Jeffrey Katzenberg on making the most of what's in front of you

I've had some big setbacks over the years. Owning my failures is as important, or actually more than owning my successes. I'm proud to own the failure. I'm not proud of the failure. Welcome to The Path where I, Ryan Roslansky, sit down with the biggest changemakers, innovators, and thought leaders in the world. At the end, we'll see what turning point shaped the journey of these incredible success stories. Today, my guest is Jeffrey Katzenberg. Jeffrey is one of the most recognizable names in the movie industry. He was a mastermind behind the scenes at Paramount Studios, Disney, and co-founded one of the most successful studios in Hollywood, DreamWorks. So if you've ever watched films like The Lion King, Dead Poets Society, or Shrek, you can thank Jeffrey for that. But his career was filled with some very public failures and a lot of surprising pivots. Here's how Jeffrey Katzenberg paved his path. I want to go way, way back to the early days of Jeffrey. I know when you were around 14 years old, you joined a political campaign. Yeah, actually slightly older than that, about 15-16 years old. John Lindsay was running for mayor of New York City in 1965. I went and volunteered in the campaign. That really was, I felt like where I actually got my education about people. And I saw every facet of the great things that government can do for people. And so when I was meant to go to college and realized sitting there that I actually was learning more every day, doing what I was doing and so I didn't go to college. Jeffrey immersed himself in the world of politics and campaigning, landing a gig-getting coffee and running errands for New York City Mayor, John Lindsay. He kept at it for years. Then in the '70s, Mayor Lindsay starts running for President and Jeffrey hopped onboard his campaign team. But their dream of reaching the West Wing was short-lived. It seems like you've got this great path going in politics and then at a certain point, you make this move into the entertainment industry. I didn't go back to government. I just didn't feel like doing more of what I had been doing for a couple of years, was actually a growth trajectory. So I thought, okay, I got to start over. And in 1973, if you were very driven, ambitious and you wanted fortune and fame, there was one place that you needed to be in, and that was Hollywood. Yeah. And so I used the networking of the people that I had met during those years of working for the mayor. One introduction leads to another, eventually leading Jeffrey to a man named Barry Diller, the CEO of Paramount Pictures at the time. Barry hired him as an assistant. And over the next couple of years, Barry moved Jeffrey around the company from marketing to distribution to business affairs. Barry may have known it, but did you know along the way that that moving around the jobs, learning every part of the business was a path? No, not only did I not, it frustrated me and in some instances really pissed me off, and I always felt I was growing. Yeah. You know, as long as you feel like you're learning and you're growing, just go with it. I love that. You know, they made me president of the movie studio, and yet when it happened, I was so ready for the job because he made me ready for the job. Jeffrey spent about 10 years at Paramount making his mark as one of the most influential people in Hollywood. He developed a reputation in the industry for having an uncanny ability to identify blockbusters. Eventually, his boss, Michael Eisner, becomes CEO of Disney, and Jeffrey comes along for the ride. Michael Eisner and I go to Disney. In 1984, I went into Michael's office. He said, "Oh, Jeffrey, come over here. I want to show you something." So we go to the corner window and he says, "Look over there. That's where they make the animated movies." I went, "Oh, that's nice." He said, "And that's your problem." Now, I had never studied animation. I draw bad stick characters. That's how bad it is, right? So my problem became my passion and my passion became my expertise. Whatever job I got, and it didn't matter whether it was to go get a cup of coffee, it's very simple; just do better than they thought I was going to do. And I realized that for people that I worked for, the more I exceeded their expectations, the rewards came. How about then for the people that work for me? I want to be a better leader than they thought. What could be more important than exceeding the expectations of your customer? Then I actually took the next step, and I did it with my children, yeah, because I was not that father that was home every night for dinner. And so I tried to do other things that would exceed their expectations and surprise them. And then finally, I'm happily married for 48 years. It's hard to exceed her expectations. Jeffrey spent a decade as the chairman of the Walt Disney Studios. Under his leadership, Jeffrey turned around their animation department and produced landmark animated films, live action hits, and he's credited for discovering and nurturing some incredible talent. But in 1994, there's a shakeup in Disney's C-Suite. Jeffrey was campaigning to become second in charge of the company, but instead, he was pushed out. Our production team had sent over just kind of make sure we have your career path, right? We had said you left Disney. That's nice. I got fired. Well, you actually edited the document to make sure we knew you got fired. I just wanted to maybe start and ask why you wanted to make sure that that was out there. You have to own it all. It's not optional. Like, you get to edit chapters out along the way. I've had some big setbacks over the years. Owning my failures is as important, or actually more than owning my successes. Even so, for something like Quibi, yeah, I'm proud to own the failure, I'm not proud of the failure. But I'm proud of what we tried, was a moonshot. You know, it wasn't fun failing. I don't recommend it, but it's going to come. Going back to Disney, the day I was fired, I walked back to my office and was like on the phone, on hold with Steven Spielberg and Bob Zemeckis. They're laughing. They go, "Oh my God, this is the best thing that's ever happened." I'm going, "Really?" Like, I'm trying to figure out how this is. And Zemeckis says, "You know what, Jeffrey? Screw them. You just need to start your own studio." I went, "Whoa, improbable." Yeah, probably impossible. Jeffrey, Steven Spielberg, and David Geffen launched DreamWorks, the studio behind some of the biggest films in Hollywood. A couple of years later, Jeffrey became CEO of DreamWorks Animation, a spinoff of DreamWorks. But then in 2016, Jeffrey and his team sell DreamWorks Animation to Comcast, leaving Jeffrey without a job for the first time in over two decades. Then, just a few months later, he founded an investment firm named WndrCo. You spent a lot of your time these days helping other entrepreneurs. I have spent a lifetime curating talent. I'm not the talent. I was a truffle hunter. I saw Julia Roberts do her little scene in Steel Magnolias and went, "Wow." And we cast her in Pretty Woman, you know, life changing her, us, me, and sell the company to Comcast. And I wake up the next morning and I go, "Hmm, if you were 23 years old today, where would you go?" Right down here, Silicon Valley. Technology impacted every single step of my career, whether it was the introduction of special effects, the impact into animation. And so I had this 40-year period of coming to Silicon Valley. I would see these Valentine at Sequoia and Perkins, and kind of predict, they were truffle hunters. Today, WndrCo has built and invested in successful companies like Airtable, Robinhood, and frame.io. My last question, what's your best piece of career advice? Whatever it is, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, you don't have a crystal ball. I didn't have a crystal ball. Don't try and look around the corner over the horizon. Take what is in front of you, you make the very most of that in the little ways, in medium ways, and in big ways. And honestly, most of all, try and exceed expectations. So here's my takeaway: Setting standards for yourself is the best thing you can do in your career. When Jeffrey set high standards for himself and began striving to exceed expectations, even the simplest of jobs, he started paving his way to blockbuster success. He would take on challenges, sometimes reluctantly, but always aim for excellence, signifying not just his dedication to his work, but also to the people he worked for. For Jeffrey, exceeding expectations meant being proactive and embracing risk, which also meant moments of failure. But when you strive to be the best, failure doesn't hold you back. So wherever you are on your career path right now, seize the opportunity to set yourself up for a life beyond the ordinary and let your commitment to excellence pave the way to greatness.