704: Strauss Zelnick - The Leader Who Greenlit Dirty Dancing, Owns Grand Theft Auto, Loves Being Coached, and Might be the Fittest CEO Alive

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should apply for our learning leader circle, go to learningleaderscircle.com. Welcome to the learning leader show presented by Insight Global I am your host Ryan Hawks. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleaders.com for showing notes of this and all podcasts episodes. Go to learningleaders.com.

And now onto the night's featured leader Strauss Zelnik is the CEO of Take Two Interactive The Company behind Grand Theft Auto, MBA 2K and some of the most successful franchises in the history of entertainment. He simultaneously runs ZMC, the private equity firm he founded in 2001. Before all of that, he was president of 20th Century Fox at H32.

“CEO of BMG Entertainment, one of the world's largest music companies, and Strauss the”

executive who Greenlit Dirty Dancing, he is widely known as one of the most disciplined executives in the world and business and in life during our conversation we discuss. At age 68, Strauss is known as America's fittest CEO. He shares the importance of his two-way day workout sessions and why they make him a better husband, dad, and CEO.

Then we discuss why he's always had a coach and will always have a coach.

This seems to be a common outie among the most effective leaders in the world. They all have a coach, then Strauss leads 14,000 people as the CEO of multiple companies. He shares how he does it, how he delegates, and why he doesn't believe in formal, cookie cutter, one-on-ones with this direct reports. We talk about that, and so much more ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation

with Strauss Zelne. Is this story true when you were five years old, you announced that you wanted to run a movie studio? Is that true? I think so.

I know I've told the story. It's at least what I recollect.

“If you're old, what made you want to run a movie studio at such a young age?”

I don't know, I probably thought it was glamorous. Why five-year-old cared about something being glamorous, separate question? I don't know that I can even answer that. So then what was it like, you know, a few years later when you actually did it? Well, it wasn't a few, but, the more honest, it's a whole bunch of stuff that happened

in between. Look, I was blessed, you know, I got out of school when I was 26, I went to work in the entertainment business in the very best job I could get, which was international television distribution, which is like running a movie studio is here, international television distributions out of frame over here, but it was the only job I could get, and I did, I worked hard,

I did well, and that led to a promotion early, and that led to being recruited to work in a pretty senior capacity at what was then the largest independent motion picture company best shot, and then pretty quickly thereafter, I became president of that company, and

then I was like, would have at the first picture, I'd Greenland was a huge hit, and that led

to my getting recruited to be president of 20th Century Fox when I was 32. So it was pretty quick trajectory from graduating to being president of a major film studio, much quicker than I had expected. And what was it like? Obviously it was incredibly scary, because I had the presence of my time to understand that

was thrilled that I got the job, but I knew I wasn't remotely qualified to be in that position. Yeah, to say that I was learning on the job was a gross understanding on the job. Don't you find, as you keep progressing within your career, that sometimes you look out and see people and you're like, oh, they've got it all figured out, and then you meet them and talk to them, you're like, actually, they're kind of figuring it out as they

of figuring things out as they go?

I don't know, I suppose that would be a healthy way to look at it, but I never really did.

“I mean, I think I was more likely to be in awe of the people that I met along the way.”

They were generally speaking much older and much more qualified. I'm a learner, and I was always interested in learning from those people, and I was on afraid to ask questions even if they were done. But I know it was not my way to sort of look at someone and see all of their own insecurities, especially because the entertainment business in those days was still a pretty rough and tumble business. And unlike today,

we're traditional film intelligence, and it's been a highly compromised sort of relegated to the sidelines in the entertainment business in those days, being inside a major entertainment company in which there were five at that time. I mean, that was a very, very big deal. And place was populated with names that were constantly in the business and even consumer press, totally different than today. No one possibly could name the head of any major film

“studio today. The film you Greenlet was a dirty dancing, right?”

Pretty dancing, yeah. Okay. Take me back to that time when you're thinking about making that decision, what went into it? Oh, gosh, no, it's a great story, actually, because remember, I don't, I'm not responsible for creative choices at any of the businesses that I'm in. There was a great team at Vastron that was there before I joined the company in the team that was put together by Austin, first to was the CEO. I was the chief operating officer.

And the motion picture division was headed up by a woman named Rufaitali, and then she sort of had two co-production heads of Mitchell Cannells and Stephen Rufaitali. It was their project, obviously, dirty dancing on my mind. We were making a lot of movies. We were a high volume shop and we were making low budget movies. And so they bring this project into the Greenlet.

And this was a very significant project for them. It was a five and a half million dollar

budget. This is a long time ago, but even then that wasn't very much money. And I remember the Greenlet meeting well because they came in with the director who previously had been a choreographer. This is his first directorial project in Neil Artelino and the writer and producer. And they proceeded. And a meal was a was a lovely, lovely person. I had just not him in this meeting. But he was so scared that he couldn't speak. And so the team collectively had a pitch.

