In this article, I will share some of the best business movies every entrepreneur should watch if he wants to take his company and finances to the next level.
To succeed in life and in business you need more than money or being highly intelligent, you need inspiration, good ideas, enthusiasm and motivation to keep going when the going gets tough.
Good movies can help you in this regard.
They can stir up some powerful emotions in you and convince you that your best days are ahead of you.
A movie can quickly elevate you from hopelessness to belief in the attainment of a worthy goal.
It can give you the inspiration to set new and higher goals and start working on them and the motivation to keep going, to persevere until you hit them.
If you’re an entrepreneur or you aspire to become one and to build something huge in this life, I recommend you to watch the movies shared below.
Without further ado…
here you have a list of
7 Movies Every Entrepreneur Should Watch
1). The Men Who Built America (2012) TV Miniseries
Do you want to build an empire? Do you want to become a titan of industry? Do you want to get so rich, that it’s humanly impossible to count your own money and/or keep track of all the sources that pour dollars into your bank accounts?
If you answered Yes, then “The Men Who Built America” is exactly what you need to watch next.
This TV Miniseries will put fire in your belly and will make you think that anything is possible for you and it is…
Five men built America from scratch: Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and Henry Ford.
All these business tycoons, through ruthlessness, sheer force, grit and determination, High belief in themselves, Humongous Desires to Win and skilfully played moves have transformed America in an Economic Super Power.
They really brought us the modern world and they raised to fame and made a bloody fortune while doing this.
Without them, we will probably still light our houses with candles…:)
And while I don’t agree with all their practices…
You can’t help but admire, the sacrifices, the Big Thinking, their commitment to the success of their Huge Dreams, their love of efficiency, the Non-Stop risk-taking, the willingness to lose everything for a chance to win and the incredible work ethic they all displayed.
I must confess I’m addicted to this movie. I have probably watched it at least 6 times or so and every few months I’m getting my dose of capitalism again 😀
If you haven’t had the pleasure of watching The Man Who built America, do yourself a favor…get the DVD and prepare yourself for some serious business lessons…
2). The Founder (2016)
I didn’t expect much from this movie.
But boy, was I wrong…
I already saw it two times and I can’t seem to get enough of it 🙂
If you’re a fan of Gary Vaynerchuk you probably already know he says/said often: “Ideas are shit, execution is the game.” and he’s right.
And The Founder shows this…and it also shows the difference between the small thinking entrepreneur and a real business titan and that age doesn’t matter when it comes to business…
Everyone can start and develop a great business at any age.
The McDonald brothers had a revolutionary concept and genius ideas and have created the perfect fast food restaurant.
But they couldn’t expand their business and they even arrived at the idea that it’s better this way, because, in their view, by managing only a small restaurant they were able to enforce higher quality control.
And this silly situation maintained until…
The 52 years hungry entrepreneur named Ray Kroc have met the brothers and entered in a business partnership with them.
He transformed McDonald’s into the behemoth business that you see today…from one restaurant to 40.000 across 120 countries as of 2023…from peanuts to making billions.
Currently McDonald’s is the world’s second-largest private employer with a bit over 2 million employees (Walmart being the first with 2.3 million employees) working world wide at restaurants franchised under McDonald’s (only 200,000 people worked at McDonald’s’ company-owned restaurants, offices and corporate wing at the end of 2022) that serve around 70 million consumers on a daily basis
Last year (2022) alone, McDonald’s Corporation generated $23.183 billion in revenue.
Ray made all this possible by using the franchise model, by buying the land on which each restaurant would be built and by using all kinds of strategies and tactics
that were not approved most of the time by the McDonald brothers.
Hence the many disputes between him and the brothers:
“Business is war.
Its dog eat dog, rat eat rat.
If my competitor were drowning, I’d walk over and I’d put a hose right in his mouth.
Can you say the same?”
