Founders - #436 Ari Emanuel's Autobiography

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

What I learned from reading Ari Emanuel's incredible autobiography Roll The Calls. Made possible by: Ramp: ⁠https://ramp.com⁠ Applovin: ⁠https://applovin.com⁠ Vanta: h⁠ttps://vanta.com/founders

Every story starts with rage and every story, one way or another, ends up there. Because rage demands a response, a resolution. Rage might not solve every problem, but it shares hell clarifies the problem. Rage brings things to a head. Why does rage get so much bad press? Why are people always telling you to keep calm, carry on, all that bullshit? That's what I would like to know. From the beginning of my career, I've come at things differently.

Rage first, ask questions later. That has been my philosophy. Rage to make them hear you, rage to keep them honest, rage or else you're no different from them. Ben Franklin said it best. There is no little enemy. If I've ever gotten a tattoo, I might have had that line across my knuckles. I'm a Hollywood agent. Rage is one of the occupational hazards.

If I'm good at this agenting thing, and in all humility, just by the numbers, I'm damn good. Rage might be my secret sauce. human beings want. That's what it is to be alive. Our superpower as a species is dissatisfaction. It's how we came to dominate the planet for better or worse. We want something we don't have, we want something we used to have, we wish we didn't have something that we can't seem to get rid of, and that leads to frustration, which leads to anxiety, which leads to rage, and finally action. Rage means shit's finally going to get done. That is an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk about today and one of the most entertaining autobiographies and just frankly craziest books I've

ever read. And it's called Roll the Calls, a memoir written by Ari Emanuel. Manuel is one of the most famous agents on the planet. And now I'd say he's much more. You know more as like a founder and a dealmaker. And I want to jump right into his very first job. He's 24 years old. And he's going to apply to a job listing that says you can be the assistant to talent agent Robert Lance. One of my favorite parts of this book is it almost reads like a diary. It kind of moves through his life in a mainly chronological order. And you kind of get insight into what's going on in his mind that he just happened to write in the book, which I heard he worked on for over a decade. So he's been working on this book for over 10 years. And the reason I think is fascinating,

he just is unbelievably honest. And there's a lot of things that happen in our heads that we don't cheer with other people. And I feel Ari's just like, you know what, forget it. I'm just going to put everything, like, I'm just going to put it down in the book. And you can just read my innermost thoughts. So what I like about this part in his life, he's 24 years old. He applies to be the assistant to a talent agent. He doesn't even know what an agent does, and yet he will come to dominate this entire industry. And he talks about, okay, I got the job as an assistant talent agent. What does my day look like? I have no set hours. My workday has no official start time because there's no official end time. Weekdays, weekends, late nights. I'm here in the office.

and when I'm not here, I'm still sort of here because I'm on call. Whatever Robbie needs, whenever he needs it, I'm up. And so let me actually go to the very, one of my favorite quotes in the entire book is the very first quote that we see in the book. And it's from this actor, director, and producer that was alive in the late 1800s. And it says, work, that's the true story of Hollywood. But who wants to hear it? So what's fascinating to me, and it's obvious as we go to this book,

is Ari's describing his work ethic that he had the very first day he's. steps into this industry that, again, he's going to come to dominate. And he's like that till this day. It's like if his eyes are open, he is working. And there's a bit of an irony here because the talent agent that he is working for is essentially one of the most important talent agents in like literature. And for authors and people in movies that want to option like all these novels and these books. And one of the main themes of the book is the fact that a lot of this rage that Ari carried with him for a decade after decade actually stemmed from the fact that he He was dyslexic, and when he was very young, a lot of people told him, oh, you can't read,

so you must be stupid. And obviously, we know that's not true because you and I have covered, I don't know, there's probably at least a dozen, maybe 20 of the founders that you and I've talked about on the podcast so far that are dyslexic. So this actually comes, this idea like, hey, I'm different. I don't fit in. It winds up being fuel for a lot of these people. So he says, walking home from the office, I tell myself, how crazy that I'm in

charge of all these writers and books when I still can't read. He can obviously read. He can obviously read. He just has a great difficulty. And so he was talking about when he got diagnosed when he was a kid by a doctor being dyslexic. It says the diagnosis was scary for my parents, but it was a huge relief for me. Before the diagnosis, I was a bundle of self-loathing, anxiety, and rage. This is what I mean about this book is almost like you're reading like somebody's personal diary, personal journal.

It just talks about how unhappy is a many persons in life, how he can't sleep, he's going to like anxiety. A lot of things that, you know, I think a ton of founders have to deal with because of the work that we do is just, you know, very high stress. You're taking this on. You're this challenge voluntarily. And, you know, this entrepreneur emotional roller coaster that Mark Andreessen, who also appears later in the book, describes as like, when an entrepreneur is building a company, they only ever feel two emotions, euphoria and terror and nothing in between. And they just kind of, you know, swing from one side to the other, euphoria to terror, back again. And so we see a lot of that in Ari's book. So he says, before the diagnosis, is a bundle of self-loathing, anxiety,

and rage. After the diagnosis, same. But at least I now knew why. I had a reason for all of my darkness. And so one of the things that a young Ari Emanuel learns from his boss, this guy named Robbie, is the importance of building your own curriculum and that you can do it in any way that you want. And so he says, Robbie was the world's greatest reader. In conversation with Robbie, it emerges that he's never once been forced to read. Not only has he read all the books in his office, he's read them voluntarily for pleasure. Ari cannot believe that. Robbie also spends part of each day keeping up a lively correspondence with geniuses around the world. Most of this is through writing letters back and forth. It seems to be his ultimate passion, the thing that gives him the most joy.

So one of my favorite ideas that Ari shares later on the book is he does this later in his career. He builds his own curriculum, and the way he does it is through phone calls. And so, you know, let's say he's interested in any subject in the world, he'll try to find and track down the, you know, the world's most expert on that, call them, you know, dozens of times until he gets them on the phone, and then goes, flies, meets with them, and then builds a relationship,

and then essentially just is learning all day long. Now, there's an awesome story in the book where one thing you learn about Ari, and I think it was there right from when he was a kid, is he kind of has, like, unlimited ambition. You know, he applies, he doesn't even know what an agent does. Okay, well, now I'm in the game.

Like, who's the best guy? Like, let me go learn from that guy. And then what is the best guy doing that, what is the best guy not doing that I think, you know, the person in this profession should do. There's kind of no ceilings on his ambition. You see some of the deals that he does later on the book and kind of where he's at today in his career.

But this story is one of my favorite ones, so I'm just going to read huge chunks of the book to you right now. I listen in on Robbie's phone calls with everyone. Robbie wants me to. It's what assistants do, he explains. It's how assistants learn. Also, if a question arises, the assistant needs to run and find the answer.

I can't lie. I enjoy my role as an invisible audience while Robbie wooes and charms and does his shick. Most people on the other end of the line have no idea than they're, taking notes on their most intimate secrets. A feeling I've never experienced. Being on the inside. It is a feeling of power. Soon after I start working for Robbie, he starts having regular phone calls with a dazzling movie star, a young woman.

Reviewers and audiences fell in love with her, and now every director wants her in their next film. Every agent wants to rep her. Robbie just wants her. Robbie would kill to rep her. She talks to Robbie every day, but will be she talks to Robbie every day, but will be her. not formally agree to be his client. So this goes on for a while. It says gradually the conversations heat up.

Robbie's getting close to signing. Her name's Deborah. He can tell. I can tell. I think Deborah can tell. And then out of nowhere another agent swoops in. Like a pirate, this other agent grabs Deborah right out from under Robbie. And for added indignity, it's the same pirate who recently stole one of Robbie's biggest clients, Al Pacino.