The project then, and Greenlet meetings, you know, generally speaking, are not pitch meetings, but we were really, you know, we were doing a best run. So it was in this instance, it's kind of a pitch meeting for me. And the pitch was, look, this motion picture is going to change the way women dress. It's going to have, you know, music that is going to be incredibly successful at a huge award-winning soundtrack. This picture is going to win an Oscar and it's going

to change the way young women look and feel in society. And I'm listening to all this and I'm, you know, I'm in experience, but I'm like, this is all complete bullshit. I'm quite not if this is going to happen. But like, I was Greenlet and stopped every day, right? Because we were making 50 projects a year. This is a heyday of home entertainment. We were volume company. So I thought all that was untrue and Greenlet picture. And incidentally, I wasn't even a fan. I didn't like

the script. I thought it was a hokey. It wasn't for me. But it doesn't matter. I supported the team. The team really believed in it. And this, this is a story in my career, which is I supported the creative team responsible for making these decisions. I believed in their process and I believed in them. And I did not trust my own judgment. As it turns out, that was very wise. And because I don't exercise direct creative judgment. I seem to be a really good judge of talent, creative talent,

executive talent. I don't try to be a judge of the products themselves. Anyhow, I Greenlet, the picture, and it turns out, it's the biggest independent hit of all time to that day, state and obsession till Blair, which project came along. It had an award-winning soundtrack. It won an Oscar and it changed the way young women dressed and imported themselves for a period of

time. It did all the things they promised in the Greenlet meeting. I mean, that's never happened.

I don't think it history before since. How did that impact you as a decision-maker moving forward, seeing the success of that movie? It didn't really. I might process remaining the same, which is higher the most talented people on earth and then encourage them to pursue their passions

“and then support them through thick and thin. I think that could be a portable lesson for any”

reason to be exactly that. Yeah. Yeah. So for any leader, I'm curious to get inside that kind of your ethos, your mindset, your process of finding hiring, supporting, training,

inside the interview process or even the process as a whole of acquiring very, very skilled people and supporting them to do their best work? Well, remember, sometimes I haven't been the one hiring. I mean, this story just told you, Austin, that hired these people. I do think perhaps I have some ability to bring out the best and talented people in addition to hiring them. My hiring process, I think it looks like everyone else's. This is not like I magically run into

someone in the street and say, oh my God, you're so talented. Come work at one of my enterprises. So we care about people's experience and background and then we go through a normal interview process, we do today also use rigorous assessment tools as I think that doesn't substitute for interviewing, but it certainly does enhance it. But in my case, it's been true that I've often encountered people inside the enterprises that I've come to because I've moved from company to company

and then I bought a bunch of companies. So it is not true that I've always been the person

recruiting the talent. The history of my career. In fact, more frequently has been, I've been the person responsible for leaning and encouraging those talented people to do their best work,

“whether I've recruited them or not. How do you do that? Well, well, first you have to”

agree on a common mission and the mission has to be ambitious but achievable. Second, you have to outline a strategy that's simple and clear and straightforward that people can sign up for. And third, you have to establish a common culture. Then you have to make sure all your financial incentives are in line with that. So your financial incentives have to be aligned with the mission strategy in the culture. If you say the words over here, like, you know, we want to be the best

entertainment company on Earth and your incentives are over there. Like, I don't know, we'll pay people without regard to how we perform. They're going to follow the money and you're going to get a bad result. You know, all of the enterprise in which I've worked, we've aligned the two. So, at take two, for example, people are compensated depending on where they fit inside the company,

either basically primarily to stock because we want to align the incentives of our colleagues,

with the goals of our shareholders. Or if they send an organization where they really can't have any influence over, you know, where the stock is likely to go, then we have profit sharing clients,

“so that we align interests and they're trying to increase profits. How do they increase profits?”

Generate more revenue and spend less money. So, increase revenue to decrease the cost. The companies that I think do the worst job of aligning interests are the ones where compensation is discretionary and the discretion is held in the hands of the CEO. Because what that does, if you think about it, is promote a culture where everyone's just trying to please the CEO and people think that the way you please other people is to like complement them.

Or tell them what they want to hear. And I'm really averse to compliments, and I really averse to being told what people think I want to hear. I want people to go build value, and I don't care what they say to me along the way. They can not say anything along the way. I'm being nice to be polite and we do believe in being kind. But I just brought the performance. So, we have to align the words with the dollar signs to get the result we want.

And very specifically, at take two, our mission is to be the number one entertainment company in Earth. That's a really, really ambitious mission. We're on a pure play basis according to market cap. We're within the top five today, which is pretty great, but we're not even close to the number one player, which is Netflix. But nonetheless, our mission is to be the number one entertainment company. Everyone can sign up for that. And vicious as it is. If you're in the top five and you

want to be the number one, okay? Like we can try. The strategy has always been be the most creative,

be the most innovative, be the most efficient. We say the words in every internal and external communication, and we make decisions in service of that strategy, consistent with that strategy. And our culture is work as a team, seek excellence and everything you do, be kind. And then the cop is, if stock goes up, you get paid, we make money, you get paid. If stock goes down, you don't, if we don't make money, you don't.

