Advice on Starting a Business from Entourage’s Ari Gold

For those of you who watch HBO’s Entourage, you may have seen a scene recently where Turtle (the friend, driver, and go-fer for Vince, the movie star) approaches Hollywood agent Ari Gold for some advice on getting funding for an idea he has. In typical Ari fashion, he smacks him down with a dose of reality.

When people have an idea and are thinking of starting a business or looking for investors, they don’t always have an Ari around to provide a reality check. So in the interest of helping everyone recognize that success doesn’t come easy and that starting a business can be a challenge, I have included a transcript of the scene below. There isn’t a video clip online yet, but if I find one, I’ll update this post.

Paraphrasing this wouldn’t do it justice, so I’ll let Ari do the talking:

Turtle enters Ari’s office.

Ari: What’s up?

Turtle: I’m looking for funding for a business idea that I have .

Ari: Did you go to a bank?

Turtle: Yeah, they laughed in my face because I have no collateral.

…

Turtle: I’m trying to do this on my own.

Ari: Coming here and asking me for money is not doing it on your own.

Turtle: No no no, I’m not asking you for money, I’m asking you to put me in touch with people who invest in businesses and I know you know those kinds of people….I just think it’s time for me to make something of myself.

Ari: Turtle, do you know what it takes to make something of yourself? I mean, c’mon, I worked a job through college AND grad school.

Ari calls his assistant Lloyd into the room.

Ari: Lloyd!

Lloyd: Yes, Mr. Gold.

Ari: Hit the stack.

Ari points to a tall stack of movie scripts on his desk. He picks up a script.

Ari: The Kingdom of Foibles.

Lloyd: The Kingdom of Foibles, written by Karen Brown. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court meets Die Hard. A man awakes in the midst of…

Ari: This man can quote from the entire stack, that is what he is willing to put in for his own success. He’s paying his dues. When have you paid yours?

Turtle: I’m willing to pay them now, and I have a great idea.

Ari smacks the stack of scripts.

Ari: So do all these idiots. Can you execute it?

Turtle: I think I can.

Ari: In this life, no one is going to invest because you THINK you can. Do you have a business plan?

Turtle: No, I mean I haven’t sat down and put…

Ari: What do you need? Office space, insurance, how many employees? What do you project to earn? What do you need to break even? At what point can your investors see some profit?

Turtle: I don’t know! I don’t know.

…

Turtle: I can pull this off Ari.

Ari: Come back to me when you can prove it.

Ideas are cheap. It’s all in the execution. Take it from Ari Gold.