accounts from one dashboard. So I know the founder, Ben

2:38 We spent a bunch of time together and I've offered to help him by introducing with some of my friends that I thought could benefit from Besto. So I call one of my friends and he said, David, I'll meet with anybody you want me to, but I have to warn you. Uh me and my team, or my team rather. we say oh no to over ninety percent of the software that were pitched.

2:54 And yet a week later I hear back from him and he says Ben and Vesta were great and that they signed up. So I asked my friend to ask his team to explain the benefit they get from Vesto in their own words. This is happening over text message. So I'm gonna read this text message exchange to you, okay? So hey. Can you please ask your team in your own words, what's the benefit? Like why did they sign up for this? And you say no to ninety percent of the things and then you use this tool. What's going on?

3:18 And he says this is th in their own words. It provides us the ability to view all of our bank accounts. and loan accounts on one platform with a single sign on. It makes it much easier to grant access to users in one place as opposed to 20 different banks. So I text back. What did they do before Vesto?

3:36 We have twenty plus different bank logins across five accountants. We literally use 21 banks. So every bank has an account and a loan. that multiple people need access and views to. just to log in and see everything would take hours and be in all different tabs. So I'm having breakfast with a friend of mine. He he owns like Huge company. And we're talking about this and I show him this text message.

3:57 And He's he the he owns like well over a a hundred different companies. It's like two hundred now or whatever. And he's just like Oh no. He was worried that his team was doing exactly what my other friend was doing. He's like, Wait, wait, there's no way

4:09 Logging in every day. Right. and putting everything in tabs and and spreadsheets. It's just not possible that we're doing that. And so he winds up texting the person responsible to some company.

4:19 you know, a few minutes later, he's like, Oh no, how can I be so stupid? And so He's I think he's gonna start using Vesto now. And so if you have Multiple accounts, multiple businesses. Make sure you go to Vesto, that's Vesto with a V, and schedule a demo with the founder, Ben. Tell him that David sent you. Vesto with a V, so Vesto.com. The link will also be down in the show notes. I hope you enjoy this episode. I just listened to the entire thing back. I think

4:41 Uh I'm really proud of of how it turned out. And I think it's just a remarkable story. And it's one of i uh it's one of I believe to be one of the most important autobiographies because of how much you see of the pain and struggle. Of building a company. I hope you enjoy it.

4:53 I felt you could never be too paranoid. I always told our agents, make your clients think that they're your friends, but remember that they're not. Yeah, it would be my clients who would stay loyal. And my friends who would betray me. Jay Maloney.

5:05 The agent that I thought of as a son and my eventual successor Would join the agency's posse of young Turks who disavowed me. After I left CAA. Michael Eisner, my great friend who ran Disney, would hire me as his number two. Then publicly humiliate me and fire me.

5:21 After fourteen months. And Ron Mayer The Blood Brother that I started CA with would leave to take a big job at Universal after I'd negotiated For us to both go.

5:32 And then disparage me all over town. For twenty years. I had made it my life's work to understand people. To grasp what made them tick. I'd been certain.

5:42 That I was too wary to w to misplace. My trust, and too smart to be duped. So I'd like to think that these betrayals were random. and flagrantly unwarranted. And that was the victim of some perverse instinct.

5:55 That destroys all human intimacy. I'd like to think. But the problem was just that the tools and strategies I'd use to get to the top. inevitably created resentment.

6:05 Even among those Who shared in my success. That everyone hates a winner. That just because I sought money and power and intimidated everyone to get them Didn't change me.

6:18 But I did change. Of course. Because I could get movies that no studio would touch released and celebrated. make stars out of nobody's, and even broker the sale of studios. With CAA's power behind me, I could, for a time

6:33 Make almost anything in Hollywood happen. Through leverage. Acumen. And sheer self. Belief.

6:41 But those whom the gods wish to destroy They first give A gift. That is an excerpt from the book that I want to talk to you about today, which is who is Michael Ovitz? It is written by Mike Obits.

6:55 And I first read this book. Almost six years ago now. Think all the way back in two thousand eighteen, so maybe even a little bit longer. And uh in the last few months I've actually gotten to know Mike Ovitz, he listens to the podcast and actually just flew to New York.

7:10 and had a very intense and fun Uh three hour dinner. Uh with Obits. So what I wanna do is I wanna go through his book with not only fresh eyes, I having now reading it.

7:22 Uh the second time in it in the Between the first read and the second read, you know, probably reading I don't know, three hundred more biographies and autobiographies. Of his case such mirrors? And I think this book is very important. This is also what I told Michael.

7:34 And Especially autobiographies. I think autobiographies are very important'cause what you what you have what I have in my hand And what happens when you read this is like you have a wiser, older man looking back on his life and M this book is a perfect

7:49 Combination of Him being very honest about his struggles, his regrets, the mistakes that he made. Uh again with with with time and with wisdom he can look back on that and then equal combination of

8:00 Really great ideas on on how to build a business and just fantastic ideas that I think future generations of entrepreneurs can benefit from. So I'm gonna go right to the prologue. This goes really speaks to why autobiographies are really important. He talks about I was a terminator. The fear of my opponents felt derived from sheer hopelessness.

8:18 How could they beat someone so tireless, so relentless, so inhuman? That was the image I took great care to project. It was an image I grew to hate. Who wants to scare the living shit? out of people.

8:31 So right there gives you a hint. I use certain tactics, certain strategies, they were very effective. You know, he comes to dominate his entire industry. But looking back, it wasn't it didn't make for a pleasant life. speaks a little bit more like uh uh to this uh a few pages later. I'm a frustrated artist.

8:46 I couldn't paint or sculpt, I wasn't musical, and I sure couldn't act. So I did the next best thing with my life. I spent it around artists. Appreciating them, admiring them, helping them become their best Fullest selves. I was the wetstone.

8:59 That sharpen them. So they could slice through anything. Our pitch at CAA was better material. Better information. better deals and will make your dream projects happen.

9:09 Yet agents It's more regret. Okay. It's really important. Yet agents make dreams happen at a terrible price. When a painter paints, other painters might be jealous of his success, but they don't believe he's personally screwing them over with every brush stroke.

9:22 It's not a zero sum game. There's room for everyone to do his best. When an agent agents, though. The list of the personally embittered lengthens with the size of the deal. If we pushed a new client, his old agency hated us.

9:35 If one of our movies went to Universal, six other studios hated us. CAA's goal was to have all the clients and therefore all the conflicts. We used to say no conflict, no interest. It was a heroic goal.

9:48 But it cost us. And it cost me. So when I read that section I thought of this great quote that I just recently reread from Steve Jobs and he says you've got to choose What you put your love into really

10:00 Carefully. So you have, you know, pain and regret on one page, on the very next page, this is Just really useful information. Nothing in Hollywood is anything until it's something. And the only way to make it something is with a profound display of belief. If you keep insisting that a shifting set of possibilities is a movie

10:19 it eventually becomes one. I think that is just like a company. So Ovitz grows up in the San Fernando Valley. He grows up in Sino. He has great line about this. He says I loved Encino until I knew better. And then I hated it. We were on the wrong side of the hill.

10:34 From the action. And so his father David Robitch. grows up in the Great Depression. The way we describe obviously this is a

10:42 It's in every single book. I say this over and ever again that you can always understand the son by the story of the father, the story of the father is embedded in the son. The way I think about the way he describes his father I love my dad, but this is not going to be my life. And so he says, My dad's dream was to open his own liquor store. You need to be in charge of your destiny. He dreamt into me. It's no good.

11:00 Working for somebody else. Yeah. That modest dream was still out of reach. For Obits' dad. And he talks about the fact that There is his mom's uncle, his guy named Sam.

11:11 He's like you know, kind of like a small time business guy. But you know, successful enough that he could drive a Cadillac. And This this line is devastating. if you think about it from a a child's perspective. And he says

11:24 He made my dad Feel small. He goes, When I love my father, while I love my father, I hated His boxed in life. Like many who'd grown up in hard times, he feared risk.

11:36 So his Maternal grandmother. She M uh Michael, how special he was.

11:44 She paid a lot of attention. And she says she also said in a in a rather like harsh way. She says, You can be better than your father. And he bought into her uh what he calls the imminent uh immigrants creed that in America you can be anything that you want.

11:58 So he says, instead of trying to emulate my father who was a kind and loving man. I would be what my grandmother expected of me. I would succeed. At all. costs. And so we see right away, even as a child, and and this something uh

12:12 Me and Michael. uh talked about at at dinner. And we you know, we had a shared of this common bond. If you were to ask him even now. Even today.

12:20 Like, how many hours do you work? All of them. He's like that at nine. He's Like that in his late seventies. At nine I got a paper out.

12:28 Then I asked for a second route, cutting my free time Down to the bone. When he was not working, he was reading. He is a voracious Reader. just collect just consumes so much information. It's one of my favorite things in the book. And you'll see this I'll I'll point it out over and over again in so many different areas

12:45 So anything different things he's working on, he just constantly saying, Hey, I'm gonna just know everything about this. I'm gonna collect more information and know more about the the history of this. Of what we're working on than anybody else. He does it over and over again. So e even as a kid, he goes, I read everything I could. But my favorites were biographies of successful men. Andrew Carnegie, Winston Churchill.

13:03 Nathan Rothschild. Uh in fact. Uh, one of the things that that we talked about at dinner. was that he you know, he he said it. He's like, I I've obviously read about the Carnegie's and the Rockefellers and the Buffets, but what he loved And I've heard this from a few other people too.

13:17 Is that you you know, there's a lot of well known people I cover, but people seem to love even more th like the unknown people that just lived remarkable lives. Like these random I mean, if you can see my desk, there's Uh I don't even know. I lost count. There's probably twenty five old books on my desk right now. Many of uh many of which are about people that no one's ever heard of.

13:37 And so we see Young Ovit. Working his ass off. No free time. Will not be like my dad. And I'm gonna r hey.

13:44 If my dad's not successful, that's fine. Let me go pick up the books. S somebody's going to teach me. Right. I'm going to learn how to to to get out of this God damn valley. And that's really the way I think about you know, he talks about this over and over again. I think a few pages later he talks about he could see. He could see where he wanted to be. He was

14:03 On the wrong side of the hill. But he would literally go and stare at the mansions in Beverly Hills as a kid. So he says at nine I discovered motion pictures, four blocks from my house. was the uh back lot for R KO pictures.