How do you define what number one is of market cap? Public health. Super easy.

“Our market today is hovering around $50 billion. I think Netflix is around $400 billion here.”

We can a lot of work to do. Why does that matter? Oh, it doesn't. Exactly. It doesn't really accept that we are a public company. And ultimately, the job of a public company is to create

every day is trying to create the very best entertainment on earth. That's our day to day job. Yeah. We do that successfully. We can succeed in our mission.

“Let's say you become number one. I don't know when, but let's say it happens. Then what?”

Well, I'll worry about them when the time comes. I am just curious about this idea because it seems like I love like you're, you're how clear you are on the mission and the values that bring us out how it seems like you've aligned really well on your construction and all that stuff. But this comparison with others, because sometimes it's like that can be the thief of joy. That can be not a fun way to go about living life. I get it from a business perspective. I

vividly remember the first job I ever had as a sales rep. Our CEO saying our goal is to be number

one by the end of the decade. And that was like, you know, seven years away. And we were a distant number two. And so yeah, I'm just wondering this comparison thing. Is that what is it that says we got to go beat Netflix? Is that just a good rallying cry for the troops? Or what's that all about? I think it's both. I mean, yeah, it's a good rallying cry. But again, the mission of a public company, whether you like it or not, is to create value for the shareholders. If you don't want

“to do that, then you can't be a public company. Then you have to be something else. And for example,”

if I owned 100% of the shares of this company and we're like a lifestyle business, then I could decide and you know, shame in that. But that's not structure of our company. Yeah. We know our companies

are different from plenty of them. For example, you know, their family businesses were the mission

of the business, maybe a social mission. Yeah, great. Or the mission of the business, maybe we need to make a certain amount of money to support our family. We're good with that. And after that, we're not focused on anything else. That's also fine. So I'm not making a value judgment about other people's approaches. You know, we are a public company. If you're going to be a public company, you're an obligation to create value for a shareholder. So what we acquired Zinger, for example,

in 2022 or 65% of the consideration was stock, which meant that we were able to do an creative transaction for our shareholders that benefited Zinger shareholders as well. Well, that's the deal we simply couldn't have done. Have we met in private with health

company? No way. As you have the leader, how much pressure do you feel? It's not really

how. And the experience pressure. I mean, I love what I do. I feel blessed. I'm able to do it. I do the very best job that I can. If there's something a little main that's really terrible, I can of course feel stress. But that's a typical for me, particularly because I've done so many turnaround. And I've had the experience of what real stress and pressure feels like. And once you're a company, I'll like take two today with a very, very strong balance sheet,

plenty of cash, a great P&L, generating loads of operating income. Out of pretty regular

“basics, you know, with some variability, but we've been a profitable company since 2011, I believe,”

year and year out. And that was coming from pretty terrible situation when we took over the business in 2007. Well, that's not a super stressful experience. I also understand that some of the challenges are part of the game, and especially given the job, I do because I believe in delegation with information that I encourage my colleagues to do their jobs. So if stuff ends up on my desk, it's not like the happy stuff. Happy stuff doesn't show my death set. Back up done outside of my office,

those are coming. Some of my desk, imagine, is probably like not so good or super complex. So what's your process to delegate with information? What does that look like? In practice, what does it look in sound like? So in practice, we have a weekly senior management meeting where every one responsible for running a group, plus senior corporate staff, get together in a room. And we go around the table and share everything that's going on and then share the

problems and challenges that we face. And because we do it every week, people are pretty well caught up so you can get through that meeting in roughly an hour. And it also means I don't know if to do one in once, so it's very efficient. Because the rule is, look, we don't have any limitations of what we discuss in that meeting. If it's going on in your business, you bring it to that room. And if someone, for example, is new to the company, like, pull me aside at the end of the meeting,

it's what I don't really want to mention this in the meeting. I just want to talk to you about it. I'm like, is it personal? It's personal we could talk about it one in one. If it's about business, back in the room, everyone's got a note. So the politics diminished greatly still, because it's still of course there's some politics, but rather limited politics, given the scale of the organization. Because everyone has the information. And if there is a conflict, it becomes clear in

but at least I kind of know the way of the land and so does everyone else. So we don't have a situation where something material is going on in the organization over here. And someone over here

isn't aware. Everyone's always aware of everything. It's also immensely efficient. So I

coach and mentor a lot of people, including a bunch of CEOs. And I remember a young CEO, I was speaking to a few years ago, and he looked terrible on, I said, and it was a growth business, and he was drinking from afar, I was going on, he said, "I'm sleeping like for our son, I'm not a civilized woman, working so hard. I'm like, "Okay, I imagine you're working hard, but once keeping you so busy, I couldn't really get there. I finally said to him,

"Do you have one of one meetings with your director for some?" He said, "Yeah, with all of them." I said, "How many directors do you have?" He said, "20." I said, "How many hours a week is spending on one of one meetings?" He said, "20." I said, "It's like half an normal work week.

