I just re-listen to this entire episode. It's remarkable. Not only like the the filmmaking genius that Spielberg is,
but the way that he built a business and the way he thought about building the business around his life's work.
And the reason I went back and re-listen to this and the reason I originally did this episode almost three years ago,
the reason I'm republishing it now in case you miss it the first time or even if you'd listen to the first time
and highly encourage you to re-listen to it, you'd be surprised how much you're gonna forget.
But because I was working on a Tarantino episode last week and he kept talking about multiple times in Tarantino's book,
he's talking about the fact that he thought that Spielberg's natural born filmmaker genius,
that he's made some of the greatest movies in film history. Tarantino would talk about Spielberg's gift of taking an idea they had in his mind
and then making it real. And the other reason that I wanted to go back and study Spielberg is because in this episode,
I talk about one of my favorite biographies of all time, which I covered seven years ago on episode 35.
And it was George Lucas a life by Brian Jane Jode. I have spent the whole week. I'm still in the processes of re-reading
and really diving deep into George Lucas's life and work again. And so while I'm working on that,
I think Spielberg is the perfect bridge from Tarantino to Lucas. Because if you study Spielberg,
Lucas is gonna play a role in his life and you study Lucas, Spielberg plays a role in his life.
And what is fascinating is when you study all three, they have an idea that they have in common.
And it's the fact that it talks about in this episode, it talks about Tarantino,
we talked about in Lucas episode, Spielberg in particular, he would watch and re-watch movies he loved.
And then decades later, entire scenes from those movies would appear in Spielberg's own movies.
That's just the exact same thing as Edwin Lans' ideas showing up in Steve Jobs' companies and products.
It's the same thing as Sam Walton's ideas showing up in Jeff Bezos' companies and products.
And a main thing that reappears for anybody gets to the top of their profession,
anybody becomes great at what they do is they are seeped in the industry, the history of their industry.
They talk about over and over again, they don't just read a book one time, they don't just watch a movie one time.
They don't just have one conversation, they do it over and over and over again.
That is why if you have not done so already, I'm going to highly recommend that you subscribe to Founders Notes.
That's Founders Notes.com, you go to Founders Notes.com, that's Founders With an S.
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What the name of this feature is like, no, that doesn't describe what this feature actually does.
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And so which Sage does, it's like search on steroids.
You can ask it a question.
It'll search every single note, every single highlight, every single transcript, and it'll start making connections.
It's been making connections that I've even missed.
And so as I was rereading this episode, I went to Founders Notes and I asked it as like, what are the most, I asked Sage.
What are the most important ideas to learn from Steven Spielberg?
And then it gives an outline of the top nine, what it feels, the top nine ideas are most important to learn from Steven Spielberg.
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One of his boyhood friends for calls Spielberg saying he could envision himself going to the Academy Awards and accepting an Oscar and thanking the Academy.
He was 12.
I've been really serious about filmmaking as a career since I was 12 years old, Spielberg said.
I don't excuse those early years as a hobby.
Do you know what I'm saying? I really did start then.
That was an excerpt from the book that we talked to you about today, which is Steven Spielberg a biography and is written by Joseph McBride.
And that is one of the reasons I wanted to read a biography of Spielberg because I think it's so there's a few reasons.
But one of them is the fact that from 12 from the age of 12 to 74, which is how old he is today, he's had the same goal.
He has been making movies for 62 years.
It's very rare for somebody to do something for that long for 62 years.
I think that somebody that we should obviously be studying and learning from.
Another reason that he came to my tensions because he appears in one of my favorite books that I've ever read for the podcast.
That's back on founder's number 35 and that's the biography of George Lucas.
It's called George Lucas a Life.
And George and Steven met when they were in the early 20s and they became best friends and collaborators throughout their entire career.
And I actually just re-listen to that episode and then I re-read.
I want to make sure I'm re-reading my highlights from that book, from that George Lucas book every year because I think what he did, his approach to filmmaking, that made him a multi-billionaire.
There's a lot of ideas that he used.
He just in his work that we can use in ours where he just approached the industries like, well, why is he just kept asking why?
Like why movies made this way? Why are they finances way? Why are they own this way? Why they distribute this way?
And he constantly questioned every aspect and realized, hey, I could come up with a better way to do things.
And my favorite sentence in the entire book, and that's another gigantic book. It's like 500 pages.
It's George Lucas unapologetically invested in what he believed in most himself.
And we'll see today that Steven Spielberg did the exact same thing.
So for today's podcast, it took a really, really long time. This is a gigantic book. It's almost 500 pages. The author interviewed 325 people, the new Steven Spielberg.
It goes into amazing detail of all the movies he made up until the end of the book.
The book ends. He had just finished Schindler's List and Jurassic Park. He's just over 50 years old.
And in addition to reading the book, I also watched and took notes on this documentary that's on HBO Max right now, which just serves as another biography of Steven Spielberg.
As well, it's two and a half hours long. So between the book and watching the documentary and taking notes, it took me about 30 hours of prep work before I'm sitting down to talk to you about it.
So I'm going to be working off my notes from the book and the notes from the documentary as well. Before jumping to the book, I wanted to tie something that's remarkable that maybe you knew this.
It blew my mind when I found this out because I tell you how Steven Spielberg reminds me of Coco Chanel. So a few weeks ago, three months ago, I read the second biography of Coco Chanel that read.
And she became, she started off as an orphan and I wind up before she died. She was the richest woman in the world. And part of the way she got that way was because she signed one of the most lucrative deals in history.
She previously made a mistake when she started her perfume company. She wound up giving away 90% of it didn't realize that Chanel number five was going to be one of the most successfully commercial commercial products ever made.
And so like 20, maybe 15, 20 years later, she runs a redoing the deal and she gets 2% of all sales globally for Chanel number five.
That made her the in today's dollars. So that means she made 300 million dollars a year and she had a clause in that deal where the company had to pay for every single one of her living expenses.
So Spielberg has a very similar deal. I just found out because I'm going to be reading a biography of Michael Jordan soon as well that he has a deal like this. He gets Michael Jordan gets 5% of all sales from from his Jordan shoe brand.
And he's estimated to make about 150 million dollars a year in present day because they're doing around $3 billion a year in sales. So Spielberg winds up and this deal is done after the book ends.
But he winds up signing a deal where he gets 2% of all the ticket revenue at Universal Studios, the theme parks.
And so that's rumored to pay him out. Again, this is just from this one deal to pay him about about 50 to 75 million dollars a year.
They keep trying Universal keeps trying to buy him out. They say, hey, we'll give you a couple billion just to buy you this contract and he keeps saying no.
And one of the reasons I think that he keeps saying knows because in that contract, it's not only the Universal theme park that's in our land though, but it's any future theme park that they built.
And I think they're making a new one in China and somewhere else came over the other destination or the other place rather, but he's going to get 2% of all tickets on that. And the last time I looked, it was something like 10 to 12 million people a year by tickets to just their Universal theme park in Orlando.
And for some reason when I was reading about that, an idea or quote from the founder of Shopify, Toby Luke, pop into my mind. And he says you have to remember that the world is nonlinear.
Spielberg had this passion for movies to start when he was 12 years old. He had no idea what opportunities him pursuing that passion over multiple decades could unlock in the future.
Certainly couldn't have predicted that, hey, I can get 2% of all tickets at Universal Studios, you know, multiple decades in the future.
So let's go to right when he's 16 years old. He just made this movie. It's called Firelight. He winds up remaking this movie when he becomes a professional filmmaker. That's the movie.
It's a remake of this movie is close encounters of the third kind, but we see his personality 16 years old and a lot of this sticks with him for his whole life. Steve Steve and he was going, he went by Steve Spielberg at this point in his career.
Steve Spielberg had been shooting film obsessively for more than 7 years with a mono maniacal dedication that made him virtually oblivious to schoolwork dating sports and other normal adolescent pursuit.
So this idea of mono maniacal dedication is something that's going to appear over and over again in the book. It appears over and over again in the documentary as well. He repeats it over and over again.
He's like, I had one focus. I was obsessed with movies. I knew right away that this is what I was going to do for the rest of my life.
And I see says I know they're quoting him when he was he's reflecting back at this time. I was being a young man, a young filmmaker.
I was more or less a boy with a passion for a hobby that grew out of control and somewhat and that grew out of control and somewhat consumed me.
I discovered something I could do and people would be interested in it and me. I knew that after my third or fourth little film that this is going to be a career, not just a hobby.
And that's another thing that just makes Spielberg extremely interesting. How many people realize from such a young age?
Two people go to mind that we're similar to Spielberg. We're like, okay, I knew by the time I was a teenager, it was going to do for my life.
Ingvar Camprod, which is the founder of IKEA, I covered him back on I think I'm founder number one or two. He started IKEA, like 14 years old, worked on until he died when he was in his 80s.
And then Kobe Bryant knew from time he was a teenager. He's like, okay, I want to be my goals to be the greatest basketball player of all time.
So I think it's rare for anybody to find what they really want to do in life, but even more rare that you know from such a young age. It's just remarkable.
A little bit about the family life and the fact that his he was really uncontrollable. He was a born director and we're going to see this.
So his mom is talking. She said, our house was run like a studio. We really worked hard for him. Your life was not worth a dime if you didn't because he nagged you like crazy.
Steven had this way of directing everything. Remember, he's 16 years old this time, not just his movies, his life. He directed our household.
He was a terrible student in school, but I never thought what was going to become of him. His mom was so tolerant of her son's lack of interest in school that she often let him stay home, feigning illness.
So he get edit his movies. So there's a lot about like the uncertainty of his family family life that pops up in his movies.
Talked about at length and documentary. It's covered over and over again in the book as well. His mom, he didn't really consider mom his mom. She was more like a friend. She basically had no rules.
She wasn't interested in growing up. His parents went of getting divorced and again into the bizarre story. Just crazy story what his mom does.
But then you have so on one end you have his his mom was kind of like a friend, right? And then his dad is this really gifted engineer that is highly recruited by the major technology companies of his day.
So they move around, you know, from the East Coast to Phoenix to then he wants to put Silicon Valley and his dad was a workaholic. So Steve, Steven winds up emulating his dad.
But in Steven's movies, a lot of them has to do with like an absentee dad. So they went up reconciling later on in life.
But Steven had a really hard time with that. And Steven's dad also took a bad approach. It might be a bad approach.
We kind of try to direct what his son was going to do with his life, force him into, hey, study mass, then study engineering being an engineer like me.
And Steven didn't even just wasn't interested in that. He wasn't interested in school. He knew, okay. I'm going to be a director.
Not only not just I'm going to work in the film industry. I'm going to be a director. So he starts talking to his dad about wanting to be a director and his dad tries to
put this. He tries to make him think smaller. So this, you'll see what I mean right here. He says, he said, I want to be a director. And I said, well, if you want to be a director, you got to start at the bottom.
You got to be a go for and work your way up. And he said, no, dad, the first picture I do, I'm going to be a director. And he was that blew my mind. That takes gut.
And here's another quote from a young Steven Spielberg making movies grows on you. You can't shake it. I like directing movies above all. All I know for sure is I've gone too far to back out now.
And so this idea there's no turning back. This obviously conflicts with a lot of conventional life advice. But I that it appears over and over again in these biographies.
People are just like I have no plan B that I'm all in on this idea. This is something he talks about in the book quote from the documentary says that they're too. And now, you know, the book ends this book ends. He's just over 50 years old.
The documentary takes place. He's in his early 70s and he says I realize there was no going back. This was going to be what I was going to do or I was going to die trying.
This was going to be the rest of my life. So a few pages later, there's two sentences each on separate pages that I think are very interesting. Very quick lessons here.
And one is that it's obviously Spielberg was one capable of independent thought. And part of that came out of the fact that he just felt like a misfit. He felt different than everybody else. He felt he wasn't understood.
He was not interested in the other things that were expected of a kid, a young person his age. And he says I never felt comfortable with myself because I was never part of the majority. I felt like an alien.
Then he talks about his approach to filmmaking, which is very common for I think how you make a good product. The fact that you put your place in you put yourself in the place of the customer. Like you make what you want to see. And so he says Spielberg wants to find his approach to filmmaking by declaring I am the audience.
Recently, this is a 10 year anniversary of Steve Jobs death and I was rereading some notes from this book about how they created the iPod and Steve Jobs and his team at Apple said they knew that the iPod was going to be a success because they loved using it.
And Spielberg has a similar approach. He's like I make movies that I want to see a trait that we see in his other life that he keeps up for his entire the rest of his career.
The book ends with Jurassic Park with them discovering oh my god like he wants to try to hire. He didn't know that CGI had advanced so much right that they could actually have the the velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus Rex look like they did in that movie.
And so he originally they were trying to physically make like these costumes are going to have whether they were machines are they had people dressed up as them trying to run and trying to emulate what wind up being reproduced by the computer in the movie.
From the very beginning he was obsessed with with finding the latest cutting edge technology he could apply to his craft is something that's very important and really the way to think about technology is not just computers technology is just a better way to do something right and you should invest in it because the savings compound.
The money he saved instead of having 30 or 50 different people running around I think about all the people that had to make the actual the steel the plastic the materials that the dinosaurs had to be made out of could all be replaced by software.
And Jurassic Park ones being one of the most profitable movies I think he made like 250 million dollars he's probably made more since then you know the 20 years since then.
Just off that movie it's just remarkable and part of that was investing in technology.
Veson technology savings compounds Stevens fascination with all kinds of cutting edge technology and his mastery of the tools of filmmaking have been evident from the earliest days of his professional career.
And there's actually a scene where I'm getting ahead of myself but there's a scene in that documentary where Stephen goes up to industrial light magic which is Luke George Lucas's special effects company.
He did the CGI for the for I think it was the transverse Rex running if I remember the scene correctly and they just could not believe what they were seeing on the computer screen they compared that moment right.
That was taking place at industrial light magic to when sound was first introduced to movies that the fact that they said it opened up a whole new way if you could imagine it you could do it you weren't limited to plastic or steel.
Another thing from his early childhood and then I want to get into how he breaks into the industry because there's a lot of interesting lessons in there one of my favorite quotes.
That I've read in all the books that I've come for this podcast comes from Ivanchanard and his book let my people go surfing.
And he says one of his favorite things about entrepreneurship is if you want to understand the entrepreneur study the juvenile delinquent to the link went is saying with his actions this sucks I'm going to do my own thing in a bond like that's how I approached my work.
Stephen was very much the same way but he was like a bad little devil since he was a little kid and this is his aunt talking about that he's like we have a word for him in Yiddish we call him a
little bit of the very beginning how do you come as the youngest director ever signed very much like a prodigy like a wonder kid so main theme in Spielberg's work singular focus which I'll repeat over and over again today.
And enthusiasm attracts mentors and it is extremely important especially when he was a twenty one twenty year old kid twenty one year old kid twenty two year old kid even in his early 30s he's constantly when he's already successful constantly seeking out older wiser people that can help.
And one thing that they're attracted in return to him is because he gives a damn he clearly has sold the game his enthusiasm we are you and I talk about this in the practice of an organ passion is infectious we just respond to it.
And so you see the mentors found his passion is do's as him for film and like wow okay I want to help this kid as much as I can.
So it's a case about one thing making films Spielberg was a general you know what before I read this up to you another know myself on the page you can change and existing industry Lucas and Spielberg did and so this description when they come in you know the gold
Hollywood's over and now in large part to Lucas Spielberg Francis for Coppola Martin square sacy Brian to Palmer all of which are friends which is one of the most amazing things about this book and about the documentary as well because you have all these young filmmakers.
They came in the existing industry and already successful motor industry and sort of questioning everything you know the time about to reach us like young people were just actors you were not put in position to make movies to be in charge at all.
And through their talent or enthusiasm their hard work to like no no we're going to do differently you don't have a monopoly on the medium of filmmaking.
I find personally very very inspiring fibres a genuine novelty when it arrived in Hollywood the movie industry at the time was still middle aged man's profession the young people on the universal lot were actors one of the first contacts he made in Hollywood was Charles Chuck silvers this guy is extremely important older generation he's the universal pictures film librarian and he became the earliest mentor Steve's early
space mentor in the film industry and so his relationship with silvers because he starts as an intern there develops a relationship with him he silvers helps him get signed to this other the other the other most important or I guess not he has more another important mentor this guy named Shinberg I'll get there in a minute but before I get there the one I'm going to reach you is also important it's like it's yeah you're passionate yeah you're enthusiastic but you also have to have a piece of work that you can point to
you need a calling card you can't just say how excited about making films okay we'll have you made a film and that's also advice Steve I was watching him on YouTube advice he gives a young filmmakers that want to make films like you can do this with your phone now like you have to make films you need a piece of work that you can point to as a tax of the calling card
and so Spielberg goes out and he makes a short film it's called Amlin which is also the name later on becomes the name of his company but since Spielberg did manage to direct an independent short film called Amlin in the summer of 1968 several months after his 21st birthday Amlin was what brought Spielberg to the attention of Sid Schienberg
then vice president of production for universal TV who offered Spielberg a directing contract so these two mentors lay the foundation for his career his relationship with universal think about how crazy it is he's going to start out as an intern and eventually get to present of all their ticket revenue later on many decades later
so that's Chuck Silver's and Sid Schienberg important characters Spielberg 21 is believed to be the youngest filmmaker ever ever contracted by a major studio.
