Ovitz: Leaders Must Resist Dopamine Addiction from Relentless Execution Momentum
Michael Ovitz · Michael Ovitz: The Psychology of Power · Feb 3, 2026 · at 1:27:46
Former CAA co-founder Michael Ovitz discusses the psychological trap of momentum and the difficulty of reclaiming personal time.
0:00 / 0:27exact quote · 27.8s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“There's a negative In that as a successful business person where you're feeding on the dopamine of getting all these wonderful things done, and because you're on this roll and you have momentum, you can get so much more done that you want to do it every second of the day. But you have to be mature enough to look at it and say, maybe I'll just cut two percent back at the beginning and do X, Y, and Z.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Michael Ovitz
Ovitz: Businesses should strive to eliminate competition rather than co-exist
“And I'm a monopolist. I believe in Peter Thiel's theory on monopoly. I don't believe that you should have competition. They have to be eliminated. That's the American way, in my opinion. Everyone says there's always room for competition. I don't think there's …”
Ovitz: Forced wokeness put Hollywood's content business in its worst state ever
“I think it contributed to the demise of the content business in Hollywood right now. I think the content business is in the worst place it's ever been, and I think this forced wokeness Has not been productive.”
Ovitz claims CAA never lost a single client during his entire tenure
“In the years I was at CA, we never lost a client, and the reason was if they tired of one person, they'd go to the next, but everyone was up to speed.”
Ovitz: Packaging tech startups is functionally identical to packaging entertainment projects
“But other than that, the packaging of a film or a television show or a record or a book is no different than the packaging of an idea for a digital company, for a company in technology. It's all the same. The founder's the creator. The VCs, the money in tech, …”
Ovitz: 1970s Hollywood agents fabricated answers over half the time
“When I started CA in seven day four, it became very clear to me that lying was a industrial problem in the entertainment business. Everybody didn't tell the truth. One of the reasons they did not tell the truth is since they didn't know the term knowledge is p…”