How about this? How about trying it my way? Have one hour meeting with 20 people?"

And he did that in 19 hours out of his work week.

“I believe this Jensen at Nvidia do that as well. I thought I saw him on a podcast,”

talk about that. I think he does something similar to the internet from me. Interesting. Well, it seems like that's more of a thing. So on the flip side of that, when I've talked to CEOs who've crushed it, and then you talk to the people that may be working their organizations, I say, "I feel like he genuinely cares for me and has a deep care for the people that work for them." And so not doing one of ones could be a thing that says, "Well, you know,

he doesn't do one of ones though. I don't know." So how do you show your people that you genuinely care for them and you're there for them and you want the best for them as actual humans, not just to make sure the shareholders are taken care of? Well, I didn't say it in spent time with people, but I have what we're doing is having that, you know, cookie cutter weekly or by weekly, you know, which hammers 20, 20 hours on your calendar. Exactly. But I spent a lot of time with all of my

colleagues and, you know, meals together, we travel together because I try to go out and see a lot of my office. So if I go visit a divisional and by definition our offices are divisional, we don't really have corporate offices outside of New York. So I'll be with executives on those trips. So I have time with executives that's one on one. It's just not a cookie cutter or one on one update meeting. One of the other things I notice this just from connecting with you,

you're known as America's fittest CEO. You do two days. You're training all the time. You look great. Not ashamed to say that. You do. Talk to me about though. I'm a believer in this two,

“seven days a week in the gym. Like I got to punish my body. I think it helps me mentally to be”

better for as a husband, as a dad and certainly in my work. I'd love to hear your philosophy and mentality about being America's fittest CEO and all the workouts that you do. I'm sure I'm not America's fittest CEO, but it's very flattering that anyone could use those words. I even know people who receive votes who are substantially better than I like Willie Walker who's one of my best

friends to see a Walker and Dunlop and an amazing cyclist, which I'm not like cycling, but he's

an amazing cyclist. He will tell people we cycle together and I'm like, I'm not really worn a cycling trip. I'm not even sure we're in the same county. He's so far ahead of me on the road. Anyway, I love fitness. That's true. And it is my application and I do train a lot of people and I train with a group of people regularly. I was training with them this morning. But for me, it's more something I'm super passionate about. And I do believe that it's a form of taking care of oneself

that shows up in a lot of other parts of your life. So, among other things, like if you look

“your best, I think it's a side of respect for others and respect for yourself. If you look”

sloppy and terribly out of shape, it's harder to lead people I think. And the other piece is feeling your best. You know, I feel great. I feel great. I was up this morning at 445, but I was in the gym with my team working out at 645. I'll be in the gym later on today and I feel really, really good. That means I can show up with energy, but the smile on my face, not feeling, you know, sort of the Leary Eye, around the edges. How important when you're thinking like looking at other leaders

to hire or promote, it has to play a role. How much of a role does it play that they work out, that they look good, that you can tell that they're energized from taking care of themselves from a fitness perspective. Oh, thank God, I don't do that. I hear, I hope the best and the brightest and the most creative has to play a little bit of a role. It doesn't work human beings. I mean, if they roll into my office, like hung over with their clothing a skew, that would be problematic,

but I know I'm really careful actually about not holding people to a standard, a personal standard to which I will myself. Everyone's entitled to be on their own journey. And I don't want

and if you have someone who's unhealthy, they're not going to be as effective for you, but no, there's no obligations to come work out with me to work at one of the businesses. Although during the pandemic, I did lead group workouts on Zoom, you know, like 250 people

at times joining the workouts, which was amazing. It was great. And actually it really was great for

culture and camaraderie. So I enjoy it, but people can show up for themselves in a way ways. And by the way, someone is really engaged in fitness. And I think reasonably expert of fitness. Remember, if you walk 30 minutes, five days a week, all the evidence shows that that's really,

“really good for your fitness. And it isn't like stated yard because I think you should do some”

way bearing exercise, especially as you age. But if all you did was 30 minutes a day of walking, five days a week, you'd be a pretty good shade. So some of who does that is not going to like show up in my house for discussion and explain to me that they're like fitness free, but that's what mean they are not showing up for themselves and they really are actually. I read about, you said there's no AI slot involved with making one of the Grand Theft Auto games,

a handcrafted building by building street, by street. And that you think that's the right move here. I'd love to hear more of your overall philosophy on AI and the importance of things still being handcrafted, as you've said before. Well, things are handcrafted in the video again, business currently with, obviously, technology, everything we do is created in a country. And broadly, we're just being described as a day out of days, a wonderful technological step toward.