So I go back to what his parents say about him as a young person to because this is important because one of the main takeaways I took from from his life stories the fact that if you don't like your life you don't like your own the world that you're living in like you can create your own
and he definitely had a very unhappy like time growing up not only with the dissolution of his parents marriage and fighting all the time but also like they lived they kept moving around they they went from like in you know Jewish community
to living to being the only Jewish people around so there's a lot of anti-Semitism here to deal with but it says when he was growing up I didn't know he was a genius his own mother later admitted frankly I didn't know what the hell he was you see Stephen wasn't exactly cuddly he was scary when Stephen woke up from a nap I shook my mother you
so say the world is going to hear of this boy she continues no one ever said no to him he always gets what he wants asked how she influenced her son's development she replied I gave him freedom
Stephen acquired what he called his father's workaholic personality he was like this even in in high school and he definitely like that for I mean it's funny because later in the book it's like I had his first son's born I think he's around 40 years old
so he's like you know I'm gonna just not work weekends I'm gonna be home he does that for a very short amount of time but he's definitely an obsessive
Stephen acquired what he called his father's workaholic personality along with such a shade as his love of storytelling in his fascination with high technology that his father introduced him to
Stephen's tendency to withdraw into his own world is also a legacy from his father like Stephen his father was an introverted person
then talks about more about his mom's influence on Stephen just realizing hey I don't really want to be an adult I want to create these I want to live like this fantasy world
the rule of home was just don't be an adult who needs to be anything but 10 we never grew up at home because she never grew up Stephen commented
and so one of his favorite stories when he was younger is Peter Pan and so something he took away from that story says he was mightily impressed by Peter's defiant declaration
I don't want to go to school and learn solemn things no one is going to catch me lady I always wanted to be a little boy and have fun Spielberg admitted
I've always felt like Peter Pan I steal I still feel like Peter Pan it has been very hard for me to grow up
and that name continues continues throughout the book there's a quote here that's describing citizen Kane the movie citizen that comes from
the main character of citizens Kane which is Charles foster Kane which is which is actually built upon the real life of William Randolph Hearst and I think this quote from William Randolph Hearst
it also applies to Steven Spielberg which he says the same thing later on and the quote about William Randolph Hearst is he was disappointed in the world so he built one of his own
way to think about Steven's approach to his work and his career and so Steven said I never felt life was good enough so I had to embellish it
that was also something that caught me so semi by surprise is how much Stephen lies constantly just making up stories he would lie about his age over and over again
constantly wanted to make it seem like he was younger than he actually was so it's more impressive if you know he starts directing TV when he's
20 or 21 when he's actually maybe 22 or 23 there's just a ton of stories about that a ton of stories he made up about like his
original story about how he broke into universal studios, comedy or an office and then went to just went to work and nobody noticed for two years that
went up being not true but just this whole theme of like I'm just going to you know I don't like my life I'm going to create it even if I have to lie and
it's definitely something that that appears in the life story of Steven Spielberg this is about also something like I was surprised how many of
things that happened to his childhood in his childhood that he would reference in movies many many decades into the future over and over again
and so this is one of them I think this is actually the scene that is in his movie catch me if you can which he made I think in
2002 and this is something that happened to him back in his 60s and this is the fact that this is very traumatic for him but Steve's mom
marries his dad's best friend that the family considered like an uncle they didn't tell their kids his
Stevens dad even though his mom fell in love with his best friend and Mary and left him and married him
and his dad told his kids that he was responsible for the divorce and so for 20 30 years he was largely alienated from his
father based on another lie this is bizarre they talk about in the book we're trying to read you now and then his sisters are
interviewing the documentary that is like this was bananas like this was our uncle Bernie and our mom runs off and
marries our uncle Bernie so this has Bernie Adler was an engineer who followed Arnold out from New Jersey and worked as his
assistant at GE at the general electric burning was almost like a member of the Spielberg family the kids called him
Uncle Bernie he was always there he did everything with them.
He Spielberg's mom would enter into an enduring and during marriage with Bernie Adler she said she found Bernie so
funny so bright so moral that I fell madly in love with and so this was rather embarrassing for the kids
because even then it was quotes from the neighbors and Phoenix that we weren't actually sure who who the father was
and so this is a scene we're Leonardo Caprio in catch me if you can sitting down with his dad saying hey you know let's call your
mom let's call mom whatever the case is and the dad says no he she ran off and married my best friend that actually happened in Spielberg's life
and then another plot twist Bernie winds up dying many years later and now Steven and his mom are Steven's dad and his mom were like in their 80s
or 90s they're extremely they got to be their 90s are back together.
Okay so let's go I want to move ahead a little bit because Steve Steven has this like encyclopedic knowledge of the history of
films and he's constantly going back doing the same thing you and I are doing now we go back through the history of
entrepreneurship fine ideas that are useful and apply him to our work he did that in film over and over and it's like oh I like that idea
in fact I will take that exact same shot and so this was very similar to David Geffen when I read his his biography for the
podcast that Steven that's Steven's obviously future partner he would he was obsessed with show business he would just hang
out hang out at the movies all day are in Steven's case as the movies I think in David Geffen's case it's Broadway shows
so you pay like a quarter and you can see hang out on the day so says Steven's movie fanaticism was nurtured at the
Kiva theater on Main Street in Scottsdale Arizona parents would drop off their kids on Saturdays and leave them all
day with 50 cents admission to a program that would include Westerns and Tarzan movies sci-fi and monster movies
it was a great set it was it was Saturdays were great Spielberg recalled I was in the movies all day long every Saturday
I've seen absolute duplicates in Spielberg movies of scenes that we used to see back in the 1950s at the Kiva theater
make an example of this when Harrison Ford and Raiders of Lost Ark rides his horse down the hill and jumps on to the
truck carrying the arc Spielberg got that shot from the 1937 serial Zorro rides again even the camera angle
one of Spielberg's heroes and he has a bunch of filmmakers that he would look up to and idolize and in many cases emulate would be Alfred Hitchcock
so says Arnold his dad Arnold Spielberg took Steven to see Alfred Hitchcock's movie Psycho now what's crazy is this idea
does it even say in the book no I think I okay let me read this to you and then he talks about this in the documentary
Steven later told a neighbor how impressed he had been with Hitchcock's employment of the power of suggestion
Steve talked about the shower scene in psycho how Hitchcock never showed any real violence he showed you the knife and this and that but most of it was in the viewer's mind
so he uses that idea the shower scene from psycho Steve uses that the power of suggestion with jaws in the movie jaws
the shark winds are breaking down right they didn't expect it to break down so now you have the star of the movie can't even use and he comes up with this idea
if you see the movie of the barrels those yellow barrels that are tied to the shark and he uses the power of suggestion
showing the movement of the barrels never at barrels rather never actually showing the shark and that's an idea that he learned when he was a young person watching
Alfred Hitchcock this is another example of how important studying the film makes it came before him war for his career
since the movies that impressed even the most when he was a boy were two epics directed by David lean the bridge on the river
choir and the Lawrence of Arabia Spielberg later called lean the greatest influence I ever had he emulated
lean sense of visual storytelling throughout his career he says the scope and audacity of those films filled my dreams with unlimited
possibilities you know what's crazy in the documentary says he watches great films over and over and over again right just like we
should be reading books or any kind of experiences that we have like books is the most obvious example here is you know
you might read a book once and you read it five years later and just like all the book changed it was like no the books the same you
change right he still sees Lawrence of Arabia every year he talks about that in the documentary the movie came out in 1962
okay so now he's college aged this is where he meets the goal we're going to go we're going to go into more detail by where he meets
that mentor Chuck Silver's you get the meeting in a tour with the universe's head librarian and this was Silver's impression of Spielberg at that age
okay he explained how he wrote photographed and directed his own pictures casting them with neighborhood and school friends devising the special effects
and even making the costumes Stephen was such a delight he said that energy not only that impressed me but with Stephen nothing was impossible
that attitude came through it was so clear he was so excited by everything when we walked on to a dubbing stage how impressed he was
at some point time it dawned on me that I was talking to somebody who had a burning ambition and not only that he was
going to accomplish his mission he was very young for his age in all other respects but when it came to motion pictures God damn I knew he was going to do something I didn't know
what the hell he was going to do but he was going to do something you can't walk away from a kid like that just out of curiosity you want to sit and watch
and so this is a quote from he's a senior in high school from the school newspaper this is right after he met silver's as we said Steve Spielberg worked with Hollywood directors
to summer universal pictures he spent a Spielberg spent the whole vacation working in his as an unpaid clerical assistant in the universal editorial department
the job enables Spielberg to roam the lot watching films and television shows being shot and to hang out with film editors and other post production people
learning the craft of professional filmmaking he would continue hanging out on the lot all through his college years until with silver's help he was hired as a director
this is more on the beginning this this beginning opportunity universal and the other of myself is this is amazing he starts out as an intern at universal now gets 2% of all universal tickets
reminded me of remember that book the gambler on Kirk Corian think was like founders number 67 somewhere back there but Kirk
Corian starts out as a day labor on the lot of MGM studios I think he's like moving around heavy rocks for production right he's getting $2.60 a day
30 years later he owns MGM and his return on investment makes him $260,000 a day from $2.60 as a day labor a day to owning MGM and making $260,000 a day
lot can happen in one lifetime but the reason I'm bringing this up to you is because something Spielberg does something here that you and I have talked about over and over again
the importance of developing your own curriculum because personal curriculum I think a better term for it comes from Bill Gurley that talk it's called how to run down a dream on YouTube
and he talks about what he learned by studying Danny Meyer not Phil Knight Bobby Knight and Bob Dylan I think is the musician but the fact that they would all the work that they're doing that's not work
is just stuff that they're trying to learn that they apply to work he called it professional research and he goes into detail in that talk how they all did that and how it enhanced the work is fast
hitting talk but anyways it just says Spielberg game began his apprenticeship at Holly at Universal in the summer of 1964 his mentor Chuck Silver's recalls
that the ambitious teenager gradually worked out his own curriculum they say it's specifically here he's working out his own
curriculum on the lot visiting sets talking with editors and sound mixers he was kind of a guest a self-appointed observer who made
his own arrangements with the people who responded to him many chapters later it picks up this theme about this theme about the importance of developing your own personal curriculum your own professional research
so says Spielberg remained essentially an auto didax Spielberg followed his own eccentric path to a professional directing career universal studios in effect with Spielberg's film school he couldn't get into film school they read every single film school rejected him
