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

0:00If you are a fan of the show, you've probably heard me talk a lot about our learning leader circle. We open it up one time per year for applications. We create one new group per year. That time is now learningleaderscircle.com is where you apply where you could learn a lot more. What it is is a group of roughly 12-ish people. It's thoughtfully curated with Git after it, people who are doers, the eights and nines who want to be tens. I love reading the applications and having the Zoom interviews to curate the next group is one of my favorite things to do. It's even better once we get the group formed and started. If you want to surround yourself with people who are going to hold you accountable, you're going to do work together with them, others who have this learning leader ethos who are always becoming never arriving, then you should apply for our learning leader circle. Go to learningleaderscircle.com.

1:01Welcome to the learning leader show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hauch. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleaders.com. Now, onto the night's featured leader, Strauss Zellink is the CEO. Of Take 2 Interactive, the company behind Grand Theft Auto, MBA2K 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 age 32, 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 in business and

2:03in life. During our conversation we discuss at age 68, Strauss is known as America's fittest CEO. He shares the importance of his two-a-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 commonality among the most effective leaders in the world. They all have a coach. Then Strauss leaves 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 report. We talk about that and so much more ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy. My conversation with Strauss, zoning. Is this story true when you were five years old, you announced that you wanted to run a

3:05movie studio? Is that true? I think so. I know I've told the story. It's at least when I recollect. Five years 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, a separate question? I don't know that I can even answer that. Then what was it like a few years later when you actually did it? It wasn't a few, but... That's a whole bunch of stuff that happened in between. Look, I was blessed. 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 running a movie studio. It's here, international television distributions out of frame over here. It was the only job I could get. I worked hard. I did well. That led to a promotion early. That led to being recruited to work in a pretty senior capacity at what was then the

4:06largest independent motion picture company, Vestron. Then pretty quickly thereafter, I became president of that company. Then I was like, would have it. The first picture I greenlit was a huge hit. That led to my getting recruited to be president of 20th Century Fox when I was 32. It was pretty quick trajectory from graduating to being president of a major film studio, much quicker than I had expected. What was it like? Obviously, it was incredibly scary because I had the presence of my to understand that it 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 as a gross understatement, I was learning 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. Then you meet them and talk to them. You're like, actually, they're figuring it out as they go too. And a way can be inspiring. Would you learn that other people are figuring things out as they go?

5:08I don't know. I suppose that would be a healthy way to look at it, but I never really did. 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. I was unafraid to ask questions even if they were done. But I know it was not my way to look at someone and see all of their own insecurities, especially because the entertainment business in those days was still pretty rough and tumble business. And unlike today, where traditional film and television has been highly compromised and sort of relegated to the sidelines in the entertainment business in those days, being inside a major entertainment company of 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.

6:10No one possibly could name the head of any major film studio today. The film you Greenlit 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, that is a great story actually because remember, I'm not responsible for creative choices in any of the businesses that I'm in. There was a great team at the restaurant that was there before I joined the company. The team that was put together by Austin first, who is the CEO, I was the chief operating officer. And the motion picture division was headed up by a woman named Ruth Vitale and then she sort of had two co-production heads, Mitchell Cannold and Stephen Ruth. 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 in to be Greenlit. And this was a very significant project for them. It was a five and a half million dollar budget. It was just a long time ago, but even then that wasn't very much money.

7:14And I remember the Greenlit meeting well because they came in with the director who previously had been a choreographer. This is his first directorial project in Emil Artilino and the writer and producer. And they proceeded and Emil was a lovely, lovely person. I had just met him in the meeting. But he was so scared that he couldn't speak. And so the team collectively had a pitch. The project and Greenlit meetings, generally speaking, you're not pitch meetings, but we didn't really know what we were doing at the restaurant. So it was in this instance, 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 music that is going to be incredibly successful. It's 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 an experience, but I'm like, this is all complete bullshit.

8:15Like, this is going to happen. But like I was greenlighting, stop every day, right? Because we were making 50 projects a year. This is the heyday of home entertainment. We were a volume company. So I thought all of that was untrue and Greenlit picture. And incidentally, I wasn't even a fan. I didn't like the script. I thought it was a little hokey. It wasn't for me. But doesn't matter. I supported the team. The team really believed in it. This is a story of 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 greenlight the picture and it turns out it's the biggest independent hit of all time to that day. It stayed in that position till Blair, which project came along.