All that work for nothing. that fucking pirate agent. So I'm going to interrupt my own story. I just told this interview that that already did for the book. The word fuck is in this book 460 times. And when he was asked, like, why did you use that word so much? That's, you know, 460 times in your book. He says, well, it's one of the greatest words in the English language. So he says, I can see that Robbie's taking it hard. Weeks later, pirate agent phones us. I put him through and listen while he grills Robbie about some matter related to Pacino. He tells him. He tells him, Tells Robbie to send over the pertinent paperwork.

Right away, Robbie says, voice quivering. I've never heard anyone make anyone quiver. It embarrasses me. A voice in my head then whispers to me. Maybe I should go work for the pirate agent. The pirate agent's real name is Michael Ovitz. Before we get back into this, I want to tell you about the presenting sponsor of this podcast, Ramp. I have been reading a lot about SpaceX lately.

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That is ramp.com. And so before I move on the book, I have a bunch of now funny Ovitz's story. So I've been making podcasts on Ovid's. I think Ovidz's autobiography, who was Michael Ovitz, is one of the best entrepreneur autobiographies ever written. And I was making episodes on him for like, I don't know, probably like five, six years before I met him. And so I was actually at breakfast with my friend Rick Gerson.

And Rick's, I didn't know this, but Rick had been friends with Michael for like 25 years. And we're at breakfast and his phone is on the table and it rings. And I see it because it's very in front of me. He says, Michael Ovis. I'm like, oh, shit. Like, I read his book. Like, I've made podcasts about this guy. And Rick puts the, the phone on speakerphone.

And he goes, hey, Michael, I'm sitting here with my friend. You really should know him. His name's David Senra, and he does this excellent podcast called Founders. And then there's a, there's like a pause. And then Ovitz goes, I listened to four of them yesterday. And Ovitz was on like his boat in like St. Bart's or something. And at the time, he was listening to like the Cornelius Vanderbilt episode, I think the Carnegie episode.

And he was like listing them off. and then I wound up having dinner with him and now I have dinner with Ovid's probably every every few months I just saw him like two weeks ago in New York but he's a huge he's a huge character in this book because eventually what Ari is talking about he's just like well you know I don't want to be

I want to work with the guy that puts the fear in everybody else like I don't want to be working with the guy that's going to cower and I don't want to be on the losing team essentially even though Robbie did a lot of you know kind of mentors Ari and essentially pushes them and says hey you have a lot of talent you have a lot of ambition you need to get out of New York and go move to L.A. and build your own empire.

And the first thing that R.E. does, which is in the book, is, okay, who's the top? CA's the top? I'm going there. Which I think is really smart. So we picked this up where Robbie sees that, you know, Ari's not going to be an assistant for long. He goes, you need to go to L.A. I'm old. A young man like you with your energy, your drive,

you should be out in Hollywood. Get out there and build your own empire. Robbie's right. He's already built his empire, and it's crumbling. It's getting plundered. Barbarians aren't just at the gates. They're taking big shits on his desk. Robbie can't help me anymore. He can barely help himself. He tells me that I'm destined for big things.

His destiny is in the rear view, but mine's up the road, around the bend, waiting. He calls, and then he does a huge favor. Robbie calls his old friend, this guy named Bill Haber. Bill Haber happens to be one of the co-founders of CAA. And so he goes, flies up to California, and tries to get a job, right? And he's going to do exactly what Ovitz did. When Ovid started his career, he starts in the mailroom. Ari is a little bit older.

Most people start in the mailroom, they're like, you know, 2021. I think Ari's like 26 years old at this time. But he's like, okay, I'm going to go to CA. I'm going to start in the mailroom. Says Ovitz has famously said of this place, meaning CAA, we're like Studio 54, not everyone gets in. That is a gross understatement. Nobody gets in.

CAA is the epicenter of the entertainment world and represents the biggest stars and possesses all the clout. I think at the time, Obitz and CIA kind of essentially monopolized Hollywood. I think they represented something like 90% of all the talent, some crazy number like that. And so he applies to get a job.

There's this guy in that he calls office dad, which is in charge of picking the people in the mailroom. And even though Ari's smart and obviously driven, he's like, no, you can't have the job. And he's like, why? He's like, you're too old. And Ari's like, I'm only 26 years old. And he's like, sorry, this job's for younger people.

You're too old. Get out of here. And Arvi does something now that we see that he does this entire career. And he's actually going to be recording a conversation with him on my new show. I assume if you listen to this, you're already listening to my other show, which is not called founders. It's called David Senra, where instead of me just talking about the books I read, I actually talk to some of the greatest entrepreneurs living. And so this is one of the things I want to talk to Ari about. Like, how does this actually work?

Because there's so many times in the book where Ari's MO is just like, I want something, I'm going to call the person once, twice, three, four, 15 times. I just saw Jimmy Iveen a couple days ago. And I told him, we mean, Jimmy were reading the same book. Jimmy had this book with him. And Jimmy and Iveen and Ari are friends. and I was like, is he actually like this? He goes, yes, he's exactly like this. If he wants something for me, he calls me 15 times until he gets it.

And so he does the same thing when he's 26 for like this shitty job in the mailroom that pays nothing. He just wanted to get in the foot, in the door, in the best place possible. This is really smart. So he says, I start pounding office dad for five times a day I call. And then he's getting like pushed away by his assistant. No, he can't come to the phone. He said, okay, cool. So besides the messages I leave with the assistant, I began leaving recorded messages late

at night. Office Dad probably isn't even listening to these messages. I don't care. I keep calling. I know that sooner or later, a basic rule of human nature is going to kick in. If you arrive at your desk every morning and find 11 messages from somebody, the same somebody who left 11 messages yesterday, you've got two options. Call the person back or call the police. And so eventually he calls him back. He says, I tell him, I will give up limb and part of my spleen to work in this goddamn mailroom. And office dad says, I already gave you my answer. And already responds, do not accept your answer. And then, so that's the end of the conversation. Ten more days go by where Ari is calling them 10, 11 times a day. After 10 days of this onsla, off his dad calls. All right,

all right. Look, if you can get yourself to L.A. in one week and Ari gets a job, moves across the country to work in the mail room. This job has no prestige, no status, and no money. And he is thrilled. And so a big part of Ari's story is obviously, I think he became famous because he's the, he's the inspiration for the character Ari Gold, the agent in the show Entourage. I was on HBO for a very long time. But he also comes from a family of these extreme winners. So his older brother is like one of the best doctors

and I think even like a scientist in the world. And then his another older brother was chief of staff for Obama and then the mayor of Chicago. And they're, you know, they're a few years older. I think they're all in like their 20s, maybe early 30s at the time. And he's meeting his brothers and they're making fun of him. They're just like, you're working in the mailroom.

So this is my older brother, Zeke, instead of he become a doctor. My next oldest brother, Ram, is getting into politics. The Emanuals have always been ruthless about achievement and success. And they said, Ari, you're crowding 30 and you're stuffing slips of papers into pigeonholes for men and fancy suits. That's really the best you can do. And his response is, all the best agents started in the mailroom. I share them, including my new bosses, the founders of CA. Even Ovitz the Great started in the mailroom.

And they said, who? I was shocked that they never heard of Michael Ovitz. I already can't remember a time when I didn't know who Michael Ovitz was. Guys, he's the most famous agent in the world. And then he has this great description of his first day at CAA. No one gives me introductions. No one gives me a list of names. Just figure it out, asshole.

That's the whole ethos of the job of the whole agency. And one thing he learns from working at CA and then studying the history of Hollywood is like, oh wait, they think this is like about creatives and directors and actresses. It's like, no, this town is run by salespeople. That he realizes that sales, being good at sales, is the meta skill. He says the whole point of this place is sales. He's talking about Hollywood. The whole point of Hollywood is sales.

I'm annoyed of myself for believing the myth that Hollywood is in the enclave of creatives. It's that too, but it's also a non-stop sales convention. What a pleasant surprise to find Hollywood is full of people like me. Salespeople. This town was founded by salespeople. And so it goes in a great detail of everything that's happening during his career. I would just tell you that he keeps getting promoted and promoted and promoted. and the reason I would think he gets promoted is he's got this rule and it's basically his his MO.

