Michael Ovitz

It's about deeply educating yourself in your field, deeply educating yourself in the peripheries of your field, knowing who your competitors are.

How do you recruit people that are really good that aren't on your side of the ledger?

I don't think a meeting went by in any business I've ever been in where I don't ask the people around the table, who have you seen out there that's good?

Who beat you last week or yesterday or today?

Who's standing out?

We recruited some of our best executives that way.

Matter of fact, we recruited, I'd say,

80% of our executives like that.

We either grew them inside or recruited them from the competition because they had our standards and they were at the wrong place in our mind.

Well, it's tough.

It's a controversial subject.

There are those who feel leverage is critical in business and there are those that feel leverage is really nasty.

I come down on leverage as a very important principle of building a business.

Because if you have leverage, you can deliver for your client or your product.

And you need leverage in marketing.

You need leverage when you're selling people.

You need leverage when you're packaging content.

You need leverage to negotiate.

Leverage is a connotation of leverage is a bad thing.

Well, you could say that about anything.