Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - Peter Cuneo Reveals Secret Strategies That Turned Marvel Studios Into a Billion-Dollar Empire | #Success - Ep. 86

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

I got an email from someone saying, “Hey, you should interview this guy… He used to be the CEO of Marvel.” And I thought... wait, like Marvel-Marvel? As in Iron Man and Spider-Man??  Yeah… That guy. His name’s Peter Cuneo, and what he shared about leadership, storytelling, and turnarounds is pure gold. We talked about how he rebuilt Marvel from the ground up, and got to learn multiple lessons that will be in his upcoming book!  He’s one of the most fascinating leaders I’ve ever talked to. What he did at Marvel wasn’t just a financial turnaround, it was a transformation in leadership, storytelling, and how to connect people emotionally to a brand. Key Highlights: ◼️How Marvel used character development to rebuild emotional connection with fans ◼️Why great leaders embrace flaws and authenticity to build trust ◼️How consistent communication (like Peter’s pizza lunches) transforms culture ◼️Why strong leaders take ownership, admit mistakes, and lead through change ◼️The leadership framework behind his upcoming book Super Hero Leadership This conversation completely reframed how I think about leadership. Peter reminded me that people don’t follow products or plans… They follow characters. The same way fans connect to Iron Man or Captain America, your customers and employees connect to you when you let them see who you really are…. And communicate effectively with your team! ◼️If you’ve got a product, offer, service… or idea… I’ll show you how to sell it (the RIGHT way) Register for my next event →⁠⁠ https://sellingonline.com/podcast⁠⁠ ◼️Still don’t have a funnel? ClickFunnels gives you the exact tools (and templates) to launch TODAY → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clickfunnels.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you have a funnel, but it's not converting? The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good, but you suck at selling. If you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next selling online event by going to sellingonline.com slash podcast. That's selling online.com slash podcast. This is the Russell Brunson show. Hey, what's up, everybody? This is Russell, and I have a really cool episode for you guys today that's a little unique. So obviously, typically we talk about, you know, marketing and sales and funnels and growth and everything here.

But I got a, I got an email about a month ago from someone who, you know, I get these all the time for people like, hey, you should have so-and-so on your show. And, you know, some servers just kind of spamming me with people's names all the time. I don't know how to get my email address, but they show up all the time. I ignore almost all of them. But this one popped through and said the guy was the CEO of Marvel, like the Marvel, like, you know, Marvel, like my favorite franchise of all time, all my favorite movies. And I was like, I would love to talk to that guy. And so I actually just finished the interview with him. And it was really, really fascinating.

I wanted to kind of, instead of just pushing play with the very beginning and running it through, there's some really interesting parts I wanted to pull out and talk about a little bit before we go ahead of time because I think it'll make this interview even more fun and more exciting. So I'm actually going to start with where the podcast ended. At the end, we started asking him just, we asked him what his favorite Marvel movie was. And from there, he started talking about it. And then we dived into character development story

and some other really cool things. So I actually wanted to lead with that part of the interview first because that was the most fascinating. And we'll come back and then I'll set up kind of the other parts I think will be valuable for you. So that said, check out this part of the interview where I asked Peter what his favorite Marvel movie was. I'm curious for me, spending time with Marvel,

do you have a favorite Marvel movie? I do. And it's actually not a movie that I made. I wouldn't make when I was at Marvel or any R-rated movies because licensing is a wonderful business and highly profitable. So if you have an R-rated movie, Walmart, any big retailer is not going to put your toys on the shelf. You do not even have toys because they're R-rated. So I never would, I never did more than, you know, a PG-13.

I can't even remember doing that. It's PG, you know, at most. But Disney made a movie. It's called Logan. And it has to do with Wolverine. It's R-rated. It's a great story. It's about Wolverine getting old and his life.

And he forms a particularly great bond with a young girl. And you have to see it. I can't do it justice. But see, I'm very big on character development. When we started at Marvel making movies, we had basically a simple formula, big action scene to start, modest scene in the middle, big scene to finish. And everything else was character development. The way you get fans, the way you grow fans, is to get people interested in your characters. Part of that is knowing what they're good at.