And so it says, okay, I got another promotion. My rule was never say no. Never say you can't do something. Say yes and then figure it out when the time comes. And so he is working in the TV division at CIA. And so he makes this job. It's like, okay, I'm going to learn more about this industry, the TV industry, anybody else knows. It says, colleagues inform me that there's someone else to CIA whose knowledge of the TV industry is way beyond.

The Almighty King of TV. This guy's forgotten more than most people. ever know. He's also one of CAA's founders, Bill Haber. This is Robbie's friend. The guy, remember, Ari was assistant to this guy. That's how he got the introduction to apply in the mailroom to begin with. So it's Robbie's friend. This is who helped me get my first meeting. So I knock on Haber's door and ask him if in my free time, evenings, weekends, I might just be able to do stuff for him to pitch in. I'm just looking to help, I say. I'm just looking to learn. And so in addition to his full-time job, he starts shadowing and spending him so much time with

Bill Haber as possible and trying to soak up all the knowledge. And it's just really, really, smart what he does. He says, I'm trying to show him that I'm paying attention to all these weeks, that one day I sit down and I draft a white paper on the emergence of the international TV market. I'd done loads of research combed through stacks of industry journals. I slipped the white paper to Haber. Days later, he invites me to his house. I read your paper. It's very impressive. I'm going to get you promoted. I'm going to make you our next agents. And he sees this as a huge opportunity because if you study the early days of CAA, they converted what most people consider their put down into one of their greatest strengths. And so I'll tell you more about that in one second.

So he says, as long it's TV, I go buck wild. I meet writers, actors, directors. I start really figuring out the whole ballgame, who the players are, what the rules are. I start running my own game at last. When Mr. Ovitz and Ronnie Meyer and Bill Haber first broke from William Morris, they had no clients. They were working in one tiny room sitting on folding chairs. And the only talent they could attract were TV writers and actors. They became known derisively as the TV boys, but they converted that put-down into their greatest strength. Now they own TV in this town. TV made them. It filled their first bank accounts, put gas in their first Jaguars, and fertilized the fairway-sized lawns of their first mansions. And then he talks about one of the innovations that existed before

Ovitz, which is called packaging. So packaging existed before Ovitz and CAA, but Ovitz took it further and did it better. And you'll see a lot of, I think Ari does a lot of very similar things with the entire occupation of agents. He takes it farther and did it better. So Ari tells us why was packaging so important and why did it generate so much money. Packaging works like this. Rather than negotiate one deal for one client

and collect a one-time 10% commission, we bundle several clients, an actor, a director, a producer, and then sell that bundle, which we call a package to a TV network. And then we tell them, we will forego the commission. Instead, we'll just take a tiny percentage

every time this baby airs. If the show becomes a hit, for years, that means a steady drip of dollars. If the show becomes a classic airing for generations, you're talking a river of cash that will flow for the rest of our natural lives. And before we get back into this, I want to tell you about Apploven. One of my all-time favorite quotes is from the book zero to one. In that book, Peter Thiel writes, he says the single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas. And that is

exactly what Apploven has done with their advertising platform. Apploven connects you with over a billion potential new customers in mobile games. Apploven allows you to capture undivided attention. Apploven ads are full-screen videos that are watched for an average of 35 seconds. That is retention that blows other ad platforms out of the water. And you can launch on App Loven in minutes. You set the goal and App Loven achieves it. No complex setup, no expertise needed.

And App Loven scales quickly. They can put your ads in front of over a billion potential customers. Other businesses have seen immediate results scale to hundreds of thousands of dollars of spend per day and increase their revenue by millions. So you want to get started quickly before all of your competitors are on Apploven. And you can do that by going to apploven.com. That's apploven.com. And then I want to tell you about Vanta. Vanta Vanta Vanta helps your company prove your secure so more customers will use your product or service. Vanta is an AI-powered security expert that scales with you.

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after becoming a Vanta customer. Automate your compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta will help you win trust, close deals, and stay secure faster and with less effort. Go to vanta.com, for such founders, and you'll get $1,000 off. That is vanta.com forward slash founders. And so he's learning a lot about Hollywood and about the agent business of CA. He's also learning that he might not be cut out to work in a big company. It says, my brand of unfiltered honesty doesn't always play well. And yet I keep doing it.

I think it's just part of his nature. And so over time, small group of other discontents inside of CA are recruiting him and saying, hey, we can leave and start our own agency. This is exactly what Ovitz and his co-founders did, you know, maybe 20 years earlier than we were in the story. And Ari's kind of like sharing his inner monologue as this is happening. As someone who loves agenting, who studies the crowd, the history, how can I just walk away from three of the best who ever did it? These dudes have advanced doctorates in agenting. They're not good. They're great. Partly their greatness stems from an abiding sense of their own

greatness. Self-belief, that's half the game in any occupation, but it's everything for an agent. So eventually he leaves Ovitz and the rest of people, CA, then now make them a target, make them an enemy, and he describes the business in general. It's CIA in particular, but the agenting business in general. I think this was a very interesting paragraph to me. Hand-to-hand combat among agents and agencies has always been a fact of life, but this thing with CIA feels nastier, more dangerous. Maybe it's because there's a new energy in Hollywood. The 1980s are a huge vibe shift. Kill or be killed used to be a metaphor. But now the major agencies are animals and they're raping and pillaging each other. And so there's all this back and forth.

There's war with CIA. They're also being recruited by a bigger agency. And there's just a lot of distractions. And I love what he does here again. Because it's like all at the end of day, all that matters is like if I can be the best agent possible and I be the best agent possible by serving the clients the best, then I'm going to win. Like the score will take care of itself over time. And so he says, the only way to do good agency is to tune out all the extraneous noise and that's what I do. I keep grinding. I keep rolling the fucking calls

and sure enough it solves everything as hard work always does. My list grows and so does my confidence. So I didn't know what this meant. The title of the book, Roll the calls. And he says, what am I doing here? I'm just keep rolling the fucking calls. So basically, most agents do this.

I think in Ovid's book he said he did something like two to 300 calls a day every day. already does the same and I think all the great agents do. And so they have their assistant or secretary. It's like, okay, most of these calls are a minute, two minutes, three minutes. I don't want to waste any time. So essentially rolling the calls is like, I'm on the phone. As soon as I'm hanging up, you better have the next person waiting.

Then I do that, maybe two or three minutes. And then as soon as I hang up, there is, like, we cannot, there should be no time of me like sitting around waiting for the next call. So what he means? We're just going to keep rolling the fucking calls. And I think there's something just to this idea of like, whatever you do, this great quote about this game, Les Schwab, who go. one of the most valuable businesses, this tire franchise that's named after him in the Pacific

Northwest. And he says, you know, when it comes to success, it's like whatever you do, you have to do it with gusto. It's a case of volume. You just have to do more of it than anybody else does. And I think it's really hard not to be successful in almost any endeavor. Like if, let's say essentially what is an agent, right? Agent's like a salesperson. It's like the greatest salespeople ever. So if you did 300 sales calls a day, it's going to be really hard for you to have some level of success. You might not have, you know, nobody be able to monopolize Hollywood like Ovitz or have the career that already did, but probably not going to wind up a loser if you have that kind of work ethic. I think it's really interesting.

Now, another thing that was also surprising of a book is how many times he says one of the most startling or kind of like disorienting questions you can ask somebody that people are not used to being asked is, are you happy? And you just like throw it out with no preface. And so he's asking that to other people. And in many cases he'll be able to like recruit from, you know, other clients, from a different agency or whatever. but he starts to ask him that question to himself.

