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- [00:01]
A
Membership means more with American Express Business Gold. Earn four times Membership Rewards points in your top two eligible spending categories every month, including eligible U.S. advertising purchases in select media and U.S. purchases at restaurants, including takeout and delivery. What are you waiting for? Get the card that flexes with your spending every month. Terms and points cap apply. Learn more@American Express.com Business Gold MX Business Gold Card built for business by American Express. You know, really, to me, so much of what happens in a deal happens before the deal. And if you set everything up in the beginning the right way, usually deals are kind of done before you actually get in the room.
- [00:41]
B
Today I brought one of the most powerful men in Hollywood ever, Jeremy Zimmer. We are going to steal his homework on how do you do deals, on how do you compete ruthlessly with your competitors, and on how you find talent in a world where taste matters more than anything. Can you tell right away when you meet somebody if they have what it takes?
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A
There has to be somewhere in there some connect to the product. I want to be a movie agent. Why somewhere in there, a movie has to have been some sort of transcendent experience for you.
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B
You and Ari Emanuel have been competitors for decades.
- [01:12]
A
Yes. What you learn is you learn to be fierce. And the other thing is you'll see what they do well, and you'll emulate and you'll see what they might not be doing well, and you'll try to ignore them. Endings are hard. But what I won't lose sight of is the experience I had of building this company along with a lot of great people.
- [01:29]
B
So you don't ever wish you just founded it yourself?
- [01:32]
A
I didn't.
- [01:35]
B
What do you think's coming for the movie industry and maybe for Hollywood in general? You've worked with incredible names. Christopher Nolan, M. Night Shyamalan, Bennett Miller, Charlize Theron, Harrison Ford, Samuel L. Jackson. On and on and on and on and on. And yet you didn't start that way. Your origin story was fascinating to me. So tell me if I get any of this wrong. After flunking out of Boston University, Jeremy was at rock bottom, in his own words. I'm 19 years old. I got stabbed. I've got no vision, notion or anything of a future. This is not the script for a nice Jewish boy from a good family. And then your grandfather called and said something along the lines of, well, you've really done a nice job of screwing up your life. I'd like to help. And that led you into a mail room in William Morris in 1979. There's like, two questions I have.
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A
Okay.
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B
One is you mentioned stabbing almost in passing.
- [02:33]
A
Yeah.
- [02:34]
B
What happened?
- [02:35]
A
No, I know stabbing is not the normal part of a lot of these stories, but I had. You know, I had. I'd gone to Boston University. I was never a very good student. I got into Boston University, and I was attending Boston University. I'm not sure I flunked out. It may have been a mutual decision, but, you know, but before. But I started working in parking lots to, you know, make some additional money and. Da, da, da. And I loved working in parking lots. And I went to one location where I was. You know, I had several locations I was managing at that point. One of them was at a restaurant called Joseph's Aquarium down at the waterfront. And I went there, it's noon on a. Whatever, Tuesday, and I'm counting the receipts from the night before, And a kid walks up to me with a knife and says, you know, give me all your money. And I was like, are you out of your fucking mind? Can I swear on this show. Are you out of your fucking mind? And he stabbed me, which was so not how you expect this to go. Like, there's going to be a conversation and a back and forth and. No, no, no, I'm really serious. I will stab you. Why would you. There was none of that. It was just like, he stabbed me, and then he ran away. And, you know, shocking. And I stood there for a minute and I went. You know, it started to hurt. I walked into the vestibule, and there was the cashier there. And I said, you know, I think I've been stabbed. And I pulled my shirt up, and there was this tiny little mark in my chest, and suddenly blood just went. And she freaked out and called an ambulance, and that's what happened.
- [04:03]
B
That is wild. And so then you go to the mailroom, which now it seems like a little bit of a Hollywood legend. Like, you know, so many serious people have come out of Hollywood mailrooms.
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A
Yeah.
- [04:16]
B
But I imagine going from Boston University to a mailroom is not like what your mama wanted.
- [04:22]
A
No, the mailroom was a. You know, it was a well trod path for the entertainment industry at that point. David Geffen had famously been in that mailroom, and so that was at least a direction. So I think everyone was thrilled that I was doing something other than working in a gas station or a parking lot. And I really had no. Like, that's so funny. You know, my kids all have these plans, and they study and they go to school and they have tutors and they do the stuff they do. And, you know, I had none of that. No plan, no idea, no concept like this vague notion of, oh, maybe I'll be a lawyer because I'm good at arguing. But, you know, so the fact that I even had a place to go every day, I think was a big win.
- [05:01]
B
Do you think? You know, now you've worked with, you know, thousands of the most talented people in the world, you could say, in Hollywood. Do you think every young person has to go through something really hard, like starting at the bottom of the mail room, working in parking lots? Is this just part of what it takes to win in life?
- [05:18]
A
Well, I think that apprenticeship is really, really important in the ages. There's in the world only so many agents, maybe in the world there are 30 really great talent agents. Right. In the whole. In the galaxy, as far as we know. So it's not like you go to say, oh, I really want to hire a great. I want to hire a great CFO. Well, there's 120,000 companies or whatever. There's a lot of CFOs, there's very few agents. So there's no place to go and learn how to be one other in an agency. So that training program is really, you know, our training program at UTA is really, really well regarded, and it becomes a great launching pad for a lot of careers, both in the agency and throughout the industry.
- [06:01]
B
And I read somewhere that you said you got your first big opportunity by fixing a chair.
- [06:06]
A
So I was in the mail room and I was interviewing to become an assistant on a desk. And the guy who I was interviewing, his chair was like, wobbling all over the place. And I could tell that the, you know, that there's these little things that hold ball bearings inside of a chair that allows it to swivel and da, da, da, boring. But I knew that that was not in properly. So at lunchtime, I went and I got his chair. I went into another place. I took somebody else's chair apart, took the ball bearings out, put it in his chair, and left a nice note saying, hey, by the way, I fixed your chair at lunchtime and I got the job. Being his assistant, it's sort of fascinating.
- [06:42]
B
I mean, it's tough out there right now, I think, in a lot of ways for young, young people. I mean, you look at the unemployment numbers, they're not great for the youth today.
- [06:50]
A
No.
- [06:50]
B
And, you know, then you have. Housing prices are pretty high simultaneously. I think in some ways, it's the best time ever to be a doer. But I don't ignore the fact that it's also hard to be, you know, having student loans that are really expensive, housing really expensive, all of those things. But, you know, what's interesting about you is you've seen all of these young people come through an entire industry and then grow over time. And I was curious, like, can you tell right away when you meet somebody if somebody's going to make it or not? Like, if they have what it takes and if you can, what do they got?
- [07:24]
A
So funny, because, you know, if you'd asked me that question 10 years ago, maybe five years ago. Oh, absolutely. My instincts are infallible. And the truth is they're not. I used to think they all had the same kind of vibe and attitude, and then it ended just the right amount of, you know, bullshit swagger along with, you know, fake humility. I thought that guy's kids got it. But, you know, a lot of times those people don't have it because they have the, you know, they can get 0 to 60 really fast, but they can't hang in there. So there's all kinds of types that can make it. So I don't. I try not to be as quick to judge, but there are certain elements, and this is what I used to always say, and I still believe it is. There has to be somewhere in there some connectivity to the product. Like, why do you want to be. I want to be a movie agent. Why? You know, Well, I, you know, I think you can get girls and, you know, I like, I want to drive a Porsche. No, no. You know, somewhere in there, a movie has to have been some sort of transcendent experience for you. You have to understand and have some passion for the product. And I think that's the case in most industries of this kind, you know, and then, you know, some appreciation for what an artist does. You know, it's waking up and say, I want to be an actor or a director or a musician or a fine artist or a poet or an author is an act of insanity. You know, the odds of being successful are extremely small. So you have to. To me, respecting that journey is really, really important.
- [08:56]
B
Yeah, it's so funny. We often talk about kind of jokingly that if you want to get really rich, that one of the worst things you could do is go be an actor. Because if you look at the. Oh, yeah, you know, the average actor. I read something the other day that was wild. You could tell me if I'm wrong or not, but that the, the average. What is that? The average Actor who is in a union.
- [09:18]
A
Right. Member of sag.
- [09:19]
B
Right. Cannot actually afford the insurance payments that are required as a member of the union.
- [09:25]
A
Yeah.