And naturally, we will avail ourselves of all those tools and technologies. What we're not doing is using someone else's model and pushing a button and saying, create a synchronous. That's what we're not doing. And I don't expect, well, ever do that. But we'll, our creative teams use state of the art tools to do great work and to be more efficient doing that great work. Absolutely. The job of CEO, I would imagine, and from others I've talked to, I times can be lonely because

so few people understand what you do or what you're going through. Even if they think they do, they don't. So I'm curious what you do to make it less lonely. What you do to surround yourself maybe with other CEOs, or you part of groups, do you meet with others, you have conversations formally, informally. What do you do to make sure that you're having good rich dialogue with others,

who maybe have a similar role to you? My first boss is a man in Brian McGrath, a very senior

executive of Columbia Pictures, a great guy, taught me a lot of stuff. And I remember one day said to me,

“"Strauss, it's lonely at the top." It's lonely here at the bottom. The truth is, no, I don't feel”

lonely at all. I feel blessed. Very blessed to be in the job that I'm in, and I've wonderful family and kids, and a new daughter-in-law, and loads and loads of friends, and all the people I train with, and 14,000 colleagues here take too. I'm pretty well in the data with people. I do have some close friends who are with similarly situated, but I can talk to about some of the challenges that I face at times, and I do have mentors who I do rely on,

one in particular, who is my go-to person when I, in a situation and I'm having difficulty parsing. And I also business coach, who's great, that helps. But no, I don't feel, I don't feel

lonely or misunderstood. I mean, I think it's just an incredible blessing to do this job. I'm

very grateful for it. What are those conversations with your business coach sound like? I don't know. I was, I had something I really needed to deal with, and I, I don't mind confrontation when I have to have it, but I don't like love leaning into confrontation, and this was something that required a confrontation, and I was avoiding it. And I said, and he said to me, I understand what you're waiting for. You gotta go do this, causing you stress,

and I was like, well, the person I had to speak to is going to be really, really upset, and he said,

“so that's all he said, so that, you know, handle yourself or really be kind to what you have to do.”

And you know, you can deal with the consequences. It's okay. You can get through it. There's a very helpful advice. I know it sounds exceedingly straightforward, but that was really useful. When you confronted them, what happened? Yeah, they were really upset, but, you know, we got to the other side of it. And it was better not to happen sitting out there. Yeah, like bad news doesn't get better with age, right?

You gotta just go do the thing. I love coaching on my backgrounds and sports, and so like, every single repetition and practice and certainly in games, as a quarterback, was graded, and so you got feedback. And now I crave it. I don't get it as much as I used to, and it's like, I kind of miss it. So it's so interesting that the highest performers, the people who are crushing it, they almost all have a coach. They almost all have outside council or people that they'll

right, I don't need a coach. It's bizarre that the dichotomy of the ones who choose to sign up and

pay for a coach versus the ones who don't. And it's like the ones who you would look at and they extract doesn't need a coach. He's crushing it. He has for a long time, and yet you do. I just love to hear your mentality on coaching and the importance of having a person who will maybe push you or keep you in check or hold you accountable. The value of coaching, the overall philosophy of that would be cool to hear you talk about that. Well, I mean, I'll

“throw it right back into athletics, man. I think we can agree top gradies in an amazing athlete.”

But would he have performed as well if there were no coach on this team or if the coach were lousy, a great coach is objective and encouraging and smart and experienced. I'd like to believe that I have some talent at what I do. And I've had coaches along the way who were to me off roadblocks or obstacles and encouraged me in other ways. And it's been immensely helpful. I had a coach for many years named Gloria Han and she coached me in from 30 until

she retired. She was amazing, amazing at unlocking roadblocks, but maybe I didn't see her, maybe I didn't know how to unlock. So I'm with you actually, the people who are most effective

are the people who typically are the most open minded and self-critical. Not always. I mean,

I think there are examples of people who are particularly open minded or self-critical who are just so talented that it's succeed despite that. For example, I didn't know, but I think that's who Steve Jobs was. No sense that he was particularly self-critical from everything I've read. And I'm not sure how open minded he was, but I think he was pretty open minded. But he certainly was not self-critical and I'd be low to believe he had a coach. But he was immensely talented,

because I was a genius at marketing technology. I'm not a genius at doing anything. I got a good workman-like intellect and I work hard and directed and I think I've become very good leading super talented people to do the best work. But I have to be aware of my limitations. I need that coach and I need that help. One of the things that when it comes to the business world in coaching that I've seen to be effective, the great ones, what they do, I want to hear

what you think Gloria and your current coach do for you is, they are really, really good at asking an initial question, listening and asking an even better follow-up question to get you potentially to go somewhere that you would not have gone without them. And so if you analyze like, what did they actually do? They didn't really give me any advice. They just kind of asked me some questions and then, you know, Strauss's smart guy, he'll figure it out. But my role as the

mentor/coach is to be that person who cares enough to ask good questions, listens, ask even better follow-up questions, which then leads him down to the path to then coming up with