He does this several times about the book. And so it's like, well, what's your answer to are you happy? For months, I live and work in a bubble, noticing nothing but the immediate task at hand. And then one day I feel the blinders fall away and I hear myself, ooh, this place is fucked. With fresh eyes, I look around and realize no one's happy. Not one person. On the contrary, there's an outbreak of low-grade depression. I would have to say, after reading this memoir, reading Ovitz's like these like, these, like,

sound like terrible way to like live a life. And so he will move from agency to agency to agency until he starts his own. And one, I think that's a sign of an entrepreneur. He's just not going to be happy until he runs his own business. But almost, and it's like almost impossible to have like a good culture when you're essentially going to war and combat and fighting and yelling at people. Like the stories in the book are wild. I really hope you pick it up and read it. And if you're not going to read it at least by the audiobook, which I have the audiobook, the Kindle and the physical copy, I'm telling you, there's some wild stuff in the book. But at this point, he's with a bigger company called ICM.

And so this is where he's like, oh, and this is after he left this other company. And he's like, oh, like, you know, I didn't realize like how unhappy I am. Why am I so unhappy? He says, there's just like a terrible culture here. It says with fresh eyes, I look around and realize no one's happy. Not one person on the contrary. There's an outbreak of low-grade depression. All I see are long faces.

Why? Because culture. ICM's culture is Drek. Long before coming to ICM, I had heard the famous joke. you know what ICM stands for? I cover myself. Me first, me last, me always. I've just learned the hard way that the jokes speaks to an essential truth. I go into a funk. I ask myself, what have I done? Why do I keep picking the wrong horse? ICM isn't set up to do good work. Day one, they tell you, here's your desk, here's your phone, now fuck off. And this is when he's saying, I realize I'm not happy.

So he says, work has always been central to my identity, my physical and mental health. I'm also hazily aware that my anxiety isn't about work. It's about meaning. What do I want my life to mean? I want my life to mean something. And what can it ever mean if I'm under the thumb of a bunch of dumbasses? Money matters to me, as it does to everyone who grew up without it. But I'm not taking a hundred spins around the fucking sun just to pile up more chips than the other guy. Money isn't the thing that makes me get up at 4 a.m. Money is all my bosses care about, yet another reason for their shitty culture. we see his inner monologue. He's like, I'm going to quit again. And really, when he's

having these conversations with himself and when you read this, it's like, oh, it's like, the solution is obvious than outsider. It's like you're a born entrepreneur. You need to start your own company. This feels irrational. I just got to ICM. I barely had a cup of coffee at Intra Talent. Before that, I was a fleeting presence at CAA. Is there something in me that can't stand stability? Is there something about me that can't sit still? Early summit in 1994. I rise early, do a hard workout, go to the office. Roll calls for several hours. Speak to 50 or 60 people. about 50 or 60 problems, then look up and realize I'm spent and I'm hungry. I walk down the street to the restaurant. One block east of the restaurant, I stop, wait for the light. Cars whipping by.

I take note of how fast they're going. Someone could get really hurt here. At the restaurant, I sit by myself at a corner table, wolfing down my omelet while reading a script. Half an hour later, head back to the office, thinking about a thousand things. At the same corner where I noted earlier how fast the cars were whipping by, I stop, wait for the light. When the walk sign flashes, I step off the curb and turn my head just in time to see the front grill of a black pickup. So he's going to get hit by the car. He says violently, I land on the hood of the truck and roll onto the pavement. My body bounces once with a wet thud and comes to rest in the middle of the road. I'm lying in the street bleeding out. Someone's shouting in my face. Hey man, are you okay? What the fuck? Do I look okay? The shouter is

the driver of the black pickup. He sounds scared. He should be. Through gridded teeth, I tell him that I'm hurt bad, then make him a promise. If I'm ever able to move again, I'm going to fucking kill you. I'm reasonably confident that my spine is still in one piece. I'm not paralyzed. For this, I give profound and tearful thanks, but then I can't stand up and I descend from gratitude to regret. Berating myself for doing it wrong, by which I don't mean stepping off the curb, I mean life. So this is the fascinating part. I'm going to finish this part. Think about this. to get this existential dread. Why do I keep moving around places?

Why can I not stand still? I'm picking the wrong horse. Like, what is wrong with me? You just life just not feel right. This is so important. He almost dies and realizes, oh, the only thing that matters is how I'm spending my time. And I'm assuming that I have more time than I do.

And I don't know how much time I have because I didn't think I was going to hit by this pickup. I wasted my one precious life. I've let other people discourage me and stop me. I've let my own anxiety control me and lead me away from my purpose. I've accepted the delusion that there's time, plenty of time. It's so clear now. Life is not a dress rehearsal. Everyone says this, but few act on it. Opening night is right now. The curtain is already up. And so he turns the worst thing that ever happened

to him into one of the best things that ever happened to him. He says five days after the accident, I drag myself back to the office. I'm not just back in the office. I'm the first in the office every morning. I'm crying out to my assistant. Roll the fucking calls, except my assistant isn't in yet. Over the next several months, I work harder than I've ever worked in my life while also hitting my rehab like a maniac. No more bullshit. So when he says no more bullshit, he means about he's going to start his own company. And at the exact moment that he wants to start his own company, he says ICM offers me a long-term deal. He's crushing it. So he's bringing in so much business. I don't even think they know he wants to leave yet, but they want to prevent him from even entertaining that thought.

I can't deny that their offer is tempting. It would pay me a million dollars per year. It would enable me to get married, to start a family, to provide for that family in a big way. Take it, I tell myself, in a voice that sounds a lot like my father's. Take the fucking deal. But another voice, a voice more like myself, whispers, life is not a dress rehearsal. At the next staff meeting, I look around the conference table and listen to the bosses yammering and think, not even for a million dollars. And then we go back to his inner monologue.

Again, if you feel this way, you have to take the risk. If this is the way you're talking to yourself, this is the authentic, feelings and ideas and thoughts that are in your brain, you have to take the rest. You have to jump. And so the company is going to be the biggest regret of your life if you don't. I'm burning with desire to build something of my own. The thrill of inventing something new out of thin air. So many people don't want me to do anything.

So many people don't want anyone to do anything. And all those doubters and Debbie Downers get extra loud when you're trying to be creative in a space not known for creativity. Amen. We pick a launch date, Wednesday, March 29. 1995, my 34th birthday. And remember he gave us a subscription of Michael Ovitz's early days, his startup at CAA, just four guys in a room. This is now a description of the beginning of his new company, four demons, rolling calls nonstop. I'm in the office at dawn every day and don't head home

until after midnight. Rolling calls constantly. So he does 300 calls a day. And then he talks, he's like essentially burns himself out, which happens a few, multiple times in the book. And usually, like, he's like, should I go to the hospital? I can't get out of bed. And so he's talking to his wife. This might be his girlfriend, but I think she turns into his wife at the time. Her name is Sarah. He says, in the morning, I tell her, get to take me to the ER.

