Michael Ovitz describes his failed tenure at Disney under Michael Eisner, including a hospital stay and repeated job title changes from co-CEO to president. He says the arrangement fell apart when his direct reports were reassigned to others.
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Good afternoon, this is Brad.
Brad, this is Gary Vaynerchuk and you're on the AskGaryVee show with Michael Ovitz.
Oh my gosh. I'm having an out of body experience.
That is a very good thing, my friend.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
No worries. What is your question, my friend?
Well, I know that Mr. Ovitz, you had a tough slog with Disney that ended poorly. Just wanted to get your comments on what lessons you took from that session.
Don't go to Disney now. That doesn't include the theme parks. I happen to like them. No, as I said in the book, it's the biggest career mistake I ever made. I completely misjudged it and it's a really good example of how and why not to be your own counsel.
And you know, it's funny you brought that up once when we first met about not being your own counsel and the value of why we're sitting together for everybody at home, just give them the one to two minute Cliff notes. Obviously the three of us know what we're talking about, but I think it would be fascinating for everybody at home. What is the Disney chapter?
The Disney chapter is about starts with my set of meetings with Michael Eisner. It goes through the time when he had a heart attack and I stayed in the hospital with him for five to six days. And he asked me to come on board to originally be the co CEO and then that went back down to being the president and coo and then it went to be the president. And then when I showed up at his house for our first meeting prior to starting, all the people who were supposed to report to me, he decided weren't going to report to me. So it was kind of over before it started.
Yeah. And did you know that at that point I hadn't.
Well, I knew at the minute that point you knew. I knew it when I was sitting in his living room at his house when he had the CFO and the chief legal officer there and he. They said they weren't going to report to me and he didn't do anything about it.
You said, okay, well, I mean, if.
He was the CEO that really wanted this to work and he wanted a partner, I mean, what we were trying to do was set up a partnership the way Bob Daly and Terry Sumo had at Warner's or Don Keogh and Roberto Goiza, Coca Cola, I understand, or Tom Murphy and Dan Burke at ABC Cap Cities. These were powerful partnerships. These were big companies. Disney was about to buy abc. It was going to be a behemoth company more than one person could run. So the concept was to create a dynamic partnership.
Understood. Thanks for the call, brother.
Hey, thanks, Gary. I wanted to ask quick, quick question. What do you know about Okanagan wines?
I know that the Pinot Noir from that region super intrigued me. Like, right before I made the transition to Silicon Valley from the wine world, I thought that the. That British Columbia and Vancouver and the Okanagan region specifically were making wines that I thought were world class, but nobody knew how to market them. In the same way that I look at Baja California, Mexico, I think the two best wines in the world that nobody knows anything about are Okanagan Pinot Noirs and Baja California Cabernets from Mexico. Because if you roll up on anybody and talk about wine, Mexico and Vancouver are not coming out of their mouth. So what I know about them is they're obnoxiously high quality. Quality with absolutely no brand awareness.