- [09:26]
B
And that's fascinating because it does mean it's insanity. You do it because you cannot sleep for the one of it, not because you want to make money.
- [09:33]
A
Right.
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B
Like, that won't be enough to drive
- [09:35]
A
you now to really get there. It has to be the only thing you could imagine doing. Yeah. You know, like, it's not an option. It's not a ho. Maybe this will be fun. It's like, oh, my God, I'll dedicate my life to it. And even then, the odds of it working are, you know, very, very long.
- [09:50]
B
That's why I stick to Laundromats, you know,
- [09:54]
A
you got that? And then this is your side hustle 100%.
- [09:57]
B
If I actually had to make money on a podcast, it would. I'm the type of human where I. I like. I don't want to sleep on the couch.
- [10:03]
A
Right.
- [10:04]
B
I want to. I'm unhinged and that. I want to build a billion dollar business, but I want to. Yeah, exactly. Right. I knew I liked you. Okay. I was curious, like, when it comes to figuring out creative talent, like, I think in this world today, everybody's worried about coding and Claude and AI, and I am, too, in a lot of ways, but it seems like taste and creativity is going to be even more important in a world in which execution becomes standardized.
- [10:31]
A
Right.
- [10:32]
B
So I'm curious, how did you determine if somebody is going to be a great writer if they have that component? And then how do you decide if they're worth taking a bet on or not?
- [10:43]
A
Well, you know, the thing about a writer is it's there on the page, you know, and if you can't tell the difference between good and bad, you're going to be at a severe disadvantage.
- [10:54]
B
So you get the. You get.
- [10:56]
A
So you would get a script and you would read it, or some of it even, and go, wow, this is a voice. This person's created a scene and a series of scenes that I am engaged in. And that happened to me many, many times with many, many different screenplays, you know, from, you know, going west in America, well, that was a movie. People don't remember, but to the. To the Fugitive, to In the Line of Fire, to Dead Poets Society, to Fisher King, these are scripts where you read them and it's just an undeniable voice. I mean, goodwill hunting. We. UTA represented Matt and Ben, and their agent was primarily a talent agent. He asked me to Help out with selling, goodwill hunting. And you know, you read that, you're just like, oh my God, I know exactly who this character is. I know exactly where I am, I feel who this guy is. And you know, every scene is a movie moment. You know, Sixth Sense. You read the first 10 pages and you're just like, wow, where am I? I'm in a place, I'm in a. You know, there's a voice and a feeling that's undeniable.
- [12:01]
B
So where's the risk for you guys? Like, do you ever. So if you take somebody on, how do you think about taking them on? Like, then are you like, well, that means I have this much money sunk into this person sort of in some way. So we gotta be careful about it.
- [12:14]
A
You know, a lot of it is. First of all, you have layers of age. So you have young agents who are out there looking for new opportunities, looking for clients, covering the marketplace place. And you're paying them not that much money and you're hoping that they're going to find the next rung. So when I was a young agent, I had my time and I had the time that I needed to dedicate towards finding my own list and building clients, as well as helping the more established agents with their existing clients. And that's kind of how the. And some agents become really good at helping other agents with their clients, and some agents become really good at finding and hunting for their new clients, building their own roster. I was more in that category initially for sure.
- [12:52]
B
Interesting. Now you are fascinating because you weren't just an agent, which maybe people could understand that even I don't think agents in Hollywood like this comparison. But is it in some ways not that dissimilar to a real estate agent in that you eat what you kill, you have to determine assets, AKA humans that you really want to take a bet on. You're not getting paid a big salary, and you only really have a lot of upside if you, your people or assets perform or when it's, it's, you
- [13:21]
A
know, the modern agency, the modern bigger agencies, it's not really that way because what you do is you build teams around your clients so that there's several people working for a client and you rely on your other agents to be out in the marketplace helping to find opportunities. And so many clients today are, you know, multi hyphenates. They want to do a lot of things, so you can't do it all yourself. So you rely on teammates to help you in this area or that area if they want to build A production company. Help you with a production company if they want to write a book, help you place your book if they want to do, you know, do live stuff. You got to have, you know, so you end up building these teams around your clients that help service the clients across all of their ambitions. And that's why the agencies have gotten so big and so diversified.
- [14:07]
B
And that has been the case for how many years do you think that's like just a few decades old?
- [14:11]
A
Well, a few decades in the sort of full diversification. But even back then, you know, back then, even 20 years ago, you know, a writer would want to write, but he'd also want to direct. And in order to direct, you had to have agents who could help him package. So you needed talent agents and you needed, you know, you need independent agents to help you put together independent financing to put movies together. So there was a natural need to grow and adapt to the desires and needs and opportunities for the client.
- [14:40]
B
Yeah, it's interesting. I know when I signed with, with uta, I had my, my agent with you guys. Who's Max? Shout out Max. But then I got on a phone call and I was like, who are all these people?
- [14:50]
A
Right?
- [14:50]
B
You know, and it was exactly that. So they're saying, okay, what about book and do you want to do TV and da da, da, da. And then you have your little, your little board almost. Yeah.
- [15:00]
A
I mean, if you do it right, you have your primary guy who's in it with you every day and, you know, and then that he builds that team, make sure we're orchestrating the team, but that the team has to feel connected to you and understand, like, how do you see yourself? What's important to you?
- [15:16]
B
Yeah, I like it because you guys are tough and you have to do all the negotiation and I just get to smile and show up.
- [15:21]
A
Right. I have a feeling behind the scenes you might be a little tough, but I don't know, David.
- [15:25]
B
Don't, don't, don't comment on that. Keep that.
- [15:27]
A
I'm not sure about that.
- [15:29]
B
Okay. I was a perfect segue because I've just been reading so much about you. And my dad has this line he always says, which is, you're not really in the game of business unless you've been lied to, stolen from, cheated. And the second that you've had those couple of things happen. Maybe you're actually in the game. And until then, you don't really know what the game even is. And so I thought about you and I was wondering, have you found that to be true? In business, does everybody have these moments where you're going to get stolen from, you're going to get lied to, you're going to get cheated? And is that just part of the game? And if so, how do you get through that?
- [16:08]
A
I mean, I wouldn't say it exactly. That may be true, and that's a one good way of expressing it. I always say that, you know, until you've really been connected to the pain, you're not really in it the same way. And that pain can be the pain of your artist losing an incredible opportunity. And that campaign can be losing an artist who is an incredible opportunity for you. But until you've really felt like, oh, wow, I don't know if I can get out of bed tomorrow morning, this feels so bad, you know, and then you do, and then you get out of bed, and then you go to work, and then someone a week later may say, what were you upset about last Tuesday? And you'll be like, I can't fucking remember last Tuesday. And it turns out. And that's when. When you start to understand that those things that are so painful for you today, the things you're so upset about today, you may not even remember next week.
- [17:05]
B
Have you ever had a moment in business where you thought, I'm not going to make it. This is going to fail. It'll be my fault. Everybody will know.
- [17:13]
A
Yeah, lots of times.
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B
What'd you do?
- [17:15]
A
Lots of times where I lost clients. I was humiliated. Lots of times where things were happening at the company where we were losing a big client or big agents were going to leave, and I was like, oh, my God, this could be it. I could feel the very foundation of the company starting to crack beneath me. And you definitely feel that. And you feel it in your stomach, especially as a founder, you feel it in your stomach. You feel it in your guts. You go home, you can't sleep. You wake up in the morning and you're hoping that it was a dream, and you're like, oh, no, it's really happening. Oh, God.
- [17:46]
B
Yeah. I think one of the scariest parts for me as a founder, and it's why I like to talk to people who have been doing it for decades, because there's nothing like lived experience. You could tell me what it's like until you're blue in the face. But unless I've experienced it, sometimes it's hard. And I was wondering, the thing that keeps me up at night is like, what if I, as the business owner, make the one wrong decision that is the catalyst for the business failing, like, that's on me. And what if I do it? And I was wondering, like, was there a move ever that you're like, that was my moment. I did make a mistake. It almost killed us. But, like, here's what I learned from that.
- [18:28]
A
You know, I don't. I think if you built a business where one mistake is going to collapse it, you haven't built much of a business. So that's my instinctual answer to that. There's been some deals that I really wanted to make that we didn't make, and had we made them, could have been disastrous. Particularly right before the pandemic. We were trying to buy a very big agency primarily because of its music business. And at the last minute, the seller couldn't control his colleagues, and the deal fell apart. And I was like, oh, my God, I'm so embarrassed. Terrible. And then the pandemic hit, and the music business went to zero, and we would have been carrying a lot of debt. It would have been very disastrous. And, you know. Yeah. Would it have destroyed the company? No, but it would have been a very, very difficult thing to come back from.
