A.M. on Masters of Scale, “The Infinite Learner”
In Spring 2018, I was a student in Temple University’s LA Program.
Through my amazing university, I was able to meet and listen to Temple alumni come in and talk about their daily lives in Hollywood, in various capacities, over snacks and beverages in Raleigh Studios.
I learned things like
the difference between agents and managers.
Insights on production,
advertising,
independent filmmaking,
post-production,
line producing,
script coordination and of course,
production assisting (PA’ing)
hollywood assisting (Lloyd from Entourage).
The list of job titles and the possible pathways seemed endless to me.
Oh the possibilities.
One executive in particular took a liking to me.
She even agreed to get coffee with me on a day I did not have to go to my classes, or my internship with Special Order.
I sent this message in response to the exec on March 19, 2018:
“I will check out the podcasts with Barry Diller and will contact HR at the agencies we discussed [for a possible job after graduation].
I have a lot to do before we meet again. Thanks again, have a great day!”
Little did I know this podcast, and the Masters of Scale community, would transform the way I approach my life and my work.
Give it a listen and come back: Reid Hoffman Barry Diller MoS
Learn to Unlearn
Chapter 3: learn by reading, learn by doing:
HOFFMAN: Barry actually dropped out of college for this quixotic three-year course in a filing room [at William Morris]. It’s an extreme version of a story I often hear from scale entrepreneurs.
They’re not always full-fledged autodidacts, like Barry, but they always show flashes of independence.
You may have figured it out by now.
I too am an autodidact.
I like to teach myself new technologies, ways of working, living.
And if I find ideas I especially like, I will share them with you, reader.
Text in a blog is one way to distribute thoughts and feelings.
But through use of visual literacy, we all can be storytellers.
We can choose to use the tools like Walt Disney or Leni Riefenstahl did for their governments during their World War.
The information is out there, it is May 5, 2023 today after all.
But you have to start with starting with a clean slate.
HOFFMAN: if you can turn your naïveté into an asset, I’d argue you stand a better chance at scaling a business than any of your competitors.
In fact, I believe that no one can truly claim to be a “master of scale.”
I believe we are all, at best, infinite learners. - Ch1
“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.” ―Epictetus
Create Space for Luck and Serendipity.
DILLER: My closest friend, Marlo Thomas, (American actor best known for starring in the TV series That Girl), was dating an executive at ABC.
But everything is serendipitous. And he was moving to Los Angeles from New York, he was kind of up-and-coming, rising little lower-middle management guy at ABC.And he was coming to LA to be, I think, the vice president of current West Coast programming.
And he asked me to be his assistant.
I know some assistants in Hollywood.
Nobody wants to be Lloyd from Entourage and serve Ari Gold. HBO:
But Diller did do this, for 3 years, file room.
He learned everything about the entertainment business at William Morris since like 1898 or something.
I do not know if they worked shoulder-to-shoulder, but I do know that Michael Ovitz also read everything he could in the WM file room.
Who Is Michael Ovitz Ch3, “Mail Man”:
“[WM] had a file room the length of a basketball court. It was lined with steel cabinets, the hard drives of the era, all packed with seventy years’ worth of manila folders.
I viewed those files as an encyclopedia of entertainment, albeit a helter-skelter one, so I helped the woman who ran the file room, Mary, with her mimeographing. And I brought her little gifts—a box of candy, a scarf.
One day I said, “You know, I’d love to read some of the files.”
She told me to make myself at home.
Within a week she was letting me stay on after she left.
Then she gave me a key.”
Amazing stories from two Hollywood moguls.
As Barry said to Reid, “The word “mogul” was invented for those guys—the founders, basically, of the movie business.
They were just on their last legs.”
It is important to learn infinitely about how empires are built.
Especially when you are trying to build your own.
“I love studying Ancient History and seeing how empires rise and fall, sowing the seeds of their own destruction.”