14:16 Which is a studio owned by Howard Hughes, which is very fascinating. So he would sneak into in into the studios through the fence and he would come upon A different world. And he says, I was completely hooked. My parents desperately wanted me to become a doctor. But the movies became my obsession.

14:30 I watched every new release. I became a student of the business. So he's doing this as a kid. He'll do this for the rest of his life. He did it when I just talked to him, you know, last week. I became obsessed with the Spartan idea of the phalanx, the battle formation in which you were not only as strong, but you're only as strong. As the guy on your left.

14:46 I was also impressed by an Errol Flynn Western. Where he drew a line in the cert in the dirt. And said you're either with me or against me. You're totally in or you're totally out became my mantra. It helped me enormously later. And hurt me in equal measure.

15:01 Because it didn't allow for shades of gray. Most of life turns out to be shades of gray. So you th you have To me, you have the contrast between You know, a young, aggressive man. He starts his company was like twenty seven years old. He's gonna start in the mail room. I think he's like nineteen, seventeen, something like that.

15:15 you have a certain set of belief as a young man, you're you're on the come up. All your success. It is in the future. And yet Now

15:23 He's looking back at decades of experience and saying, Hey, I didn't understand. then most of life is actually shades of gray. Back to this idea of This can't be my life.

15:34 is the way I described this. Like this can't be my life is a very powerful motivator. Eight miles from where I grew up. Stood the mansions of Beverly Hills, I would stare at them. That was when I began to hate the valley. This grudge against my surroundings. This sense that I had been raised in the wrong nest.

15:51 fueled me. When I began my working life this is exactly uh the reason I read this, the reason that this jumps out to me It's one, it's in a lot of these books. And yeah. If you're listening to this, you probably felt this way too. I definitely felt that way. I had like I grew up

16:05 with a A burning desire to achieve mission success to not to you know, to change my life. I was like, there's no way in hell I'm going out like this. I this can't be my life is a very powerful motivator. It's one that Ovitz felt, it's one that I felt.

16:19 The grudge against my surroundings, the sense that I've been raised in the wrong nest fueled me when I began my working life. I always felt one step inferior to the people around me. And one step superior. I wasn't as creative or cultured as they were. But it was a lot smarter and more hard working than most of them. This is a crazy line.

16:35 Insecurity and амбіш. Make a powerful cocktail. So before he graduates high school, he hears that universal is hiring ten young guides to do these like ch uh these studio tours. And turns out that his dad ran a little league.

16:52 and one of the guys that his dad knew from running this little league uh team Was the head of publicity at Universal, uh M C at Universal. That that really should have helped. Oh young Michaelovits get this job.

17:05 And he says, That was my first lesson in the business. Who you know matters. I was the only high school student MCA hired. Now. The note I have on this page. And I've already given already think given you a hint.

17:17 Everything he does is like this. So pay attention to this idea. He's you're gonna see it over and over again. The other guys to work the other guides worked from nine to six. But I came in at seven each morning and stayed until nine at night. So two hours early. And I'm gonna say three hours later. I walk four

17:36 The entire four hundred acres of the lot, right? End to end. I read and re read and underlined My studio guide. As if it were cr if I was cramming for a final.

17:45 Writing out lists of questions for executives and technicians and keeping a notebook full of uh answers. At the end of each interview, I arranged to come back to observe. I had carte blanche. At the busiest film and television studio in the world. And I was getting paid for it. What I learned at Universal The way glorious films

18:03 blossom out of an intricate mess. of mundane practicalities enthralls me still. I went in Even on Sundays. When I could wander the empty sound stage.

18:14 To my heart's content. Now the difference between ovits And Other kids. Most people are obsessed, you know, with the movie stars, with the actors. No, no. He wanted to know who had the power. He was interested in the people.

18:26 with power. And this is actually Uh I asked Ovit when we had dinner if he's still like who is Lou Wasserman still you think is the best of like the studio tycoons? He said yeah. This is the person that he really patterned himself of. Uh Lou actually was a talent uh agent first.

18:41 Uh in what oh it's picks up a young overs picks up is like oh Washerman. Is the one that has the power. I wasn't interested in the stars, but in the process of making pictures and in the people who were truly responsible.

18:51 So he starts reading about all the history of of all these biographies. the the history of Hollywood And he just was he loved the f what he calls the foul mouth magnets who founded the modern film business were fascinating. Harry Cohn, Lewis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, William Fox, but the one who interested me the most, in part because I worked at a studio.

19:11 And be car and part because he had the most far reaching ideas was Lou Wasserman. He began as a talent agent. Lou built the town's paramount. Talent agency.

19:21 His rules were simple, tend to the client. Dress appropriately, divulge no information about MCA, do your homework. Never leave the office without returning every single phone call. Cornering the market on movie stars. Okay, so the reason I'm pointing this out to you is because Later on Obits will be on the phone with Lou.

19:36 And he's has a great line where he's like I wonder if he knew that I patterned myself. off of him. And maybe Lou never knew that. But the important part is like you'll see how much their stories reflect each other. He began as a talent agent, right? He has like a very simple set of rules on how he built his agency. Uh Obeits will have a very simple set of rules that how he built CAA.

19:58 And then The way Lou did business and change Hollywood is very reminiscent of the way Ovis is gonna do business and change Hollywood. I think within like Forgot the time frame he told me,'cause when I have these dinners I don't like record anything, so I just write notes after the fact. I think it was within like the first ten years. of founding of CA and they have like seventy five percent market share.

20:16 of their entire industry. And so it this sounds a lot like What I'm about to scribe to you for Lou? Sounds a lot like what what Obit says later on. Cornering the market on movie stars, Lou swung decisive leverage to the talent and their representatives.

20:29 and helped finish off the old studio system. Later, he bought the Paramount Library of Old Films when no one thought it was worth a dime. MCA was everywhere, packaging a huge number of TV shows. and taking up to seventy five percent of their production costs. The company's reach was so vast it became

20:44 Known as the octopus. In nineteen sixty two, after MCA bought Universal Do you this is a crazy story. So MCA buys Universal nineteen sixty eight two. The US

20:55 Department of Justice, which was run by Lou's friend Bobby Kennedy. moved against the company, his company, right? Lose company. Against the company for antitrust violations. Lou could have sold his agency intact to the next generation as we did later at CAA. Instead. He used Kennedy's thread.

21:13 As a pretext. To break it up and scatter his top agents. To a dozen boutique. Outfits. Cellars were balkanized.

21:22 And their power was neutered. That was brilliant. So even when Ovit starts at college, he's still working weekends at Universal throughout his first year at UCLA. He says I was putting myself through college and so I had to work every spare Hour. Now this is again

21:39 Goes back to this idea. I love my dad. I don't wanna be like him. I don't want to live the same life. I don't wanted that boxed in life is is the way he described it. Uh by fall I was working sixty hour weeks while going to school full time. It's interesting'cause part way through the dinner Ovid said to me that he goes, You're just like me

21:58 And I don't even think he knew this background. I found a way to start working full time when I was in high school. And I worked Sixty hours weeks. Sixty hour weeks.

22:06 when I was in college and taking a a full schedule as well. And because I had to. I had no safety net. So very much like like Obits, and you'll see why he like s he has so much pressure on him. So By fall I was working sixty hour weeks while going to school full time. I'd be making almost six hundred dollars a week at age nineteen.

22:23 More than my father. So after school, he applies to three companies. The only one that hires him is one of the largest talent one of the largest and oldest, I think it's the oldest talent agency in the business. It is William Morris and he starts out in the mailroom. He says that almost everyone at William Morris started in the company's mailroom. It would take three years. They had like this hierarchy system and like this track system and you know, y you can already get the You're can already under like get a sense of Ovis's personality just no way in hell. He's gonna just wait around.

22:50 And just, you know, follow this track. So normally you start a mail room. Takes three years to become a junior agent and then another four before you can start signing your own clients. And that's just crazy. uh between starting the mirror room and that seven year track. eighty percent of the people wash out.

23:05 So And then he also noticed that oh it it's this is an old stodgy business. This is gonna he's gonna lead a revolt. They're gonna like take a bunch of people from this business and this is gonna how he's gonna start CAA. The way you get ahead at WMA was nepotism. Everybody was somebody's nephew. It was an old, soft

23:21 Corrupt. Place I needed another way to stand out. I told the head of personnel, I have a proposition for you. I think I can learn all I need to know to become an agent in a hundred and twenty days. If I can't I'll give you back everything you paid me.

23:34 I was agenting him. And he knew it. He broke out laughing. This is the craziest thing I ever heard, but I'm gonna hire you. You start Monday. My salary was fifty five dollars a week. I said I'd like to start tomorrow. Again, everything he does is like this. I showed up at seven AM

23:49 two hours early to learn my way around the building. There were twenty other mailroom trainees, which meant I had nineteen rivals. For advancement. Now he sticks out almost right away, so they bump him a little bit his salary a little bit, but he's making seventy five dollars a week. And again, I think this is just fuel.

24:06 And and you know, just adds to his drive. 'Cause he's already married. He m he m married his wife Judy when I I think he was still in college. And he's embarrassed. Se I'm making seventy five dollars a week. I'm surrounded

24:20 You buy you're in Hollywood, there's wealth and there's mansions and there's fame. And I'm embarrassed I have to take my wife out. Th the the only place I can take my wife out is these cheap Mexican restaurants. And just adds fuel to the fire. But you had a very Judy was very supportive, especially in his early days, and I think this is really important.

24:38 I I said over and over again that um it's it's obvious from reading these books that entrepreneurs either need a supportive spouse or no spouse at all. I I think those are literally the only two options. And it says Judy gave me the line I'd later use when I recruited people to an entry level job at CA. You're investing in your life. I despised the mailroom, but I fell in love with the world it served. Working for William Morris was a means to an end, even then. You know, I I I think, you know, entrepreneurs for a large percentage of them

25:05 founders just like you you were like this from birth. Right. And so this this this kid, this nineteen year old kid Making no money working in the mailroom, just realized you know, he he's he already knew that he was gonna start his company one day. He's like I aspired to build my own company some day.

25:22 And so I told you before in the past, one of my favorite talks is this talk uh on YouTube. It's by Bill Gurley. It's called Running Down a Dream How to Survive and Thrive in a Creative Love. And Th one of the quotes there's a bunch of great quotes in there and he's talking about, you know, how these these you know people achieve great things like how they went about doing it. And he has a line in there that I think of all the time. He says, hone your craft constantly. It's extremely important to be obsessive about understanding everything you possibly can about your craft.