- [19:21]
B
Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. It's probably an irrational fear as a founder, but I do. And it's a little egotistical. You know, you think that you could be the sole savior or the sole founder of a business.
- [19:33]
A
Exactly.
- [19:34]
B
It's probably not always the case. But I do think there's a couple stories or lore I would say about you that I really like, and we talked about one of them beforehand. But tell me if this is a true story. So it's October 11, 2017. It's right after the Harvey Weinstein sort of bombshell hits, and no major studio or agency has spoken out yet. And yet you send this email to a thousand plus employees that reads, we've all read the news. As a father, a husband, a colleague, and a human being, I'm disgusted. Harvey earned his demise, and it should serve as a cautionary tale to anyone in our industry who believes moguls own their thrones. What an incredible line. And I was wondering, how do you stand up for what you think is right, even, and maybe especially when no one else is. What was going through your mind as you sent that?
- [20:28]
A
You know, honestly, as a father and as someone who I, you know, I felt the need to make my family first and my colleagues feel safe. This is a safe place. And we're not going to allow this kind of behavior, and we're not going to be. We're not going to Condone it. We're not going to condone it with our actions, and we're not going to condone it with our silence. And, you know, it's been funny. I've been thinking about that and a few of those other memos I wrote over the years. You know, lately, with everything that's been going on in this insane world and, you know, with the silence, the corporate silence about what's gone on in Minnesota and some of the overall, you know, behavior that we're seeing out of certain parts of the country right now and, and how, you know, corporate America has kept so quiet, you know, where, you know, during, you know, Black Lives Matter and me too. You know, every, you know, every corporate CEO couldn't wait to say something because it was the virtue signaling that was key to the time. And now we're all, you know, everyone's either so afraid or so ambivalent that they're not standing up and saying, this is horrible. You know, what's happening with ICE in this country is horrible, full stop. Do I believe that immigration should be, you know, completely unfettered and endless and da, da, da, no. But, you know, I think shooting of citizens is something we probably should stand up against.
- [22:03]
B
You know what I've realized in really, really famous rich people like Jeremy Zimmerman, they do not say yes to everything. They talk a lot about the things they don't do and don't touch. Like, he spent nearly 20 years perfecting UTA's film and TV business before he got into music or sports. He was like, I'm not touching it until we've killed this other thing. And I think that's super, super rare and powerful, and there's a reason for it. A Harvard Business Review analysis found that executives known for decisive judgment and determining things not to do, they actually outperform their peers by 20 to 25% over time. I think that's the same edge creators are fighting for right now. Everyone can publish a million things. AI is everywhere. But very few know what deserves attention and how do you actually get more of it. That's why the serious creators are building their newsletters on Beehive. Because Beehive isn't another tool. It is infrastructure for owning your audience and monetizing your value. It's only going to let you do the things that actually matter. Publish, grow, analytics, ads, subscriptions, all in one space. No clutter, no compromises. So if you're building something that you actually want to last and make real money from, build it where the attention comes to you. And they Tell you what to focus on. Beehive is the newsletter system. I think of the future. That's why I invested in it. I'm so obsessed with this company that we asked them to be a sponsor. So you can go to beehive.com Cody so that's B E E H I I V.com Cody and then they gave me kind of a ridiculous code, which is, Cody, 30 for 30% off of your first three months. Also, you guys, if you sign up now, this is not an expensive product, like the way that they price. This is incredible. So go sign up now. Beehive.com Cody I don't know if this will last forever, but we got a deal, so you get a deal. I love the point that you said about not virtue signaling.
- [23:46]
A
Yeah.
- [23:47]
B
Because now I think consumers can smell it. They're like, don't tell me what to say and don't, don't post things just because you think I'm going to like you right for it one way or the other. And even I think we have some more respect for companies even if we don't always agree with them. I'm like, at least I know that's honest.
- [24:03]
A
Right?
- [24:03]
B
You know, and so you made one. I don't know if you want to talk about it, but I remember reading a story about you back in the day, and it was, I believe you were at icm and you, you, when I asked people about you, they're like, you know what the thing is about him, he always has said the quiet part out loud. And, you know, you kind of felt like, I think that agents were taking advantage of talent at icm. And you said the industry was raping and pillaging talent. And it kind of.
- [24:33]
A
That's not really. Well, yes, but not talent. They were raping and pillaging each other to steal each other's talent. So the point I was making is this was at an independent film conference and somebody put their hand up and said, well, if I just send my script over to you, all you're going to care about is packaging. It's, you know, and da, da, da, da. And I was basically saying, you should be so lucky that we would actually care about packaging your script in parentheses, probably dumb script. And you should be so lucky that we would do that. We're all we're really thinking about is raping and pillaging each other's clients. But, you know, rape and pillage doesn't turn out to be great activities to portray yourself as doing. And the next day I was, I went to the Gym. I'm working out at my gym at like 6 o' clock in the morning, and this little guy walks up to me and always as a guy reading the trades here, and he comes, oh, boy, you're going to have quite a day today. I go, what do you mean? He goes, oh, you're going to hear from everybody. You're going to hear from Bloomberg. You're going to hear up. I don't know. I'm like, what? He goes, look at this headline. And it says, you know, holly, reporter, whatever Zimmer says, agents rape and pillage. I was like, oh, this is going to be bad.
- [25:43]
B
That's wild.
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A
And so what happened is I got called into Jeff Berg's office and he says, you know, I can't believe you said this. I can't take it anymore. You're. Da, da, da, da, you know, get your shit and get out of here. I was like, really? Yeah, yeah, I'm done, I'm done. Get your shit, get out of here. I was like, okay. And I went to my office, started packing my stuff. They came back. No, no, I, I didn't mean that. I'm sorry, you know, but you can. You're gonna have to write a letter to the National Organization for Women apologizing, and I want that in the press. And I was like, well, okay, but you fired me and I'm leaving. And that's what happened.
- [26:25]
B
That's wild. So is that normal? Is that how agents. This is a silly question, but, you know, we've all only watched agents on, on tv.
- [26:36]
A
Yes.
- [26:36]
B
Are you guys as intense as everybody else makes you out to be? Is everybody, like, yelling at each other all the time and like, entourage?
- [26:44]
A
No, but it is intense. It's a very intense job. And you're dealing with, you know, really, you know, you're, you're representing people every day who, the best way of putting it, has a dream. You could also say, have, you know, other issues, but they have a dream to be something, and you are, are the conduit to that dream. And they can be really, really happy and really, really despondent, and they can be ups and downs and da, da, da, da. And you are trying to help this dream occur in a marketplace that, you know, there's art and commerce. The art lives over here, the commerce lives over here. And you're trying to pull these together and get the commerce people to see the value of it from a commercial point of view and the art people to feel like they're still going to do their thing and blah Blah, blah, blah, blah. There's a lot of pressures at Bear, so, yeah, it can be very intense. And great agents, you know, the. The best agents can be very, very intense and very, very, you know, you know, aggressive and all of that stuff. So there is an element of it. But it's, of course, nothing like, you know, Entourage any more than Doogie Howser is like, the National Institute of Health. You know, it's kind of a ridiculous comparison.
- [27:57]
B
Well, that's a tragedy because I like that show. Okay, now you're killing my dreams.
- [28:02]
A
Maybe the National Institutes of Health would be better right now running it than probably running actually.
- [28:08]
B
Probably. Yeah. I mean, I think. I think. I don't really consider myself talent, but why? I just think about myself as a business builder first.
- [28:19]
A
So I think there's a lot of business builders who cannot capture an audience consistently and dig in with other people in a way that allows them to tell their story.
- [28:30]
B
So, yeah, I like telling stories, and I take it really seriously that we get, you know, I think about this, like, right now, somebody, like, it'll be a couple million people that'll watch this conversation. That's a lot of time, and time's pretty precious. So Lord help us if we don't give people something that's worth listening to. Otherwise, there's plenty other things they could be doing with the, you know, one thing you can't make any more of. So I do take that pretty seriously. But I've been thinking about competition a lot lately, and that's why I think about intensity of agents. And I was wondering, you know, like, you've had some incredible competitors over the years. And the fun part about your competitors for me is that a lot of them are public. Like, I don't know if you would categorize it this way, but, like, you and Ari Emanuel, let's say, have been competitors for decades.