Ray Kroc asks one of the McDonald brothers in one of their many disputes over the phone (the answer was no of course)…
Eventually, Ray Kroc got tired of that situation and bought Dick and Mac McDonald part of the business and started running the entire show alone.
When Kroc died in 1984 at the age of 82, his personal fortune was estimated at $500 million.
If you want to know how a high-school dropout, got from almost nothing to a fortune like that, go watch The Founder.
3). The Social Network (2010)
I’ve seen this movie again last night.
Man, it made me see even clearer why some people are destined to be broke and others become fuckin billionaires 🙂
Some have crazy huge dreams and they stay tuned in their dream world 100% of the time, doing whatever needs to be done to materialize those dreams, while anyone else is thinking of drinking, relaxing and sex…
Even if Zuckerberg is portrayed in this movie as a really awkward person in most social situations that didn’t know how to speak with/treat girls or other people for that matter…I can’t help but admire people like him.
The ones that are so focused and obsessed with an idea that they shut down almost completely the outside world with all its noise and nonsense.
They only hear/see the things that can help them reach their goals.
And this quality makes them look like assholes, but at the end of the day, like it or not, they’re the ones that make this world go around.
Not the people that want to be liked by every freaking person in the world.
But, as you will see in this movie, a huge obsession with an idea/goal is not enough to hit the Jackpot.
You also need:
- to be passionate with what you do; You need to be able to work night and day with little rest;
- mad skills and creativity and Mark had plenty of those…
- to dream big…really BIG;
While his friends were having mental orgasms thinking about girls and being accepted in different exclusivists clubs…Mark was thinking all the time to change the entire social game and the world.
- Resources(money, things, people, amazing ideas);
His friend Eduardo Severin was the one that came up with the capital for starting “TheFacebook”, the mammoth social network in its baby stage, that billions of people are using today.
Then when things started to speed up and Facebook became huge…Sean Parker most known at that time for co-founding the file-sharing computer service named Napster, played by Justin Timberlake, helped Mark to bring on board his first big investor, entrepreneur Peter Andreas Thiel that made a $500.000 angel investment in Facebook…
And the rest is history.
I hate with passion, when I see/hear stupid people who want to build something huge with zero resources. It can’t be done. You need some money, no matter how little, in the beginning, you can’t get things out of the ground with nothing but enthusiasm.
- a great team of people/mastermind;
No one can create something like Facebook alone. We all need smart and powerful allies(friends/business partners) to hit humongous goals like this…
Without Severin as his friend, the idea and the blueprint for the site that got from the Winklevoss brothers, Sean Parker that amplified everything in no time and a few amazing programmers, Mark would have never built Facebook.
- to make big sacrifices and do whatever it takes;
Yep, even to lose good friends and risk looking like a heartless person that will destroy everything and everyone in his path; Or to steal ideas and plans from others. Again, to do whatever it takes to succeed.
- and the last ingredient is of course to not give a flying f..k about what others think or say about you;
It’s impossible to not upset some people in your way to the top; If you always care what others think about you and you get emotional when they don’t like you or your actions, you can kiss your goals/dreams goodbye.
4). Jobs (2013)
This movie is more of a biography of the late Steve Paul Jobs, who was the co-founder of Apple Inc, the founder of NeXT Inc and the chairman and the majority shareholder of Pixar Animation Studios…
I’ve watched it 2 times already and I would probably watch it again in the future.
It’s a great movie and there’s a lot to learn from it.
It also has near the end some really strong quotes that will give you a ton of inspiration and enthusiasm and make you see things differently, it will make you see new possibilities and help you tap a little more into your potential, that is infinite by the way…
Here’s one of them:
“When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.” – Steve Jobs
Steve just like Mark Zuckenberg was not so nice with the people around him…
Many hate the way Steve Jobs treated his friends, the people with whom he started Apple…his employees and especially his pregnant girlfriend…
And to be honest I can’t find any excuse for him for the last one – leaving his pregnant girlfriend and denying the paternity of his daughter Lisa, in court documents, by claiming that he was sterile was not nice at all…
But at least after 8 years or so, he came to his senses and let his firstborn daughter Lisa in his life.