I cannot move. I don't go to the hospital, but I go to bed for a week. When I finally climb out before I stumble into the shower, I get on the scale. I've dropped 20 pounds. So he's talking about the stress. Remember, turned down a million dollars guaranteed. It could be, you know, spending a ton of money, supporting a family, not worrying about bills. he's on a shoestring budget, worried that his business is going to go out of business constantly

and over again, doing everything to survive because he's that innate desire to do something on its own to build something out of thin air. And it's so grueling. He pushes himself so hard and does this for his whole life. He drops 20 pounds. And so then he talks about the early dates of his company. We need to be careful. We need to watch every penny, tabulate every microsecond of cell phone usage. So some people are going to be too young for this. I remember this. You used to buy minutes. And so, like there was a real cost of like it wasn't unlimited phone unlimited data like at 100 minutes a month or whatever and you went over they were taxed you and so he's like hey we're on cell we cannot afford

to go over and so this from this um this like constraint he he actually discovers what come what becomes like it's kind of his m o for the rest of his career that he never says goodbye or hey like he just hangs up in mid sentence and he started doing that because he didn't want a big cell phone bill each of us gets a monthly allotment of minutes from our phone carrier and there are huge penalties for going over keep every call quick we remind each other A great exercise for honing your pitch for getting to the point. It's not unlike the way Ernest Hemingway learned his craft at the Kansas City Star. Firm deadlines, tight word counts, plus the stars hard-boiled the rulebook,

helped create Hemingway's singular voice. Forced to keep it short and simple, Hemingway made sparseness his art, even part of his credo. Scarcity does something similar for me. I now feel licensed to just hang up whenever. Mid-thought, mid-sentence, doesn't matter. Call ended. goodbyes take time and time is might. But what starts as a cost-saving measure

quickly becomes my signature style. No long goodbyes, no goodbyes, period. Just roll the next call. And again, there's a lot more detail in the book, but it has to be unbelievably scrappy with the startup. They're completely underfinanced. And says, new hires scream loudest

when they learn of our travel policy. There is none. If I go to New York, I sleep on the floor of a friend's house. And then he just talks about his level of education before the fact that he would like, you know, says he compromised his own house. health that his company has to be successful. My partners have mortgaged their houses,

maxed out their credit cards. They borrowed $100,000 from one friendly producer with no way of paying it back anytime soon. They brought in chairs from their garages so we have something to sit on. Someone brought in their kitchen table and we're using it for a desk. Everyone's all in. How can I be any less? And then he's got some great stories about Hollywood history. And one of the reoccurring things that you and I talk about over and over again is that, you know, history doesn't repeat human nature does. And, you know, in the early days of Hollywood, it was essentially like the forefront of technology over time. You know, you build these successful businesses, people don't like change. And his idea, and Ari's, I think one of his superpower is that he would just embrace change.

He's like, you just are not fighting the future in these technological revolutions. And he says, I kind of understand people not liking change, especially technological change. I just can't understand them hiding from it. And yet that seems to be the most common reaction to change down throughout history. When Talkies arrived, so Talkies were just movies with sound, right before that it was all silent movies. When Talkies arrived, Hollywood thought the world was ending. And it was. Silent films were a gorgeous art form, beloved by millions of fans, and completely different from what came after. There was no gradual transformation to Talkies. It was a mass extinction event, and it dislocated thousands of artists, and was also completely inevitable. Pretending that

it wouldn't happen, that it wasn't happening, was more than just a big fat waste of time, more than a tragic waste of opportunity, more than self-sabotage. It was stupid because every loss brings equivalent compensations. I'm a fighter. I'll fight anyone anywhere. But the one thing I'll never fight is the future. It was a great line that Mark Zuckerberg said that the biggest risk is not taking any risk in a world that is changing really quickly. And the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks. I would have to imagine that R.E. agrees with that quote. And so two of the biggest acquisitions that R.B. is going to do in the future,

he's going to buy Vince McMahon's wrestling company and then Dana White's Ultimate Fighting Championship. But before he buys both of them, he winds up signing them as clients. And so I like this background that he gave us about, and there's this great documentary on Netflix about Vince McMahon and just building, you know, this media empire. Essentially, well, I guess I'll just read this to you. It was just like, it was all these different wrestling companies. And they would like, hey, I have wrestling in the Northeast and I have it in the Midwest and I have in the South and you're going to respect my boundaries. And Vince is like, no, I'm not going to respect anything.

I'm going to, since you cobble all these together and I'm going to unify everything and kind of dominate this entire industry. And so at this part of the book, Vince and Ari are having a meal together and says 20 years ago, Vince explains. wrestling was the opposite of the talent agency game. There was no competition. Every little wrestling outfit had its regional turf, and everyone respected everyone else's turf. Vince said, fuck that. He saw cable coming,

thought it was going to change the game, and then only being big would ensure his survival. And so he devised the plan to drive his competitors out of business. He started by promoting wrestling shows everywhere, turf or no turf. He marketed nationally, built up a national profile, a national audience.

And once he was big, the clear leader in the wrestling world, he leveraged his power, ruthlessly. He began blackmailing cable companies. He'd mount a huge event on the same night as an event mounted by a competitor and forced a cable company to choose. Me or them. It wasn't really a choice. Ultimately, if he couldn't drive a competitor out of business or steal their best talent, he'd just buy them out, fold them into his empire, and then move on to the next victim. One day, the wrestling world woke up and Vince McMahon was the only game in town. And then he talks

about the similarities that between him and Vince, we discover that we both have trouble sleeping. that we both obsess about the future, and that we're both focused on figuring out what comes next before anyone else. And so this is when, right at this meeting, Vince agrees to sign to endeavor. And so a few years later, Ari realizes that a very similar thing is happening in his business, and the only way that he's going to survive is to get big fast. He says there are 200 talent agencies operating in Hollywood, and I don't know how most keep the lights on. Yes, we're one of the biggest, one of the big five, but that's not enough. We're still not safe. Only the biggest one or two are going to survive the coming technological earthquake and mass corporate consolidation.

Until we get bigger, much bigger, I cannot rest. But how can we get bigger? And until we're bigger, how can we appear bigger? I see only one solution, merge with another agency. This is terrifying. It would expose us to a thousand unknowns. Equally terrifying is the choice. Which agency? It doesn't matter. So this is very fascinating. I've talked to a few elite entrepreneurs, and I'm always curious, like, who they go to for advice or who they think they got the best piece of advice from or who helps them, like, shape their thoughts. And people that don't even know each other would say the same thing, which is David Geffen, which is really fascinating. And so Ari, in this book, when he has to make one of the biggest decisions in his life, he actually goes to David Geffen.

And what I heard about the, what I heard about Geffen and why he's so valuable to see counsel from is because he'll tell you the shortest path from here to there that is very common, especially because of an entrepreneur, like, so close to their business, that you'll come in and you're just like this super complicated problem. And David kind of just, Geffen just immediately like gets to the heart of the issue. He's like, no, no, no, no. It's like, very simple.

It's like, fire that guy, marry that girl, sell that business, buy this, merge here. He's just like, there's only like, he hones on the most important idea and tells you to ignore everything else. So it gets you from the shortest path to here there. And we see he does this with RE2. I see only one solution merged with another agency.

So he's talking to David Geffen about this. But he's telling, he's like, I'm scared. This is terrifying. It's going to expose me to a thousand unknowns. and then equally terrifying, I don't know which agency to merge with. David Geffen, what should I do? And he says, doesn't matter. David Geffen tells me when I seek his advice.

Doesn't matter. David, what the fuck? Ari, it's like when you're in traffic. The one thing you can't do is stand still. Even if you don't know which way to go, you just have to go. Hit the gas, Ari, go. So this is in 2003. The successful completion of the merger is going to happen many, many years later.

There's all these failed negotiations, start, stops. But what I thought was very interesting, what he did. does, when he realizes like merging is like his only way out, he goes and he consults this Harvard Business School professor. That was an expert on mergers. And there's some interesting ideas in here that Ari gets from this professor that I want to share with you. And so they're talking. Ari and his partners are spending, you know, a few days at Harvard with the professor, and they go over everything. He understands like getting a downloaded talent agency business. And at the end, he goes, okay, well, it's just more important that you accept one basic fact about

mergers. And Ari's like, okay, what's that, professor? They don't exist. There's no such thing as a merger. Every merger is a purchase. This dream of a perfect union of two companies, of symbiotic alignment, synthesis of strategic interests and cultures is just that, a dream, a lie. It sounds great in theory, never works in practice. With every merger, there's a dominant and a submissive, an alpha and a beta, a winner and a loser. Every merger is really just one company swallowing the other. The rest is spin. So Mark Wahlberg was one of Ari's clients. Mark has this idea to sell this show about essentially loosely based on his life when he first moves to L.A. He's got this entourage of like hometown friends. And they, uh, he has already sell it to HBO.