giving him an education that was both more personal and more conventional than he would have received in an academic environment Spielberg devised what amounted to his own private tutorial program at Universal
immersing himself in the aspects of filmmaking he found most crucial to his development
and so it's this point where he finds other like minds and this is just again a repeat myself but this just blew my mind
like the day jobs comes out so you're just driving around with martin square sacy like before martin square sacy was martin square sacy the idea that you have George Lucas Brian
to palm a spill even spill but martin square sacy for instance for Coppola you have a group of crazy people who were all obsessed with movies all struggling to make it at this point right now you fast forward 50 years and they're all huge
successful but not this point and the whole group wants to become successful and dominates the movie business all the to all the time though they're giving each other
feedback trying they're friendly but they trying to compete with each other they go back and forth between producing like the most financial successful movies at a time first
it's godfather then I think Spielberg passes them and then I think Lucas passes Spielberg it's just absolutely remarkable
and I've already read biographies on Lucas and Spielberg I'm looking for biographies on the rest of these people as well but let me just tell you a little bit more about this time in history because I found this fascinating
and I find it fascinating because again they're doing this to an already like mature industry there's always room for more opportunity it just starts with questioning why things are done the way they are right
so they're called the movie brass this whole crew and sometimes referred to as a USC mafia and there's a bunch of us not just these five people there's screen writers there's entertainment attorneys they're all helping each other
it's very fascinating at the time they came to Hollywood generations of neptism had made the studios terminally imbred and unwelcoming to newcomers
the studio system long under siege from television falling box office receipts and skyrocketing costs was in a state of impending collapse
so how fascinating is that from the outside it's like why are you wasting your time making movies what is wrong with the television it's the future
this look at this they're making less money you can't get in you have to go people are going to film school and the professors are saying don't go to film school because you're never get hired
it's just very fascinating that's when they're like okay at the very bottom of the market so to speak they're like okay well this is where the opportunity can't go anywhere
from here but up right the future seem daunting for the term for the determined young movie fanatics who came of age in the 60s and for whom film historians coin the phrase the movie brand
Spielberg vividly remembers how he and such other self starters that's how he's describing himself Lucas and Scorsese had to chisel and dynamite
their way into a profession that never really looked to young people except as actors there were no willing producers at that time I was trying to break into the business
my first first the rust were met with a great deal of animosity but all these people the movie brats USC mafia this is a description of them were unwilling to settle for such limited dreams
they ate breathe and slept movies with a passion earlier generations had brought to writing or painting and so what they needed is they needed somebody like Francis for Copa
who was the first young director to break through and then once they saw wait a minute that guy can do it and he's great talented
they're not they weren't saying it wasn't talented but it's like okay he's not he's like a couple years older me I can do it too it's extremely important it took Copa
to start breaking down the doors of Hollywood for other films to will graduates in the late sixties he became a Spielberg put it all of our Godfathers
and so now we fast forward to when Spielberg and Lucas start becoming friends they want to being pals and spiders collaborators but they're pushing each other because of how talented they were
so Spielberg you know it's like I'm young hot shot I'm good too oh wait there's another meat right there's always another you
know like you gotta know that and so what what Spielberg realizes like he watches Lucas's film he's like oh my God I'm sick to my stomach and how good this guy is
so he says when he saw the short films Spielberg was jealous to the very marrow of my bones I was 20 years old and I directed 15 short films by that time
and this little movie was better than all of my little movies combined so he says now I you know before he out I always people like Frank Cap or Walt Disney
out for Hitchcock David Lee and all these people but he's like now I can have a role model and a collaborator and somebody inspires me this my own agents doing the same stuff I'm trying to do
as it says now instead of having those role models rather with someone near to my own age someone I could actually get to know
compete with and draw inspiration from and that was remarkable how you know they're obviously very driven big egos but they didn't have big egos with each other right
they're like listen we're competing but I'm also being inspired from you and they they were able to maintain like a friendship right and not they had the maturity to realize hey
it's we're gonna get a lot farther if we can help each other then if we just like oh I hate that guy because he's doing this you know the same thing I'm doing well this is not a zero
game like people can like your movies George and they can like they can like like my movies as well.
It doesn't have to be just one filmmaker the fact that they were able to do that at such a young age is very very admirable.
So here's another fantastic little story from the book and how yes for Chuck Silver silvers is what I wrote here
on my note on this page because if we ever have the opportunity to stick out for a young talented person like we should do it and this is an example of that because
Steven's dad who is now divorced and living in a Steven's living with his dad but basically gone all the time because he obsessed with with movies
Steven's dad realizes hey he's spending a lot of time universal spending a lot of time with this guy named Chuck I'm gonna call this guy Chuck and tell him hey my son needs to be focused on college
even if you want to go to college he winds up placating his his I think mainly his dad goes like Long Beach college Long Beach University something like that but he doesn't give a shit about that like he's spending all
time universal winds of dropping out and the reason I say hell yes for Chuck Silver is just because look at the conversation that he had as he's like your dad doesn't understand the
opportunity and how gifted you are and this is not an opportunity that waits around right for you to finish school shortly before Steven started college Arnold made a phone called Chuck
Silver's Steven's mentor universal who described their conversation the only substantial one he and Arnold ever had as spirited he's going to Long Beach state
I'd appreciate if you would do what you can to make sure that he goes to school Silver said he couldn't do that look there's something you got
to motion picture business he told Steven's father for Steven to realize his ambitions he's going to need a hell of a big break somebody's going to have to put a lot of
faith and a lot of money up so the rest of us can see if Steven is who he appears to be I'm his friend if it comes to a choice of
Stephen having the opportunity to direct something that he could use as a showcase I will advise Steven to do it school be damned lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place in
history so you'd better be ready for it they don't care whether you've got a degree or not what they are interested in is what he can put up on the screen
and so his dad's like well okay that's fine I still want to go to school his reach Silver's reaction is with talent like Steven Spielberg you don't get you don't
set that kind of goal what the hell good as a degree that wasn't Steven and this is such an important part of this whole thing about this I'm not trying to direct
him what to do I'm trying to be there for him so silver says my guy my idea of encouragement was to be there basically that's the only
function I really served somehow I always became a listening board every time he got a story idea every time he shot some film
asked why he went so far out of his way to help Steven silver's reply simply I liked him I admired this lump of raw material just think about
his pause and think about what is happening in the story how important there is an alternate future where Steven does not have the help of
Chuck Silver's somebody that that is a film historian somebody that's been with Universal somebody can help guide him somebody is a few
decades older than him and there we don't know the name of Steven Spielberg because that wasn't that opportunity didn't present
itself he didn't actually stand up for this person he's like hey this guy is talented the work he's putting on to the world is important I'm going to be
there to encourage that that is just so so important we're going to have to do that for people and Steven wants to play that that same role in the future for young filmmakers and
young writers and young producers it's so so important and it's another idea that he got from Chuck which I'll talk to you about later but I just want to
say what his father's telling him to do right he's going to school he's going to drop out but this is just a reflection of how disjointed school can be from real
life and this is something that Phil Knight founder of Nike and Fred Smith founder of FedEx dealt with two they both wrote papers about
exactly what they were going to do the idea for Nike the idea for FedEx and I think they both got a C same thing happens to
Spielberg this is so silly nothing sums up the frustrations of Spielberg's academic experience along Beach state better than his record
in the TV productions course he received a C moving on reminder shoot your shot shoot your shot goes up this is a young kid and he just goes up and he again he's not like an arrogant
kid goes up with asking for help and saying why he wants help he often would walk up to stars and directors and producers on the studio streets and invited
them to lunch carry grant and rock Hudson were among those who accepted this is the same thing that a young Steve Jobs did he called up Bill he
left I remember correctly I think it was Bill and not David either one the partners calls him up asked for parts says I'm a 14 12 year old kid
winds of getting a summer job well later on when he's like 18 19 he pulled he calls up all the people Bob noise founder of Intel the
guy that did a micro systems camera was named the guy that the AMD camera his name at the moment sorry all these people is just like listen
I didn't know how to build a company I greatly admire the people that that knew so I called them up I asked if I if I could talk to
if I could have lunch coffee with them yeah some people are going to ignore you some people are going to not be able to
do it whatever the case is but some people will say yes just shoot your shot few pages later look at this this is repeated over and
it's so important professional research personal curriculum we've got to develop that Spielberg asked a million questions to the
editors it was a process of absolute technical application he worked out his own curriculum I am not making up these words this is the author
using the sentence this statement that you and I talked about over and over again multiple times in this biography he worked out his own
curriculum it was the real world there's no school you can really go to learn to be a filmmaker that's not what they teach
and then later on we have silver's talking about this is like this and I hope them but like my impact I try to open as many
doors I could give them advice from an older wiser perspective but you can't teach like who's going to teach DaVinci right this is a very
very interesting just quick paragraph for you I don't want to cast myself in any way as his teacher I wish to hell I had
been how the hell do you teach Maria callus how to sing who taught DaVinci you can expose people to things but they have to have it
in themselves as far as I'm concerned he's the most gifted person in motion pictures and so with the fact that Spielberg obviously was
extremely so he calls himself a self starter he had a piece of work which I have to repeat is very important you have to
do something you could point to sign just like come you know I'm just somebody you don't even know you know come help me
like they see that this kids out here hustling is out here working is actually doing this he's really interested in this industry
that I'm in right and he's got something point to so because he had like a calling card he was able to get signed and then
he's just so grateful because he feels Chuck silvers is the one that like opened all the doors for her universal is he's like be my manager
and that Chuck is so wise here and he just has one request he's like listen I'm just doing this because I want to help you
but you have to pay this forward after your success his one request to Chuck's one request to Steven Spielberg is the same thing
it's why in Var Comprite said over and over again founder of a Kia why am I writing this book people told me I didn't want to write a
autobiography I resisted the idea he says explicitly the the the argument that convinced me from his co-writer was that you know
stuff that a help future entrepreneurs and you love entrepreneurs and so that's why he wrote the IKEA story because I'm going to
re now he's passed on it's good thing he did because we wouldn't have had access to his ideas Sam Walton same thing I'm writing
this book because I wanted to help you fill night the there's some kind of instinct you know these people are older they