Part of that is knowing their failures. because all the Marvel characters have failures. They're not perfect. They're like us. They make some of the same mistakes. So it's the origin story. How do they grow up? How do they get their powers, et cetera?

So I just think that that's very important. And today, a lot of the movies, not just Marvel, I'll basically shoot them up, pull them up for most of the movie. No storyline. And characters show up that no one knows, has ever even heard of. You know, that, and the fans hate that, hate that. So the main characters, but if you, in entertainment in general, I have to tell you,

Russell, whether it's film, audio, music, a book, any form of entertainment, play, the way you make a good piece of content is to form it so that the audience will be emotionally connected to some of the characters, even the bad characters, even the bad people, you know, which in Marvel, there are a few and they're still people that find them interesting.

And you want them to root for them. Peter Parker can't get a date with the girl he really likes in high school, but he's Spider-Man. And he gets, he gets full of himself and he gets his uncle killed because of it. It's pretty heavy. But it's a good example. Tony Stark, I can tell you like Tony Stark, Tony has got a lot of problems. He's obnoxious at times.

You know, he's full of himself also in many ways. And yet you love him. You know, I do. and uh and so on so okay i hope you enjoyed that part of it and got the wills your head spinning just about um character development and story and the things that are so vital we've been talking for years with you guys in expert secrets and other places about uh becoming the attractive character and sharing parts of yourself but you notice what you talked about was like the best heroes that stanley developed they weren't the flawless ones in fact it was the reason why

dc versus marvel why marvel is traditionally beat dc right dc it's like the characters are super who have no flaws, no issues, no one can mess with them, right? Other than this went random kryptonite thing that they added to try to make him feel more like them, you know, give him some weakness. But all of Stan Lee's characters were very much, you know, they were flawed. They had their pauses, like X-Men, they had these superpowers, but at the same time they're flawed and like, and the flaws is what makes you fall in love with people. It's the same thing why we always talk about with your audience.

Like when you're talking to him, you should, like, you can't just share the highlight real of all the cool things you've done. you also share the flaws like that's what actually like it gets people to to bond with you and and to have rapport with you is sharing those parts of it which is really fascinating so i'm going to jump back now earlier in the the podcast interview where i asked him specifically about the the turnaround he did with marvel um what peter's known for us he comes in and he takes companies are struggling and he turns them around through leadership and through communication a whole bunch of stuff so uh during this part of the interview he's going to talk about the actual marvel turnaround

going to go deep into some communication things that are really, really valuable. And then he's got a new book coming out. I asked him, I said, it's called superhero leadership. Like, of all the different leadership things that you, that you learned through your years. Like, I know the book's got like 20 or 30 different ones. I'm like, what are your two favorite, the two most powerful? And the two each year, I thought were really interesting and fascinating. So we're going to jump into the Marvel startup, turn around, communication, and then the two

most important leadership things you can learn from the guy who literally took Marvel from a company who was going bankrupt. it was in bankruptcy to selling to Disney for like four and a half billion dollars. So with that, so let's jump in this part of the interview. I'm curious with all the different turnarounds you've done is, is the core thing you're bringing to those turnarounds when a company's struggling? Is it leadership, like the leading driver of what you're doing when you take a company and you're turning it around?

Well, obviously, many, most of my turnarounds, certainly the companies, the organizations got in trouble because of past leadership, not doing the job. It's not always the case. Sometimes it's fundamental changes in an industry. But for the most part, that's the case. And so I always have a challenge walking through the door as the new CEO or the new president, whatever the title is. And everyone is afraid because there's a great air of uncertainty, you know. Are we going to, is a company?

A new leader coming in. Yeah, it's scary for a company. Yeah, new leader, but what is, what's he like? Look, is the company going to survive? Are the employees going to keep their jobs? It's, it's a very different challenge. What I do is, is, I have to say, is, is, oh, I don't know, I guess I would say, I'm doing severe changes is what I have to do.