- [29:16]
A
Yes.
- [29:16]
B
You know, and. And you've built. He built this public company. You kind of built a profit. First acquisition agency. I would say you both stepped down
- [29:26]
A
the same week, right around the same time.
- [29:29]
B
Do you think it was useful having a good competitor?
- [29:32]
A
For sure. I mean, my first, you know, when we started UTA, there were three other big agencies, ICM, William Morris and CAA. And they were really big. And we were 23 guys, and we said, oh, we're the. We're the fourth big agency now. And it was ridiculous, but that was our thing. We're going to be the next big agency. And Mike Ovitz was like, really? I don't think so. I'm just going to put you out of business. We're going to take all your clients as soon as we can. And they took Michael J. Fox, they took Sandy Bullock. They took. They just went. And you know what? We're still here. And so. But what you learn is you learn to be fierce and you learn to show up every day, and you learn to keep going. And, you know, Mike Ovitz. And the other thing is, when you have great competitors, if you're smart, you will emulate what they do well or steal what they do well. You'll see what they do well, and you'll emulate, and you'll see what they might not be doing well, and you'll try to ignore that. So let's capture the best of what our competitors are doing and try to avoid some of the mistakes they might make. So I really am. I believe in being a good emulator. Yeah, me too. You know, and Ari changed the game because Mike Ovitz was all about, let's figure out how we use the power of our platform to diversify and get into corporate America and get into the brand business, become more of a broker. And he, he was amazing. I mean, Lou Wasserman was the first one who sort of said, let's build. Let's build an agency that's about the. The agency, not the clients. It's about the. The network and the team as opposed to individuals. And then Mike sort of took it to the next level, right. With real diversification outside of the entertainment business, into the world of brand and finance and technology. And then Ari sort of said, well, let's actually use it as a. As a vehicle for acquisitions and to own. To own assets. And that was different than the other two. And, you know, I was able to sort of watch pieces of all of that and think what, you know, what. What's right for us, what makes sense for us.
- [31:31]
B
Yeah. So is it like when you see your competitors now, or maybe even back then when it was still a big competition, like, is it war? Or are you, like, this is gentlemanly riffing?
- [31:44]
A
I think at the very top level, it's more, you know, some of, you know, sometimes, you know, we can all be a little maniacal, but for the most part, there's a certain respect that exists at that level where you kind of all, you know, get together and say, okay, look, what are we really doing here? And what's the right thing? And let's, let's figure out what's in everybody's mutual interest. But out in the, you know, the Day to day battles between agents, you know, it can be pretty intense. Yeah, yeah.
- [32:13]
B
I mean, it was funny we were talking about this the other day, but I think there's a moment for putting feet on necks, you know, and that it's okay actually to say that, right? And I don't actually want. I don't want to win by anybody else losing, you know, I would rather just win better than you, you know, win bigger than you. But it does feel like there's like this PC vernacular today that competition is not good in business and it's not happening. And I'm like, no, no. If you're going to go through the misery of running a business, you want to win.
- [32:48]
A
Yeah.
- [32:48]
B
What do you think?
- [32:50]
A
Well, winning, first of all, you got to define what to win, right? Because there isn't really a score. There's really not a scoreboard with a final clock, right? Nobody says, oh, time's up, you won't, because no, the next day you're waking up and you're doing it again. So what's, you know, so winning, it gets. There's so many ways you have to define winning, both for yourself as a human being and for your colleagues and your team and what you represent and all those things. So winning, da, da, da. And a lot of winning is the experience of going to work every day. What is the experience? What's the lifestyle like that you've provided for yourself and for your kids, colleagues, you know, is that a win? Is it a win that your people love showing up to work and they trust you and they believe in the fact that the company is going to stand behind you and that you're going to lose, you may lose your biggest client, but people are going to still be there to nurture you back and help you find other opportunities. You know, that's a win. So we get to, you know, how we define winning is so important for all of us in every way, right? And what it represents to not just our colleagues, but to our families, our children, et cetera. And the other thing to understand is competition. Like, who is your competition? Right? Because that's the other thing we can get. You know, I would say to my competitors, I say, guys, we should not be spending so much time competing with each other. The competitors are the buyers. Because what's happening amongst the buyers and the way they're collaborating, explain what buyers are too. Well, in the first case, it's, you know, the studios and the networks. That was the big buyers then. Now, weirdly, the buyers are more Netflix and Amazon and YouTube. And, you know, this new cadre of buyers who are massive and, you know, they're sort of. I used to have this, you know, sort of. I would create this sort of metaphor or analogy or whatever it is where we're like, you know, we're out here, we're shepherds. Like, there's this huge castle full of gold, and we're the shepherds and we have our. Our sheep, our clients. And every night I'll run over and I'll steal a goat from him, and then at night he'll run over, steal a goat from me. And other than we're all destabilizing each other all the time, meanwhile, the castle full of. They're watching over the whatever, going, look at these idiots stealing goats from each other. We have all the gold. And that, to me is a real concern is the power of the platforms, the power of the buyers. And now the power of the platforms is so consolidated. And the way they make deals and the way they think about our clients has really constricted the opportunity for artists. And to me, that's much more concerning. You know, this whole, like, who's gonna get Net, you know, who's gonna get Warner Brothers, Netflix is gonna get it, or Paramount's gonna get it. You know, in a weird way, either one of them getting it is terrible for our business. It's terrible for the city of Los Angeles. It's terrible for the state of California. It's terrible for our business in general.
- [35:53]
B
Yeah, it's interesting because every industry probably has that you could focus on your immediate competitors, so, like the other little guppies in the. In the pond and miss the shark entirely.
- [36:02]
A
Yeah.
- [36:03]
B
And that's a really. That's a really good stand back in our industry. I think I. I guess I imagine the same thing. We've, like, run an advisory and investment business, and I think sometimes everybody who's playing the same game, we can kind of get a little snippy with each other. But the real game is like, what are the biggest PE companies in the world doing? And how can we. How can we disrupt that?
- [36:26]
A
Yeah, how can we be so much better together than they are that any founder is going to want to be with us?
- [36:34]
B
Yeah, it's really, really smart. You know, I think the other part that's interesting is you've done. I think I saw it was 19 acquisitions in 13 years. Is that right? That's incredible. For people who don't do a lot of acquisitions, that's a ton of ingesting. It's a ton of searching. It means you went through a ton of deals that didn't go through. And that's probably not something very normal at all for an agent to do to then come into that. Do you think that's the future of Hollywood and agencies and do we have to have these acquisitions in order to, to grow? And then I guess my second question to that would be, how did you even figure out that's the way you wanted to play the game as opposed to just acquiring more talent?
- [37:17]
A
Well, what I realized was, you know, our artists, the future of our business was changing. You know, the business was changing tremendously, the environment was changing tremendously. And we were primarily a motion picture and television based writer, producer, actor, director business. And we needed to diversify because I could tell that with the platforms coming, the ownership opportunities, the back end, the assets that we were able to build with clients were going to go away. So I knew we had to diversify and that meant music and sports and broadcast and publishing and all those different areas. And I knew that trying to build it all from scratch would take forever and be really hard to do. And the size of company we want it, we were and needed to be, we needed to diversify faster because growing from zero to two is really hard, you know, and so I realized we need to do that through acquisition. And so I, you know, I spent a lot of time just wandering around in New York meeting with different private equity people, meeting different investment bankers because I didn't have the language of, of diversification. I didn't have the language of building a business. You know, I was college dropout and agent, but I learned the language and I started to understand the concepts. But I, what I did know instinctively was if we want to really thrive, we have to grow. And that where we had been, it had been a great business being driven by television packaging and star back ends. Those were going away and that the streamers or, you know, Netflix was buying everybody's back end out and all of that was going away. And we needed to diversify in order to have a broader revenue base.
- [39:02]
B
Can you explain, explain what a backend is?