Ari successfully sells at HBO. He's vaguely aware there's a character based on him, uh, had no idea that the show was going to be a massive success. had a hard time watching the show, and then realizes, and I think one of his partners told him this early, which I think he said in another interview that he wasn't sure of, that, oh, this show being a hit and you have being a character show is going to be phenomenal for your business. And so this is the impact that Entourage and Ari Gold, the character Ari Gold had on Ari, the real Ari, and his business. I'm asking myself all the time, the same question everyone asks me. Where does Ari Gold end and where does Ari Emanuel begin? People jump on the phone with me and think they're the first to say,

am I speaking to Ari Emanuel or Ari Gold? Ha ha ha. At the end of every call, meal, meeting, human interaction, people can't stop themselves. They scream, let's hug it out, bitch. Then the strangest thing happens while supplying Walberg and Piven,

Jeremy Piven is the actor that plays Ari Gold, and the writers with fresh material to build their character based on me, I begin borrowing material from that character, subliminally imitating the guy who's imitating me, doing his gestures,

quoting his best lines. I can't deny, that the show is helping me do my job. Suddenly, people take my calls 10 times faster. They listen more closely when I speak. They sign with me at a record-breaking clip. My list explodes. I discover that I can cold-call anyone now.

I've always been a cold-caller. I was never afraid to dial any number. But now the call always goes through. People might not want to talk to Ari Emanuel, but they sure as shit want to talk to Ari Gold. Fame brings new clout. New clout brings new business. New business brings more.

clout. A hit show increases my business, my visibility, my influence, and acts as a force multiplier on the power that I wield. And so one thing that recurss about the book is these conversations that Ari's having with his therapist. He calls his therapist Dr. Calm. This is what I mean about, I think a lot of people wouldn't be comfortable. I have a lot of respect that he just puts all all this crazy stuff in the book. And so he's going through, he talks about multiple times, like, why am I unhappy? I'm really successful. That success is flea. That success is fleeting that he didn't understand like he had a goal he gets that goal he's got to feel great and feels great for like 15 minutes or a day and you know then he's on to the next thing he's

back to kind of being miserable but the reason i bring this up is because he talked he also tells us what his therapist tells him and at this point his therapist is telling him that your personality type you actually want to be god like you think you're godlike you want to have godlike powers, which again is, I think people that feel that way, certainly are less likely to admit it, you know, out loud, much less put it in a book. But Ari's take on this is a little different that he essentially just fears for the safety and survival of his company, put everything in the building endeavor. And if it goes away, a huge part of him goes away. So he says, but Dr. Calm is wrong. I don't want to be God. I want to be safe. Endeavor isn't safe. And if

endeavor isn't safe, then I'm not safe. And so then Ari tells the story of which is going to turn into his second biggest acquisition. This is when he's going to eventually buy the UFC for $4.2 billion. This is the ultimate fighting championship run by Dana White. Dana White, one of my favorite entrepreneurs and CEOs operating today. I was lucky enough to spend time with him in person. And I've been a fan of his for years. I would watch his press conferences. It's like the same person in the press conference, the same person in person. And so Ari is a little late to the game because Dane and his partners

have been slowly building this cult-like following. And the first time Rere discovers him is he's looking at like the top-ranked shows. He's like, what is this UFC stuff? He says, looking over the TV ratings, I noticed the numbers for one new show on Spike TV.

Something called UFC, Ultimate Fighting Championship. It reminds me when I first noticed the ratings for Vince McMahon's wrestling show. These are serious what-the-fuck numbers. I had not been paying close attention to the show and that's my bad because it's a phenomenon among a wide swath of a massive

America. I learned that the guy in charge of the UFC is someone named Dana White. I had never heard of Dana. And so he calls up data, gets a meeting, and then makes a big mistake in trying to sign him for the first time. I then compare in the meeting, WWE to UFC, my biggest blunder. Like proud parents, they don't want to hear that their kid looks like somebody else's. They want to hear that their kid is singularly beautiful. Meeting over. So he thought he messed it up. And he says multiple times. Like some defeats, you think you're out and, like, they turn you down. And then a month later, two months later, sometimes five years later, it actually turns.

And like you wind up signing a – you close the deal, sign the client, whatever the case is. So in this case, a month later, Dana calls him up, right? Dana's in New York City and wants a meeting with the head of boxing at HBO. His dream is to get the UFC on HBO, but he's been getting Stonewall for months. Ari, he says, if you can get this meeting, I'll sign with you. But the meeting has to be today. He's like, today? Dana goes, today.

Is this what's going to take for you to sign? Dana says that's what's going to take. I have so much airtime on HBO right now. It's ridiculous. So he's got entourage, curb your enthusiasm, and the Ali G show. He's signed all of this. And so he calls the head of sports at HBO. I called Dana back exactly three minutes after his initial call.

Head over to HBO, dude. You have a meeting. Dana's meeting with HBO does not go well. He doesn't get the deal. But already says at least he made one deal today with me. I send over the agency agreement for his signature. So just like with Vince McMahon, he signs Vince McMahon first before he buys his company. He signs Dana White eventually before he buys E UFC.

Now, there's a bunch of personal details. I'm omitting. I mean, the book's over, I think, 400 pages. So there's a lot in here I have to admit. But this was very shocking. A stray bullet killed Ari's uncle. So Ari's father was like, I think, five years old, walking with his older brother. Okay?

And it says, when he was five, my father went first. walk and his older brother Emmanuel, with his older brother, Emmanuel, and they came upon a street demonstration. They get trapped by the surging mob. There's this outbreak. Somebody shoots a gun. A bullet bounces off the pavement and kills Emmanuel. I think he's like 10 or 11 at the time. The reason that Ari's last name is Emmanuel is because this actually happened. So it says, my father, his family, all my beloved ancestors were never the same and they commemorated to the permanent transformation by changing their last name from Arabok. to Emmanuel. I thought about this a lot growing up. One errant bullet, and now we're all

Immanuels. And our children will be Emmanuel's and their children. One act of rage altering the trajectories of so many lives. And so he's also honest about the fact that his reactions to the stress severely harm his personal relationships. It leads to the divorce from his first wife, Sarah. And he says, the lack of sleep, the gushing adrenaline, my energy runs down, my fuse gets shorter. I snap at people for the little things. I snap at Sarah a lot. With friends and my family, my short fuse does nothing good. Aside from my full-time job, my full-time obsession, the possible merger, I feel a compulsive

need to read everything, newspapers, magazines, trades, all of them every day, even if it takes me ten times longer than the other guy, which means getting up at 3 a.m., work out, shower, hustle downstairs, dig into the big reading pile, struggle with English as if it's my third language until about 6.30 a.m. Then my boys are up, screaming, wrestling, searching for their sneakers. Sarah says, I'm crazy to go this hard. I would feel crazier not to. Which thing I ask her, am I supposed to give up exactly? And then ever so gradually, I start to give her up, and vice versa. And so all of this stress goes back to the fact that he does not feel safe because endeavor is not be safe until I grow big. The way I grow big is to go to this merger. The love of agenting,

the dedication to agenting is the reason behind this potential merger with William Morris. agenting is the reason behind my nightmare workouts, my ice plunges, my frantic push-ups until my arms feel like noodles. I don't do it because it feels good or because it makes my suits fit better. I torment my body and my mind to stay alive because I have to be alive in order to be the kind of agent my clients need. And he talks about this crazy morning routine. He was so dedicated. The first thought I had about this is like, I wonder if he puts this morning routine in the book, which I guess now he's more of like an entrepreneur and agent. It's like almost described this like intense, almost ridiculous morning and routine as a way to like to distract his competitors.