25:46 Considered an obligation. Hold yourself accountable. Keep learning over time. Study the history, know the pioneers. And his whole point is like You have to be a genius.

25:54 Right, you can just go out and collect more information than anybody else does. And considering that you have the internet, you have no excuse Not to make yourself a world expert. in whatever field that you happen to be interested in. And

26:06 Ovitz does this. When he's a kid, listen to what he does. So remember, this is there's no computers. This is we're in the seventies. So says we had a file room. Th everything that you need to know about the history of this place and the history of Hollywood is is in in a paper folder.

26:20 So he said we had a file room the length of a basketball court. It was lined with steel cabinets. uh which were he calls it the hard drives of that error. They were all packed with seventy years worth of Manila folders. I view those files as an encyclopedia of entertainment. I helped the woman who ran the file room Mary.

26:37 He's agenting her, essentially. I brought her little gifts, a box of candy, a scarf. One day I said, Hey You know, I'd really love to leave to to to read some of those files. She told me to make myself at home. Within a week, she was letting me stay on after she left. Then she gave me a key.

26:51 While other trainees waited to be told what to do and read and learn, I entered Mary's domain each morning at seven. And every evening after work for weeks. I made my way through from A to Z. Through the client files and the network and studio deals. I jotted on questions for Sam Sachs, the head of Television's Legal Affairs. who is charmed by my interest.

27:10 And lent me a tape of a talk he gave. At USC on contract law in entertainment. I watch it at home. Then I came back the next day with more questions. He gave me nine More

27:21 Tapes then there's this is also really important. Because the legal office is adjacent to the first floor executives. And Sam Wisboard. who was the head of television worldwide and the top Morris executive in LA.

27:35 And again when he returned. So There's a lot of these people in the book. No, they're like creatures of habit. And Obis will just watch you. And he'll observe you.

27:43 And then he realizes okay this guy does the same thing every day. He's gonna leave the office. At six thirty. Everybody else leaves at seven. He's gonna come back a few hours later and work another I think he works like

27:53 What did it say, three hours, so it says uh the office was empty. Until Sam returned for dinner dinner. for another three hours to finish up. So what do you think a young ovits does? I planted myself at a cubicle. Where he could not help but notice me, spreading out my files so he would see them.

28:09 A week later Around nine PM, no one else is there. He says, Can you do me a favor? We were the only two in the building. In fact, uh Ovit is gonna wind up having uh This like fight with David Geffen and then they reconcile later in the book.

28:22 If you read David Geffen's uh biography. He does this exact same thing. Exactly. Starts in the mail room. Figures a way to get a bunch of one on one time.

28:32 With a uh a uh the the top executive and then does whatever he needs. for that person. So starting three months after my start data, William Morris, I became Sam Wisborg's guy.

28:43 I worked as his after hours assistant without being asked or paid. I never went by his office without ducking my head in to see what he might need. So he says service organizations live or die by time management. I lined up all the memos on Sam's desk by priority. So he's organizing his workflow. I then he would do

29:00 Very humble things. It's like I'm not I don't have an ego attached here. I'm gonna serve you in any way possible. I would keep his refrigerator stock. I would call stockbrokers. And ask for tips on stocks that Sam should buy or sell. In short I made myself indispensable.

29:16 And then the book is full of lines I don't think it need any further explanation. He says I didn't want to be standard in any way. So You built a bunch of relationships. With all the young uh agents of William Morris. And they're looking around and they're like, These guys are old and soft.

29:31 And lazy. And we are young and energetic and hungry. And they begin to ask themselves Uh what if guys like Ron and me Had more of a say.

29:40 And then That leads them to the you know, further questioning is like Well What if we could run a company On our own.

29:47 And so they're gonna wind up leading a revolt. And they're gonna leave. uh William Morris and they're gonna start CIA. And keep in mind and part of it is because They were also underpaid. This is a big mistake. I think it's come up on a bunch of the podcasts recently.

30:01 It's like overpay for talent because it's w it's it's almost impossible to overpay for talent. And in this case. In nineteen seventy three, Mo um, Ovitz brings in two million dollars for the firm and they pay him Four hundred bucks a week.

30:13 And they're like, Oh, you did a great job. Thanks for that two million. Here's a seventy five hundred dollar bonus. So they're working way harder. They're making a ton of money for the old you know, soft people and they're not getting compensated. So what do you think's gonna happen? This human nature is like, Well, screw you guys, I'm gonna do this on my own. So they're having uh him and Ron are having dinner and they're really starting to have discussions like why don't we go into business for ourselves? We'll make more money, we'll have more control.

30:37 And The guy that Ovitz was Helping the Sam Weisberg was next in line for the presidency. So Ovez had like well I could stay it.

30:47 Like what if I I might wanna stay here because I'll be maybe I could be maybe the number two guy to the guy running the company. And Here's the thing that that Ovit will repeat over and over again in the book, and it's obvious if you read the book and and you and you talk to him, he's just not meant to be a number two. And so they're having this conversation with him and his future co founder, Ron. And he's like, Well, I had more to gain by staying than Ron and more to lose by leaving.

31:09 And says, seeing me hesitate, Ron said, You have no gamble in you. Sometimes you have to step up and roll the dice. That got me thinking. I was twenty seven. If we bust it in three years, I could land a new job and start over. So even though they don't have a bunch of money.

31:24 They get together, I think there's five of them. And they're they're gonna start CA. And you know, they lay out so Ovitz from the very beginning lays out a bunch of points. That he think is is very important. One, we should all have even equity.

31:36 Two. We need to get big fast. Three, we need to share all of our clients and serve them as a group. Uh no, he didn't want any turf wars, he didn't want any silos. Uh there would be a you know, a uh at other agencies. all the agencies all all the agents kind of work for one agency, but they really like work for themselves. And he's like we need to that causes all kinds of internal conflict. In fact

31:55 You know what I had a strange thought when I got to this part about hey, no turf wars, no silos. We're gonna serve them as a group. I'm thinking about doing an episode'cause uh um I read a biography on Jangus Khan. I've watched a bunch of documentaries.

32:06 And a bunch of podcasts on'em. And so I might do that, but One of the things that that Jengis Khan he he was really brilliant uh creator of like states and and management structures. And one thing that he he would do over and over again that you see is like he he was really important to him.

32:20 to reduce internal conflict. And so even if something even that there was like a practice that was something going on in a culture for a long time period of time, like They would kidnap the your enemy's w uh women, for example. He would outlaw that because his whole point was just like well You kidnap.

32:36 Somebody else's. you know, family member. they're gonna they're gonna seek retribution and then when they get retribution Their family members are gonna seek retribution. And there's gonna be retribution for retribution and retribution. And so like we're gonna outlaw this because we need to reduce internal conflict. And so

32:49 Yeah, that was like one of Khan's major principles like in it reduce internal conflict. You see the same thing right at the the get go. Uh with Ovitz. Uh, number four, tell the truth. So I this is something I talked to him at dinner about. He really values friends.

33:04 That tell the truth. His friends that are able to tell the truth. Obviously he he's you know, famous and well known. A lot you'll have y you could if you want, you could build people around you and you'll never hear

33:14 Anything bad. And I think a lot of people make the mistake of doing that. The great founders that we've seen over and over again in history. Sam Walton, Jim Casey Yeah, Steve Jobs, they want to be told the truth. They want they respect you more if you push back at them. Um and I think the bad founders or the bad executives just surround the social sycophants and then you know, that may work for a little bit, but it all it always ends terribly.

33:34 Um so number four, tell the truth. And number five, cre this is really Really the like one one of the most innovative things that that Ovitz does is like he's gonna create opportunities, not just wait around for it. So other agents they they'd field offers. He's like Why are we just fielding offers? Like why aren't we

33:52 the ones creating the opportunities and then going out and try to sell them on behalf of our clients. And th they they really like uh differentiate themselves around that idea. Like we're gonna come up with ideas And we're gonna put that together for you. And like, where essentially gonna serve you? And he actually uh

34:07 Recruits a lot of clients. He starts working for people that he wants to be clients that have never signed with him. And what he'll do is It'll just bring him a great opportunity. And then that leads them thing, comes to them with an opportunity. They're like, this opportunity is great. Great. Do you want me to represent you? That's a much easier to sell.

34:22 So we see that CA has very humble beginnings. They're in debt. They wind up uh putting up Holmes as collateral. And it says CAA was a prototypical startup. We bought him folding chairs and card tables for desks, and our wives each came in one day a week to answer the phones.

34:37 We had one assistant, a bookkeeper. And right away they have to deal with one, everybody around them doubting them, you're not gonna succeed. the the f the people that stayed at William Morris said, Hey, just so you know We have like a bet at the office that you guys are gonna be out of business when s within six months. And then

34:53 They they W A W M A. Threatens a lawsuit. and tries to destroy CAA before they get going. And so this is Ovitz's response and they were terrified. You know they're they're

35:04 They're late twenties. And they have they get this letter from one of the most powerful attorneys. in Hollywood saying You know, we're essentially we're gonna just crush you.

35:14 And Oh, it's Responses fasting. He goes my one play, a long shot, was try to intimidate my old boss. From working for Sam, I knew that the Department of Justice was probing William Morris for monopolistic practices. So

35:26 He calls up the attorney. Okay. He goes, I rang up Leon Kaplan. He sounded arrogant and why not? He peg CAA As weak, broke, and defenseless. Mr. Kaplan, I said.

35:37 We haven't met. But I know who you represent. I think you're trying to put us out of business and I think it's inappropriate and unfair. And it could be really interesting if this went to the Justice Department in the middle of their antitrust investigation. My tone was firm, but

35:51 But matter of fact. I continued. You can rip up this letter and we can all be friends and forget about it. Or you can pursue it. And I will call a pal of mine who works at justice.

36:01 Justice Department. And I'll ask him to throw this in the hopper. And we'll see how this sorts out. And so the lawyer and W M A back off and I think it's probably obvious, but like Yeah. Ovisn have a friend of the Justice Department, he was bluffing.