I think they in that case in those three examples I just gave you I think they were on their 70s by the time they wrote it
and in Sam Walton's case he knows he's dying super super sick he talks about in the book he's got cancer everywhere right
but it was very important for them Bob noise same thing in Intel like but they're like what the hell Bob you're wealthy doing
anything in the world why you spend a time having you know at 19 year old 20 year old Steve jobs at your house why are you
going to give these talks why are you doing all these investments he's like I need to restock the stream I fished
from it's that natural human instinct to be like okay I benefit greatly from this knowledge from this
industry from this mentorship I'm going to go and turn it around and do it for the next generation to it's
amazing so it's a Spielberg then asked me if I'd be as a manager silver said I said Stephen you need someone
who knows a hell of a lot more about the business and I do I'm not the right person he asked me what I wanted
for helping I said well Stephen by the time you really make it big I'll probably to goddamn old for you to do
me any good in effect what I told him was when you can pass it on when you make it big you could be nice to
young people I learned from people I had no way of thinking I learned from people I had no way of
thinking you can pass that on Steve made me a promise and he kept it you look at the first of the
first time directors and new writers and first time producers he has made an opportunity for he puts his
money and he puts his business personality on the line okay so he's already signed as a director again I've
repeated a certain I'm going to repeat it one more time because it's not enough myself on this page there's two notes
myself number one have a piece of work that you can point to right he set up a screaming of Amblin it was an
incredible piece of work this is how he gets signed but it's guy named Sid shineberg so think of this as
mentor number two in Stephen's life and there's still friends to this day which again like this is something I
always look for like if like when you meet new people it's like it's very important that they have they've
been able to develop relationships for a long time because like you can fool like you can fake being a good
person for you know a couple months maybe a year maybe even a few years but you know if somebody's known
you for 20 years like you can't fake me in a scumbag for that long right and Stephen something that he
talks about I actually I wasn't going to talk about this now but I might as well because it passed my
mind it's like something that I think is an idea that we can take from Spielberg he talks about the reason
he's able to work so quickly now is because he's worked with the same people for decades right his
editors his visual effects people the people like when he's on a new project he wants up hiring a lot of
the same people over over again because he says like we just have a way like all the knowledge we have
working with each other it compounds and that compounding makes it easier for us to communicate and work
faster he's like if I had to hire brand new people every few years to do a project he's like I couldn't do
this this is very similar if you I did a three-part series on Larry Allison he said the same thing he's
like the reason he's like the core programming team at Oracle for the first I forgot it was like 10 years
whatever the time period was like they didn't change it looked the same 30 people whatever the number was right I can't
these numbers might be wrong but the main point I'm telling you is definitely I remember correctly
but the idea is like you don't want all this turnover you see these people jumping from project to project working with
constantly new people you might want to do that may want to get some fresh idea new blood in there but the idea is like
well just like money compounds time compounds knowledge compounds to and now you've been working together you have a
way of a fundamental understanding that has taken years to develop and that if you keep switching like
you're interrupting the compounding and so Stephen applies that to not only the people he works with but his
professional relationships up and down like not only the people he hires but the people that hired him
very fascinating so he has a piece of work Sid winds up hiring him gives him contract he makes some do TV first
Stephen does not want to do TV right so the second thing is you may not like your first opportunity
but you got to do your level best it's just a script was terrible
you work said later I really didn't want to do the show I told Sid Jesus can I do something else he said I take this
opportunity if I were you and of course I took it I would have done anything
and so he talks about the very beginning something also that might surprise you to this day from the from the first time
he makes a movie till now he's constantly throwing up nervous every time I start a new
film nervous talks about vomiting over and over again he's a 65 year old man when he's talking about this
right and the same thing he was that was happening to when he was younger like we just don't and I'm glad he shares this because now
says I go this guy obviously knows everything he's got I don't even know what four of the I don't know what the number is now
but I think when this book ends he has four of the top 10 highest grossing movies of all time like just
outsides remarkable success this guy clearly knows what he's doing and yet you don't see before he can't return on he's in the corner throwing
I was so frightened that even the whole period is a bit of a blank blank for me I was walking on a ex I didn't know if you if I'd ever I don't know if you've
never been a bit bad for four days in a row it's like taking drugs I don't take drugs I never have or I would have used every
drug under and over the counter at the time the show put me through dire straits it was a good discipline but a very bad
experience so you have he goes from the euphoria right of being signed youngest director ever to the terror of not
making the work and being very bad at it he has a breakdown he wants to have to take a really the high from being getting
signed and then the fall of being to spawn and yes take a break not only had he failed to interest universal letting him
bring to life all the stories I had my head but no one was even offering him TV episodes to direct I was in a
despondent comatose state and I told Sid I wanted to leave of absence and I got it and there's one more
sentence about this point in life because I think it's extremely important to remember success is not a
straight line he didn't just go from night gallery the show he didn't like to jaws his career stalled at a
number of occasions okay so there's an idea that popped up in the book and in my notes multiple times for the
documentary and it's this idea that he thinks visually and really the way I think about this is like you
got to find the perfect medium or the perfect format for your skill set and there's another way to put it
somebody else later on the documentary says that that Spielberg speaks cinema as his native language
in Spielberg in the documentary also gets advice he's just like you have this idea of what you want to do
and it's only in your head and he says no one can help you holding the entire idea in your head
that that is your job that's something that you have to figure out how to do and I think that's his approach to
to movie making so let's go back to the book he thinks visually he's in the perfect format for his skill set
and it says he seemed to be able to see more than other people saw he didn't seem to waste any time
he didn't seem to get caught up in what directors often do eating up camera time eating up miles and miles of film
this is back before the digital film there was literally with a physical film there was
literally that's true miles of film on a movie he seemed to cut on the floor we knew that this boy knew about the camera
and then he combined this this the way he thought visually which is perfect for obviously being a filmmaker
with the fact that it's just try not to be a dick just try to be you're going to get farther if you can avoid that
and a lot of people would interact with Stephen but okay like he's not he's got he says he has a nice manner
this gets you a long way when a director has the attitude I don't know everything about this but would you like to try something which is how Stephen interacts with the people his co-workers
you're willing to knock yourself out for that director
and so I think at this point in his career where he's really struggling it was very helpful to have all these other filmmakers around him these young filmmakers
because he's suffering internally but this is the note of myself positive forward motion
regardless of internal suffering which is just a really smart idea they're all not really getting what they think they they're their talent and their drive is is currently not being like
there's no evidence of actual accomplishments like they're not getting as far as they think they they could based on the talent
there to have in the drive they have so says we were all ambitious in wanting to work and none of us were getting the kind of work
that we wanted to do Stephen knew what Stephen knew he wanted to do features meaning movies when Stephen was very discouraged trying to sell a script and break in
he always had a positive forward motion whatever he may have been suffering inside so positive forward motion regardless of external circumstances
so eventually he does get the opportunity to direct a movie it's called Sugarland if flops and it's very dangerous
as much as like the the film industry talks about oh yeah it's an art and everything else it's like yeah you have a couple flops and you're out of the industry real quick
right and so he was in a very precarious position because he was being pushed into do a shark movie and he's like what the hell I don't want to do this shark movie
and the real little lesson here is that his biggest win draws is by far the most important thing to ever happen to the career of Spioberg and he says it right
his biggest win is going to come right after what he thought at the time it was his biggest failure
when he received the bad news about Sugarland in April 1974 Spioberg did not have much time to sit around engaging and second guessing her nursing his wounds
he was on the Massachusetts Island of Martha's Vineyard immersed in preparations to make another film it was a modestly budgeted thriller called called JAWS
so we're going to get into JAWS I want to take a slight tangent first I do have to tell you I'll just take a front JAWS is was his
Spioberg calls JAWS his free pass pass into his future then that's completely due to his it's financial success at the time it
it was released it was the most profitable movie ever made and he's like once I had that I got final cut on every single project I ever did moving forward in my career
I got to choose his projects I did I got to choose what they look like it bought me my freedom and again finances by you freedom
I want to at before JAWS their shop in this this idea of a of a science fiction film that is going to eventually become
closing counters of a third kind which is also successful but I want to pull something out here because the thing is important
something we talked about on this the autobiography of Sid Meyer Sid Meyer is the computer programmer the game designer that made civilization
the main idea that book was so important is the fact that like you you discover that if you question that questioning conventional wisdom can be very profitable
Sid wanted to make a strategy game I always said no strategy games can make any money doing that he does it anyways releases civilization it sells
51 million copies right and so we see the exact same thing here Lucas and Spioberg they're trying to shop this this this project it says in two
decades in Star Wars and the closing counters were released science fiction films have accounted for half of the top 20 box office hits
but before George Lucas and Spioberg revived the genre there was no real appetite at the studios for science fiction the conventional wisdom was science fiction
films never make money so questioning conventional wisdom can be profitable let's get to the making of JAWS because it was a just
constantly in flux they're rewriting the script the night before not sure if they'll have it done before the next day if they can actually shoot
anything it went over budget and over schedule I think like three times like it was supposed to take like 57 days I think it took like 150 days
something like that but it says and then they wind up the shark winds up like the main character winds of disappearing so it's just amazing
like how resourceful he had to be so says I hired a man named Carl Gottlieb who was an old friend of mine and he came
to Martha's vineyard essentially a polished script as the actor sat with me every night often only 24 hours before the shot and improvise
to facilitate the work on the script Gottlieb and Spioberg shared a house on location with and Gottlieb would continue to work on the
revisions after Spielberg went to sleep each morning Gottlieb would give new pages to the company typist and by 8 30 in the morning they
would be approved and ready for filming it was incredibly 10th and so halfway through Spielberg wants to quit
and this is just a reminder your mind will play tricks on you Lucas thought Star Wars was gonna flop if you remember that
Spielberg says the same things like this I'm going to be out of the movie business this movie is not going to do well I had two failures in a row and I'm done
Sid had words with Spielberg over jobs there was one of the few disagreements that Steven and I had I literally forced him to do it
I think he was upset for a while and he turned to me and said why are you making me do this B movie he was scared he felt overwhelmed he wasn't sure he was