9:17It had an award-winning soundtrack. It won an Oscar and it changed the way young women dressed and comported themselves for a period of time. It did all the things they promised in the Greenlit meeting. I mean, that's never happened. I don't think in history before or since. How did that impact you as a decision maker moving forward, seeing the success of that movie? It didn't really. Yeah, my process remained 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 leader. I've proven 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, very skilled, highly talented people. But what is that like to find great people? Can you take me inside the interview process or even the process as a whole

10:19of 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, the 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, looks like everyone else is. This is not like I magically run into some of the streets 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, because I think that 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

11:23leading 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 aligned with that. So your financial incentives have to be aligned with the mission, the strategy, and the culture. If you say the words over here, we want to be the best entertainment company on Earth, and your incentives are over there, 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 it that resolved. In all of the enterprises 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,

12:25either basically primarily to stock because we want to align the incentives of our colleagues with the goals of our shareholders. Or if they sit in an organization where they really can't have any influence over 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 the 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 complement them, or tell them what they want to hear. And I'm really averse to compliments. And I'm 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 a lot in a way. And they can not say anything a lot. I'd be nice

13:28to be polite and we do believe in being kind. But I just brought performance. So we have to align the words with the dollar sides to get the result we want. And very specifically, take two, our mission is to be the number one entertainment company in Earth. That's a really antly ambitious mission. We're on a pure play basis, according to Mark Kitka, 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. Ambitious as it is. If you're in the top five and you want to be 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. When we make decisions in service of that strategy, consistent with that strategy. And our

14:28culture is work as a team, seek excellence in everything you do, be kind. And then the comp is, if stock goes up, you get paid, we make money. You get that. If stock goes down, you don't, if we don't make money, you don't. How do you define what number one is? A market cap. Public company. Super easy. I'm working today is hovering around $50 billion. I think Netflix is around $400 billion. So you're getting a lot of work to do. Why does that matter? Oh, it doesn't. It doesn't really accept that we are a public company. And ultimately, the job of a public company is to create value for shareholders. How you do that is, of primary importance. We wake up doing 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?

15:28Well, I'll worry about that when the time comes. I am just curious about this idea because it seems like I love like your how clear you are on the mission and the values to bring those 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. That was like seven years away and we were at distant number two. I'm just wondering this comparison thing. 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. 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. For example,

16:30if I owned 100% of the shares of this company and we're like to lifestyle business, then I could decide. No shame in that. That's not the structure of our company. There are companies that are different. For example, their family businesses were the mission of the business, maybe a social mission. 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. After that, we're not focused on anything else. That's also fine. I'm not making a value judgment about other people's approaches. You're a public company. If you're going to be a public company, you have an obligation to create value for shareholders. We acquired Zenga, for example, in 2022 or 65% of the consideration of stock, which meant that we were able to do an accretive transaction for our shareholders that benefited Zenga shareholders as well. That's a deal we simply couldn't have done. Have we been in privately held company? No way. As you have the leader, how much pressure do you feel?

17:31It's not really an attempt to experience pressure. 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 looming that's really terrible, I can of course feel stressed. That's atypical for me, particularly because I've done so many turnarounds. I've had the experience of what real stress and pressure feels like. Once your company takes you today with a very, very strong balance sheet, plenty of cash, a great T&L generating loads of operating income on a pretty regular basis. With some variability, but we've been a profitable company since 2011, I believe, year out. That was coming from pretty terrible situation when we took over the business in 2007. That's not a super stressful experience. I also understand that some of the challenges are part of the game, and especially

18:34given the job I did, because I believe in delegation with information and I encourage my colleagues to do their jobs. If stuff ends up on my desk, it's not like the happy stuff. Happy stuff doesn't show up on my desk. Back up on outside of my office, it's like, come here, it's on my desk, imagine. It's probably not so good or super complex. What's your process to delegate with information? What does that look like? In practice, what does it look and sound like? In practice, we have a weekly senior management meeting where everyone responsible for running a group plus senior corporate staff get together in a room. We go around the table and share everything that's going on and then share the problems and challenges that we face. Because we do it every week, people look pretty well caught up. You can get through that meeting in roughly an hour. It also means I don't have to do one-on-ones, so it's very efficient. The rule is 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. If someone,

19:39for example, who's new to the company, pulled me aside at the end of the meeting and said, I only 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-on-one. If it's about business, back in the room, everyone's got to know. The politics diminish greatly. It's still big business. Of course, there's some politics, but rather limited politics, given the scale of the organization. Because everyone has the information. If there is a conflict, it becomes clear in that meeting that there's something we need to sort out. Maybe we won't sort it out in that meeting, but at least I know the way to land it and so does everyone else. 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 mentally efficient. I coach and mentor a lot of people including a bunch of CEOs. I remember a young CEO I was a speaker a few years ago. He looked terrible. I said, it was a growth business. He was drinking from a firehouse and I said, what's going on? He said, I'm sleeping like four hours a night. I said, why? I'm working so hard.