“his own solution, which he's in there, but I had to help him get it out. That's why I feel like”

great coaches do, is that in your experience or is there something else that great coaches do in addition to that? You just, you know, you just described this chronic method. And I actually think that that method works really well in leading day-to-day and that's the method I try to use as a part. And when I was younger, you know, I believed I was a smart astronomer, I'm thankfully I would ban in that belief. And therefore, I decided to give people the answer. And by the way, you know,

I am reasonably intelligenceist, that can actually work, but it also piss people off and, you know, cause them to be disengaged. And I learned that the method you're just described this chronic method is much, much more effective. But actually the regards to my coaches? No, as a matter of fact, I tell them the story and I wanted advice, directed advice. Really,

part of that is that I am very self-critical and I'm very open-minded. I want them to say to

me, "You have that wrong. You are missing that." Right? Glory would say, "You're missing this. This is right there from a kid." And, you know, I graded advice from actually someone else who was in a coach, a friend and a recruiter by trade. And I was in a situation that I just wasn't succeeding at. And she said, "You know, sometimes you're really good with the words that you're really bad with the music." And I said, "What?" She'd like, "Get the facts right." And you, you know,

“the answers, you don't read a room all that well. And you need to start reading the room better”

and interacting with people more effectively. Using that analogy, you know, you get the words right, you get the music wrong. It was immensely effective. She was not using the sporadic method. She was giving me direct advice as it happened. She used, you know, a colorful approach to that that worked for me. But my coach, my mentor, so generally speaking, said to me, "Don't do that, do that." And I like that. And I reserve the right to make my own decision.

So, when I coach people, I say to them, "Look, just remember, this is only one person's advice.

will clear and obvious, we wouldn't be having a conversation. So, I'm giving you the best advice

that possibly can give you. You still have to make the call. I can do that. Let's say you go back to Harvard to teach in the class's title, CEO 101. I do that sort of thing. So, okay, that's

“you do? I do, yeah. I go back to, so when you go back to Harvard, what do you teach?”

Well, usually Harvard business club uses a case map, and so they've done a bunch of cases on businesses that I've run over the years, probably 12 or 14 of them. So, okay, I did a class around that. But I also, I go to MIT's song once you're actually to talk about, it's not called CEO 101, but it might as well be. Okay, so what's part of the syllabus there? What are you teaching? You know, you get high level, and we can maybe be able to roll down, but I'm just curious,

what's a part of that class? That's slowly the class is called corporations at the crossroads, and what the professors want you to cover is really difficult sort of decision points and how you navigate them. And I do it through a, actually through a Scratic Math, through a Q&A, I ask the students a lot of questions. I show up with the questions in addition to being asked questions. What do you ask them? Well, I start by asking them why they're there in the class that day.

Like, it's an elective, so why are they there or where they hope to get out of it? That's

drawing and surprising to them, because their speakers never do that. Really? And I, yeah,

I'm like, what do you hope to get out of this class? And I'll go around, you know, people raise your hands and I'll get 10 or 20 answers. And that gives me guidance for what to do in the session.

“You know, I believe that if you want to engage in audience, if to be a service to the audience,”

I learned that one that we're going to. Also, I was president of the restaurant and the new president of the restaurant. The longer ago, I was 31 years old at something like that. I was really down. And very inexperienced. I consider myself a good communicator. Definitely, I am a good writer. And I had to give a speech to a bunch of like momentum and retailers. I know it sounds synthesating and that kind of speech. And so I wrote a speech. I was very proud. It was very

eloquent, certainly grammatical. And I stood up at the podium after dinner and I delivered the speech. And I walked out. I was really proud of myself. At the end of it, my boss, Austin,

first to see what pulls me inside, he said, "You're just a terrible speaker. I was so offended and

surprised." And he said, "You need obviously any training." So I went and got two days of media training. And I learned that you can't tell the audience what you want to talk to them, though. You've got to speak to them about what they care about. And I learned you can't deliver a written speech unless you're president of the United States. The rest of us should be speaking either because a no-stop word at worst use notes. And it's even better if you could do a Q&A format.

