Lessons from Michael Ovitz

Hollywood super-agent and co-founder of Creative Artists Agency (CAA), Michael Ovitz, is a figure of immense influence and controversy. His career has been marked by groundbreaking strategies, tough negotiations, and a relentless drive for success.

On Power, Negotiation, and Strategy

"It's not about money. The money will flow. It's about power and influence." [1][2]
"Mystique is ten times better than publicity; it's much better to be thought of as the great and powerful Oz than to be revealed as merely another schemer behind a curtain." [2][3]
"One way to conceptualize how to think in business is a martial-arts precept: 'If you aim at the target, you lose all your power. You have to hit through the target to really smash it.'" [3]
"Leverage is a very dangerous thing in an internet world where everything's instantaneous and everything is communicated if it's not used properly." [4]
"I viewed what we did as positioning, molding, manipulating: taking fact sets, and making them work for the result we wanted. That mind-set underpinned every single conversation we had with the buyers, and they had with us, all day long. They were never lies to me. They were tools I needed to use to get shit done." [5][6]
"You can never be too paranoid: Make your clients think that they are your friends, but remember that they are not." [5][7]
"The easiest way to lose a client is to make a promise you can't fulfill; the client always remembers." [8]
"Decision making was always about having complete information." [3][8]
"Don't ever think that what is, is – because it isn't. Never count on anybody or anything." [2][5]
"Insecurity and ambition make a powerful cocktail." [7]
"I didn't want to be standard in any way." [6][7]
"Agenting is a form of manipulation, of coercion... It's a form of getting what you need to get for yourself, or for your client." [5]

On Building a Business and Leadership

"Our focus on first impressions won us new clients before we'd uttered a word." [8]
At CAA, there were four commandments: "Never lie to your clients or colleagues. Return every call by the end of the day (or at least have your assistant buy you a day's grace). Follow up and don't leave people guessing. Never bad-mouth the competition." [5][8]
"We worked insanely hard, but we fostered the illusion of working impossibly hard. I believed momentum was everything — once a company relaxed, it was done for." [5]
"Overpay for talent because it is almost impossible to overpay for talent." [7]
"If we asked someone to do something, it was nothing that we wouldn't do ourselves. And at the beginning when they didn't do it...we just went in and did it. And let me tell you that had a humongous effect on the culture." [9]
"You can only lead by example. It's the only thing you can." [4]
A key principle at CAA was to "share all clients and serve them as a group; no turf wars and no silos." [7]
"If you're not commoditized, you got a shot." [4]
"Service organizations live or die by time management." [5]
"You work for them [your employees], they don't work for you." [4][10]

On Success and Ambition

"I'm not good at being static. I have to be climbing a mountain." [1][11]
"A lot of drive is innate, self-perpetuated, reinforced energy. As a kid, I could always sell anything I could get my hands on - from newspapers to lemonade to 'TV Guide.' I knew how to make a presentation." [1][11]
"Everyone stopped. I didn't stop." [6][7]
"To get where you want to go, you have to set out to go even further." [2]
"Money is the scorecard of success." [5]
"I would succeed at all costs. The formulation - you're totally in or totally out - became my mantra." [5]
"I must say that in my early years, I was incredibly aggressive. I was working as hard as I could to build a business, to try to dominate a business. And I probably irritated a lot of people." [11]

On Failure and Learning

"I believe sometimes I make some mistakes. And I don't think they are life-threatening mistakes." [11]
"I learned my first lesson at the Walt Disney Company about not being able to trust my associates." [1][11]
"One of my closest friends...used to always say to me 'There's always another racetrack, there's always another game.'...I didn't listen to that...to me winning was everything." [12]
"In America, we view failure as a stepping stone." [9]
"I have failed at a number of things, and it's just part of the game...You don't stop...you just keep going." [9]
"I would have been much happier if I hadn't been so determined to appear all-knowing and invulnerable." [7]
"I could have worked ten percent less, and it wouldn't have made a difference in my professional success. But I would have been a lot happier." [13]

On Hollywood and Creativity

"Nothing in Hollywood is anything until it's something, and the only way to make it something is with a profound display of belief. If you keep insisting that a shifting set of inchoate possibilities is a movie, it eventually becomes one. Sometimes." [2][3]
"The Internet is the greatest thing that ever happened to the entertainment industry." [1][11]
"Hollywood is a small, familial place. Everyone does business with everybody else." [1][11]
"I had started a private project (one that took me ten years) of watching every film that had won one of the five big-category Oscars. I discovered why Gone With the Wind had passed the test of time and How Green Was My Valley hadn't; I learned the relationship between vision and craft.” [8]

On Life and Human Nature

"All of us are probably three people. We're probably the person that we think we are, and we're probably the person that you or somebody else perceives us to be, and... frankly, we're probably somewhere in the middle." [11]
"The human condition is not perfect. We are not perfect specimens, any of us. We're not robots." [11]
"The unknown is always interesting." [1][11]
"People dedicated to something other than themselves—helping family and friends, or a political cause, or others less fortunate than they—are the happiest people in the world." [3]
"Belief comes before ability: 'I believe that nobody wants to be treated just as they are. People want to feel encouraged to become more than what they are, to become the best versions of themselves.'" [3][7]
"There's a reason we have two ears and one mouth. Because good listeners are great negotiators." [14]
"It's personal. It's always personal." [5]
"When I get on a plane, I don't want a laid-back pilot. I want a pilot who is a control freak, who is paying attention to every single detail of his job." [1][11]
"Creating a zone of calm, in a chronically overexcited world, proved disarming." [15]
"Time's my enemy and it's been that way since I was a kid." [16]

Learn more: