Hollywood CEO: How to Look Powerful in Any Room | Jeremy Zimmer

25:30You're going to hear UPI. I'm like, what? He goes, look at this headline. And it says, you know, holly report or whatever zimmer says agents rape and pillage i was like oh this is gonna be bad that's wild and uh so what happened is i got called into jeff berg's office and he says uh you know i can't believe you said this i can't take it anymore you're you know get your shit and get out of here i was like really 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. He came back and said, no, no, no, I didn't mean that. I'm sorry.

26:11But you can, you're going to 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. 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 TV. 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? Meh, meh. No, but it is intense. It's a very intense job. And you're dealing with, you know, really, you know, you're representing people every day who, the best way of putting it, has a dream.

26:56you could also say have you know other issues but they have a dream to be something and you 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 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.

27:33So yeah, it can be very intense and great agents. The best agents can be very, very intense and very, very aggressive and all of that stuff. So there is an element of it, but it's of course nothing like entourage any more than Doogie Hauser is like the National Institute of Health. You know, it's kind of a ridiculous comparison.

27:55Jeremy Zimmer:Well, that's a tragedy because I like that show. Okay. Now you're killing my dreams. Maybe the National Institute of Health would be better right now if Doogie Hauser were running it than he's currently running it. Probably. Probably. Yeah. I mean, I think I don't really consider myself talent, but - Why? I just think about myself as a business builder first. So I think -

28:21capture an audience consistently and dig in with other people in a way that allows them to tell their stories. So. Yeah. I like telling stories and I, and I take it really seriously that we get, you know, I think about this, like right now, somebody will like, it'll be a couple million people that'll watch this conversation. That's a lot of time. I mean, time's pretty precious. So Lord help us if we don't give people something that's worth listening to. Otherwise there's plenty of 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.

28:52But I've been thinking about competition a lot lately. And that's why I think about intensity of agents. And I was wondering, 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. I don't know if you would categorize it this way, but you and Ari Emanuel, let's say, have been competitors for decades. And he built this public company. You kind of built a profit first acquisition agency, I would say. You both stepped down the same week, right? Around the same time. Do you think it was useful having a good competitor?

29:30For 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 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 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.

30:12And, 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. 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.

30:48And he was amazing. I mean, Lou Wasserman was the first one who sort of said, let's build an agency that's about the agency, not the clients. It's about 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 vehicle for acquisitions and to own assets. And that was different than the other two. And I was able to sort of watch pieces of all of that and think, what's right for us?

31:27What makes sense for us? 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? I think at the very top level, it's more, 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? Let's figure out what's in everybody's mutual interest. But out in the day-to-day battles between agents, it can be pretty intense.

32:10Yeah. 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? Yeah. 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. I would rather just win better than you, 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. Yeah. What do you think? Well, winning, first of all, you got to define what to win, right?

32:51Because 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. 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 colleagues.

33:27Is 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 may lose your biggest client, but people are going to still be there to nurture you back and help you find other opportunities? That's a win. 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.

34:01You 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.

34:45Like there's this huge castle full of gold and we're the shepherds and we have 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 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.

35:29And to me, that's much more concerning. You know, this whole like, who's going to get, you know, who's going to get Warner Brothers? Netflix is going to get it or Paramount's going to 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.

35:50Jeremy Zimmer:Yeah. That's interesting because every industry probably has that. You could focus on your immediate competitors. So like the other little guppies in the pond and miss the shark entirely. Yeah. And that's a really, that's a really good stand back. Yeah. In our industry, I think, 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 disrupt that? Yeah. How can we be so much better together than they are that any founder is going to want to be with us.

36:32Yeah, it's really, really smart. 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? Yeah, something like that. Yeah. That's incredible. I mean, for people who don't do a lot of acquisitions, that's a ton of ingesting. Right. It's a ton of searching. It means you went through a ton of deals that didn't go through. Right. 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 grow?

37:07And 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? 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 backends, the assets that we were able to build with clients were going to go away.

37:46So 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 wanted, 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 diversification.

38:25I didn't have the language of building a business. I was college dropout and agent, but I learned the language and I started to understand the concepts. But what I did know instinctively was if we want to really thrive, we have to grow. And that where it had been a great business being driven by television packaging and star backends, those were going away and that the streamers or Netflix was buying everybody's backend out and all that was going away. And we needed to diversify in order to have a broader revenue base. Can you explain what a backend is? So 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.