All leaders are challenged in every organization, not only business, but wherever you could be a leader. A lot of other places, as you know. And you're going to be faced at some point with having to make change. Some people don't have to make very much change. Maybe they lead through a couple of speed, bumps. Um, but, uh, and that's fine. That's great. But in my case, there were no speed bumps. It was all, uh, you know, a deep tissue operation. If you know what I mean.

Yeah. And, uh, I became, this is not for everybody. In fact, you have to be weird to like doing this. And I, so I'm weird. You know, I don't know how that will happen, but I do. I'm addicted to taking on tough situations because I get a tremendous high when we are successful. Yeah. Well, let's talk about the Marvel. I think it'd be fascinating

for people to hear that story. So when in the Marvel timeline, was it that it was struggling a spot where you came in, took over CEO and turned it around? Either year-wise or like, what was it like between Iron Man one and two? Or, you know, where in the saga of...

Way, way before Iron Man. Okay. All right. So a little history. Marvel went into bankruptcy in 1996 and was in bankruptcy for two years, 1998. And as it came out of bankruptcy, I came in 1999 as the new CEO. One of the reason I got to Marvel was I had done the previous turnaround I had done. One of the owners of Marvel was also one of the owners of that business, a company called Remington Products. Talking about men's hair, They are. Yeah, he's Remington. Not, not, not, not, not, uh, guns, but Remington. And one of the, you know, owners there sold what I had done. And frankly, I made him a lot of money.

And so when he was the leading, um, uh, shareholder of Marvel coming out of bankruptcy, Marvel was a public New York Stock Exchange company. And so he called me, hey, I need a CEO. That's kind of how it happened. I had no background in, um, motion pictures or comic books. And most of my turnarounds, I was going into situations in an industry I had no experience with. So that was not unique.

But I also think it was an advantage because, frankly, you could see some of it, what's out of whack, what's crazy pretty quickly. You know, you don't have to be an instant expert. And so Marvel had had several different challenges. the financial setup, coming out of bankruptcy, everyone usually thinks, if they haven't been through a bankruptcy, that you're now cured financially. You come out of bankruptcy and you've got plenty of money and so on and so forth. The reality is the only thing you really have is what the secured lenders and other people would agree to, the creditors would agree to.

And in Marvel's case, like most cases, it was not the best situation for Marvel. So we had to go to work on that to fix that. The second thing is there had been a lot of flight for talent. A lot of good people, particularly in the comic book area, had left during the two-year bankruptcy. And they didn't see light at the end of the tunnel. They could get a good or better job. because they were good.

Was Marvel this time more like complete comic books? Were they also doing movies at this time when you, when you stepped in? I'm going to get, I'll get into that in a second. Okay. I'll give you the time. So we had to get that, you know, we had to get that back. And then the culture of the company, the value system was, you know, needed to change. And what we came up with and I had a great board to support me with some other

turnaround people on the board was that we, our culture became, we're going to change the rules of the game. We're not going to make movies like other people. We're not going to make comic books. And I think the rest is history because that's exactly what we did. It's always risky, change the rules for a whole industry. But we were all risk takers. As I said, adventurers. So, yeah, those are the big challenges. You said that you didn't do comic books and you didn't do movies? I had no background before I came to the company. Yeah, in movies or or comic books. So I was learning on the job.

But one of the things that I will take a lot of credit for is I didn't pretend that I was an instant expert. For example, I would read scripts, but I never made a single change because I didn't feel qualified. I didn't know the characters. You know, comic books, I never read a comic book before it was published. I read most of them after they came out. I was learning about it.

But I'll take, I like to say I take credit for. for staying out of the way of some really great content producers. And we, as I said, had a talent drain, but we got a lot of those people back. Oh, it took a while, but they all came back, most of them. So, but so when I came to the 1999, my first month, I went to Toronto, Canada, to the set where they were filming X-Men 1.

That was the first film for the new Marvel, if you will. I can't take credit for getting us in the movie world. It was done already before I came, and they were actually filming the first big film. And so on. An X-Men one came out a year later. It was a gigantic hit, as you may know,

and we were off to the races. So that's way before Tony Stark, you know, an Iron Man. Iron Man came out. we were partnered with big studios for the first five or six years that I was there. So we didn't know how to make movies. So we were partnered on Spider-Man with Sony, on the X-Men with Fox, on the Hulk with Universal, and others, okay, and so on. And it was until 2006.