20:43I imagine you're working hard, but once keeping you so busy, I couldn't really get there. Finally, I said to him, do you have one-on-one meetings with your direct reports? He said, with all of them, I said, how many direct reports? He said, 20. I said, how many hours a week he's spending on one-on-one meetings? He said, 20. I said, it's like half a normal work week. How about this? How about trying it my way? I have one hour meeting with 20 people. And he did that. He got 19 hours out of his work week. I believe, does Jensen at Nvidia do that as well? I thought I saw him on a podcast talk about that. He does something similar, but he didn't learn it from me. Interesting. It seems like that's more of a thing. On the flip side of that, when I've talked to CEOs who've crushed it, and then you talk to the people that maybe work in their organizations, they say, I feel like he genuinely cares for me and has a deep care for the people that work for them. Not doing one-on-ones could be a thing that says, well, he doesn't do one-on-ones though. I don't know. How do you show your people that you

21:46genuinely 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 I didn't spend time with people, but I avoid doing is having that cookie cutter weekly or biweekly. Which hammers 20 hours on your calendar? Exactly, but I spent a lot of time with all of my colleagues and we'll have meals together. We travel together because I try to go out and see a lot of my offsets. So if I go visit a divisional, and by definition, our offsets are divisional, we don't really have corporate offsets outside of New York. So I'll be with executives on those trips. So I have time with executives that are that's one-on-one. It's just not a cookie cutter or one-on-one update meeting. One of the other things I noticed is just from connecting with you. Your note is America's fittest CEO. You do two a days, you're training all the time, you look great. Not a shame to say that. You do. Talk to me about though, I'm a believer in this two, seven days a week in the

22:47gym. 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 are seatbos who substantially better than I like Willie Walker, who's one of my best friends. So CEO of Walker and Dunlop and he's an amazing cyclist, which I like cycling, but he's an amazing cyclist. He will tell people we cycle together and I'm like, I'm not Willie, we're in a cyclist 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

23:52your 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. I feel great. I feel great. I was up this morning at 445. 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 and with a smile on my face, not feeling, you know, sort of gliarion, rough around the edges. How important when you're 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 hope the best and the brightest and the most creative. It has to play a little bit of a role, doesn't it? We're human beings. I mean, if they roll into my office, like, hung over with their clothing askew, that would be problematic. But I know I'm really

24:58careful actually about not holding people to a standard, a personal standard to which I hold myself. Everyone's entitled to be on their own journey. And I don't want clones of myself. Yeah, that would be far of fine. I think it's important for people to be healthy. And if you have someone who's unhealthy, they're not going to be as effective for you. But no, there's no obligation to come work out with me to work in 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 of ways. And by the way, some of it 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 state-of-the-art, because I think you should do some weight bearing exercises, especially as you age.

26:02But if all you did was 30 minutes a day of walking five days a week, you'd be a pretty good shape. So someone who does that is not going to like, show up in my office for a 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 Slop involved with making one of the Grand Theft Auto games. It's handcrafted building by building street by street. And that you think that's the right move here. I 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 game business currently with obviously technology. Everything we do is created in the computer. And broadly, what is being described as AI today is a wonderful technological step forward. 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 the synchrocs. That's what we're

27:05not doing. And I don't expect we'll ever do that. But will 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 at 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? Do 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 named Brian McGrath, a very senior executive of Columbia Pictures. It's a great guy. He taught me a lot of stuff. I remember one day he said to me, Strauss, it's lonely at the top. It's lonely 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 have wonderful family and

28:10kids 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 two. No, I'm pretty well inundated with people. I do have some close friends who are similarly situated. 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'm in a situation and I'm having difficulty parsing. I also have business coach who's great. That helps. No, I don't feel lonely or misunderstood. 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,

29:14I understand what you're waiting for. You've got to go do this, it's 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, you know, handle yourself appropriately 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. It's 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 have it staying out there. Yeah, like bad news doesn't get better with age, right? You got to just go do the thing. I love coaching. I'm my backgrounds in 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 counsel or people that they'll listen to and then the ones though who are not