- [39:06]
A
So, you know, our, you know, big writers, directors and stars would get a percentage of the profits of a movie and the biggest ones would get a percentage of the gross. And what started to happen was the big studios started to take away that percentage of the gross and based on the budget of the movie, which made some sense, but then it just became gross just started to go away. And you know, I'm not an antitrust attorney and I'm certainly not someone to threaten, you know, collaboration or collusion, but it sure felt a lot like it. It all happened very quickly, all around the same time. And suddenly there was no first dollar gross to be had. And backends became much harder to achieve. They started doing these imputed fees and all kinds of stuff. So even what was called Cash Breakeven Cash Break zero, which was a pretty good definition, not first dollar growth, but pretty good definition, suddenly was cash break zero with a 9% imputed fee. So it's like cash break zero plus 9%, meaning we have to make 9% on our investment before you get anything further. And then Netflix came and said, we're going to buy out everybody's back end. So here's the good news. You don't have to worry about a back end. And there was enough suspicion about the legitimacy of studio accounting that artists at first like, oh, that's great. I get my back end up front. But unfortunately, the real wealth in our business was generated by people's ownership positions in the stuff they created.
- [40:45]
B
It's so fascinating, you know, as like a normal person watching movies or art of any type, you don't think about the business of it.
- [40:55]
A
Right.
- [40:56]
B
And then, you know, then you kind of get these little moments where it's like, Taylor Swift didn't own her music. What happened there? Like, what do you mean that they had no, you know, rights to it. And it really is. It's a type of asset. And it's. You know, it's fascinating because we do a lot of acquisitions, not of this type at all. But I was meeting with a friend of mine and he was. He runs a royalty pool for books, like lots of different types of books. And then he explained to me what the multiple was on this royalty pool that he has. And I always thought that SAS was one of the best companies you could have because. Well, the question. Question today. Yeah, but because of the multiple expansion you can have and how you could resell them. And he was like, you think that SaaS is cute? Look at royalties and IP.
- [41:42]
A
Yeah.
- [41:42]
B
Because it's actually an incredibly profitable business.
- [41:45]
A
It's a great business.
- [41:46]
B
But then it kind of got the. You got the rug yanked a little bit.
- [41:50]
A
And agencies used to have. People would say, oh, your assets go up and down in the elevator. I say, well, not really, because a lot of our assets are pieces of these shows that we help to originate and back ends that our clients have earned through success. And we own a piece of those assets. Those are real assets.
- [42:07]
B
Yeah, it's fascinating. And so that would be like Star wars, for instance. Like George Lucas might have owned, you know, all of these royalties.
- [42:15]
A
Zuckerberg at ICM made a deal for George Lucas on the original Star wars movie. He made a deal for the original creator of Mission Impossible. And I remember being at ICM and, you know, someone in accounting opened a check and there was a check for a million dollars to ICM from some old Star wars receivable.
- [42:32]
B
I love this conversation with Jeremy Zimmer watching his time building at UTA was wild. He's just a winner, you know. But I think there's one activity that so many winners fail on. And him and I even talked about this a little bit, which is sleep. Like, not necessarily more sleep, but better quality sleep. I think that's why I'm so obsessed with eight sleep. They made something called the Pod 5. I literally use this every single night. Night. It's a cover that goes on any mattress, so you don't have to replace anything, you don't have to install anything. And it just cools or heats your side of the bed from 55 to 110 degrees automatically all night. So your body needs to drop in temperature to enter deep sleep. Right? That's just physiology. The pod handles that. What's wild, and I've seen this with my husband and I, is people using the pod. They're seeing up to 34% more deep sleep and fall asleep up to 44 faster. I also love this feature that they have, which is this AI powered autopilot. So it basically learns on 1 billion hours of sleep data and figures out your patterns to adjust in real time. Your bed does all the work, then it tells you how you slept that night. It's also sweet because I'm freezing in the evening, so it warms up my bed before I even get in. For my husband, it cools his down. Also, it's helped us to not get divorced because, you know, men sleep at way too cold of temperatures and I will die on that hill. So if you want to optimize your waking life, I think you got to optimize your sleeping life. Use my code deal@8sleep.com big deal. For up to $350 off the pod, you get 30 days to try it at home and return it if you don't love it. But I know you're going to. You're going to be obsessed and you're going to thank me. Did you ever meet George Lucas?
- [44:05]
A
I have met him. Yeah. That's so cool.
- [44:08]
B
Is he cool?
- [44:09]
A
He's cool because, oh, my God, he's George Lucas cool and he's cool.
- [44:12]
B
Both. Yeah, yeah. No, there's not very many people that would make me lose it. But I think this idea of, you know, being able to world build and then he's so eccentric. You know, I loved how he created the. The technology because he was so obstinate, mainly. I mean, I don't know how much the stories are true. I've just read the books.
- [44:30]
A
I'm dying to see his new. You know, he's built this new museum downtown that looks absolutely spectacular.
- [44:36]
B
Incredible. So were you ever sitting in rooms doing deals with, like, people whose names we know that you can tell stories about?
- [44:47]
A
Usually when you're sitting in a room doing a deal, those people aren't in the room.
- [44:51]
B
They're not.
- [44:52]
A
They don't want to be in the room when you're doing their deal. They want to be out of the room being an artist, and they want you in the room, you know, hurting and killing people. And they don't want their hands. They don't want a part of that. Right. They want to know you're doing that, but they don't want to be seen as the instrument of that. And it's important we. You know, the role of an agent is very important because once. Once everybody hits each other, beats each other up, and the deal's done. Now you have to collaborate as artists and executive. You have to have a positive, productive relationship. So our job is to mediate that process so that nobody gets so upset that they can't then work together. Yeah. You know, so when I ask for something outrageous and they say, are you kidding me? Your client's last three movies have been a bomb. Why would we ever pay him this? Da, da, da, da, da. You know, and then I go back to the artist and report, well, they're not sure they see it quite the way you do, but they're so excited to have you on the project. So we got to figure, you know, you have to create a middle where everybody can come together and work together.
- [45:56]
B
You're like a divorce attorney before the divorce. Yes, but they're going to come back together.
- [46:00]
A
Yeah.
- [46:01]
B
They need to not know what they said they need.
- [46:02]
A
Yeah. You're trying to admit. Yeah. You're trying to mediate people coming together as opposed to breaking apart.
- [46:09]
B
So what's the secret to doing incredible deals? I mean, you've done. I. I've obviously talked to lots of different people about you. I was. I was talking to Scooter Braun Last night. And he was like, he's a great guy. And I was like, that's interesting, because not that many people say that about each other. But he also said you were incredible. Deal maker. So I was curious, like, when you come into a deal, how are you prepping? What are you thinking? What's the secret to doing great deals?
- [46:32]
A
I mean, I think the secret to. First of all, the secret to doing great deals is having great clients. It really makes it easy, right, that, wow, this is an undeniable talent and an undeniable opportunity. And it's exactly right. But you also have to understand who the buyer is, what their circumstances, what their level of need is. And to me, it's about how do we create an environment where we're going to make a great deal for the client who's going to be super happy, the buyer's going to feel good about where, and then they're going to be able to move forward and do something great together. Yeah. You know, and different people have different theories. To me, it's like, I think it's important to understand both sides and to kind of leave everyone feeling okay once in a while. That's not what happens. Once in a while. You have to take it all the way and make everybody very uncomfortable. And if you have to do that, you have to do that sometimes.
- [47:21]
B
Yeah. You know, do you have something that you do in every deal? Like, I remember one of my mentors at Goldman, he was like. He's like, this was old school. I don't know if this is more lore than reality, but he was really big on. I love putting water, a ton of water in the conference table, all different types. And I'm always trying to get them to drink a ton because they don't really like to leave the room when we're getting a deal done. So he's like. So his thing was like, make them uncomfortable. So they're having to go to the bathroom all the time, break their thinking, whatever. A little maniacal. But I thought it was fun. I'm like, what a fun, weird story about doing deals.
- [47:54]
A
No, I don't have any tricks. I don't, like, make the room really hot or make the room really cold or wear a funny outfit. I don't do any of that.
- [48:01]
B
You do any of that?
- [48:02]
A
You know, really, to me, so much of what happens in a deal happens before the deal. Right. It's like everything that happens before the deal so that the client. So they, you know, so that they're really, really excited to be in the business. And the client really understands the circumstances and the table set. So we're not like. So at least we have some mutual understanding of where we need to be. If the. If the movie's a $50 million movie and the client's normal deal is $25 million, is it reasonable to expect they're going to get paid $25 million to do this movie? Maybe not. And it's not going to be, can you make a great movie if half of the budget's going to one person? Maybe not. We got to understand that. Then the other side of the coin is the buyer understands that normally the client gets $25 million, but they can't afford to pay him this. So the expectation in terms of ownership on the back end. And how are we going to make up for this? Because we have to acknowledge there's a gap that has to be filled in another way. And what's. How are we going to fill that gap? So both sides have to kind of understand sort of the, the ground, you know, the, the, the groundwork upon which were the. Which we're going to build this deal on.