39:15And what started to happen was the big studios started to take away that percentage of the gross 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, and I trust attorney and I'm certainly not someone to threaten, you know, collaboration or, or, uh, Collusion. 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.

39:55So even what was called cash break even, cash break zero, which was a pretty good definition, not first dollar gross, but pretty good definition, suddenly it 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.

40:34But unfortunately, the real wealth in our business was generated by people's ownership positions and the stuff they created. 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. Right. 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 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 runs a royalty pool for books, like lots of different types of books.

41:19And then he explained to me what the multiple was on this royalty pool that he has. And I always thought that SaaS was one of the best companies you could have because, well, the question today. Yeah. But because of the multiple expansion you can have and how you could resell them. And he It was like, you think that SaaS is cute. Look at royalties and IP. Yeah. Because it's actually an incredibly profitable business. It's a great business. But then it kind of got the, you got the rug yanked a little bit. And agencies used to have, people would say, oh, your assets go up and down in the elevator.

41:52I say, well, not really, because a lot of our assets are pieces of these shows that we help to originate and backends that our clients have earned through success. And we own a piece of those assets. Those are real assets. Yeah, it's fascinating. And so that would be like Star Wars, for instance. Like George Lucas might have owned all of these royalties. Jeff Berg 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 someone in accounting opened a check and there was a check for a million dollars to ICM from some old Star Wars receivable.

42:30I 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 five, I literally use this every single 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.

43:03So 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.

43:37It 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 at 8sleep.com slash 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? I have met him, yeah. That's so cool. Is he cool? He's cool because, oh my God, he's George Lucas.

44:08Cool. And he's cool. Both. Yeah. No, there's not very many people that would make me lose it. But I think this idea of being able to world build and then he's so eccentric. You know, I loved how he created the technology because he was so obstinate seemingly. I mean, I don't know how much the stories are true. I've just read the books. Well, I'm dying to see his new, you know, he's built this new museum downtown that looks absolutely spectacular. Incredible. So were you ever sitting in rooms doing deals with like people whose names we know that you can tell stories about? Usually when you're sitting in a room doing a deal, those people aren't in the room.

44:49They're not. 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 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.

45:21So our job is to mediate that process so that nobody gets so upset that they can't then work together. 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? And then I go back to the artists 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 it out. You have to create a middle where everybody can come together and work together. You're like a divorce attorney before the divorce. Yes. But they're going to come back together.

45:58Yes. And they need to not know what they said. Yeah. You're trying to mediate people coming together as opposed to breaking apart. So what's the secret to doing incredible deals? I mean, you've done, I've obviously talked to lots of different people about you. 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're an incredible dealmaker. So I was curious, when you come into a deal, how are you prepping? What are you thinking? What's the secret to doing great deals?

46:30I 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 circumstance is, 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 what we got, and then they're going to be able to move forward and do something great together.

47:02And 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. Yeah. Do you have something that you do in every deal? I remember one of my mentors at Goldman, he was 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 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.

47:41So his thing was 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. 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. You don't do any of that. 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, and the client really understands the circumstances and the table sets it.

48:17We're not like, so at least we have some mutual understanding of where we need to be. If the movie is 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 on this. So the expectation in terms of ownership on the back end, and how are we going to make up for this?

48:54Because we have to acknowledge there's a gap that has to be filled in another way. And how are we going to fill that gap? So both sides have to kind of understand sort of the the ground, you know, the groundwork upon which we're going to build this deal on. Yeah. So it's almost like a pound of pre-production is worth 10 of post-production. 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.

49:34This is, we never do this and we're never going to do this. And the other side of the client says, I know, but we got to kill it. Okay. You know. So is it hard to get you riled up because you're so used to this? I used to get so riled up. Oh my God. I used to be a lunatic. Really? Yes. Screaming? Screaming, threatening. I'm going to come over there. You better tell the guard at the gate to not let me in because if I get it, you know, craziness. 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 aspire to yell at some point. 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 and 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 and say, oh, we have this project and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

50:24I say, that's the worst project I've ever heard. Like I would never let any of my clients do that. Wow. What changed? Now you seem so nice. It felt lousy to be that way all the time. 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 listening will be the same. I feel like, you know, 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 re from entourage level response or now i'm going to say a jeremy response and 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 gonna 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 a process to you for standing up to yourself.