But look at this is my morning routine. Get my competitors doing this two hour morning routine while instead of doing this routine that I made up, which I think is probably true, I'm just going to be rolling calls for two hours. This is the thought I had first. The first thought I had when I read this. So let me just read this morning routine. It's hilarious to me. He says my morning routine is essentially the same. Upon waking, I drink two bottles of mineral water.

do 40 minutes of stretching. I do 10 minutes of dynamic warmups, do a regimen of extremely difficult breathwork, then dive into the sauna, then 20 minutes of meditation, then 10 minutes in the ice plunge, then 20 minutes of infrared light therapy, then a protein shake with coffee and vitamins, topped off with a cup of live worms to eat the bad bacteria in my gut. Then I go to the office, and I roll the first day's calls on his treadmill desk, by the way. About 8.30 in the morning, I permit myself to have my first food of the day and then I don't eat again until dinner. Both meals are vegan.

And so at the same time, he's trying to save his company. We have the 2008 financial crisis. It says that 2008 ends I feel dead. I'm in a deep fatigue. There are days when I don't know how I'm going to make it to my 7 p.m. bedtime. I worry that it's the flying. My job requires me to be on planes constantly,

even when the last thing I want to be on is a plane. Fly across the country, fly across the world, sit down for a meal with some potential client or investor. Then get back on the plane, stare out the window, and then take a car to a house and arrive just as my kids are going to bed. The general public doesn't understand what a huge part of the job flying has become. What a sole obliterating part. But every business traveler knows.

Each flight shortens your life by several hours. Not sure if it's the recirculated oxygen, the dehydration, the alienation, the radiation, the insomnia, the altitude, or some combination. But every time I step off a plane, I feel as if someone had taken the thread of my life and snipped off a little piece. So this deal to merge with William Morris, the first meeting they have happens, I think, in 2003, and the people running William Morris essentially laugh him out of the room. They're like, you're so small, we're much bigger, we're like, you're this upstart, we've been around forever,

you can't buy us. You know, if we're going to merge, we're going to dominate you. I don't think anybody, you know, from his personality, you could see that already is not going to want to be dominated by anybody. And so he's essentially destabilizing his own negotiations by leaking to the press to this Hollywood gossip website. and so every morning the person, the editor of this website, he just calls her. He says, I put her at the top of my call sheet each morning and feed her a steady diet of tidbits about ongoing negotiations between Endeavor and William Morris. My aim is to destabilize William Morris, make everyone in that building paranoid and uncomfortable.

This goes on, this back and forth between them, and some of the moves he does. Probably goes on for 20 or 30 pages, maybe, something like that. But what realized, it goes back to what the Harvard professor told them. It's like, no such thing is a merger. One company's going to swallow the others. How are you going to do this? And so eventually, he, like, there's, he knocks out, like, two of the people in William Morris. He agrees to the merger, lets them pick the name, says, oh, you can be chairman and everything else.

And then once he does that, he gets, like, votes behind, like, behind their back. And essentially he says, hey, like, either you, like, almost like shives them. So, like, shows up, it's like, we have the votes. We can pay you off and you can get this care package. There's, like, a lot of money. Or you can, you know, fight this. but you're going to wind up losing. And they didn't see it coming.

And so the note I left to myself at this section is Ari makes his move. And so he's going to knock out this guy named Wyatt and Wontrop. And I really like what he, the way he describes this here because, you know, he's unapologetically extreme. He goes, I hope I get out of the game before the sharks eat my legs. But I also know the odds are 50-50. All the young agents and former assistants I've ever known, if given half a chance, would do me exactly the way I did Wyatt and Wynetrob. It's their job, especially if I taught them well. Circle of life in Hollywood and nobody at any level of the food chain should ever be surprised when it's their turn.

Critics carp about the money we've spent to get rid of Wyatt and Wide Trial. So costly, they say. No, actually, for the paltry sum of $44 million, which is what the bylaws are going to be, we've acquired the oldest and most prestigious talent agency in town. I wish I could say that in the wake of our glorious triumph, that I don't spend one minute thinking back to the first meeting with Wyatt and Weintraub. the laughter they laughed at me are you by us i wish i could say i didn't think about it but that would be a lie and so then he gets the merger now he's big and then this this is a reoccurring theme throughout

the book where he fights really really hard struggles really really hard to accomplish something gets his goal after a lot of blood sweat tears a lot of expenditure of treasure and he's just like i'm not satisfied why do i feel like crap this is why do i keep assuming that getting what i desperately want will solve my problems. And so one of the people that Ari is going to meet that's going to have a huge effect on his career is this guy named Egon Durbin of Silver Lake. If you listen to the podcast I did on Michael Dell's autobiography, play nice but win. Egon is the one that first approached Michael Dell with the idea of taking Dell private and then eventually take it public again. And it was interesting the way Ari meets Egan. He reads this article. So he read an article about somebody.

He's like, oh, this person is interesting. I'll just call and try to meet them. One of the people he meets is Mark Andresen, or he reads about is Mark Adreson, reaches out to Mark, finds out, I think this is before Mark starts his venture capital firm A16Z, because he says he's got, at the time, Mark has a private investment fund with Egon Durbin and Nikesh Aurora, and that meeting with Mark leads to a dinner with Egon. And he likes Egon right away, and this is what he says, I pepper him with questions. Marvel at his particular style of response. Quick, never condescending, effortlessly reducing each question to its basic components,

than making the answer easy to grasp. This is the mark of genius. Not enough to know, you have to be able to convey. And this is when he describes what I said was one of the most interesting ideas. He's like, I'm going to build my own personal curriculum. He calls it the Ari Emanuel Rolling School of Business and Entrepreneurship.

I call lots of people for money, but never just for money. My daily phone blitz is also my private grad school. It's my MBA. And it's school on my terms. No books, no tests, just voice-to-voice encounters, that lead to in-person meetings, sit-downs, and friendships. And so I mentioned earlier that I think Ari had essentially like no ceiling on his ambitions.

But he also realizes, so they're going after bigger and bigger companies. He buys this company, this is IMG. He buys it for $2.4 billion. When he realizes is that the deals get bigger and the pressure gets more intense. And we see another nervous breakdown. The last time I was anywhere close to this exhausted was 1995, right after launching endeavor. 19 years later, so much water under the bridge, and yet this feels oh so similar. Nerf is breakdown with a side of deja vu.

plus the most extreme case of jet lag in aviation history, plus the added strain of my marriage ending. I lie on my back for three days. I was less immobilized after getting hit by that pickup. I'm not paralyzed, technically speaking, but I can't move. At some point I have the thought. If I'm not dying, I can't go on like this. It's not just that I can't do everything.

It's that I need to accept not being able to do everything. And then you get some of the best piece of advice. I love this section. One of my favorite parts of the book. A friend who's a multi-billionaire tells me, When you're on the field, be on the field. But remember, you can't always be on the field. There has to be a timeout, halftime.

You have to heal, recover. The show must go on, sure, but the game must stop now and them for the players to catch their breath. I absolutely love that. When you're on the field, be on the field. One of my goals this year was to try to learn how to relax. I feel real nervous, I would say, when I'm not working. But one thing I want to work on, and I haven't done it yet,

I haven't succeeded yet, is learning how to relax. But I love that idea. When you're on the feel, you're on the feel. But dude, you've got to, like, be able to take time off. And, you know, even if for a few hours. I was talking to Mr. Beast about this. Jimmy's favorite podcast is founders. And he says that.

He's like, you know, that guy pushes himself harder. It almost, one of, you know, hardest working people, I know for sure. One of the most obsessive people, I know for sure. But he even says, he's like, he'll feel that strain. And he goes, okay, I got to take some time off. But his time off, he's like, I just need half a day off. It's just an afternoon. So I just thought that was funny.

So then I want to go back to this idea of like, you know, is already even an agent anymore? Like, what is he building? And it goes back to just taking this business further than anybody else has, doing things that other people haven't done before. And, you know, yeah, he's still signing people, but he's also buying businesses. He's taking things public, taking things private, putting things together. It's like much more of like a deal maker and an entrepreneur. And so he says, analyzing the agency business we see more clearly than ever.