36:13 But this is the the punchline, the the important part. That day forged our siege mentality. To defend our tiny position, we unleashed hell. On anyone who crossed us. For the rest of my time at CA

36:25 I was a great friend and ally, but an implacable foe. When you're twenty eight years old and you've quit your job and there's no going back And then the industry leader tries to smother your baby in its cradle. You steal up pretty fast. Kaplan's letter taught us to play hardball and hardball we would play.

36:40 For the next twenty years. So when you're not making any money, you don't have a lot of money, you're in debt. w what what option do you have in your startup? There's one option. You gotta get to the money fast or you're going to die. And so what they do

36:53 Is they go to kind of the So there's like a Th there's like a the films m and movies is obviously, you know, the the most prestigious aspect of the business. uh can be the most lucrative. But they start in TV, which was, you know, way less

37:07 Prestigious. Because it pays really fast. It's actually really, really interesting. Needing clients fast to pay a rent, we focus on T V writers and actors. Two reliable sources of income. In T V the talent got paid every Thursday.

37:18 So the agents did two. Then he talks about what he was like at twenty eight, he's still like this today. Every waking hour was a working hour. This is a very scrappy startup. says we didn't even have expense accounts. We paid for everything ourselves and deducted it.

37:33 From our individual taxes. And this is the part of the book where it just feels full of just really interesting ideas on on, you know, really scrapping resourceful ideas to build your company. One thing that's very obvious is uh Uvis was ahead of his time in a lot of things. He's very ahead of time what's about to happen here because what he's about to tell this actress. Actors, athletes all think like this today.

37:53 And He he's saying, you know, you you're a great actress, you should be doing more, you should have bigger roles. And he goes, uh seeing her skeptical expression, I jumped in and said, Take off your actress hat for a moment and pretend that you're a small corporation. This is what I mean by that. All these athletes and and

38:09 If you look at like a lot of athletes movie stars, you know, people that are in different domains, uh outside of like typical business people. you'll see in their bios. It'll be they'll say like founder. So they think they definitely think about them themselves as like a small uh in many cases like they could be multi billion dollar corporations, but They think like the Slut now. They definitely were thinking back then.

38:29 He and he says he says to this actress, What what can you do to increase your bottom line and control the direction of your future growth? You need to take control of your projects and get involved in developing them. Now this second part that he tells This is great advice for dealing with people. I believe that nobody wants to be treated just as they are. Everybody wants to feel encouraged. To become even more than they are, to become the best versions of themselves.

38:50 So then the third thing that jumped out on me on this page is again this belief comes before ability. Yeah, yeah. I used to have this thing where they pop up in all the the books that I read in the early days of founders. It's like critics don't know shit. And it's just everybody around over it's like you can't do that. That's impossible. That'll never happen. You're not gonna get that person. You can't do that.

39:09 And so they they're talking about like yeah, we might be like these little guys doing TV, we might have no money, no one knows us. And he says, I plan on representing movie stars. And the response to this person I'm talking about is like you'll never get them. They're locked up by the big boys. And Ovitz's response here is perfect. He goes, I'm gonna represent them all. I'm going to get them all.

39:28 And I think it's very important. Don't ever let somebody else tell you what you're gonna do or you're capable of. How the hell would they even know? Another way. You gotta find another. Another route in. And so

39:38 Okay. It's really hard. You know, obviously film is highly competitive. This guy just said all the the great actors and directors are locked up by the big boys. Okay, so how can I break into to movies? He says we break into film by taking books and scripts and treatments to prospective clients. So He finds he winds up uh reading in I think New York magazine.

39:56 Hears about this this legendary literary agent named Mort Jenklo. And he goes, Okay, I'm gonna call him up. Yeah again. This is just so overt.

40:06 I'm gonna I'm gonna call him. It took 10 days for me to get him on the phone to ask if I could see him. I flew to New York at a cost that made my stomach twitch. Remember, they have no money at this time. So he says I laid out our book for a strategy. I'd asked to call him every Thursday at ten AM in case he had something for us. Mort could set his watch by my calls. I kept at it for a year every week, no matter what.

40:27 Before he gave us a novel. So the first thing he gives him gives him this novel chiefs, they actually uh sell that and turn it into a very successful mini series on CBS.

40:38 More it was a static. So what happens? You just you just made me more money. You brought me an opportunity. People love that. So now we start sending ovits and all the people say, Hey. A bunch of manuscripts. For some of his more commercial writers.

40:50 That are should be easier to turn into Mini series, movies. Things like that. And then you see this gorilla marketing tactic. That

40:58 that they had. They take these these scripts and these manuscripts And they Well, I'll just read this to you. Soon we had eighty agents sending us novels and manuscript to be optioned by our producers. And then are screenwriters for adaptation. After copying the scripts in bulk.

41:11 We slapped on bright red covers with white CAA logo and planted hundreds of them. In beauty parlors. Restaurants. and doctor's offices. They generated free publicity. They helped establish our brand.

41:24 in our race against larger but less agile firms. Now talks about the insane amount of pressure he's under. They don't make any money, I think, for the first three years. And then on the third year Each

41:37 uh partner is able to take eighty thousand dollars out in profits. Remember in the seventies, so it's like holy shit. So he says all he could think about was money. Obviously if you grew up with no money. You feel that way forever. And so he says I was hell bent on making enough money so I'd never have to go back to the valley.

41:53 starts making a little bit of money, this feeling. This is I double underline. This is so important. So Judy and I moved from Sherwin Sherwin Oaks to Brentwood. Trading in our seventy five thousand dollar house. For one that costs six hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

42:06 I'd wake up and think my God. I live in Brentwood. So he's starting to build up a little momentum here. People are noticing how resourceful they are, how hungry they are. Think about the contrast. It's gonna be obvious. See that the the success is gonna come later, right? But the score will take care of itself. You're gonna notice

42:22 If you know the industry like How are the old sodgy guys at WME doing? Right. Uh William Morris or WMA, sorry. And how

42:30 What are these like young guys? that are on it every day that are being super resourceful in it CAA doing. And so says uh in late nineteen seventy six opportunity had come knocking. In the form of fifty two year old Marty Baum.

42:43 He was an agent with his own shop. Okay. He had a really good list of clients. But he worked by himself. So since Marty felt lonely and he wanted to join us, we decided to make him a full one six partner. And never regretted it.

42:55 He gave us a big foot in the door in films. His clients made CAA a contender. And he's gonna lead them to their big their first big payday. So Marty sense sets. Over it's up with James Clavel, who's the the writer of the series Shogun.

43:11 Shogun has just been remade recently. I watched it. I enjoyed it. But Obitz is the one that gets it. He this is you know Three decades ago, or four decades ago, maybe. Maybe four and a half decades ago.

43:21 And he gets it made in and it becomes one of the most watched mini series of all time. So I'm gonna skip over and we get to the punchline. Uh and James is a static at what Ovis was able to do. So the author James Uh, Clavel says, Hey, can you come meet me?

43:36 Yeah, he sits down, Ovid sits down. James hands him an envelope. Yeah, and he found he says he opens it. found a check with a dizzing number of zeros made out to CAA. one million dollar commission, which would be about three million in today's money.

43:51 Even more today'cause the book is, you know, almost ten years old. Shogun had this is the important part. I think you and I have been talking about this over and over again the last few weeks. How many of these people were able to build Empires.

44:02 In many cases billion dollar empires. Off of o opportunity hiding in plain sight. Shogun? It's not like the sho they CAA was the first

44:12 company to see Shogun. And you're and Ovis says this over and over again. He takes things that other people pass on. And turns them into phenomenal successes. Shogun had languished at William Moore's for three years. CA got it made. Never mind that the deal almost fell apart 20 times. Deals always almost fall apart 20 times. That was the first time we took a client's far fetched dream.

44:31 And made it come true. So he's doing the best with every day opportunity in front of him, but he still has his long term plan. He's like, I want to have the best directors, I want to have the best actors. So he went up making a list of all the best directors that he wants to represent one day. And he says I was dreaming. Though my dream would eventually come to pass.

44:50 And so he winds up eventually some of these people are like Martin Swordsesee and Stanley Cub Kubrick. And one advantage that he did Right. Think about like I've done a bunch of podcasts on on directors like Christopher Nolan, Tarantino, Spielberg, Ju George Lucas. They're all the same in the sense that they have this encyclopedic knowledge of film history in their head.

45:08 And what ovits realized is like, Oh, I need to get that in my head, so then I have s I can be able to relate to them and understand them and talk to them about this. So What does he do? Know the history of the industry in, right? I was beginning to believe that I can converse with those guys because when we launched CIA, I had started a private project, one that took me 10 years. Of watching every film that had one

45:27 One of the big five Oscar uh big five category Oscars. I discovered why gone with the win. had passed the test of time and how green was my valley hadn't. I learned the relationship between vision and craft. Film had its own language and I needed to be bilingual. So you I I keep pointing this out because it's like He just d he does the he's willing to put in the effort.

45:46 and do the research and do the time. How many other people Let's say you're another agent on another uh your direct competitor of Ovit at this time. How many of them do you actually think did that? I I'd be surprised if there's another one.

45:57 And if they're It's certainly not what more than one percent of his competitors? So you're already knocking out ninety nine percent of the people. It's probably point half of a percent. If you really think about human nature. Uh it's just it's fascinating that you can still just get an advantage. Just by collecting more information.

46:12 Uh Nothing. I love this idea. I've already talked about it. Do the job. Before you're hired. So one of the guys that he wanted to um to represent

46:21 That was on his list of directors was a guy named Steve Gordon. So one way he would he would do he says we would poach people by assumption. We would behave as if we were the client's agent already and make their dreams happy and then they would sign. And so He winds up

46:37 Getting a script. uh attaching Steve Gordon to the script and selling it to United Artists as if Steve Gordon agreed to that. And then they ordered the movie with Steve attached to to direct. And then Steve was very happy'cause the deal Think about it, you show up at his door, the deal's done. Like, hey, I know you wanted this movie. Guess what? I just sold sold it to this studio and you're the director.

46:57 So this was actually a surprising thing. And and something that uh I actually asked him about at dinner too. because it's obvious in this book, like he's just heartbroken and devastated by s two of his closest friends. And and business partners. Uh betray him.