30:17crushing it who are not doing that well, right? I don't need a coach. It's bizarre. 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 think Strauss 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. I think we can agree. Tom Brady is 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've warned me off road blocks

31:21or obstacles and encouraged me in other ways. And it's been immensely helpful. I had a coach for many years named Gloria Hand and she coached me in from 30 until she retired. She was a 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 who aren't particularly open-minded or self-critical who are just so talented that 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 loved to believe he had a coach. But he was immensely talented. I was a genius at marketing technology. I'm not a genius at doing anything. I got a good workman-like

32:23intellect. I work hard, directed, and I think I've become very good at leading super talented people to do their best work. But I have to be aware of my limitations. I need that coaching. I need that help. One of the things I want to come to the business world and 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 do they actually do? They didn't really give me any advice. They just kind of asked me some questions and then Strauss the smart guy, he'll figure it out. But my role as the mentor slash 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 was in there, but I had to help him get it out. That's what I feel like great coaches do. Is that in your experience

33:27or is there something else that great coaches do in addition to that? You just described this chronic method. 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. When I was younger, I believed I was the smartest kind of them. Thankfully, I've abandoned that belief. And therefore, I said I'd give people the answer. And by the way, I am reasonably intelligent. It says, it actually works, but it also piss people off and cause them to be disengaged. And I learned that the method you just described as chronic method is much, much more effective. But actually, in regard to my coaches, no. As a matter of fact, I tell them the story and I want a device, direct device. 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. Glory would say, you're missing this. This is right there in front of you. And I got a great device from actually someone else who wasn't a coach, a friend and recruiter by trade. And I was in a situation that I just wasn't succeeding at. And she said, sometimes you're really good

34:33with the words, but you're really bad with the music. And I said, what? She said, like, get the facts right. And 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 got the words right, you got the music wrong, it was immensely effective. She was not using this chronic method. She was giving me direct devices. It happened. She used a colorful approach to that that worked for me. But my coach, my mentors have generally speaking said to me, don't do that, do that. And I like that. And I reserve it 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. You have to follow your own path. You have to make your own decision. And if the decision were clear and obvious, we wouldn't be having a conversation. So I'm giving you the best advice I've 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 as titled CEO 101. I do that sort of thing. So okay, that's

35:39you do. I do. Yeah, I go to back to when you go back to Harvard, what do you teach? Well, usually Harvard Business School uses a case method. So they've done a bunch of cases on businesses that I've run over the years, probably 12 or 14 of them. So I'll get into class around that. But I also, I go to MIT Sloan 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 could high level and we can maybe be able to draw down, but I'm just curious, what's a part of that class? That's Sloan. 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 actually through a static method through a Q&A. I asked the students a lot of questions. I show up with 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? Where

36:41they hope to get out of it? That's drawing and surprising to them because their speakers never do that. Really? And yeah, I'm like, what do you hope to get out of this class? And I'll go around, no, people raise their 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 an audience, you have to be a service to the audience. I learned that one the hard way too. How so? I was president of S.R. and the new president of S.R. I'm a long ago. I was 31 years old. Something like that was really not. And a very inexperienced. I consider myself a good communicator. Definitely I'm a good writer. And I had to give a speech to a bunch of like, moment attainment retailers. I know it's unsentilating. An actor in a speech. And so I wrote a speech. I was very proud. I 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 Hurst, who is CEO, pulls me aside. He said, you're just a terrible speaker. I was so offended and surprised.

37:44And 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 about. 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 they know stuff or at worst use notes. And it's even better if you could do a Q&A format. And then I learned yourself an injector personality into it. And then I learned from my wife, you gotta 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, for any much anytime 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,

38:45especially when it's like a Q&A and someone says, ask your question, they go back to their talking box. I mean, you want to shoot yourself. What? It was to be your service to the audience. That's how I started. Wow. How did you feel when he 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. It's really funny. Right. Wait, 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 nose or something? Yeah, absolutely. Read it off my nose. 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. Ergance is the enemy of a continued success. Is it hard not to get a little arrogant now? No, of course, this is trooper. 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. I have a lot of experiences and I am proud that I do certain things very effectively and say otherwise would be stupid.