And then I learned yourself and inject your personality into it. And then I learned from my wife you're going to try to make people laugh if you can, because I was too serious. I had to learn how to communicate. And you know, with my starting point, pretty much any time I'm in a public speaking situation is to figure out what that audience wants to talk about. Not what I want to talk about, what they want to talk about. Think about the most annoying thing for an audience member

is when you're sitting there getting bombarded with someone's message over and over again, especially when it's like a Q&A and someone says, ask your question and they go back to their talking points. I mean, you want to show yourself. Why aim is it those to be your

“service to the audience? That's how I started. Wow. How do you feel when you told you that was terrible”

and you thought it was good? I mean, clearly, I'm the one hand I was upset on the other hand. I was amused to like, it's really funny, right? Why was it bad? Like, what did you do that was bad? I delivered a boring speech. Did you just like read it off of your notes or something? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I read it off of my notes. I'm very proud of what I've written very much. I love that you have this humility to be like, yeah, this was something I needed to get better at,

and now I have. Yeah, I don't know. Our against is the enemy of a continued success. Is it hard not to get a little arrogant now? No, this is true, but as you as you age, you realize you know less, not more. Some people do. Well, I certainly do. And look, I don't mean to be falsely modest. But I have a lot of experiences. And I am proud that I do certain things very effectively. And say otherwise would be stupid. Like, what would I say? Like, oh, I'm just bumpling through

my job. Come on. I mean, I don't believe that. Now I'd be silly to try to convey that. I'm certainly not bumpling through my job. But I'm learning all the time. And I surround myself with people who can help me learn. And I remain curious. And I remain very open-minded. One of things of my team will say about me is that I strongly held opinions. And I'm quite happy to share

that are at odds with my strongly held views, my mind will be open. And I will change my views. I'm not a person. It's like, I made the decision. That's my call. We're just like, we're all going bad things happen. We need to do that. I am absolutely willing to change course when there's a reason to change course. You know, as I've gotten older and more experienced,

“I believe I've gotten better. And the only reason I've gotten better is that I'm highly”

open-minded. And I'm a learner. I've always been a learner. And I really do surround myself with

young and vicious thoughtful, wide-eyed people, many of whom are totally full of shit. But doesn't mean I can't learn from them. How so? Look, I mean, I've been totally embedded with all things AI in the past few years. Who hasn't? Yeah. And a good 50% of everything you're hearing is is utter crap. Totally untrue. Never going to happen. But in order to be the best of what we do, technology influences every single thing we do in the entertainment doesn't specifically

in a video game company. I better be fully immersed. So I show up completely open-minded. I do the research. I learn as much as I can. I talk to resilient people. As spend time with

your 18-year-old entrepreneurs who are working in tech, something most people who do what I do,

my age don't do. And then I have to arrive at conclusions. And it is true. Those conclusions have far reaching influence on what this company does. And I've had to do that over and over again.

“So roll the clock back when only the only thing people were talking about was in AI. It was VR”

and metaverses. And my competitors devoted hundreds of millions of dollars of capital to VR development. And I did all the research. And I've been around the entertainment business long time. I was like, this is just not going to be a thing for our business. Just not. And I said, so what we're going to do is despite fact that's all anyone's talk, but you can go look at analysts calls over and over and over again about the metaverse and VR. I said, look, we're going to do

enough work around here so that if VR explodes into something huge in the video game business, we're ready to pursue it. We did a bunch of experimentation. I said, we're not devoted to capitals of this. We got every single VR project we did here. We got paid for and made a margin on it. Every single one of them. Lots of zero money when it turns out that there is no such thing as the metaverse. Oops, no more VR entertainment. And you know, that's just the state of play. So it was my job to make

that call, how do I make call? I did the homework myself by being open minded and being in touch with people, all ages and stages in the business. And then I made the decision in a way that preserved this enterprise's ability to succeed even if I were wrong. I didn't make a decision that slammed the door on my being not. I had to make a decision based on what I thought. But I left all kinds of escape hatches open if I had turned out to be wrong. Is it surprising that Mark Zuckerberg could have

been so incredibly wrong about that? I mean, spent, I don't know, until billions of dollars and it was just like, are you kidding me? I mean, is that surprising? It wasn't surprising to me at the time. And, you know, I was, frankly, without being in play. And I have enormous respect from Mark Zuckerberg. That would be the same. And maybe he was wrong once. Like, I've been wrong

a thousand times to be clear. So I'm not going to be critical. But no, I thought, I thought his strategy

around VR was incorrect. And I said so at the time. This mentality creatively risk forward and financially risk averse. This feels accurate to what we just talked about. How does that work? Well, I mean, it works by making sure two things happen. It's quickly as possible after I take over a business. And because I've done so many turn rounds, it wasn't always possible do it quickly. But what really means is make sure you have a solid, exceedingly well-funded balance sheet,

and a highly profitable core business. So that you can take enormous creative risk and in the event Iran, which you will be now, and then you can live to play another day. And what you can't do in the entertainment business is run a thinly capitalized business on the one hand and take huge creative risk on the other hand. Those two things don't cut together. It's sort of like, if you can't afford it to lose, you don't play the game. One of the reasons, for example, Carl Icon was able to win

over and over and over again, is A, he's a really good poker player and B, he had a huge stack of chips. So he knew, in poker, you're going to lose sometimes, even if you're really, really good, really, really good. So you better have a lot of chips so that you can play another day.