47:10 And yet I I well have a bunch of m mutual people that I know that know of it's Uh, I know what he's working on now. And I know what he's been doing the last few years and I just ask him, like, how the hell?'Cause I I'm like a very untrusting person and like One of my closest friends. And advisor says like my

47:26 biggest problem is that I keep everybody at arm's length away. And I can actually like damage. Where where I'm trying to go in life. Uh it's like a very interesting piece of feedback, but

47:37 And so one thing I was just curious for myself is like You know, read your book. Ripped your heart out. You know, and Obits is not gonna say like he was like blameless too, you know?

47:49 How do you continue to build relationships after they ha haven't you, you consider these two people literally your two best friends in the world. And he made a great point. He's like, You know, I've been betrayed by like three people in my life. Out of what? A thousand?

48:02 It just it just didn't ha like you can't live your life like that. What he was telling me is like you just can't live your life like that. Because you know, it's three out of a thousand. So It it so y I think it would be surprising to you how trusting a person he is. And you see this here where

48:16 He would sign, quote unquote sign clients and he never at he never papers anything. And he goes, I never asked them to sign a letter of engagement. I thought written agreements were overrated. And he goes, And I think they're downright co counterproductive. And there was another benefit of this, with no papers to renew, our clients had no anniversary to jog them into thinking about leaving us. Very interesting uh insight there, but he mentioned that over and over again.

48:39 Just not needing to to paper anything. uh and just, you know, working with people with just a uh basically a verbal and a handshake agreement. This is where He started to pick up strength and you see he's just a conqueror and he knows he's a conqueror. He says this is really the vision and the the beginning of him just completely rolling over everyone.

48:56 And He says a vision of my future came over me. I'm going to have all of these people someday. in an agency that will represent the whole food chain. And flip the power from the studios to the artists.

49:07 Again. Belief comes before ability. He had that belief. He did not have the ability to do that yet. So he's figuring out how to do it.

49:14 Even then I had the odd feeling that Sidney Polak Which is a The legendary director. would be the master key. Realizing this vision would take years. So he discovers that this is one of the wildest parts of the book.

49:25 So Sydney's longtime agent with this guy named Evarts Ziggler. We're gonna call him Zig,'cause I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing his name correctly. So he zig represented a bunch of A-list writers and he had a bunch of top tier directors, but he's getting old and a little lazy and not with the times. And so he goes, I want them all, but how do I lure them away? The unexpected

49:45 Answer came through my car telephone. Which was a novelty at the time. The radio based phone, slightly larger than the shoe box, had eleven channels. You would keep pushing buttons until you found a dial tone. Busy channels were like party lines, any subscriber could listen in. On my way to the office one morning I heard a voice

50:01 That's so wild. That like you're using a car phone and it's like a party line. And I'm me and you were having a conversation, and then if you just happen to get on that same channel, you're just listening in. I guess it's like kinda like C B radio. Right, we're truck drivers in the it's the same way. So they're they're like party lines, any subscriber could listen in.

50:16 On my way to the office one morning, I heard a voice that sounded like zigz. I pulled off the road to take notes because Zig was discussing his star studied client list with his assistant. I clocked in at the same time the next morning. And there was Zig again doing business while commuting. He sounded old and forlorn.

50:33 At a time. When we were swarming Potential Clients and so He also has

50:39 A tiny business. In the sense that he doesn't have a lot of help. Where you know Oh, it's like building an army.

50:44 Okay. And so Zig has just like one assistant and a junior partner. And so he says I decided to try to buy him out. To make him more receptive to soften him up, I escalated my campaign aga to sign Sidney Pollock. I'll kill for you, I told Cydney.

50:58 All I had to sell was my passion and energy and the fact that I was thirty years younger than Zig. As Sydney wavered, we got screenplay after screen pay. S after screenplay. Into his hands before Zig did. Each day I spent up to two hours on Sid, on Sydney, rather, excuse me.

51:13 Far more than anyone who spent on his biggest signed clients. This is Actions express priority. He's telling you with his actions what's important. I'm gonna get this guy. In nineteen eighty one.

51:23 With our courtship in a second year. Remember he started I think the very first page. Uh he calls himself the Terminator. And so in my mind I I have that scene where like they just keep shooting, it just keeps coming, it keeps coming, it keeps coming. I I just feel that that that's how overs like

51:38 Uh definitely in in this situation and m and many others. Uh so he's like, Okay, I'm gonna spend Tuna's day. It's gonna take me two years. And I'm gonna I'm just gonna out hustle. your agent and show you that like I'm obviously better than that. Uh so he signs with us after it signs with us at last.

51:54 Having dealt Zig a body blow, we offered him seven hundred fifty thousand for his agency plus a lifetime royalty on his client's work. he keep a piece of his business in perpetuity, even if he never came to the office. Zig past. But during our discussions, we discover that Steve Roth, his own the only other partner, his junior partner, right? Is the one who's actually servicing the their best clients. And that Steve was eager to leave. We promptly cut a deal for him to come to CAA that got us most of what we wanted. And all we had to pay

52:20 Steve was two hundred and fifty thousand a year. We better Cheaper than paying Zig seven hundred fifty thousand. And then this just again, more terminator like.

52:31 I'm gonna roll over everyone. Anyone in our way was gonna get rolled over with the core his core business gone, Zig sold what remained to ICM. And he was done. The truth is That I didn't give a thought to Zig after he turned us down.

52:44 You never heard that someone was unhappy afterward. They just lost. But flattening zig. Was the beginning. of my Sherman esque march to the sea.

52:53 So in this book, Ovis will also talk about people that he admired or people he he would learn from. And one of the guys was Uh Ted Ashley. And Ted Ashley was Actually one of the few people that actually started his own agency. younger at a younger age than Obits did. I think Ted was

53:08 twenty three when he started his agency. And Ted gives him a warning. And I actually uh asked Ovit uh about this at dinner and he still believes this that this is true, but he said not on the rise. So I'll I'll explain what that means in one second. Uh, there wasn't a day where I didn't walk in the door and get hit by a rush of anxiety. What idea can I come up with to

53:27 to today to pay the overhead. There'd be the adrenaline rush when we sent out the internal memo. Robert Redford is now a CAA client. Fifteen minutes later, it was what's next. In nineteen seventy nine when I was thirty three. Ted Ashley at Warner Brothers took me aside.

53:42 And said, I'm gonna give you some great advice. And knowing you, you're not gonna take it. But here it is. I could have worked. Ten percent less.

53:51 And it wouldn't have made a difference in my professional success. But I would have been a lot Happier. Ted was absolutely right on both accounts. It was great advice. And I didn't

54:02 Take it. I see now that it could have worked as much as twenty percent less. And it wouldn't have cost me. If I worked even ten percent less across thirty years.

54:12 That's three extra That's three extra whole years of life. that I would have enjoyed. And so when I asked him about that, he's like, Yeah, that's definitely still true. Now

54:22 On his rise, he probably couldn't work ten percent less because you see that was one of his edge. But within ten years when they have, you know, they're they're solidified The the momentum's kinda going. Yeah, he could have easily worked ten percent less. So again Great advice from

54:36 Ted Ashley. Fice the young Mike Obits. Did not take? And advice that Michael its of today

54:43 still believes is true. So again, I think I keep repeating this, autobiographies are super important. you know, James Dyson's autobiography, Phil Knight, this Biography. They're just really important'cause of the Sam Waltons. There's just a layout exactly, you know, it's a it's a wise older man looking back.

54:59 Uh With a lot of wisdom. And I think you know the for the cost of what, fifteen bucks, twenty bucks you could probably get this book for? And twenty hours of your time, you're you're not gonna read you're not the read it like I do. If you can see like

55:11 I I mark this thing up, so it takes a ton of time. You know I'm doing like arts and crafts over here. Yeah, if you're just reading without doing all that, like it's just it's just a no brainer, I think. So remember he t he talks about There's just like a lot of co founder conflict and him not realizing

55:27 People you can damage a person's relationship but they won't say anything to you. Not everybody's that direct. And so what is happening is like he's bringing in so much business. He's taking on so much more work. He's a undeniable It was his idea to have Even equity.

55:40 But he is undeniably the more important and the more productive partner. And so he's like, Listen, I I need to get more than sixteen point six seven percent. And if I don't, I I have to consider my other options. And even if logically

55:54 Your Partner. Can see that and can believe that. there's like an emotional component to this. You just see it over and over again. Where they feel that the other person is

56:04 U not valuing them Enough. Everybody gonna f is going to feel this way. It doesn't matter if you can logically lay this out. This is an emotional decision. And so they they're they agreed with him, hey, you're obviously the firm's leader. they wind up getting a larger allocation of shares.

56:19 And but he realizes like they they're going to They didn't want to do this. And so he says professionally, mission accomplished. Emotionally though, I had just hit the self destruct button. only would take sixteen years to go off. And now here's also another warning. He's gotta mediate.

56:34 All these disagreements between other partners. And so his partner's Ron partner's Ron, which is like his best friend. It's just like lighting'em up about

56:43 Let's get rid of Bill. Bill shouldn't have equity either. He's not doing anything. And yet Ovitz is observing that Bill doesn't have any idea. This is Bill never had an inkling.

56:54 Iran's animists. Now keep that in mind because Ron's gonna hide it from Obits too. This is really important. Like if somebody just if you observe somebody doing something to another person. You have to think like the the Likely will turn around to it to you.

57:06 And so he's like, Wait, Bill doesn't even know how Ron feels. And he goes, I was amazed at how well Ron hit his true feelings From somebody that he saw every day. I've been having conversations with founders more and more. And I think um something that's not discussed enough is

57:21 Yeah, especially with serious entrepreneurs, like they they start one company, they sell it. They start another company, they sell it. And then the third company they're like kind of like you you you get this feeling it's like oh it's like I could do this over and over again. I'm like I'm just fantastic at this and then like the third company like fails completely. Completely. And in some cases I was just talking another one today.

57:38 Where their last success was What ten years ago? And that w that was rather shocking. And so I I think Obitz is really wise to realize like

57:50 Part of the reason. He was able to make so much money one, he was very innovative, he was doing things that other agents were and we're about to get to that. But he's at the right time. He says we're lucky to work We were lucky to work in a golden age.

58:03 People went to the local theater three times a month. Piracy had yet to explode. There's really no internet. And cable was in its infancy, so before technology really fragmented attention. it made it much more difficult to make money in movies. Like he's at the right place. At the right time.

58:18 really reminds me of like newspapers before the internet and I would say like Telegraph. After the railroads. But before the telephone.