I believe that every person makes mistakes and is a mix of good and bad traits and Steve was no exception.
And as I mentioned earlier all these business titans are totally obsessed with a vision/dream and they don’t care about being nice with other people.
They only care about their dream/vision.
I can’t say that I like this behavior, but this is what you will see in most people that build something big that change the world eventually.
All Steve wanted was to create an extraordinary product and customer experience and let his mark on this world, a thing that he accomplished.
I want to put a ding in the Universe.
Jobs was very smart, creative, a visionary, a perfectionist, a great salesman and one of the most unreasonable people you could ever meet.
Some of these traits/qualities and the mistake of making John Sculley Apple’s chief executive officer, got him banished from his own company, but at the same time got him back 10 years later and helped him revive Apple and make it great again.
Jobs and Steve Wozniak revolutionized the computer industry through their company Apple, by making personal computers smaller, cheaper, easier to use and accessible to anyone.
We will never know…
But without these two and a few others like them…the technology would probably still be in its infancy and this world a lot duller than it is today.
5). Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999)
One of the things I like about this movie is the fact the director sprinkled a lot of funny situations and remarks throughout it… that made me burst out laughing at times because it is not all serious as the movie “Jobs”
Pirates of Silicon Valley covers not just the success and trials of Steve Jobs’s Apple, but also of Bill Gates’s Microsoft and the rivalry between them from the very early days.
Watch it and you will see how a 20-year-old took on a huge corporation like IBM and learned the value of believing in his dream and following through with it no matter what.
It doesn’t matter if someone copies your idea. What matters is the execution and how well you do it. Nobody can copy that.
And when you’re just starting out, a little competition never hurt anyone.
Noah Wyle did a great job of portraying young Steve Jobs in this made-for-television movie.
And Anthony Michale Hall does a great Bill Gates.
Success is a menace. It fools smart people into thinking they can’t lose.
Jobs and Gates knew exactly what they wanted and were hyper focused on their actions, very aggressive, even ruthless at times, ready to do whatever they can to make things work and both were master negotiators and knew how to manipulate people and situations to their liking and benefit.
Good artists copy, great artists steal.
Both were no doubt “great pirates” and this movie does a great job of showing that.
This is by far one of the best movies about stock trading and business.
It kept me glued to the monitor screen of my computer till the finish…
Bud Fox(played by Charlie Sheen) the main character in the movie is a young stockbroker, who is willing to do almost anything to get wealthy.
He manages to meet and then work with and for the infamous businessman named Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas) who’s actions revolve around two mantras: “greed is good” and “it’s all about the money”.
In this collaboration… Bud is forced to leave his morals and ethics at the door and starts doing insider trading, an illegal practice that will get him into trouble.
The moral of the story is to not sell yourself out and to not do business just for the sake of money.
A few other things you can learn from this movie:
- Money never sleeps.
You must be ready at all times to jump on an opportunity.
- "Win every battle before it starts."- Sun Tzu
You must be smart enough to engineer a (legal) strategy that will give you an unfair advantage and make the outcome of every business deal favorable to you…
and of course…
- Mad ambition mixed with persistence can get you everywhere
and if you add some ethics in, you have a perfect recipe for entrepreneurial success.
There are a lot of harsh critics out there, that if listened to, you will believe “The Greatest Showman” is just another crappy movie that will be a waste of your time.
On the contrary, I believe this original musical movie is amazing and should not be skipped/avoided for any reason.
From the cast, the splashy and colorful costumes, stunning visual effects and vibrant and moving music, everything invites you into a magical world, where dreams can come true.
The funny thing is that we’ve all been there as little children, but we forgot about it.
Little by little grown-ups around us and the rules of society, made us stop dreaming…
they kept reminding us to be realistic
another word for being just another freaking zombie in the crowd,
a person with no goals and a crappy job that offers a mediocre paycheck from which he/she barely affords to survive.
