George Lucas took a $350,000 pay cut on Star Wars to keep merchandising rights, a deal nobody else wanted. When the film became the highest-grossing movie of its era, that gamble made him a billionaire. He then self-financed The Empire Strikes Back for $30 million, risking everything on his own vision.
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Welcome to another Famous Friday. I believe that whatever your goal is, whatever obstacle is in front of you, it's already been solved by somebody else. And the fastest way for you to get to where you need to be is to model the success of people who have already been there and apply it to your business. So today's lesson is from George Lucas, founder of Lucasfilm, and it's believe in yourself. Good fit for this channel, right? So George Lucas was a director and he had had some success with his first movie, um, that was American Graffiti, and he wanted to create a new one called Star Wars. And he had it produced with Fox Pictures and he did something different. He did something that nobody else did at that time. They wanted to pay him half a million dollars to create Star Wars. And he said, you know what, I'll take $150,000. I'll take a $350,000 pay cut if you give me two things. One, 1) The rights to do any sequels. I own it. And 2) The merchandising. And this is a time when merchandising didn't really exist for movies. There weren't, you know, plates and cereal boxes and action figures for movies. That didn't exist. And there weren't a lot of movies that went to do the sequels, that had series. So Fox thought, "This George Lucas guy, he's an idiot. He wants these two things that nobody cares about and he's willing to take a $350,000 pay cut for it. Done! Where do I sign? But George Lucas believed in himself. He took that gamble on himself, and it paid off. When it came out, Star Wars was the highest-grossing film of all time until Steven Spielberg overtook it with E.T. I think it was 5 years later. That gamble paid off. He believed in himself. The next one came when he decided, okay, this first one worked out well, it's time for me to do the sequel. I own all the rights. I can do whatever I want with it. He wanted to create The Empire Strikes Back, and he wanted to finance it all himself. Where usually you go and you work with a production house like Fox Studios, he said, "No, I'm gonna do it myself." And it was gonna cost him $30 million to do it. That was basically all the money he made from his first movie. He was gonna pour it all into that second movie. If it didn't work out, he'd be bankrupt. But he believed in himself. He took that bet, and it worked out. Empire Strikes Back did amazingly well. He kept releasing more Star Wars. He launched into Indiana Jones, he launched into a whole bunch of other movies, he's now a billionaire. But it all started by that belief in himself. That's the difference from just being a director making movies and a billionaire entrepreneur owning the movies. He bet on himself. He believed in himself. And you need to believe in yourself too. You need to believe in what you're doing. You have to be passionate about your product, your service. You need to believe in yourself. You have to have confidence that you can do this, and you need to believe that it's gonna work out. You need to believe that if you continue to follow your passion and you continue to help people and you continue to pour everything you have into it, that you will be successful. It worked out for George Lucas, and it might just make you a billionaire as well. Believe. For those of you watching, like the video. You can subscribe to the channel, see more just like it. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you soon. Don't forget to sign up for my free newsletter. It's energy in your inbox every single week.
Hi, I'm Jason J. Ros Fonseca of RiseOnline.com, and I want to say Evan Carmichael's newsletter is consistent, fun, inspiring, and it's the only newsletter I prioritize and look forward to, period.