58:27 And so you just you find these periods and usually don't last that long. Where you just can extract and make so much more money than if you were ten years later or fifteen years later, or in some cases five years later. So

58:38 One of the ideas was he's gonna innovate just like his the his the person he patterned himself off of Lou Wasserman. And so one one thing he does is like he's just gonna design the whole package and he's gonna bring it to the studio. He's essentially gonna do their work for them. We've grown so big enough that we were able to package movies with multiple clients. Which is a common practice in television, but not in film. Nobody was doing this in film.

58:58 CAA was the first to orchestrate the entire development process. We took an idea. Which is like a yet. Pu yet to be published. Bestseller. A magazine article in some cases, or even a news story. And turn it into a script.

59:09 and shoehorned as many artists into the project as we could. The process fattened our commissions and spared the studios the headache. And expense. of development. So

59:20 It's actually interesting. Idea. I learned from George Clooney about uh surprisingly. It it's really what's what's happening here is like the the studios, they have a problem. They want a movie that they can sell.

59:31 And in the past, like they had to do all this work. And Ovitz found it easier. It's like I like You have a problem, I'm gonna present myself as the solution. And so There's a line uh where George Clooney realizes he was like not having any success becoming an actor until he had this like s slight change in his framing.

59:48 George Clooney's luck change when he realized that the audition is a problem. For the people giving the audition. They want to find an actor for the role. If I present myself as the solution to your problem Rather than the person dying for your approval, it will increase my chance for success. And so

1:00:04 What is this idea? It's like This process fattened our commissions. and spare the studios the headaches and expense of development because I'm going to do the work for them. Essentially I become the solution to your problem. Here is just uh one example of like the financial outcome. that just way he's gonna we make way more money.

1:00:21 And then other agencies is like Just realize that packaging everything is just much more lucrative. And again, I this is something he does over and over again throughout the book. He's really great at expanding the revenue opportunities of his existing profession. And this partly, I think, would tie directly to his personality. He's just never satisfied with the status quo, which he just said. Oh yeah, I wanted Robert Rudd for ye for years. I signed him.

1:00:40 Fifteen minutes later, I was like, What's next? So Ghostbusters is one of the movies he did this with. And this is the result, Ghostbusters became the second biggest film of the year, grossing more than two hundred and ninety-five million dollars. As our clients collected

1:00:52 uh our clients collectively got thirty percent of the gross And they get 10% of that. So that means CAA gets three percent of the gross over the years as T V and VHS revenues came in. We made more than thirty milyen dollars. From that movie alone. Nothing.

1:01:07 Great idea. And Yeah, I again I just got done saying like uh done a bunch of episodes on on directors. I think filmmakers are fascinating. I think there's a lot of insights for entrepreneurs and filmmakers. one of the people that he wanted to sign and was on his list forever and he winds up signing

1:01:21 Is Martin Scorsese. I realize my oversight. I haven't even done an an episode on Scores AC, so I need to do one. But he talks about and I'm just gonna I just found this part interesting.

1:01:31 that any time you find and I've seen this with like Bill Belichick. Like you see us with coaches sometimes, with filmmakers, you know, with tennis players, with anybody that Kobe Bryant was like this. You you you talk to them about what you think you understand, which is the game that they dedicate their life to, whether it's film or business, John Malone and and cable was like this. The the list just goes on and on and on. Obviously Munger and Buffett are like this. And you just understand like what you're seeing is not what they're seeing.

1:01:56 They have such an advanced understanding of what's happening. You can just learn a lot if you can actually sit there and do this with them. And so it says I read all the great books on Hollywood's history and seen every Oscar Winning film going back to nineteen twenty nine, but I didn't get movies. And so I started watching them with Marty. More interesting. In the late eighties.

1:02:12 So they wind up living They both had an apartment. In New York in the same building. So when he would get in from uh Ovis were flying from LA. And he'd get in and if Marty was there, he would just go

1:02:24 uh drop his bags off and then knock on Marty's door. They'd grab some food and they'd sit in front of Whatever was playing on his projector. And he says Marty was a walk Film.

1:02:34 Encyclopedia. There is nothing better than walking into a dark room with a projector flickering. Showing an old movie I'd never heard of. That m but that one day might influence Marty's own work. So the the analogy between filmmakers and entrepreneurs is obvious.

1:02:47 Right. Tarantino, or when I did Tarantino Spielberg. They'd watch these videos. And these movies. And you know, they would take an literally a scene verbatim or an idea verbatim from something from like, you know, the nineteen forties.

1:02:59 And they put it in a movie in like nineteen ninety. It's just remarkable. And uh Ovitch just picked up on that. He's like, Wait a minute, he's like watching these old films on you know, in in his New York apartment on a projector. And there's he's why is he doing that?

1:03:12 Why are we reading these biographies? Why are you listening to this podcast? Because you're hoping to find an idea that one one day might influence your own work. It's the exact same thing. I love this. I absolutely love this. And so as the years go by, you start to see this like in s intense pace. This insane schedule really

1:03:28 takes a toll on him. So I actually wanna give you an idea of like what a typical day schedule was like. And then the trade off that he that he's making with his family. And again, this is again why autobiographies are so important. yet treating my clients like family was hard on me and my actual family. I was waking up at five forty five AM Fifteen minutes later I'd be riding the bike in the gym and making calls to Europe.

1:03:46 Skimming five newspapers. Marking articles for my assistants to strip out and distribute to the firm. After forty minutes on the bike, I do thirty or forty uh minutes of martial arts, working myself to exhaustion. By eight AM after showering and eating a fast breakfast. I'd be on the car phone in route to the office.

1:04:01 After our morning meeting I'd take meetings, have lunch, a drink with a colleague, and a working dinner, all in between running calls. Up to three hundred phone calls a day. After being a chameleon all day work. It took me an hour or so to figure out who the fuck I was when I got home. And all the time the phone would keep ringing.

1:04:18 Which drove Judy crazy. She would want to discuss my day to feel closer to me, but I was exhausted by my day. And I didn't want to talk about work in front of the kids. I wanted them to feel normal and safe. After the kids went to sleep. I worked every night skimming through three or four VHS sets.

1:04:33 I'd brought home and chipping away at the stack of screenplays, then I'd fall asleep Johnny Carson at midnight. and do it all over again the next day. My kids viewed my world less as something to aspire to. Then it's something to lure me away from. They often noticed that though I was playing with them

1:04:49 when they were young, or asking about their days when they were older. That my attention was elsewhere. Could you please come back to reality, they'd say. Or just earth to dad. I use the car as a place to return phone calls.

1:05:01 Viewing travel time as dead time. They, quite rightly, viewed it as family time. And they'd regularly disconnect me or grab the phone from my hand and so Uh, I'm sure, you know, he's not alone. With the same problem, I have it as well.

1:05:16 You you might as well. I do so like if I'm mind wandering, right, back to work or whatever I'm thinking about when I'm playing especially with like my son,'cause he's so s he's still so small. And the best piece of advice I ever heard about this is when that happens, you picture yourself As you thirty years into the future.

1:05:37 as that person and you know that person thirty years into the future would give anything in the world. To be able to go back. in time and play with your four year old. One more time.

1:05:49 And so I try to like snap myself out of there. It's like gotta stop doing that. You know, when I'm When he's Okay, ca has his own life. His own wife and kids and everything else. I'm going to miss this so much. The good times is are now.

1:06:02 I have to like Focus on that. I th I think that's like really good uh Advice. Um goes back to just the euphoria and terror that entrepreneurs feel. And unfortunately, as as founders know.

1:06:14 Sometimes you just feel terror. For no reason at all. And He Ovitz talks about this. Like this just constant Pressure.

1:06:24 Uh, my evenings and Saturday mornings were swallowed by the demands of a growing service organization, from tax planning and pensions to training programs. human resources and legal and accounting all reported to me. Each time I walked through our front door, I felt a physical chill, like the chill you felt in high school before a final exam. How much do we have to earn today to cover our costs and overhead?

1:06:43 What if the business shifted and the money up? The feeling would recede for a time. Once I sat down at my desk and began to work, but I carried those fears To my last day there. So then one of the most surprising parts of the book is just this insane co founder conflict craziness.

1:07:00 So one morning Nineteen eighty seven. Ron comes into my office. Shuts the door and says, I've got a problem. I said shoot. We've had a thousand conversations that started like that.

1:07:09 I lost a lot of money in a poker game and I can't pay up. I was shocked, but I said, Okay, we'll take care of it. I figured it was like a hundred thousand dollars or so. How much? I'm not sure you'll be able to take care of it. How much is it?

1:07:20 Over five million dollars. Ron told me he'd been going to Vegas several times a week. He'd make the flight after work, play deep into the night, And grab a few hours of sleep before flying back to LA in the morning. And working his ass off as usual, never missing a meeting. I was unable to process this.

1:07:37 My partner. My best friend. The guy I was tied to for life. Clearly had an unconscious need. To throw away everything that we had worked for.

1:07:45 So the company winds up lending him a little bit of money, try uh he he was saying over and over again, Don't worry, it's never gonna happen again. For the next year and a half, Ron and I worked harder and more closely than ever. Then one morning he closed my door, took a seat, and looked at me with a funeral expression. You're not gonna believe this, he said. But another poker game.

1:08:00 and an even bigger loss this time six point five million dollars. I felt That he'd smash me with a baseball bat. Who was this man? I was deeply

1:08:11 Deeply. Shaken. Despite my three hundred and sixty degree paranoia, I hadn't seen any of this coming. Which scared the crap out of me. I prided myself on reading people and forecasting from subtle clues.

1:08:21 And here I hadn't been reading Ron right for ten years. That fact was so shocking to me. That I instantly try to forget it. I couldn't though.

1:08:32 And from then on I was constantly worried That Ron would take the agency down. And then there's just several great lines. I really feel like this is sage advice for for entrepreneurs. I would have been much happier if I hadn't been so determined to appear all knowing and invulnerable. Uh, I think it's great advice.

1:08:49 One thing I asked uh Michael at dinner. And I y ask all uh everybody that I come in contact with. Yeah, very curious, like who's the smartest person you know and like what's the best business you know? And one of the people he said is was the smartest people he ever met. was Michael Crichton.

1:09:04 And actually After that. I went and looked for biographies on'em. I couldn't find any. I might figure out another way, uh maybe I can do like a long form article.