right guy for it the picture was important him finally important there was such huge professional stakes nothing was ready it was at that
stage completely out of control and it was as it was during most of the shooting jaws rented to so many production problems that
exasperated crew members began referring to the movie as flaws Spielberg later admitted I thought it would be a turkey
this is more about the terror part of you for your entire imagine having to shoot a shark movie without the shark he thought he was doomed and this
one's being his greatest achievement just wild for weeks after shooting starting started Bruce simply refused to work that's the name of
the shark that night Richard dry face declared if any of us had any sense we'd all bail out now Spielberg anxiously shot around the
star of the movie out of desperation he began shooting barrels instead of the shark in the movie the barrels are fixed to a shark by the
harpoon and they cruise the ocean surface as a standard for the submerged creature we were very scared I didn't know when he whether any of us could
do it we thought we're making a picture called jaws and we don't have the fucking shark today with computers you could just
put the shark in in those days it was a strictly mechanical thing the pressure on the 27 year old director was enormous I
thought my career as a filmmaker was over I heard rumors from back in Hollywood that I would never work again because no one
would ever take a no one had ever taken a film a hundred days over schedule let alone a director whose first
picture had failed as a box office there are moments of solitude sitting on the boat thinking this can't be done it was stupid to begin with
will never finish it no one is ever going to see this picture and I'm never going to work in this town again
think about the mind games that he had to deal with when making the movie the movies finish the movies released this is what
happens jaws surpassed frances for cople is the godfather to become the most successful film in motion picture history to that date
jaws held that distinction until November 77 when it was just thrown by George Lucas's star wars
Spielberg took on an ad and Hollywood trade papers showing a little robot from star wars are 2d 2 catching Bruce the
shark and his jaws of the fishing hook congratulating Lucas for capturing the box box office title Spielberg wrote where
well your pal Stephen again just remarkable that all these guys were friends
so after jaws he has a jaws is a hit closing counters of 3rd kind is a hit he's like I can do anything real high on his own
supply so he tries to do this comedy called nineteen forty one and this is really the point of the reason
bring Mr. Tensions because sometimes you learn more from failure and nineteen forty one winds up being a failure
he has a reputation that you know yeah jaws is successful close to the counters of their time successful but he's
always over budget he's always like he's not disciplined and so he learns from George Lucas that you have to watch your
costs you have to be disciplined about this and so again to our Lucas plays a huge influence in his life
but first it says Spielberg used to say that he was born again after nineteen forty one that's the big
gigantic failure the mistake working as a hired hand for Lucas a conservative and highly
disciplined producer Spielberg used Raiders of the Lost Ark as a form of professional rehab
so after nineteen forty one Lucas is like hey I have this idea I'm going to be a producer for
this is you know Raiders of Lost Ark that one of the most successful film franchises in film history
they don't know at that time obviously he's like will you direct this for me
and so Spielberg Lucas and Spielberg are now on set it's Spielberg the director Lucas lets him be as a director
but he's the one you know putting up the money making sure everything runs on time
so that's where he's just learning from here on in he becomes you know he had a bad reputation
Lucas goes around selling trying to sell the movie and they're like well who's going to direct
like Spielberg like now we're out like how could you be out he just did jaws and closer cut as a third
kind and like talked about you know the guy that lying about the budget but saying yeah
you can do it for twenty million it comes in at sixty million that's going to piss these people off right
so says the Lucas Spielberg proposal was presented to the studios to proposal day out
there to assault oh I'm bringing I'm bringing this to your attention because there's a quote from
George Lucas's biography that's fantastic and he says some of the bravest and most reckless acts
that we did were not aesthetic but financial again highly recommended all founders I think
should read George Lucas's biography how many people do you know that founded multiple
billion dollar businesses and did it like he just has this like a not aggression
this damn it I'll do it myself attitude that you just can't you just love the absolutely love
so says they're going around shopping this and now they're saying okay this is after star words
this is after jaws this is we're playing a different game here so says the proposal
dare to assault the standard Hollywood financial practices on several especially sensitive points chief
among them was that while the distributor would be expected to put the movies budget
at twenty million dollars it would receive no distribution fee and take no overhead
charge that's like these Hollywood accounting this is a term for like the shenanigans
finish shenanigans I was known in the industry at the time those items usually counter
from where the 50% of the gross film rentals besides demanding large sums of money
upfront Lucas and Spielberg also wanted enormous shares of the gross a demand
that was especially unusual for director in that era and while the distributor
would be allowed to recover their entire cost of raiders from gross film rentals
before Lucas and Spielberg started to receive their shares of the gross
Lucas would eventually all have full ownership of the movie studios were taken
aback by such hootspa and so with Lucas's help he becomes this disciplined
watch your costs director so says we knew we had to now they're talking about shooting the movie
we knew how to compromise there were some moments where it would go to take two
or three and take and take four and something wasn't working so you know multiple
takes Stephen would say that's it let's move on we'll figure out another way to do it
he was very very good in our respect raiders was the first picture he bought in
on budget I heard Stephen say that his friends were doing smaller pictures than him
less expensive pictures than him coming in on budget and they were able to see money
on the back end Stephen rarely had that opportunity so he was bound and determined
to bring a picture in on budget so he could see the back end
so really what Lucas taught him is like you gotta watch that's nice is your
you're you make a lot of money the box office but you'll make a lot of more money
personally if you watch your costs and so he takes what you learn from Lucas
and on the the raider the the Indiana Jones movies right and he applies it to
ET and check this out this is now where in the euphoria part of his career
ET prints money so he winds up he's like I'm doing this movie for $10 million
ET was so tough because Stephen had made a bet with Universal that he could do
this thing for $10 million completing ET within that budget enabled him to
satisfy his obligation for the final remaining film from his 1975 contract
with Universal in the first weeks and he winds up coming in on budget and on
time right in the first weeks check this out this is gonna blow your mind in
the first weeks after the films release on June 11th 1982 we're talking
about $22 which is even crazier what I'm about to tell you
Spielberg personally was earning as much as half a million dollars per day
as his share of the profits and so as his movies become more financial successful
he's able to demand better and better deals he also is learning from his
third mentor Stephen Ross so it says Steve and then of myself
is you don't make three or four billion dollars by accident referring to
Spielberg Spielberg is good as a businessman as he is a director Spielberg
is renowned and sometimes deployed in Hollywood for driving hard bargains with
everyone from technicians to actors to studio chiefs in recent years his
standard deal has been a remarkable 50% of the distributors gross on his
pictures and they said you compare that with five or 15% of growth five or
15% of gross that even major stars command so he's making a lot more money
the studios also fully finance Spielberg's films even though that he that he owns it
that he owned that that the movies owned or shared by Amlin his his company
Stephen gets the studios to carry the risk and he takes in the money and so he
wants to be becoming real good friends with the head of time the head of
is this Warner Brothers or Time Warner at the time I'm not sure time Warner so
he says his connection came through his close friendship with Steve Ross to
chairman of the board of time Warner Ross was the most colorful and controversial
of the film industry mentors to whom Spielberg had attached himself assuming the
roles of Spielberg's best friend and idealized father figure as well as
business mentor Ross began educating Spielberg in the finer aspects of life as
a Hollywood mogul in the documentary Tom Hanks talks about working with
Spielberg is remarkable because how resourceful he is you could plan something
out as best you can circumstances dictated it's not going to work out and he comes
up with just he just makes the most of whatever is there and we see an example
of this when he's on location filming his first his first movie in China
so so while preparing for the first day of shooting in Shanghai assistant director
David Tomlin plotted out all the crowd movements and everything and I plan to
keep the road clear so there could be traffic so there could be traffic
movement I drew it all out and told everyone to do what to do then 5,000
people suddenly flooded the road it went I went crazy I said to Steven oh
Jesus it's all gone wrong he said looks great roll the cameras action he was
happy with how it looked and I wasn't going to argue with the 5,000 people
he's very good like that he's not pedantic whatever is there he makes it
work that's the most important sentence of that entire paragraph whatever is
there he makes it work that's the assistant director talking about something
they made in the 80s Tom Hanks of the exact same thing when they were making
save a private Ryan another thing that Steven talks about in this book
talked about in the documentary over and over again he's how important family is to
him the fact that he's got like a seven-kid something like that you got divorced
for the first time he felt like a failure then got remarried they've been married
for a long time so it's extremely important because of the traumatic childhood he
had and he's got this scene and hook that he took to heart and I think it's
fantastic and so they're going back and forth it's the character Peter and his wife
and it says your children love you they want to play with you how long you think
that lasts we have a few special years with our children when they're the one
where they're the ones who want us around so fast Peter it's a few years
that it's over you're not being careful and you're and you're missing it that
is the lesson Peter learns and hook and it is one Spielberg took to heart in his own
life and I would say that is the major life regret that I've seen in a lot
of these biographies and autobiographies and when they're writing in these books
it's too late it's the fact that they over optimized for their work life at
expense of their children they'll tell you not to do it they did some
regret they can't do anything about the best term I've ever heard about this came
from Ingvar Campera's autobiography because he did that his three boys from
non-mistake and he's like I I missed their childhood because I was building IKEA
and I messed up I should have done that and it says childhood does not allow
itself to be reconquered there's also a line in the hook movie with Peter Pan
that I think Spielberg took this idea and ran with it as well and that's the
idea that to make life the adventure it's supposed to be so granny Wendy
tells Peter your adventures are over oh no he replies to live to live will be an
awfully big adventure so in the book ends he just finished Schindler's list
and Jurassic Park finally finally gets his Academy Award that he's been dreaming
about since he was 12 that he would have been snubbed for multiple decades before
then as two of the most successful successful well known movies and it says as
he approached his 50th birthday Spielberg showed no signs of being crushed on
his way of his success many a lesser career has collapsed from the burden of
escalating expectations and Spielberg who still bites his fingernails and throws
up before coming to a set in the morning cannot help feeling the horrendous
pressure of having to top himself of simply having to be Steven Spielberg
but throughout his 28 years as a professional filmmaker he has maintained a
sense of inner balance that so far has enabled him to avoid losing his
nerve he seems comfortable even if others are not with his own complexities
and contradictions when his high school friend Chuck Case visited him at the
Long Beach Airport during the filming of 1941 Spielberg surveyed his army of
uniformed actors and World War II airplanes and said with a childlike smile
you know they pay me to do this and that is where I'll leave it for the full
story read the book and I highly recommend watching the documentary as well as
fantastic if you want to buy the book using if you buy the book using the
link to some show notes should be supporting podcasts at the same time that
it's 209 books down 1000 ago and I'll talk to you again soon.