I was no longer CEO. I was vice chairman of the board. 2006. So I had been the CEO for almost four years, from 99 to the, to the end of 2003. And then I'd been on the board. So it's now 2006. And we decided to rejuvenate Marvel Studios. There had been a brief attempt in the early 90s to start a Marvel studio. But we decided to do that. And that was 2006. We raised over $500 million for the studio. And Iron Man One came out in 2008 and was also a gigantic hit.

So give you a little bit of a timeline. And then, you know, we eventually sold to Disney on the last day, December 31st of 2009. So I had been with Marvel 10 years. at that point. That's so cool. And then at that point, did you exit after the, after the sale and kind of go to the next the next big project?

Yeah. No, no, none of the board members were kept by Disney. They didn't need us. I mean, you know, so it was, it was time to move on to the next challenge. But yeah, I think that Marvel is great. example, though, of taking risks, which is what you have to do to do, you know, to do a really a surgical approach to a turnaround. And it takes time.

Nobody understands everything the minute they walk through the door. And I always do a lot of homework on a mess to do a turnaround. But you can do tons of homework and still be surprised. In fact, I honestly say on my seven turnarounds, it was. was worse than I thought it was in every one through the door. Yeah. I'm curious, when you, when you go into a turnaround, do you have, like, is there a playbook? You go off like, here's the, here's the step-by-step process.

We take somebody through or is a more kind of search and discovery and then trying to fix problems as you find them or how, what does that look like for you? Very good question, actually. And I have to say that I don't have a playbook. I don't, you know, I'm going in and, um, I'm, um, I'm, I just want to, first thing I want to do is establish what the changes are that are needed. And, you know, I like to talk sometimes about pet rocks, pebbles, and boulders in a pond. And for anybody in an organization, if, you know, let's call the pond is your organization. And it's not just business.

I mean, you could be in the military. You could be, you could be in government. You could be any number of different places where you're a leader. And when you've decided, you know, figured out what the, some changes become are very readily apparent after a month or two. Some take longer to really, to really understand. And I used to say, I mentioned to you that I have on my podcast, petercunio. on my website, petercunio.com. There are 28 essentials for superior leadership.

And one of them used to be, there used to be more, was make as many changes as you can all at once so the healing in the organization can begin because you could tell people we're done making changes. But the truth is, as I thought more about that, that's very hard to do. And it could be a mistake to make all the changes. at once early on.

Going back to the pond, okay? So some changes, think of them as pebbles. Toss them in the pond, there's a tiny little ripple. Last a couple of seconds, and it's gone. So the effect on the pond, the effect on your organization is quite small. There's going to be no real issues, what have you. Some changes are a rock. They make a big, they make a bigger splash.

some of them skip and make multiple splashes so there and again they they make a bigger ripple but the ripple never really hits the shore then there's boulders and so there's a cliff next to your pond and a boulder falls off and goes in the pond and a big wave comes off the boulder and hits all of the all of the if you will the the coastline of your of your pond And what you want to do is once you realize what pebbles you want to drop, what rocks, what boulders, you make sure that you do it so that they don't intersect each other. Because then you're getting an extra problem, okay? If the wakes, the ripples of these rocks, if you drop them all at once, if you ever seen what happens when they hit each other, it's really disruptive. And sometimes change that you want to make. It's not, you'll think of it as, oh, I need to change this consumer.