1:09:12 I think he's a fascinating person. And I'd like to to like learn spend like a week studying him in in detail. One because O Ovis, you know, said he's met ton of people and Michael Crichton's like top three.

1:09:24 Smartest person you ever met. But also That was very fascinating how he writes. So in the book says Uh after putting off writing as long as possible. He went at it eighteen hours a day, seven days a week until he was done.

1:09:36 And he wrote Jurassic Park that way. And so I I looked up on uh line. This is from Uh Michael's Cratens.

1:09:45 Wikipedia page says Craig was a workaholic. When drafting a novel, he would typically take him six or seven weeks. Critton withdrew completely. To follow what he called a structured approach. Of ritualistic self denial.

1:09:57 As he neared writing the end of each book, he would rise increasingly early each day, meaning that he would sleep for less than four hours. by going to bed at two PM or t ten PM and waking up at two AM. And as a sign that he was probably not the easiest person to deal with. It's You want a hint?

1:10:13 Uh, he was married five times. So usually. I've seen that a couple times. uh in these books. J uh I think the episode I did on James Cameron might be the the best single episode I've ever made. And uh you know, you can read between the lines the opening of that episode.

1:10:28 He moved to New Zealand with his fifth wife. And then everything you hear about him after that. Uh, I think is not surprising it kinda fits into that. Uh into that. Context.

1:10:38 This might be my favorite quote in the book and and uh And me and Michael talked about this at dinner. He stopped. Because it was hard. It required discipline.

1:10:47 Dedication. And hours and hours of time. Everyone stopped. I Didn't stop.

1:10:54 So I mentioned a few times that he's constantly Yeah, rethinking didn't believe like, Oh, I'm not remember he says I didn't want to live my father's boxed in life. Some of his partners would do this, other agents they kinda like, Oh, this is what an Asian does, and we're just gonna like build a uh this imaginary box around what an Asian does and and Ovis is like, No, not gonna do that. I'll just find opportunities and and do that. So He gets his first exposure to corporate MA. And it's actually with

1:11:18 Sony and a a Camarita. He is a really fasting guy. I'm gonna do another episode on him. I think I did I read his autobiography a long time ago called Made Japan. I think it's episode one or two. And I found him because both Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos talked about Pattern and learning f ideas from the Uh from Akeo.

1:11:33 that they've used in Amazon and and Apple. And Ovitz does something really smart here. He's trying to help Sony. Buy CBS records. And he's not, you know.

1:11:43 technically signed up to to to represent anybody. So he finds Akio's autobiography called Made in Japan. And he reads it and he says I was the only person I knew with a copy of his book and it served me well. And so he says, I wasn't representing CBS or Sony. I just put myself in the middle of the situation. I was a connector. It's what I did all day. And so he realizes there's a lot of Like you if you if you think of everything in like

1:12:05 kinda don't think of what's actually taking place, but the idea behind it. Like I always say I turn everything into an abstraction. He does the same thing where he's like, Well I'm connecting actors and directors to to people making movies. You know It's not that different from somebody wants to buy a record label or somebody wants to buy a movie studio.

1:12:20 Like Okay. I can just connect these people too. Sony winds up buying this for like two billion dollars. This is the the important part is is not that the actual sale went down. It's what m uh Ovitz learned from us.

1:12:32 And so he says, after this first exposure to corporate m mergers, I made a list of all the MMA specialists. So he goes and tries to find the best people at this. He starts calling them to try to build relations with them. And he goes, I met with them to learn their craft. It struck me It struck me. that it wasn't that different from assembling a movie package. You had to put all the elements together first, get the buyer and seller in sync, and then strike a price.

1:12:52 And so his idea he goes back to his his uh partners and a lot of them don't want him doing this. Again, they they want to kinda s keep him boxed in. And he's like, Well, if we can become deal advisors it would put more distance between us and other agencies and bring in larger fees. So one of these people he builds a relationship w is Herb Alan the second.

1:13:10 of Allen and company. Herb Allen had invited Ovitz to the very first annual Sun Valley conference, which still goes on today. And he gives this great description of her balance builds a relationship with him. He says, uh he rose before five AM Had dinner at six PM sharp and was in bed by nine PM.

1:13:27 One time I was at his Wyoming ranch when a phone call made me a half hour late to the cookhouse. Three courses were lined up in my plate setting. Herb looked at me and said When I say six, I mean six. He was smiling.

1:13:38 But I took his point. Herb was a model of integrity. After Summer Redstone broke a promise and engaged another investment bank. He sent Allen and company A token check for a million dollars.

1:13:50 I was in Herb's office when it arrived. He took out his scissors. Cut the check into tiny pieces. And return them to sender. Hard.

1:13:59 Was supremely Loyal. And so being involved in these M and A deals uh observing them, seeing the the huge checks being written. he he's like, Oh, this is I find this essentially more interesting than agent work.

1:14:11 And It says part the the line here says part of me had begun to view CIA as a stepping stone. highly suspect that that was, you know, probably the case the whole time. I think if you've S he he says, you know, I pattered myself to Lou Wasserman, like Lou didn't stay an agent, he he ran a studio. I think oh that was like the likely outcome or maybe the idea that Ovitz had.

1:14:29 But in the book he says his own experience taught me how much I liked the suspense of the acquisition game. the stakes and the strategies dealing with leaders who supervised empires. I set my sights on building CAA into the McKinsey of the enter entertainment industry. The indispensable advisor. I couldn't wait to broker a big transaction of my own.

1:14:47 And so that big deal that he's talking about He's eventually Ovitz is gonna help Panasonic by uh MCA Universal for six point five billion dollars. Okay. Now before that happens

1:14:58 Th this is another idea like the good ones know more. So the the founder of Panasonic was this guy named Kano Suki. Matchashutti. Matsushoota, sorry. He realizes that hey Kana Suki.

1:15:10 He actually wrote forty four different books. And so he goes and he buys all the books and reads all the books that the Panasonic founder had had written. Then he says, I spent hours in electronic stores. Eyeballing all of their product lines. Uh, I acquired the company's

1:15:25 giant wholesale catalog and I honed in on video and audio equipment. Soon I could tell you the how the to I could tell you to the last pixel. How Panasonic's best big screen TV Stacked up against Sony. So again. I keep saying you know, that example that he started in the mailroom, maybe even started when he was nine years old, reading the biographies.

1:15:42 of these great men. and continues over and over again. He's just he he prepares himself by just accumulating as much information and context and background. As possible. Now There is an idea that I think is might be related to to to today as well.

1:15:55 So his you know, Lou Wasserman is much older. And What's happening Is Ovis is pushing up the price to how much movie studios have to buy because if you, you know, own 75% of the market, you package everything together. I'm making up these numbers, but let's say,

1:16:11 You used to be able to do the movie for a million and now it's five million. Right? It's a substantial amount, maybe ten million. It's like a lot larger amount. I think it's very common. It's like Your industry was valued a you know, one way for a very long time.

1:16:24 And you know, you came up and you kinda dominated that. And now you see this like huge step up and you're like, Oh, that's that's like a bubble. I'll just sit on the side. And and wait it out. Maybe. But maybe it's not a bubble.

1:16:35 And you're starting to see that, you know, I think present day it's obvious like with with some of the valued valuations of these companies. some of the the huge rounds that are being done. And so I just think there's like there's a There's like analogy here. I don't know. If it's

1:16:48 You know, I'm not I have no idea what Things are worth. I just think it's fascinating. That Somebody that

1:16:54 Lived And literally got to the top of their profession. called this wrong. And so this will make sense in one second. Since she loop passed on movies that seem too expensive. But that bubble lasted fifteen years and it lasted

1:17:06 It outlasted Lou's career. So it says when we founded CAA, Lou Wasserman's MCA Universal was uh a power in film and dominant in television. Then the inconceivable happened. The last mogul got old.

1:17:19 As the cost of making movies soared in the nineteen eighties, in large part due to us, Universal hunkered down. Despite the runaway success of George Lucas's Star Wars, the studio passed on Raiders of the Lost Ark. When Lucas's lawyer demanded a fifty fifty split. Paramount scooped up the movie on those terms and they made it killing.

1:17:36 Lou. and pass on deals that he deemed inflated. But that bubble Lasted fifteen years.

1:17:45 Universal. The fabled octopus. Had crawled. Under a rock. So once Ovitz helps Panasonic buy MCA Universal for six point five billion

1:17:55 He gets his check. Yeah. People from Panasonic. Give him this giant check. says he they handed me a colossal check to distribute as I saw fit, a hundred and thirty five million dollars.

1:18:04 After paying the bankers and all the consultants, I was left with sixty million dollars for CAA, which would be about a hundred and ten million today. It changed. Everything for us. In Hollywood, people didn't know Didn't know the difference between Goldman Sachs and Sachsfift Avenue.

1:18:18 Everyone was dumbstruck. that a talent agency could earn that kind of fee, let alone arrange and execute a deal of that magnitude. Of course. My elevated profile pissed off my partners. And I began to feel that I was a hamster on a wheel.

1:18:31 Part of me felt I was running on the wrong wheel. That I should be going into business for myself. And part of me believe that I wasn't really a hamster. But a cheetah.

1:18:40 The fastest animal in the field. Even as everyone was telling me to slow down. I wanted to speed Uh And so he doesn't just stop at hey I'm gonna do M and A for giant corporations. He's like

1:18:52 Uh I can do ads for you too. So he strikes a deal. With Coca Cola. And again, I I gotta point this out'cause this is another he's he's applying the same approach to a different domain. He d everything he does is like this. When he when he when he's gonna pitch them on I can do advertising better and cheaper than you know these these big stodgy old corrupt

1:19:10 advertising agencies that are paying millions and millions and millions of dollars to Coca Cola. What does he do? We comb through single Coca Cola ad. And commercial since nineteen fifty five. And he looks at this.

1:19:22 This is a great line. Yeah, it's not very complicated, and you could know this from your own taste. He says advertising wasn't subatomic physics. Make commercials fun to watch and viewers would embrace them. And so he pitches them on something that no other talent agency was doing.

1:19:36 He's like, Hey, we're gonna Be your consultant. on advertising. We're gonna make the ads. We're not gonna charge Like we're gonna uh any of our costs, like we're not gonna increase that cost, but you're gonna pay us a consultancy fee.

1:19:47 Coke agrees to pay CAA. a million a consultancy fee of a million dollars a month. Plus expenses and costs. These ads Do so well.