That’s why I believe this movie is of the utmost importance for many future entrepreneurs because it will inspire and motivate you, it will remind you to dream again and have the courage to take risks.
And we need this(inspiration, motivation, to dream) more than we need money or other tangible resources if we want to hit our goals.
The movie shows us how P.T. Barnum, played by the actor Hugh Jackman, goes from rags to riches, from a rough childhood living in poverty, and losing his parents at an early age, to creating an amazing circus spectacle that celebrated diversity, a spectacle that became a worldwide sensation.
But this wasn’t enough for Barnum.
He didn’t want to just entertain the low-class people.
He also wanted to appeal to the snobs as he says in the movie, or the “polite” society, to get their respect and be seen as one of them.
And for this, he became a business partner with Philip Carlyle(played by Zac Efron) and also goes on a concert tour with the Opera Singer Jeny Lind, played by the lovely Rebecca Ferguson, a mistake that threw his marriage into a crisis and almost ruined him financially.
A few ideas that can be learned from this movie:
- there's no such thing as bad publicity;
- you can thrive on controversy;
- comfort is the enemy of progress;
and of course…
- you need to dream, to keep your dreams alive and to do whatever you can to make them a reality.
Don’t let the world/the reality stop you from what you really want to get from this life.
Anyhow. Enough of this.
Go watch the movie. I promise you won’t regret it.
The music is amazing and I’m convinced “The Greatest Showman” will spark some motivation in you to wipe your dreams off dust and start working towards them again.
Bonus: Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (TV Series 2022)
I recently watched the entire first season of the TV Show Super Pumped and decided to add it as a bonus in this article.
This high octane entrepreneurial series paints the dramatic story of the Silicon Valley transportation network company ,Uber,
and the rise and fall of its CEO, Travis Kallanik(briliantly played by Joseph Gordon Levitt) who was ousted from the company în 2017 in a boardroom coup.
While both the book and the movie ended up as a cautionary tale about the dangers of startup culture and following a founder blindly,
there are some things you may learn and even need to emulate from Kallanik if you want to create a company as big as Uber:
- Focus
Uber and its success was on its CEO‘s mind 100% of his waking hours and he was committed to do anything to get the result he wanted.
- Think BIG
Travis wanted to innovate and dominate the entire cab industry, not just have a small cab company in his hometown like so many other entrepreneurs have.
- Try to not screw up often or big time and have harmonious relationships with your business associates and investors
There is a false belief that if you own the majority of the stock or you create special classes of stock so you can control the voting rights you can keep control of the company.
Uber has put an end to this myth.
Travis Kallanick had control of the voting rights of the company and he was still fired by his investors and associates.
If you ever intend to build a mamoth of a business like Uber always remember that you’re not invincible no matter how many shares you have in the company. If you keep screwing up and keep upsetting the people who can fire you, sooner or later that thing will surely happen.
- Ruthlessness
In this physical world that we experience with our five senses and especially in business, success comes down to one single tenet – survival of the fittest.
Ruthlessness is a quality every billionaire has. In my book it’s not something negative…
It’s just an obsession with your dream (obsession is also a good thing – read Be Obsessed or Be Average by Grant Cardone, if this word has a negative connotation for you).
I don’t like how Travis treated Uber’s drivers and let men sexually harass women în his company creating a toxic work environment
or the fact that he only hired assholes.
But I’m not here to judge Kallanick. I’m just pointing out that you need to be ruthless in business if you want to make billions.
You must show no mercy to competition or anyone who stands between you and your dream. Otherwise you’re toast.
Well…that’s it for now.
There are other good movies for entrepreneurs (Moneyball (2011, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Startup.com (2001), The Pursuit of Happiness (2006)…etc), but in my opinion, the ones outlined above are in the must-watch category.
Thanks for taking the time to read this article and I hope you will enjoy these movies and get inspired and motivated by them to take your life and your business to the next level.