“And that's what he did over and over and over and over. And so we looked at the world. So when things”

went against Carl and I know Carl, well, the hints are I'm moaning about it. He went out to the next game.

We've always had the highest hit ratio of any team within the business of which we operated.

But it's hit ratio for a reason. What does that mean? They're losses. So take two has a really high hit ratio. And we have lots now. And then thank God, not very frequently. It's been quite a while since we had one. But we had it. And you know, when I was in the movie, this is a well-run studio in those days had a 30% hit ratio, which is to say 70% of where you did broke even our last month and 70%. So you better be like wired to understand, creatively, lots of stuff

is going to go against you. And if you believe that, you understand that, which I did in the humility, if you're aware of that, then you can answer business according to it. There was a competitor to ours years ago. And I in a moment that was perhaps not very diplomatic predicted that they would go

bankrupt in six months. And the reason I knew they'd go bankrupt is that they had a release schedule

coming up. But they weren't capitalized well enough to market the titles effectively, unless everything went perfectly. And I knew everything would be go perfectly. So I unintentionally publicly said that they would go bankrupt in six months. I got scolded for it by properly. And they went bankrupt in eight months. So it was on two months. Yeah, I mean, at a leadership, you cannot win a game if you're not in the game. You know, you got to stay in the game. So one of the things I had

to promise to investers around here after we turn around take two was that I would take meaningful

“creator risk, but I would never take bankruptcy risk. And that's what this company does. Like”

when I ever go on BK under my leadership, that's not happening. Might have some failed projects,

but we'll always be there to live to play another day. I'm curious, I won't one more question

before we run stress. Let's fast forward exactly one year from today. And you're surrounded by people you love, whether it's professionally or personally or both. And you guys are pop and bottles. You're spraying them all over each other. You're celebrating like crazy. I'm curious. What are you guys celebrating? I'm saying the words creates a great fear. But I would say we'd be celebrating one or more huge hits because we're in the business of making heads. So the only way to light

that that was a truth which is we don't really spend a lot of time congratulating each other. We understand nature of this business is to get up every morning and do it again and again. And again, my father-in-law used to say about, you know, it was a very, very successful entrepreneur. He said, anytime someone congratulated him, it's something that I come while he say, oh, that's yesterday's headlines. And one way to look at it is, oh, that's, you know,

it's overly modest. The other way to look at it is it's actually the truth. It's yesterday's headlines. We don't high five endlessly around children things go, well, although we certainly do show sincere appreciation for people's great work. I try really hard to do that. I'm sure I fall short. I don't think leader can ever show sufficient appreciation for other people's work. But I try really hard to. We really avoid the, you know, who's better than us, you know, kind of

party. Because a minute you engage in that, you know, you lost the thread. This is a really, really hard business. We want to be at the very top of this business. We only want to make kids who want to make the best entertainment properties on earth. We want to surprise and engage all of our consumers open over and over again.

“The only way we can do it is by saying super hungry, super aggressive, super humble,”

ambitious, and to do it over and over and over again. And yeah, we'll let other people do the big celebrations for us. We, you know, you know, we do the next day. We get back to work on the next big project. I'm just going to say it seems like a calm alley among those who have sustained excellence over time is what do they do the next day they get up and to go to work. We may celebrate a little bit here in there, but like it's actually area. A lot of people think, I'm not really good at that. And that

seems to be a theme amongst excellence. It's interesting to me. I really appreciate this route. So thanks so much for being here. Is there anywhere you want to send people to learn more about what you guys do online? We're easy to find. So probably not. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Thanks so much. I love to continue our dialogue as we both progress. Man, this is great pleasure. Awesome. Thank you, man. You're welcome.

It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are sent me a note, Ryan at learningleader.com that we know you learned from this great

“conversation with Strauss, Zelnik of you, takeaways from my notes. What's a commonality among the best?”

One of them, they all have a coach. Strauss is one of the most disciplined humans on the planet. And yet, he still needs a coach. All the greats value coaching. That's a person who tells them the

One of the commonalities of leaders who sustain excellence over an extended period of time. They all

“have a coach. Speaking of that, Strauss had a confrontation he was avoiding. And his coach told him,”

"You've got to stop avoiding it and address it directly." As we talked about bad news,

doesn't get better with age. So there's probably something all of us right now are avoiding. We hope it goes away. Well, we know it won't. So let's take action on this. Think about the person

“you need to have a conversation with or a situation that needs addressed. And immediately after this”

podcast have the conversation addressed that situation right now. And then I'm super inspired by his

fitness routine. 68 years old looks amazing. Works out every day. He knows that taking care of

“himself first is the ultimate way to lead others. All of us, we all only get one body. And if that”

stops working, then we're done, right? So it's on all of us to do whatever we can to get stronger every day, especially as we age. And you can see that the discipline, energy, the clarity, that standard he holds himself to physically, that leads into every decision he makes. Are giving me the opportunity to do what I love in a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much, talk you see, can we?