1:19:57 that they wind up sending him a check. I think they try to pay him like an extra like ten million dollars. And he sends the check back. I'll find uh the exact line. Yeah. says they sent me a check for ten million for the ads. I returned the check with a post it note attached.

1:20:10 Hey, let's discuss this. We did. And they wind up talking to the people at Coca Cola. I was friendly but unrelenting. And they finally sent me a new check for thirty one million dollars. And so he's drastically expanding, you know

1:20:21 what agents do. He's making way more money than anybody else. But he he's also realizing, you know, he he wants he's draining him. He's just like pushing burning himself to the last uh Like burning the candle at both ends. And he he wants to build up

1:20:35 Equity. Like what happens when he stops working? Yeah. They like he he's making these big deals, but then the money just stops. And he's he's really just

1:20:44 Unbelievably tired. And I think This goes on for a while, but I think these these few paragraphs is just great writing. And gives you a sense of like what was going on in his life and and why he was eventually gonna have to make a change. And eventually like he there's just no way he could stay at CAA forever. Agenting was a young person's game and you could run just so long and so far. At forty eight years old, having run since my first day at William Morris, I was tired.

1:21:07 I was tired of getting up at six AM and squeezing in a workout while on the phone with Europe. I was tired of rolling through three hundred calls a day, talking to my throat was raw. I was tired of having lunches and dinners scheduled three months out. I was tired of flying six hundred hours a year. I was tired of own six tuxedos for the thirty obligatory events.

1:21:24 Between November first and Christmas. I was tired. Of returning calls till seven PM. Going to dinner till ten. Coming home to a mountain of pink message slips.

1:21:33 Calling Japan till midnight and starting all over six hours later. I was tired of submerging myself, drowning myself. in the lives of my clients and their families. and significant others. our clients' worries about the size of their trailers and how big their billing would be.

1:21:49 had come to be seen inc as increasingly petty to me. The truth is, I'd always disliked Having to see After people's Creature comforts.

1:21:58 Making sure our actors and directors Had fresh guava. And the perfect nanny. You're an adult. Run your own life.

1:22:07 And then on top of that, he says, I yearn to build equity. Once an agent stopped working, there was no more accrue to fall back on. Executives I considered as my peers, Michael Eisner, Barry Diller, were raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in stock options. I wanted to play in that league too. And in truth.

1:22:24 I'd always been faintly embarrassed to be an agent. As much as CAA had professionalized our field, it would never be a noble calling. I want it to be One of the six people who could say yes to a movie without scrounging to assemble all of the elements ahead of time.

1:22:42 So he almost leaves CAA. to run MCA Universal. And Ron, his his you know, best friend and partner. was kind of acting his his agent through the whole

1:22:53 Process They get to the end. And Ovit realizes that He's not too sure about the relationship with the owners. And it's too big of a chance, so he decides

1:23:03 Uh to not take the job. And His Friend. And partner.

1:23:09 Arrives at the exact opposite conclusion. So this is where they complete this is co founder breakup where he breaks up with his co founder. Says Ron called me one day. Guess what? I met with Edgar and there's been a change in plans. He wants me to run MCA and I think I'm gonna do it. I felt completely numb, frozen with disbelief. The job on the table, chief operating officer

1:23:29 was one I'd negotiated for Ron in my last go around with Edgar, with one big difference. I was out of the picture. So they're gonna bring in somebody Ovis is gonna be the CO. Or CEO. And Ron was gonna be the COO.

1:23:40 And then they decide to ditch ovits and then they bring in this other guy named Frank as the CO that Ron's gonna report to. After a long silence, When I felt I could speak without my voice breaking, I told Ron how much I needed him. what it meant for to me to have him at my side. What came back in a burst of rage were all of Ron's pent up grievances. Remember when Ovid said earlier that

1:24:01 He had set off this emotional time bomb. It just took sixteen years to explode. This is what he was talking about. But came back in a burst of range were all of Ron's Pent up grievances.

1:24:10 How I made a big mistake by walking away from MCA. How it had always been all about me. Never about him. How it was time to strike out on his own to be recognized as something more than my consigliary. I tried to sell him for two hours.

1:24:24 as the knot in my stomach swelled into my throat. Finally my voice faltered and I gave way. His mind was made up. I felt absolutely crushed. Ron was leaving. It felt like I was getting divorced.

1:24:38 So what he realizes is there's no way he's gonna stay at CA without Ron Heart's not in in any ways. He knows he's not gonna stay there forever. They wind up selling CAA to the young Turks. I think for like a token amount. I don't even know if they say the amount in the book.

1:24:52 And the opportunity he left for was okay. Ron was his First best friend. His second best friend was Mike Weisner. And Michael had

1:25:01 Been trying to recruit him. To come to Disney and be His number two. And then Ovitz realizes like he's not He's just not meant to be a number two. But

1:25:10 The reason I wanna bring this up. Is because There is O Ovis is talking about all these signs that he ignored because of his personal relationship and and the way that he thought like Michael would treat him. And

1:25:23 Well you realize we talked about this in the Jerry Jones episode, there's some people that just Or not They don't they're they're not they're they're not the sharing type. Right? And Jerry Jones wasn't like that, and everybody around him knew that.

1:25:34 And they would tell you, like, if you're gonna come in here and you're gonna be his coach, like you're a clear number two, where like Jimmy Johnson, even though they were old friends. He wanted like equal billing and Jones shows that he wasn't down with that because he fired him right after he won the Super Bowl. And who he replaced him for?

1:25:49 Barry Switzer was very comfortable. being a number two. that that was gonna be a conflict, you know. with the these two personality types. And there's also s signs that that

1:25:58 that Ovitz ignore and he he talks about one here. This move came with risks. I knew how Michael treated his deputies. One of Iser's closest friends had told me flatly, Michael is incapable of sharing With anyone.

1:26:11 But I believe that I was immune to Michael's rages and suspicions. After Ron, he was my next best Friend. But even before he officially takes the job, like it keeps shifting of who's reporting to who's reporting to him and it's just like

1:26:25 He he's not listening to his intuition. And so there's this like weird thing that happens with Eisner and Ovitz and and a few uh Disney executives. Uh Iser's house before the announcement.

1:26:38 Takes place. And Ovitz calls his wife. And he says, Michael just threw me under the bus. No matter what I do, I'm gonna fail in this job. I think I just made the biggest mistake of my career.

1:26:50 Eisner says almost the exact same thing. He's actually working with this guy. They think was like writing a book on him. And when You know, Ovit's like slept on it for a day and then he calls even after he told his wife that. And he's like, Okay, I'm gonna take the job. It says minutes after I called him following my meeting with my brain trust.

1:27:06 To say I was in. He told this author exactly what I told my wife the night before. that he just made the biggest mistake of his life. He wondered if he could take his offer back. I wish he had. And so Ovitz is only gonna last fourteen months at Disney. And again, he he does what he always does. He's like, Let's buy this company, let's innovate over here, let's try to do something different.

1:27:24 And Izer would tell that's the stupidest idea I ever heard. He'd block him over and over again. He just felt very uncomfortable by, you know, sh trying to share the spotlight by any means with Ovitz. And he winds up being fired. By Eisner.

1:27:37 And so in September nineteen ninety six A Disney executive comes into Ovitz's office, says, Michael doesn't want you at the company anymore. Uh, go tell Michael to come tell me myself himself, I said. After a twenty something year relationship with my so called friend I thought I deserved to be fired face to face.

1:27:54 Michael didn't appear. He had volunteered to throw the party for my fiftieth birthday that December. Three days before my birthday. Michael summon me. To sign off on my resignation, which he said was by mutual consent, which obviously it wasn't.

1:28:09 And then this is it gets really crazy. He said he still wanted to stay friends and he wanted to host my party. A bizarrely crazy idea that wouldn't happen, of course. But one that was quintessential Eisner. Twenty years later.

1:28:21 I still have no interest And ever sitting down with him again. I was living with Eisner and furious at myself. I felt awful. Worthless and an utter failure. And so after he leaves Disney, you could guess

1:28:35 Like what he did next. He didn't Didn't have to work for money anymore. Didn't have to work for money for a long time. Yeah, he just like go back to the first page of the book where he's like the terminator. This is something we talked about. Uh at dinner.

1:28:47 The fact that He's still very driven. Uh, he's still like I I think all of us think we you need to have something to push forward, something to improve, something to focus your energy, your life energy on. And so after he leaves Disney, he starts a bunch of other companies.

1:29:01 starts to really get interested. And spent a lot of time in Silicon Valley, invest a bunch of technology companies. uh help several venture capital firms. Uh you can watch the interviews he that he's been doing lately. Talking about

1:29:13 uh helping scale and and build investment uh companies to this day. But I think the the best Way to end. is on what I think is one of the most important lessons in the book and it's actually found on the last two pages because

1:29:28 He built this phenomenal uh headquarters for CAA. And he just wind up holding on to it and keeping it, you know. decades after he had left CIA. And so

1:29:39 He ends this book in in a really, frankly, beautiful way, where he's touring this old building that is now empty. uh Sony had uh leased it from him for like twenty years. And he's walking around. And he's looking back. On his life.

1:29:53 He says I was hit But the magnitude. of what had done in that building. And it seemed kind of amazing. This kid from the valley

1:30:00 With no stature, no tenure, no network to rely on. Reshaping the entertainment business. In my empty fortress I realized That I wasn't out of the valley yet. I'm free of it in my daily life and in my bank account.

1:30:13 But I'll never be free of it in my brain. You carry your origins with you. Still, Those origins drove me here. And built this place.

1:30:22 And attracted so many bright Funny and creative colleagues. In the silence I discovered That the only thing I really miss about the agency business Was the camaraderie.

1:30:33 My comrades and friends and the passionate way we spend our lives together. I miss The people And so I think that closing lesson, like it's all about the people.

1:30:45 And the best way I describe about this is like your one of your missions in life comes from Charlie Munger. Uh you should Your goal is to build a seamless web of deserved trust. and work with those people and do life with those people.

1:30:59 for the rest of your life. It is all about the people. And that is where I will leave it for the full story. Highly, highly, highly recommend. buying this autobiography. It's one of the best autobiographies. If you buy the book using the link It's in the show notes below.

1:31:14 And also available in your podcast player and at founderspodcast.com. You'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. That is three hundred and eighty two books down. One thousand ago. And I'll talk to you again soon.

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