51:28You seem very good at standing up for yourself. Yeah. Sadly, 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, that makes people... I still, believe me, my wife's like, oh yeah, sure. I am just always with the... Boom. 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 in the end. You know what I said? I said, you said that? She goes, no, I didn't say it, but I really wanted to. That's me inside. If you were there, you would have said it. So I don't know.

52:11I have a natural, some bit of it. It comes quickly. I'm just going to text you and be like, what should I say? Give it to me really fast. You know, there was one that I really liked, which I can't remember who was interviewing Ari Emanuel. I think it was. And they basically were like, are you going to buy UTA? And Ari was like, nah, we don't need them. And then someone interviews you and says, hey, this is what Ari says. And you go, I don't know. Of course we don't fit their profile because we're profitable. Exactly. Which I loved. That was good. That was a great line. That was good. That was a good example.

52:46And I was curious, in those instances, what happens afterwards? Are you guys then having to go do a deal? No. No. No. No. I mean, he does his thing. I do my thing. We see both members of the 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. It's the way it's been for 20 plus years. God, that's incredible. I love that. And it doesn't seem to bother you at all. No, it's funny. It's funny. Yeah. Maybe is that part of the joke? It's all a game.

53:20It'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. Yeah, somebody was talking to me the other day about business and they're like, what have you learned? I'm like, I don't have learned very much except if you take it too, too, too seriously, it'll kill you. And so if you don't laugh, you 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?

53:47Today's Tuesday. What was I upset about last Tuesday? What was I worried about last Tuesday? What was I wanting to get even for those two days? I can't possibly begin to remember. So it probably wasn't that big a deal. Well, 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. I did. And many people don't stand by people when it doesn't immediately benefit them.

54:19Right. 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? 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.

54:57He 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 happen. Yeah. I heard a line in business, which is that most problems are never a how problem. They're always a who problem.

55:40And so you might lose a client or bet on a bad partner or have a bad employee. I've done all of those things. 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? 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 bought companies with amazing leaders and they've grown into great businesses and great parts of our thing.

56:27I'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 look the other way based on the story I was telling myself. My belief, one, 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. I always feel like it's, my dad also has a line, which is you can't do good deals with bad people.

57:08And 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. 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.

57:43and 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. Yeah. You know, I've learned that lesson over and over and over again. Yeah. Why do you keep doing it then? Why do you keep betting on people? 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.

58:19And I'm much better at it now. Let's just say that. I learned the lesson the last time was really a key moment. 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, 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. And like almost like you could kind of ignore some bad ideas. You could ignore some bad spreadsheets.

58:52But if you don't have the right people in the right seats, it doesn't 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 kind of 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? I probably, I don't really have rules like that, you know, because, you know, you see people, you know, because 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 uh 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.

59:57Everybody'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 them. Lawyers are terrible. Well, that's not true. Doctors, oh, they're all, you know, terrible egomaniacs. They don't get it. 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. 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.

1:00:31Oh, my God, these doctors. Oh, these insurance guys. Oh, my God, a real estate agent. You can't trust that. Everybody's got a story about that. Yeah, it's totally inappropriate, but it makes me think of the Dave Chappelle character where he's the Black Ku Klux Klan member. He doesn't realize it. And so he's like, I hate him. You're 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? I wasn't the first one, but I definitely said it.

1:01:02And for a long time at UTA, every, all the men wore suits and I was pretty dogmatic about it. And I was very like, why are you wearing a green suit? 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. I wore 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. I don't think I ever did. Yeah. Although it does seem there's a lot of data to suggest that when you dress better, you make more money.

1:01:44So I do think there's like something to it. Would you still tell people that they should wear suits? I don't tell people anything about what they should wear. I learned that. But, you know, 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 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 if they're a cancer or whatever.

1:02:35And that's kind of true, but it also seems like a lot of high performers are divas. What do you think? Yeah. And then there's that line, right? And so 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 going to lose all these clients. Oh my God, this is going to be terrible. But then you would take a step back and then a bigger step forward.

1:03:12Because 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.

1:03:49if you want to build a great culture. And I think at our company, we have an incredible culture. Why did you write those memos for all the years? They were 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. Yeah. You know, like that memo with Harvey, I remember it vividly. 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. I didn't, you know, I probably showed it to our Corpse Com person, but then didn't listen to, if they didn't like it, I didn't care.