It's got a hard ceiling, a strict limit on growth. So we start shopping for businesses that fit with our position in the world of entertainment. That means concerts, pageants, rodeos, not the things that talent agencies have traditionally bought, but the Times call for something new. The Times call for agents to be owners as well as representatives. People keep asking, what's the word for what you're building? Hybrid talent event agency? New kind of media company?

Maybe there isn't a word, and it doesn't matter. And so now we're in January 2016, and he's starting to hear rumors. Wait, wait, wait, the UFC might be for sale. He'd already bought WWE. And he looks at it, he goes, wait, wait, the UFC is just one big, loud, sweaty bundle of cash and upside. So he calls one of the owners, one of the Fatita brothers, Lorenzo. He says, I dial Lorenzo. Jesus, man, do not sell to anybody without at least giving me a chance.

He won't say yes and he won't say no. He will not commit to anything. I ask him straight out, what's your dream price? Just tell me what number you see when you close your eyes. I don't know, Ari, but it starts with a fucking four. So I sit down with Egon and ask if he'd be interested in buying the UFC with me. This would be a coup, he says, given where sports rights are headed these days and where they're going to be headed. We can smell the value.

And so the deal plays out over multiple pages. Egon and I hammered together a consortium investors to get to $4 billion. And it hasn't been easy. This is hundreds of calls made and dozens of ego stroked. Ten days until the bids are due. Ten days of hell. Ten days of being on the phone, in the phone, sleeping with the phone, sharing with the phone. Problems crop up again and again.

In the end, we win the bidding war. and then somebody on his team is saying, hey, we're going to pay too much. And then he gets this piece of advice that was hilarious. That's, you're never going to remember the extra $400 million. And so one of his partners doesn't want us to overpay. He says he doesn't want us to overpay. But again and again, I run it by Egon, and he agrees with my instinct. Back when we were chasing IMG and the price jumped from one point something to more than

$2 billion, Egon told me, you're never going to remember the extra $400 million. Big number on paper, but in a year, it will seem minuscule compared with the gains of owning IMG. He was right then and he's more right now. So in my final words to the buy team, you're not going to remember any goddamn price reduction, but you're sure as hell remember fucking up this deal. Do not do it. They wind up winning the bid and he takes us into the room where it closes. You'd think there'd be a big moment, a definitive click. But deals this size, for some reason, the endpoint actually passes like a soft breeze. The deal is done and everyone's reality is altered. One second ago, the UFC belonged to the Fratita brothers. Now it belonged to.

to me. And then he repeats the same thing that happens to them over and ever again. The highs never last. No matter how high, they just never last. That's sensational, invulnerable, able to leap tall buildings feeling. One day it just goes away. Kill yourself to reach some impossible summit, then stand before your mirror or your God and ask, really, this is it. So he's in India on a five-day meditation retreat, and this is what the leader tells him. Rage has gotten you this far, which is very far indeed. And for that, you can be grateful to Rage. you, Mr. Rage, for the wonders you perform, the miracles. But consider that rage can take you no further. Rage, like everything else, is subject to natural laws, laws of change. Rage has run its course.

Remember how the beginning of the book started. You can't live in a world of war and anger, he says, and also in a world of beauty. You must choose. Do you want to live in a beautiful state? Yes, then you've got to let go of rage. How? Not thinking about me, me, me. That's the cause of rage, the cause of ego, the hungriest monster is ego. Do whatever you do for the joy, the artistry, or else don't do it. Then in serenity, move on. And so then he comes back, he says back in LA, I feel very uncerene. I work on my ego, I'm not thinking about my ego, but it's hard. My ego won't leave me alone. It calls me constantly, the way I call other people. I spend weekends sitting around, staring at walls, pacing, restless, and something worse than restless. Something

is working on me, something new, I can't name it, I snap my fingers, I'm lonely. So he had been divorced and just focused on work and obviously going to a lot of pain. And he winds up meeting the woman that's going to wind up being his next wife. There's a lot of, like, he tells the story of how that happens in the book. And he also admits that he's like kind of mellowing out. And over time, it's like actually surprising to him. This is again why I say the book is kind of like reading like a diary. And so a lot of this book is him coming to terms with who he is and really trying to figure out how he actually wants to live life, how he can actually be happy,

is the things that used to serve him early in his career? Are they still serving him now? Is the leader in India, right? And so there's something really surprising. Like during the pandemic, a lot of his business is live events. People are not having live events. They're not gathering together.

And so the pandemic is destroying his business temporarily, yet he's in a new relationship, and he realizes, like, oh, I'm like happy. He says, the world is ending. My business is cratering, and yet I'm happy. happy and he decides to try to do psychedelics. I think he's doing ayahuasca in this case. So he says, I've been reading about hallucinogens, how they can heal you, make you less anxious.

Do they make you less ambitious too? Less angry? Maybe. A guy I know has a guy in New Mexico, a shaman. He guides people on wild journeys using a chemical derived from the back of a toad. And so he explains this night he has where he's throwing up, he's retching everything else, and he's trying to explain the effect the before and after of what happened. He says, the next morning, I think of a better way to describe it. I'm a product of bad weather. Back in Chicago, those cold, snowy nights, roofs covered in white,

streets covered in white. Next morning, walk outside to find the world under a vast duvet, perfect, endless whiteness, everything clean and pure and quiet, and calm, beautifully, wonderfully calmed down. This toad shit makes me feel

as if the world's been restored to that clean, calm, pristine state. Only better. Knowing this beautiful state is possible makes me calmer. I'm calmer, but not because I'm wiser or because I'm on towed. I'm calmer because I don't care as much. I'm no longer do or die about this. He's talking about taking his company public, which then he eventually takes private. And so when the offering is a go, when it's a raging success, when we stand beside each other and ring that mythical bell at the stock exchange, I feel good, sure, but not the peak feeling I expected.

Maybe because I know that the good feeling will be fleeting. So it goes back to the fact that the highs never last. At times, I wonder if the fight has gone out of me. Blist out with Stod, that's his new wife, brokering peace between billionaires, giving health tips to my former arch nemesis? Who the fuck am I? Have I finally lost the rage?

And then this continues a few pages later when the last big deal they do is they take the company. Private, going private will provide the validation that going public never did, the validation we deserve. when Silver Lake announces to the world that the value of endeavor was $13 billion. A dozen years ago, we were $350 million. I look out the nearest window and sigh.

That's more fucking like it. Egon calls me and says, come to Georgia, meet me at Augusta. We'll relax. We'll have ourselves a day. This is right before the 2024 Masters. We both love that tournament, and thus it feels like the ideal place to get together, to give ourselves one small victory lap. We play the legendary course.

I notice the groundskeepers pruning a tree, trimming a green, no leaf or blade unattended. So much to be learned here about attention to detail, about hard fucking work. Suddenly, striding down the middle of the fairway, thinking about our game.

It's all just a game, I think, with a laugh. And yet so much more than a game. As we walk off the 18th green, I thank Egon for his faith in me. Come on, he says, let's go have lunch. That sounds fun, but it's. no, I've got to get back. Back? Back where? I've got to get back to L.A. I've got a signing meeting this afternoon. Potential client I've been trying to sign for years. I know what he's thinking.

We just won our version of the Masters. Time to hit the clubhouse, hug the trophy, have a drink, take a load off. But I've been chasing this writer-director for years and I want to get his ass signed. I might not be an agent forever. I might not even be an agent for much longer, but I'm doing it now. And while I'm doing it, by God, I'm going to do it with everything I've got. What can I tell you, man? That's the job. And that is where I'll leave it. I think this book is incredible. There's so many more deals in the book. Stories with all the major players in Hollywood. Ari is completely unfiltered. Highly, highly, highly recommend buying the book. There's a link down below. If you buy the book, using that link, you'll be supporting the

podcast at the same time. That is 436 books down. 1000 to go. And I'll talk to you again soon.