- [49:16]
B
Yeah. So it's almost like a pound of pre Production is worth 10 of post production.
- [49:21]
A
Yeah. And if you set everything up in the beginning the right way, usually, I like to say usually deals are kind of done before you actually get in the room. That doesn't mean that everybody has to do a little screaming and shouting, because everybody does. You know, the studio, the lawyer ends up going, I don't care what they said in the production side. This is. We never do this, and we're never going to do this. And. And the other side of the client says, I know, but we gotta kill him. Okay. You know, so is it hard to
- [49:45]
B
get you riled up because you're so used to this?
- [49:47]
A
I used to get so riled up. Oh, my God. I used to be a lunatic.
- [49:52]
B
Really?
- [49:52]
A
Yes. Screaming, screaming, threatening. I'm gonna come over there. You better tell the guard at the gate to not let me in. Because if I get, you know, craziness,
- [50:02]
B
I aspire to have a little bit of that. I'm way too calm. It's pretty hard to get me riled up. But I, I aspire to yell at some point.
- [50:10]
A
No, I used to really get too riled up, you know, and I used to be, you know, I'd be tough on my colleagues. I'd be tough on the buyers. And, and so, and I was just so, you know, I was sarcastic and nasty and like, you know, people call, say, oh, we have this project and. Da, da, da, da. That's the worst project I've ever heard. Like, I would never let any of my clients do that.
- [50:34]
B
Wow, what changed now? You seem so nice.
- [50:36]
A
It felt lousy to be that way all the time.
- [50:39]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. You know, one thing I wanted to talk about is I loved. You know what else I like about agents that I aspire to? Maybe people the same will be the same. I feel like, you know, it's very. It's a normal situation where, like, in life, especially for women, somebody might say something to you, it's not very nice, and you wish you had an Ari from Entourage level response, or now I'm going to say a Jeremy response. But you don't. And you just. You're quiet and you're thinking for hours later about what you should have said to the person when they. And next time I'm going to get them, you know. And so I'm kind of curious, what do you do when you're in those moments? Like, how do you have a smart response? Is there like a. Do you take a second and then you retort? Is there any sort of process to you for standing up to yourself? You seem very good at standing up for yourself.
- [51:31]
A
Yeah, sadly, I was like, to me, the cost of being acerbic was worth it, because if you made a really funny, nasty comeback, it was worth it. But then over time, you realize, wow, you know, that makes people. I still believe me. My wife's like, oh, yeah, sure. Like I am just always with the, you know, boom. And. And I think I'm pretty good at it. And my wife says to me, she'll say, oh, you know, so and so said this. And you know what? I said that. And I said, you said that? She goes, no, I didn't say it, but I really wanted to.
- [52:09]
B
That's me inside.
- [52:11]
A
If you were there, you would have said it. So I don't know. I have a natural. Some bit of comes quickly.
- [52:17]
B
I'm just going to text you and be like, what should I say? Give it to me really fast.
- [52:20]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [52:21]
B
You know, there was one that I really liked, which I can't remember who was interviewing Ari Emanuel, I think it was, but. And they basically were like, are you going to buy uta? And Ari was like, nah, we don't need them. And then someone interviewed interviews you and says, hey, this is what Ari says. And you go, I don't know. That's because, of course, we don't fit their profile because we're profitable Exactly. Which I loved.
- [52:44]
A
That was good.
- [52:45]
B
That was a great line. That was a good example. And I was curious, like, in those instances, what happens afterwards? Are you guys then having to go do a deal?
- [52:55]
A
No, no, no. I mean, he does his thing, I do my thing. We see both members of same golf course. We see each other there all the time. Sometimes we say hello to each other, sometimes we ignore each other. I don't know what the reasoning is for when we ignore and when we see it's just the way it is and it's the way it's been for 20 plus years.
- [53:13]
B
God, that's incredible. I love that. And it doesn't seem to bother you at all?
- [53:17]
A
No, it's funny.
- [53:18]
B
It's funny.
- [53:19]
A
Yeah.
- [53:19]
B
Maybe. Is that part of the joke? It's all a game.
- [53:22]
A
It's not all a game. A lot of it's really serious, but the stuff around it, you can't take it too seriously. If you do, you're going to be. You're going to spend too much time thinking about it.
- [53:31]
B
Yeah. Somebody was talking to me the other day about business and they were like, what have you learned? I'm like, I don't have learned very much.
- [53:36]
A
And.
- [53:36]
B
Except if you take it too, too, too seriously, it'll kill you. And so if you don't laugh, you
- [53:41]
A
won't make it, or it just even won't kill you. It just make you feel not good. And then going back to what we talked about at the beginning is like, what was I upset about last Tuesday? Today's Tuesday. What was I upset about last Tuesday? What was I worried about last Tuesday? What was I wanting to get even for last Tuesday? I can't possibly begin to remember. So it probably wasn't that big a deal.
- [54:01]
B
I think that's also made you interesting because I've heard from other people, like when M. Night Shyamalan was going through some tough times and he's, you know, I think very many people would say he's a genius and has created incredible things. But you were one of the people who supposedly stood with him through all of that.
- [54:17]
A
I did.
- [54:18]
B
And many people don't stand by people when it doesn't immediately benefit them.
- [54:22]
A
Right.
- [54:22]
B
And so I was curious for you, what are those moments, like, where, you know, you have to stand up for other people and how do you decide, you know, what to do in those moments?
- [54:32]
A
Well, that's, I mean, a big part of doing what we do is standing up for other people. But, you know, in the case of artists, you know, they're so vulnerable out there and don't want to be vulnerable and, you know, they want to feel like somebody is trying to, you know, stand up for them. And by the way, I stood up for night and we had an incredible relationship. He made some great movies while we were together. He made one or two that weren't great. He fired me and, you know, we got together. He actually came over to my house. I had this really nice house, and he came over to see me and he said, da, da, da, da. And I said, you know what, man, we're good. We had an incredible run. I made a lot of money. I have a beautiful house that you were a big part of me having. And I have nothing but respect and best wishes for you. And if you can hold that, you know you're going to have a much nicer ride in business because bad stuff's going to. Again, bad stuff's going to happen.
- [55:34]
B
Yeah, I heard a line in business which is that most problems are never a how problem. They're always a who problem. And so you might, like, lose a client or bet on a bad partner or have a bad employee.
- [55:48]
A
I've done all of those things.
- [55:50]
B
Do you think that's true? Are most of the problems a person that you choose as opposed to a decision that you make? And how do you decide who to be loyal to or who to choose?
- [56:01]
A
I mean, I think there are probably all kinds of problems. There are probably other kinds of problems. But yeah, the people, especially in a people business, the people that you bet on, the companies you acquire based on the people who run them are going to be a big part of the wins and the losses. And I've, you know, bought incredible. I bought companies with amazing leaders and they've grown into great businesses and great parts of our thing. I've hired great people who've built great businesses for us. And I've also made a couple of really real mistakes, you know, where I hired someone who I looked the other way based on the story I was telling myself. My belief won. I can help someone be different. I can manage people to be different. And this is such a great opportunity. I'm going to look the other way at some of the things that don't quite look right. And that was a big mistake. And it came off, you know, it ended up being a big problem and a big drama and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
- [57:04]
B
I always feel like it's. My dad also has a line which is, you can. You can't do good deals with bad people. And I'm not again, I'm not sure that's totally true. Like, I think I've done some decent deals with people that I don't at least want to be in bed with, but I got a decent asset out of it. But it does feel like the people part of the business is almost harder than the spreadsheet. Like.
- [57:24]
A
Yeah. And the idea that you can change people, you know, that I bump up against it over and over and over again, you know, because one part of my life I see people change dramatically. You know, I've been sober for a long time and I see unbelievable change and growth in people that, you know, get sober. And it's incredible. And they go from, you know, whatever they are, crack addicts, to amazing fathers, amazing business partners, amazing colleagues. And then on the other side, people don't change. I don't know which is true. But I know one thing. People don't change because I want them to. That I'm certain of.
- [58:02]
B
Yeah.