39:51Like, what would I say? Like, oh, I'm just bumbling through my job. Come on. I mean, I don't believe that. Now, be silly to try to convey that. I'm certainly not bumbling 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 the things my team will say about me is that I strongly held opinions and I'm quite happy to share them and equally, I'm very open-minded. And if I'm presented with facts or analysis or thoughts 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. I made the decision that's my call. We're just like, we're all gone. Bad things happen when you do that. I am absolutely willing to change course when there's a reason to change course. 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

40:53young, ambitious, 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 business, 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 a zillion people. I spend time with the 18-year-old entrepreneurs who are working in tech, something most people do what I do, my age don't do. And then I have to arrive at conclusions and it is true that those conclusions have far reaching the influence of 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 an AI. It was VR and metaverses. And my competitors

42:00devoted hundreds of millions of dollars of capital to VR development. And I did all the research and I didn't 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 the fact that it's all anyone's talk, but you can go look at analysts calls. I would ask over and over and over again about the metaverses in VR. I said, look, we're going to do enough work around here so that if VR explodes in something huge in the video game business, we're ready to pursue it. We did a bunch of experimentation. I said, we're not devoting capital to this. We have every single VR project we did here. We got paid for and made a margin on it. Every single one of them lost zero money when it turns out that there, oh, there is no such thing as a metaverse. Oops, no one wants to be our entertainment. And you know, that's just the state of play. So it was my job to make that call, how did I make the 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

43:02that 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 honest. I had to make a decision based on what I thought. But I left all kinds of escape hatches open if I 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, untold 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 perfectly without being in play. And I have enormous respect from Mark Zuckerberg to be exactly the same. And maybe he was wrong once. 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?

44:03Well, I mean, it works by making sure two things happen as quickly as possible after I take over a business. And because it doesn't have so many turnarounds, it wasn't always possible to do it quickly. What it 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 you're wrong, 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 go 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, he's a really good poker player and be here to huge stack chips. So he knew in poker, you're going to lose sometimes even if you're really,

45:03really 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 that's how we looked at the world. So when things, when against Carl and I know Carl well, they're hints around moaning about it. He went on to the next game and you have to be that way in entertainment. So I'm really proud of the hit ratio of my businesses. We've always had the highest hit ratio of any team within the business of which we operated, but it's a ratio like for the reason, what does that mean? There are 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've had one, but we've had them. And you know, when I was in the movie business, a well-run studio in those days had a 30% hit ratio, which is to say 70% of what you did broke even our last money, 70%. So you better be like wired to understand creatively, lots of stuff

46:04is going to go against you. And if you believe that and you understand that, which I did in the humility, if you're aware of that, then you have the nature of business courting. 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 go bankrupt is 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 wouldn't go perfectly. So unintentionally publicly said that they would go bankrupt in six months. I got scolded for it quite properly and they went bankrupt in eight months. That was on two months. Yeah, I mean, a leader's job, 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 investors around here after we turn around take two is that I would take

47:05meaningful creative risk, but I would never take bankruptcy risk. And that's what this company does. Like we're not ever going to be K 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. So one more question before we run Strauss. 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 poppin bottles, your spray animal over each other, your celebrating like crazy. I'm curious. What are you guys celebrating? I'm saying the words creates great fear, but I would say we'd be celebrating one or more huge hits because we're in the business of making hits. So the only way to lighten that though is 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. My father and my used to say about, you know, it was a very, very successful entrepreneur. He said, uh, anytime someone congratulated him on something that had gone well, he'd say, oh, that's yesterday's

48:07headlines. And one way to look at it is it, 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 here when 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 hardy because in minute you engage in that, you know, you've 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 hits. We want to make the best entertainment properties on earth. We want to surprise and engage all of our consumers over and over and over again. The only way we can do it is by staying super hungry, super aggressive, super humble, super ambitious, and to do it over and over and over again. And yeah, we'll let other people do the big celebrations for us. Where, you know, you know, we do the next day,

49:11we get back to work in 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 miss celebrate a little bit here and 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, Raus. 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'd love to continue our dialogue as we both for Grestman. 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, send me a note, Ryan at learningleader.com that we know what you learned from this great conversation with Strauss, Zellnick, a few 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.

50:18And yet he still needs a coach. All the greats value coaching. That's a person who tells them the truth, holds them accountable and helps them make decisions when there is no easy choice. 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, hey, you 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 address that situation right now.

51:18And 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 bleeds into every decision he makes. Once again, I'm going to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Strauss Zellnick. I think it'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Spotify, Apple Podcast. You subscribe to the show. You're ready to hopefully five stars. You write a thoughtful review by doing all of that. You are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis and for that. I will forever be grateful.

52:22Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.