Okay so what you're about to hear is this question was asked a few months ago
actually recorded this few months ago they asked how did history is great
such when you think about hiring all the answers people think I have a
better memory than I then actually do you know if people say David you have a
great memory my wife would laugh at that I forget things all the time it's not
to have a good memory it's I reread things over and over and over again every
single answer every single reference you're about to hear in this 20 minute
many episode came from me searching all of my notes and highlights that option
is now available to you if you like what you hear if you think it's valuable
if you're already running its successful company and you want an easy way to
reference the ideas of history is great as entrepreneurs in a searchable
database that you can go through at your convenience anytime you want then you go
to founders notes dot com and sign up I want to start out first with why
this is so important there's actually this book that came out in like 1997
it's called in the company giants I think it's episode 208 of founders
it's two Stanford MBA students if I remember correctly and they're interviewing
a bunch of technology company founders and in their Steve Jobs is one of
them this is you know right I think even before he came back to Apple
and they were talking about well yeah we know it's important to hire but in a
typical startup a manager or founder may not always have time to spend
recruiting other people and I first read this this Steve's answer to this you
know I don't know two years ago and I never forgot it I think it's excellent I think it's
sets up why this question so important and you should really be spending
existing the early days like basically all your time doing this in a typical
startup manager may not always have the time to spend recruiting other people then
Steve comes in I disagree totally I think it's the most important job assume
you're by yourself in a startup and you want a partner you take a lot of time
finding a partner right he would be half of your company I'm going to pause there
this idea of looking at each new hire as a percentage of the company is genius
why should you take any less time finding a third or a fourth of your company or
fifth of your company when you're in a startup the first 10 people will determine
whether the company succeeds or not each is 10% of the company so why wouldn't you
take as much time as necessary to find all a players if three three of the 10
we're not so great why would you start a company where 30% of your people are
not so great a small company depends on great people much more than a big company
does okay so to answer this question the advantage that that I have making
founders and that you have as a by-park of listening to founders is not only
that I've read you know 300 some biographies of entrepreneurs now but I have all
of my notes and highlights stored in my read wise app and that means I can search
for any topic I can look at the past highlights of books or I can search for
keywords so what I did is first of all like what I've started to do with these
AMA questions is I read them decide which ones I'm going to do next and then
think about it for a few days I don't put it I just literally that I know
that's the next question just let my brain work on it in the background for a few
days and then I'll go through and start searching all my notes and so that's
what I did here and so there's a bunch of you know I don't have I may have like 10 or
15 different founders talking about hiring the first idea is the most obvious
but I think probably works best when you're already established so Steve Jobs is
talking about hey you know great way to hire is just find great work and find
the people that did that and then try to hire them when you're Steve Jobs
that's a lot easier right then if you're just somebody that's in a
reputation maybe you don't have resources maybe your company's rather new or
not as well known David Ogoby I just did Confessions of an Avertising Man
couple episodes ago I think 306 or something like that 307 and
he did the same thing but he's David Ogoby at that point so he would find
he'd go through magazines find great advertising great copywriting and he'd
write the personal letter and then set up a phone call and he says he
wouldn't he was so well known and you know he's one of the best in his field
that he wouldn't even have to offer a job just the conversation then the person
would the he would want to hire the person never mention it and the person
would apply to him and so again I think if you can do that then of course
it's straightforward find for somebody that does great work usually you can
do this I actually have a friend that I can't say who it is he's doing this
right now actually I have a friend that's really good at doing this he's finding
people that do great stuff on the internet and then just cold cold DMing them
and then getting convincing them to work on things and that usually works
especially with people like younger people early on the career there's a
bunch of different ways to think about this and a bunch of different ways to
prioritize so the first thing that that come that came to mind that I found
surprising is you read any biography on Rockefeller and he had a couple ideas
where he felt the optimization you know table stakes that you're intelligent
and you're driven in your hardworking right we don't even have like if you're
listening to this you already know that but he prioritized hiring people
with social skills and so this is what he said the ability to deal with people
is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I pay for I pay more for
that ability than any other under the sun there's the two the second part to
this though and this is also works well if you have access to more resources
he Rockefeller would hire people as he found as he found talented people not as he
needed them it's not like okay standard oil has six open spots let's go find
six candidates right he'd come across what he considered a talented person he
didn't even matter if he didn't know what they were going to do he's like I'm
just going to stack his team and if you really think about the his partners
of standard oil he essentially built a company an executive team of founders
of cuz because he was buying up all their company so it's very rare but
there's a line from tight now I want to read to you taking for granted the growth of his
empire he hired talented people as found not as needed
and then I found another idea in the hiring like the actual interview process so
there's this kind of vanny verbush I did two episodes on them I think it's 270
and 271 he is the most important American ever in history
in terms of connecting the scientific field private enterprise and the government
the most important person to keep alive for the American War effort was FDR
the second one was vanny verbush vanny verbush is like the force gump of this
historical period he is involved in everything from the Manhattan project
to discovering like a young called Shannon to building a mechanical computer
like this guy literally has done he just he pops up in these books over and over again
if you are reading about American business history during World War II
and post World War II you are going to come across the name vanny verbush over and over again
I read his fantastic autobiography called Pieces of the Action
and I came across this weird highlight and so this is his brilliant
and unusual job interview process and so he's talking about his organization
he's running called Amrade at Amrade I hired a young physicist
from Texas named CG Smith the way I hired him is interesting
an interview of that sort is always likely to be on on an artificial basis
in somewhat embarrassing so I discussed with him a technical point
on which I was then genuinely puzzled the next day he came in with a
with a neat solution and I hired him at once
here's another idea this is from Nolan Bushnell Nolan Bushnell's the founder of Atari founder of Chuck E. Shees
and Steve Jobs mentor he hired Steve Jobs when Steve Jobs was like 19 at Atari
he would ask people their reading habits in interviews this is why
one of the best ways his whole thing was he wanted to build all of his companies
laid on a foundation of creative people so that's what he's looking for he's like I need creative people
one of the best ways to find creative people is to ask a simple question what books do you like
I've never met a creative person in my life that didn't respond with enthusiasm to a question about reading habits
actually which books people read is not as important as the simple fact that they read it all
I've known many talented engineers who hated science fiction but loved say books on bird watching
a blatant but often accurate generalization people who are curious and passionate
read people who are apathetic in a different don't I remember one that that's such a great line
and I obviously agree with that I remember one I'm going to read it again a blatant but often accurate generalization
people who are curious and passionate read people who are apathetic and in different don't I remember one particular woman
who during an interview told me that she had read every book that I had read sorry started mentioning books
I hadn't read and she had read those two I didn't know how someone in her late 20s found that
this much time to read so much but I was impressed I was so impressed that I hired her right there
and assigned her to international marketing which was having problems this is why this is why I'm reading this whole second to you
a job with a lot of moving parts benefits from a brain that has a lot of moving parts
it wouldn't be possible to have read that many books without such a brain so you see what I mean like
we start with Steve Jobs saying this is the most important thing that you your roles the leader of the company
the founders to do right and you are and it's so important to study and this is why I'm glad this this question exists
and why I'm glad that I've I took the time and I had like the foresight to like hey I should really organize my thoughts and notes
because there's no way I would have remembered all this without being being able to search my read wise right
but you have Rockefeller saying this is what's important to me you have bush saying this is how I hire
now you have Nolan Bushnell saying well here's another weird thing that I learned
let me go through what Warren Buffett says about this so this is about the quality
one thing that is consistent whether it's jobs Buffett, Bezos, Peter Teal
this just pops up over and over again they talk about the importance of trying to find people that
that are better than you the the hiring bar constantly has to increase now obviously the larger the company gets that's impossible
Steve Jobs has this great quote where he's like you know Pixar was the first time I see I saw an entire team
a tire company of a players but they had 400 players they had 400 team members
he's like at the time apple 3000 seconds impossible to have 3000 a players so there is some
number that your company may grow to where it's just you're just not
you're not going to have thousands of a players in my argument I don't even know if you get a 400 I guess you I mean I
take Steve's word for it on there and Pixar definitely produce great products but it's probably a lot lower than that as well
so Warren Buffett would tell you to use David Ogleby's hiring philosophy
and so Warren said Charlie and I know that the right players will make almost any team manager look good again
that is why it's the most important function of the founder maybe directly next to the product
right above the product actually because those of people building your product we subscribe to the
philosophy of Ogleby and others founding genius David Ogleby this is what Ogleby said if each of us
hires people who are smaller smaller than we are we should become a company of drawers
but if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are we should become a company of giants
David or Jeff Bezos rather use a variation of Ogleby's idea too Jeff used to say in Amazon every time we hire someone
he or she should raise the bar for the next hire so that the overall talent pool is always improving
and they talk about this idea in Amazon where the future hires that we do should be so good
that if you had applied for the job you already have an Amazon you wouldn't get in
that's a very interesting idea take your time recruiting take your time with hiring
this is great book on the history of PayPal
I've recently become friends with the authors named Jimmy Sony and this is in his book
the most fascinating thing that I found was that PayPal prioritized speed
so from the time they found it to the time they sell to eBay it's like four years
Jimmy spent more time researching the book then he spent six years researching the book
I was teasing because like you took a long run of book and they were like
they took the time researching the book then he spent six years researching the book I was teasing because like you took a long run of book then they took to start and sell their company
it just speaks to like the quality he's trying to do but as a byproduct of that like obviously they move fast
but they prioritize speed over everything else except in one area recruiting
Max Ludson kept the bar for talent exceedingly high even if that came at the expense of speedy staffing
repeating A's higher A's B's higher C's so the first B you higher takes the whole company down
A players higher A players B players higher C players so the first B player you higher takes the whole company down
additionally the team the company leaders mandated that all prospects here's another idea for you
all prospects must meet every single member of the team
one is the most bizarre it makes sense if you study I did this three part on Larry Ellison three
parts here is Larry Ellison I should read those books again because the podcast is like 50 times bigger
then then when I publish those episodes and he's just he's just crazy
so he would hire based on the confidence the self confidence level of of the candidate listen to this
I have tears of my eyes I don't know why I'm laughing okay I'm just okay because this is you read about Larry Ellison
and he's one of these people it's like really easy to interface with because you just you just know exactly who he is
and what's important to him that's why I think it's so funny
Ellison insisted that his recruiters hire only the finest and cockiest new college graduates
when they were recruiting from universities they'd ask people are you the smartest person you know
and if they said yes they would hire them if they said no they would say who is and they would go hire that guy and said I don't know if you got the smartest people that way but you definitely got the most arrogant
Ellison's and this is what the personality of the founder is largely the culture of the company Apple is Steve Jobs
Apple is just Steve Jobs in 10,000 lives right I was just texting a founder friend of mine
he was just a podcast actually met him through the podcast and he's going through this like process of self discovery
like he's already started a bunch of companies are really successful but he's like I think I'm more of this type of founder than the other type of founder
and that's good that he's doing that because he's he's hopefully his next mission is like his life's mission you know
and you can't get your life's mission unless you do you figure out who you are Ellison knew who he was
Ellison swaggering combative style became a part of the company's identity this arrogant culture had a lot to do with oracles success
his another odd idea for you is he sharp the founder of four seasons actually could figured out that in his business which was hotels right
that hiring could hiring the right person could actually be a form of distribution for his hotel he gave me the idea
because of what what do we know what do you and I know in our bones that history's greatest founders all red
biographies they all read biographies of people that came before them and took ideas from them is he sharp
is he sharp is trying to build four seasons what do you think he did he picked up a biography of Caesar Ritz the guy that
it risk Carlton is named after the great arguably the greatest hotel the air of all time
and when he realized oh shit Ritz he says remembering that Caesar Ritz made his hotels world famous by hiring some of the
foremost chefs we decided to do something similar so what is he talking about Caesar Ritz went out and partnered with August
coffee what Caesar Ritz was to hotel to building hotels Augustus coffee was to French cooking and so what happened is you partner with world famous chefs
people come into your restaurant that's in the hotel because the world famous chef and now they know about your hotel that leads to more
get that leads to more activity in your restaurant that you own but also leads to more brand recognition of your hotel and then
by as a biopartic that more people staying at hotel so hiring as a form of distribution this is fascinating as a
fascinating idea okay here's a problem you can identify great people right maybe they even want to come work like if
I identified them you've sold them hey this is what this is our mission this is what we're doing and yet humans have complicated
lives they have spouses they have kids they have a reason maybe they can't move across the country to work for you
even though they want to so there's a problem solving element that you see in these books on you have to solve like you've
already identified the person you've recruited them they can go for some other reason okay well the great founders are not going to take no
for an answer I read in in this book called liftoff which is about the first six years of space sex this is what Elon must
it they had anticipated his friends issue having convinced must they needed to bring this brilliant young engineer from turkey on board
it became a matter of solving the problem his wife had a job in San Francisco she would need one in loss angelus right because that's for space
X's at the time there these were solvable problems and Elon's better solving problems than almost anyone else must therefore came into his
job interview prepared about halfway through must told the guy that he wants to hire so I heard you don't want to move to
LA and one of the reasons is that your wife works for Google well I just talked to Larry and they're going to transfer your wife
down to LA so what are you going to do now to solve this problem must could call his friend Larry page the co founder of Google
the engineer sat and stunned silence for a moment but then he replied given all that he would come to work at space X
that's really smart there is another idea when you're promoting are you going to promote one within or from without you
know that's dependent on you depending on what's going on I do think this is interesting though this is again in less
than who built this is really valuable chain of like tire companies in the Pacific Northwest actually found out about
him because Charlie mongers like hey you should read this biography he said it in a he didn't say to me personally he said it to
in like one of the birch are meetings that to study less Schwab had one of the most one of the smartest financial incentive structures
that Charlie monger come across so this is what less Schwab did he did not want to hire from he didn't want to hire other people
from other companies because they might come with bad habits he'd like to train his own executives and so he says in our 34 years of
business we have never hired a manager from the outside every single one of our more than 250 managers and assistant
managers started at the bottom changing tires they have all earned their management job by working up and then another thing
higher the best of the best in a players there a players don't like to be my crew manage and so this came in Larry Miller's
autobiography called driven he owns like he owned like 93 companies all throughout Utah card dealerships movie theaters all kinds
of crazy stuff but he also owned the the NBA team Utah jazz and what was fascinating is he's trying to recruit Jerry Sloan as the coach at the
point at the point and Jerry Sloan would only take the job on one condition and I really like it I really like this idea if you hire me let me
run the team in business right that's what you're hiring me for one of the best things we had ever done was hire Jerry
Sloan as coach at the time he said I'm only going to ask you for one thing if I get fired let me get fired for my own
decisions if you hire me let me run the team slash business here's another idea from Thomas Ellett Edison that I
think is fascinating really the way I think about a founder is like you're developing skills that you can't hire for
you you're going to hire for everything else but you shouldn't be hireable and Edison wasn't Edison expressing his views
on the preeminent role of applied scientists which that's what he considered himself coin the expression I can hire
mathematicians but they can't hire me and so when I read that paragraph for the first time to note I left myself was
developed skills that you can't hire for capitalism rewards things that are both rare and valuable as they lauder
would give you advice that you need to hire people online with your thinking and values hire the best people
this is vital hire people who think as you do and treat them well in our business they are top top priority
so this idea is like that seems kind of weird like hire people who think like you there's obviously not
one right way to build a business I think that your business should be an expression your personality who are as
a person at a core and so I think there is an art to the building of your business and the reason I use the word art
I don't mean in like a hoidi toy toy you know pretentious manner that's not me at all I don't even care about it all art at all really
I mean that you're making decisions not just based on economics like there are non economic important decisions
based on how you're building your business like you could probably make more money doing a decision a
but decision a goes against who you are as a person or you just don't like it or it's just not as elegant or beautiful
and so therefore you don't do it so that's what I mean about you know hire people who think as you do you do
and what for whatever reason when I read essay law to say that I was like okay that there's like this art to what she's doing
one thing that's gonna be help when recruiting this comes for Peter teal I think this is the book zero to one
understand that most companies don't even differentiate their pitches to potential recruits into hiring
so therefore like they're just gonna buy as a byproduct of that you're gonna wind up with a lower overall talent base
and so he says what's wrong with valuable stock smart people are pressing problems nothing but every company makes this these claims
so they won't hope you stand out general and undifferentiated pitches to join your company
don't see anything about why a recruits should join your company instead of money instead of many others
so that idea of like your pitch your actual he would tell you you should be building a undifferentiated commodity
business but even above and beyond that like you're the mission that you're trying to engage everybody to join you in
that pitch that sale sale you're trying to make to potential recruit should be differentiated should not
if that person's applying to five other jobs there should not be like it's like they may not like your mission they may not like your pitch
but they shouldn't be able to compare anything else
I had another quote from Nolan Bushnell hire for passion and intensity that's what he would do or that's what he did when he found Steve Jobs
if there was a single characteristic to separate Steve Jobs from the massive employees it was his passionate enthusiasm
Steve had one full at one speed full blast this was the primary reason we hired him
and one thing all these thunderstorms common is that he know how important hiring is and when something is important
you do it yourself this is again Elon Musk on hiring he interviewed the first 3000 employees at SpaceX
that's how important it was one of Musk's most valuable skills was his ability to determine whether someone would fit his mold
his people had to be brilliant they had to be hardworking and there could be no nonsense
there are a ton of phonies out there and not many who are the real deal must said of his approach to interviewing engineers
I can usually tell within 15 minutes and I can sure I can for sure tell within a few days of working with them
Musk made hiring a priority he personally met with every single person the company hired through the first 3000 employees
it required late nights and weekends but he felt it was important to get the right people for his company
and then the close on this we started with Steve Jobs telling us why it was so important and why should be a large part of how you spend your time
and now we'll close with what you do after what you do after you hire the person this what he says
it's not just recruiting after recruiting it's building an environment that makes people feel they are surrounded by equally talented people
and their work is bigger than they are the feeling that their work will have a tremendous influence and as part of a strong clear vision
so that is the end to that 20 minute mini episode I just really listen to the whole thing
and it really does I think it's a perfect explanation and illustration of why I think founders notes are so valuable
because some of those books I haven't read in five six years and just the ability to have a searchable database of all these ideas
like this collected knowledge of some of the history's greatest entrepreneurs to reference and then contextually apply to our own businesses
it's nothing short of like it's magic that's the really the way I think about it I think it's a massive superpower
it gives me a massive superpower I couldn't make the podcast without it I also think if you have access to it
it will make your business better and so if you're already running a successful business I highly recommend you invest
in the description and you can do that by going to foundersnotes.com