- [58:02]
A
You know, I have, I've learned that lesson over and over and over again. Yeah.
- [58:06]
B
Why do you keep doing it then? Why do you keep betting on people?
- [58:09]
A
Well, I keep betting on. Why do I keep betting on. Why do I keep betting on my ability to change people? Probably has something to do with, you know, ego, you know, what I'm willing to overlook, and I'm much better at it now. Let's just say that I learned the lesson. The last time was really a key moment.
- [58:30]
B
Are there any red flags? And I know we're like kind of going into this one in depth, but I think one of the hardest things when you're running a business it's, I kind of think most businesses are people. Businesses, at least they seem like that to me. And if you can figure out how to choose better people more consistently that are better for you in the right role, you seem to win more often.
- [58:49]
A
Right.
- [58:49]
B
And like, almost like you could kind of ignore some bad ideas, you could ignore some bad spreadsheets, but if, if you don't have the right people in the right seats, it doesn't work. Work. And so I'm curious, like, are there a few red flags where you're like, you know what? It's not always true, but when I see that I got to pay attention and when I see that green flag, I kind of move forward with people. Do you have those, like, mental frameworks like that?
- [59:11]
A
I probably, I don't really have rules like that, you know, because, you know, you see people, you know, because a lot of, a lot of really good agents are very self involved. Like, I want, I want, I want, I want. And they're not necessarily good managers, but the best agency, the best in. In professional organizations, the best. The best performers tend to get management opportunities. And does that really make sense? And you go, well, it's not. It doesn't make sense. But yet that's what ends up happening. And some of them become really, really good managers. So I try not to have hard and fast rules about stuff like that or, you know, try to put people in boxes just because, you know, people say all the time, oh, the agency business, that's such a terrible business. Everybody's a snake. Well, that's just not true. That's not my experience. And then you can hear people say, oh, lawyers, all lawyers. You can't trust. Lawyers are terrible. Well, that's not true. Doctors, oh, they're all, you know, terrible egomaniacs. They don't give, they don't listen. Well, that's not, you know, anytime you try to sort of generalize, I think you're going to be disappointed.
- [60:22]
B
Yeah, it does seem like also very standard for people who are in the industry to hate the industry. It's always the doctors that are like, doctors are the worst. The agents that say, agents are the worst doctors.
- [60:33]
A
Oh, these insurance guys. Oh, my God. A real estate agent you can't trust. You know, everybody's got a story about that.
- [60:39]
B
Yeah, it's totally inappropriate, but it makes me think of the Dave Chappelle character, which, where he does. He's the black Ku Klux Klan member. He doesn't realize it, you know, and so he's like, I hate him. You know, like, you are one. You know, calm down. But I think, you know. You know what else? I heard a fun story about you. Is it true that you were one of the first people to say all agents should wear suits and you wanted your agents to wear suits?
- [61:02]
A
I wasn't the first one, but I definitely said it. And for a long time at uta, every, all the men wore suits. And I was pretty dogmatic about it. And, and I was very like, why are you wearing a green suit? Don't wear, you know, you're not a tree. Don't wear mushroom colors. Don't wear tree colors. Wear blue, black or gray. That's what we do here. Let's keep it simple. You don't have good enough taste to get fancy. Keep it simple.
- [61:32]
B
And do you think I wore a
- [61:33]
A
suit and tie every day for like, 40 years? And then I think the pandemic came and I was like, I'm never Wearing a suit and tie again, the rest of us. And I don't think I ever did.
- [61:41]
B
Yeah. Although it does seem there's a lot of data to suggest that when you dress better, you make more money. So I do think there's, like, something to it. Would you still tell people that they should wear suits?
- [61:51]
A
I don't tell people anything about what they should wear. I learned that. But, you know, it was. It was hard for me because, you know, that was what we did at the company. And then there was this one agent who became really, really successful, and he was a senior guy at our company, and he started coming to work in whatever he wanted, sweatpants or this or that. And it drove me insane, and I really wanted him to change, and he didn't. And it drove me insane, and it didn't change. And you know what? At a certain point, it's like, I gotta learn to. I gotta let go of it.
- [62:23]
B
Yeah. I did like Steve Jobs line about divas, because sometimes I used to think. And I'd be curious what you think. Like, no, you know, this person's hard to manage. They're a diva, They're a high performer, but it's not worth it. And you kind of hear like, well, if they're toxic, get them out, you know, if they're a cancer or whatever. And that's kind of true. But it also seems like a lot of high performers are divas. What do you think?
- [62:42]
A
Yeah, and then there's that line, right? And so, you know, our company went through several difficult phases. And many of those difficult phases had to do with very successful, very toxic personalities. And every time we ultimately made the decision to get rid of those toxic personalities, we got better. Now, there was always a period of insecurity where we were concerned, like, oh, my God, we're gonna lose all these clients. Oh, my God, this can be terrible. But then you would take a step back and then a bigger step forward. Because ultimately, the culture of your organization, when you do something that says, I care about the culture of the organization more than the short term money, you reinforce your values and the people around you feel they can thrive. And that is really, really important. So, you know, getting rid of toxic person, my toxic personality included, and some of my colleagues say, what do you mean you never got rid of your toxic personality? But understanding that, you know, what's an appropriate limit and being mindful of other people and their experience is really, really important in an organization if you want to build a great culture. And I think at our company, we have an Incredible culture, Right?
- [63:56]
B
Why did you write those memos for all the years? It was so fun to go back through, but that's not exactly normal for CEOs, especially a private company, for, you know, you don't have to. You don't have external partners that you have to speak to.
- [64:10]
A
Yeah. You know, I like that memo with Harvey. I remember it vividly. I was. I was just sitting home and I read this stuff, and I just wrote it, and it just came like that. And I didn't debate it, and I didn't. You know, I probably showed it to our corpse person, but then didn't listen to. If they didn't like it, I didn't care. Like, I just felt there are things you have to say. Like, we, you know, we. We represented this boy. I'm embarrassed. I can't remember this name. A fantastic Iranian director directed a movie called the Separation, and we represented him, and he was nominated for Academy Award. And this is in the first Trump presidency where he had. Did the Muslim band. So he was not allowed to come to the United States for the Oscars because he was banned from entering the country. And we would traditionally have an Oscar party. We canceled our Oscar party that year, and instead we had a rally for. Against the Muslim ban and in support of our client and the Muslim community. And I just knew it was the right thing to do. You know, it was not a debate. It was the right thing to do. And so when you believe that something's the right thing to do, you know, you just kind of do it. And I think that your colleagues may not all agree with you politically, and some of them certainly don't. And I may not stand for everyone, but I think I stand for a notion and a concept of what it means to represent artists and stand up for them and what it means to be on the right side of the. Whatever we think we want to be on the right side of, you know.
- [65:47]
B
Yeah, and that was a, you know, really countercultural movement, too. Not to mention, like, I bet there are people that didn't like that. There are deals that maybe fell through. There's, you know, repercussions to actions.
- [65:59]
A
There certainly are. And things got, you know, there were other times things were much trickier. They weren't as black and white in certain regards. During some of the different, you know, social issues, we've had where it was harder to know exactly. Exactly where to draw the line. But we've tried to be really thoughtful about it, and we've also tried to stand up for things that were we did. I can't speak, I don't speak for the company anymore. But we did try to speak, you know, stand up for the things that, that the vast majority of us felt strongly about.
- [66:29]
B
What do you think's coming for the movie industry and maybe for Hollywood in general? Like, is there a prediction where you're like, I bet my bottom dollar this is going to happen in the next few years?
- [66:41]
A
Well, I'm a little nervous about it right now. I mean, I looked at a recent, I just saw a recent statistic or whatever it is that showed sort of advertising revenue among the different platforms. And when you look at ad revenue from YouTube or meta or Google or Amazon, you know, which is anywhere from, you know, 40 billion to 295 billion as compared to ad revenue for, you know, Warner's or Comcast or whatever, which is like 8 billion or 9 billion or 7 billion, you just realize, wow, these are really, really small companies and these are really, really big companies. Coming, competing with them and coming to get them. And, you know, how we figure out how to maintain our relevance and importance, I think it's going to be really challenging. And I think AI can be, is going to be very problematic and also can be a very powerful tool for the next generation of artists and how we figure out what soapbox to stand on. You know, I think the, you know, talk about it more, you know, union unrest I think is really, really damaging and really, really misplaced right now. And I'm really hopeful that we don't have another couple of strikes because that would just be devastating.
- [68:06]
B
Yeah, I mean, I know this is not at all not knowing anything about the industry really, but man, with the speed at which things are changing in AI. My husband was the former Department of Defense's commercial AI investor and so he's much smarter than I am on all of this stuff and invest in a bunch of AI companies and own some SaaS companies, smaller ones, but like it's not stopping. And so sometimes I see what's happening with, with let's just say the unions or people who say, well, you shouldn't be allowed to do it. And I am a counter talent in that way. And I'm like, well, if you won't let Hollywood do it, we, aka YouTube and streamers will eat your lunch.
- [68:50]
A
They're doing it.
- [68:51]
B
And so like, I think it's so sad what happens with these calcified industries. And unions seem to do this a lot.
- [68:57]
A
I mean, Lily, what happen happened over the last while we were investing in diversification, the studios Weren't they were making movies, making television, making huge profits, putting it in all the executive pockets and they were not investing. And the fact that Netflix was built outside of our industry and destroyed it is just a sign of sort of a calcified thinking. Yeah.
- [69:22]
B
And yeah, I was talking to, I was DMing back and forth with 50 Cent, which is a stupid thing to say out loud because I'm not in your industry. So this just happened 10 years ago.
- [69:30]
A
Somebody said you're going to be DM. I was DMing.
- [69:33]
B
I would lose it. I'd also be like, shut up Cody. But the point is I thought he did this deal that I thought was fascinating and I'd be curious your take and maybe I got some of it wrong. He said it's right, but I haven't seen the numbers. But that he bought this land in Louisiana. Did you see this purchase? He did. Okay, so the TLDR was basically 50 bought land in Louisiana, is building a production studio there, a couple big centers, maybe a sphere and got Louisiana government to comp part of it. I think $124 million build out. They're putting up 50 mil or something like that. Obviously some tax breaks too. All good stuff for, for Shreveport. But the part I think is fascinating that I wonder if more talent is going to get into is to not just be the talent but to be the, the landlord too. To own the rental equipment to get paid before the studios do. Because your, your first check because it doesn't matter if the studio, you know, if the movie succeeds or not. Somebody's got to pay for production and everything on site.
- [70:31]
A
Tyler did that down in Atlanta. I think Taylor Sheridan does that all over Texas. I think that more and more talent saying wait, if I'm driving this much production, why aren't I driving it into my own facilities and buying my own buildings as a result of it? I mean a lot of producers around town have used their overhead deals to buy buildings and then they use the studio's overhead money to pay for it. So it's not uncommon. But this is a scale that's, it's much, much bigger.
- [70:56]
B
And is it new for talent to be doing this?
- [71:00]
A
I mean talent, that's the thing about talent today. Talent today so much are so much more entrepreneurial and multi hyphenate and they're thinking about the world in terms of not just what role am I going to play, but I'm going to create my own roles, I'm going to create my own productions, I'm going to create my Own. I'm going to have a beverage. I'm going to have a podcast. I'm going to publish a book. I'm going to do a live event. I'm going to own a facility. I mean, this is the, you know, the world today. The environment of entrepreneurship is so much broader that, you know, how many, you know, how many kids are sitting there thinking, I want to be a creator and I'm going to have a makeup line and I'm going to do this. You know, that never used to happen. So the tools that we've been given through technology have allowed this whole experience explosion of entrepreneurship and creativity. And it makes sense that talent would be a part of that for sure.
- [71:54]
B
Yeah. I'm excited to see what happens. I loved the part where I found out that Taylor charges per head of cattle that he rents out.
- [72:01]
A
I'm going to rent my cow.
- [72:03]
B
There's also a great discrepancy. It's 300 bucks for a cow and 3,000 for a horse. And I need to understand why. Probably because you have to train somebody how to ride the horse.
- [72:12]
A
I just had. I should start representing cattle and horse and start. This is the new venture negotiating on their behalf.
- [72:18]
B
Come to Texas. Better tax code.
- [72:20]
A
Yeah.
- [72:20]
B
Come on.
- [72:21]
A
Fantastic. Yeah. I do get hay fever, though. That could be problematic.
- [72:25]
B
Yeah, Austin's terrible for that, actually. You're not going to like it. Plus, the weather's abysmal.
- [72:29]
A
Yeah.
- [72:30]
B
No.
- [72:30]
A
I was in Austin visiting a set once in May, and I went downstairs to get in my car at 6:00 in the morning. It was 96 degrees. And I said, oh, this is not.
- [72:37]
B
This is not for you. That's true. You come to la, you're like, I get it. I like to. To give California some.
- [72:44]
A
Yeah, we wandered out of the desert a long time ago. We decided not to go back.
- [72:48]
B
Exactly. Okay. I want to close out. If there's any that you can think of with stories about talent that you haven't told before. Like, do you have any where you're like, I was having dinner with this guy or gal. I mean, a lot of them that I didn't know about. Like, I didn't know you knew Aaron Sorkin and the LeBron James deal that you pulled together. So I don't know if you have any that you feel comfortable or that aren't going to be.
- [73:13]
A
I don't really have any. Like, oh, my God, this story, that story. And if I did, I'm not going to tell it. I could just, you know, in my life, I've had some amazing moments around town. You know, when we started our music business, you know, we represented one of my colleagues. Ken from Alice represented Axl Rose. And he kept saying that Guns n Roses, we're going to have a reunion. It's going to be incredible. I was like. And a couple years later at Coachella, they were the headliner at Coachella, and it happened to be my birthday. And I remember standing there in the middle of Coachella watching Guns N Roses, you know, doing their. You know, their headline act. And I thought, wow, I am in the music business, and it was an incredible experience. And then, you know, early on, you know, we made a deal with Rich Paul. We brought his agency over, and we got into this sports business. And I helped LeBron make this GMC deal at the time, or helped Rich make the GMC deal on behalf of LeBron. And I remember being on the sideline on the court at the Laker game. At one point, I'm standing there with Rich, and LeBron walked over, and he gave me a handshake and pulled me in for a hug. And I thought, wow, I'm getting a hug from LeBron James on the floor at the lake. Wow. So, you know, the great thing about our thing is these moments happen, and you can't really believe you're there. You can't believe you're saying those things. You can't believe this is what's happening. And I've had so many of those moments, you know, so many moments throughout my career where I was just like, wow, this is incredible. And I never want to lose sight of that.
- [74:56]
B
Yeah, it's really beautiful. So what would you say to a young person watching us today who maybe they've got that twinkle in their eye? They want to be in the movie business. They want to tell stories in some way. They want to be part of the Hollywood scene. What advice would you give them?
- [75:10]
A
Well, first of all, I would say develop your taste. Really understand what's good. And there is a difference between good and bad. It's not all totally objective or subjective. There is some objective good and know what is objectively good. So be a student and remain curious and keep, you know, keep open to new stuff. And now I'm going to sound like a really old person. Read good things. I mean, this is like, I talk to my, you know, I used to talk to the, you know, trainees, and people say, you have to be reading. Reading is still, you know, storytelling in its most basic form. Great storytelling is what we're doing. So understand what Makes a great story, you know, and if all you're doing is reading, you know, think and Grow Rich and How to get six, you know, how to get six minute abs and Think and Grow Rich and da, da, da. You're missing an incredible universe of great experiences. So that's it. And, you know, I've been blessed with being incredibly curious, you know, about lots of things, you know, So I know, you know, I'm interested in life. Everything from art to sports to music to film to books to this that I don't know why, but I am, and I'm really lucky for that. So I get, you know, I get to really taste all these different amazing flavors and it keeps me really excited about the world that I live in today.
- [76:37]
B
So what if you had to leave them with two or three books, like, or two or three things that they should read? Where do you start? You get to give them a tiny little library.
- [76:45]
A
Wow, that's hard. But I mean, to me, I can't even begin. But, you know, Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry's great novel, is an incredible book, an incredible literary experience, and I would really recommend everyone read that. And then one of my favorite books that taught me more about relationships and family than almost anything is a book called I Know this Much Is True by Wally Lam, which I always recommend. And. And it really also talks about forgiveness and the power of forgiveness in our life. So for people who are having a hard time forgiving something and someone, which a lot of people are, this book really lays it out in a way that you can connect with.
- [77:33]
B
Thank you so much for being here today.
- [77:34]
A
This has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for being interested in having me.
- [77:39]
B
Fantastic.