1:04:26Like, I just felt there are things you have to say. Like we, you know, we, we represented this, where I'm embarrassed. I can't remember his name. 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 ban so he was not allowed to come to the united states for the oscars because he was banned from entering the country and we had would traditionally have an oscar party we canceled our oscar party that year and instead we had a rally for uh against the Muslim ban and in support of our client and the Muslim community.

1:05:10And 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 whatever we think we want to be on the right side of, you know? Yeah. And that was a, you know, really countercultural movement too.

1:05:50Not 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. There certainly are. And there were other times things were much trickier. They weren't as black and white in certain regards during some of the different social issues we've had where it was harder to know 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 we did. I don't speak for the company anymore. But we did try to stand up for the things that the vast majority of us felt strongly about.

1:06:26What do you think is 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? 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, Warners or Comcast or whatever, which is like$8 billion or$9 billion or$7 billion.

1:07:11And you just realize, wow, these are really, really small companies. And these are really, really big companies competing with them and coming to get them. And how we figure out how to maintain our relevance and importance, I think is going to be really challenging. And I think AI 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. I think the talk about it and more 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.

1:08:04Yeah, 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 we invest in a bunch of AI companies and own some SaaS companies, smaller ones. But it's not stopping. And so sometimes I see what's happening 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.

1:08:48They're doing it. And so like, I think it's so sad what happens with these calcified industries and unions seem to do this a lot. I mean, what 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. 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.

1:09:26So this just happened yesterday. But if 10 years ago somebody said, you're going to be DMing, I was DMing with, yeah. No, 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.

1:10:00I think it's$124 million build out. They're putting up 50 mil or something like that. Obviously some tax breaks too. All good stuff 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 landlord too, to own the rental equipment, to get paid before the studios do because your first check, because it doesn't matter if the movie succeeds or not, somebody's got to pay for production and everything on site. Tyler did that down in Atlanta. I think Taylor Sheridan does that all over Texas. I think that more and more talent is 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?

1:10:43I 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 much, much bigger. And is it new for talent to be doing this? I mean, that's the thing about talent today. Talent today 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.

1:11:18I'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. And, you know, that never used to happen. So the tools that we've been given through technology have allowed this whole explosion of entrepreneurship and creativity. And it makes sense that talent would be a part of that for sure. Yeah, I'm excited to see what happens.

1:11:54I loved the part where I found out that Taylor charges per head of cattle that he rents out. Yeah, I'm going to rent my cow. There's also a great discrepancy. It's$300 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. I should start representing cattle and horse and start negotiating on their behalf. Come to Texas. Better tax code. Yeah. Come on. Fantastic. Yeah. I do get hay fever, though. That could be problematic. Yeah. Austin's terrible for that. Actually, you're not going to like it. Plus, the weather's abysmal.

1:12:27Yeah. No, I was in Austin visiting a set once in May, and I went downstairs to get in my car at 6 o 'clock in the morning. It was 96 degrees, and I said, oh, this is not for me. This is not for you. That's true. You come to LA, you're like, I get it. I like to give California some shit because I'm a Texan. We wandered out of the desert a long time ago and we decided not to go back. 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.

1:13:02I 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. 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 talent. You know, when we started our music business, you know, we represented one of my colleagues, Ken for Maglitz, 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, uh-huh, uh-huh.

1:13:34And a couple of 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 the 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, you know, on the court at the Laker game at one point.

1:14:20I'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 Laker game. 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. Yeah, it's really beautiful.

1:14:54So 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? 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.

1:15:34Read good things. I mean, this is like I talked 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 Think and Grow Rich and How to Get Six Minute Abs and Think and Grow Rich, you're missing an incredible universe of great experiences. So that's it. And I've been blessed with being incredibly curious about lots of things. So I know I'm interested in a lot for everything from art to sports to music to film to books to this, that.

1:16:23I don't know why, but I am. And I'm really lucky for that. So I get to really taste all these different amazing flavors. And it keeps me really excited about the world that I live in today. So what if you had to leave them with two or three books or two or three things that they should read? Where do you start? You get to give them a tiny little library. Wow, that's hard. But I mean, to me, I can't even begin. But 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 Lamb, which I always recommend.

1:17:13And 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. That's so good. Thank you so much for being here today. This has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for even being, for being interested in having me. That was fantastic.