I'll make this up. Consumer service department's not doing well. I got to make a couple of changes. You know, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. I'm going to bring in some other people to do things. And that's fine. But you have to think through, okay, what will the changes in consumer or customer service, you know, what other areas will they affect?

so it's not just the effect in that particular you know what are the salespeople need to know how will it affect how they behave okay so it's very important to think through when and how you make the changes so that you minimize those ripples and waves and everything else bumping into each other in your pond yeah very interesting so besides marvel and remington where were some of the other uh turnarounds that you participate participated in? Well, I was with Black and Decker and I did three, I had six divisions, three turned out to need turnaround detention. And before that, I was with a company called Clarell, women's hair care. And I did two inside of, Clarell was owned at that time by Bristol Myers, very big company. So my first two turnarounds were there and they were really divisions of a very large. company rather than a standalone organization okay cool I'm curious like um obviously with a turnaround I'm assuming you're going in when things are kind of in a crisis mode and they're struggling but if someone's listening this and they have a business that's successful and it's not so much they're in a crisis mode but obviously they want to learn like the the most important principles whether it be leadership or other stuff to be able to like just rapidly start growing their business where will be like your because I'm not sure the company's

working with now if they're at their turn rounds or if they're more just companies that you're coming into and taking your expertise to to grow them and scale them like does it look different if it's if it's a growth type thing versus a versus a turnaround we start working with a company well I often get asked about startups and there are parallels between startups and turnarounds there's a degree of uncertainty it's certainly taking risks and whatever so some of the elements are really very similar and I would say a couple of things. First of all, particularly in startups. And I've been connected to a couple of successful startups,

but all of them really the original idea that the founder or founders thought would work, didn't work. And they pivoted. I've mentioned I've been in tech the last six or seven years. And I've seen some fail. I wasn't involved in, where the founders just couldn't admit to themselves that their original idea didn't work or needed modification. And so ego is an important part in the early stages of a startup.

In the case of my AI company based in San Francisco, I've been on the chairman for seven years. We've pivoted the tech twice before we really hit on something special twice. So that's why, you know, seven years and so on. So very important to keep an open mind, make changes where they're obviously needed. If you're a leader, listen to what other people encourage people to talk to you, even if, you know, and over time get them to trust that if they have bad news or things they would think you're not doing right, that they'll come to you and not be afraid to talk to you candidly about some of those things. I always tried to have a situation where, you know, people knew that if they spoke to me candidly,

there was trust. I was never going to quote them to anyone else, you know, and once they see that, you're not kidding, you don't do that, then it gets much easier. People, you know, so I think the candidate, the other thing is communications. Communications is a lost art. in many places. I'm very surprised at the poor communications I see, particularly, of course, in businesses that are in trouble

or in organizations that are dysfunctional. The leaders don't communicate well. You must communicate regularly, consistently. You should be telling everyone the same thing. You know, weak leaders basically are just parody whatever. The last person was they talked. to. And so they're constantly giving different messages to the organization. And the organizations is very uncomfortable. They have no idea what people are trying to do to make the company a success.

I said, I tell them to tell the story about pizza lunches. So what I like to do when I was first coming in to an organization was I would have pizza lunches. So I'd have maybe 10 employees from all different levels and different functions. We'd have an hour and bring in pizzas. And I was always amazed because early on in these turnarounds, shockingly, even in small organizations, the people had never met each other in many cases, including having cubicles practically right next to each other on the same floor.

And you know that to me right away, okay, Bill, you know, you know, alarms are going off when I see that right away. But I would, I'd use that to talk a little while about what I'm seeing, you know, and then I would say at the last maybe 20 minutes of an hour, are there any questions? And when I first started these, of course, in an organization, there were no questions. Now, I know they were dying to ask me questions, but what I would do is simply say, you know, if I were you, I'd have this question, and I'd ask, bring up the elephant in the room, so to speak, and I would answer where I was on that. And then after three or four of these, all of a sudden,

people were starting to ask questions because the word got around. I'm not afraid of tough questions. I bring them up myself. And people started, they saw I wasn't mad, you know, or whatever. I wanted to hear from them. Another element of communications is even if you really want to hear everybody's ideas, even the craziest ideas. Because people, you know, people have strong feelings

and you may make a decision as a leader to go in one direction when a particular individual recommended something different. But if they feel that you took them seriously, took their views seriously, wanted to hear from them, them. Listen closely. Okay, you didn't go in the direction they were espousing, but actually

you won't, they'll, they'll be fine. They'll be fine because you proved to them, you took them seriously, and there'll be another time. You'll be back around on something else. And so I tried to, even when I sort of knew the answers, if you will, I just wanted people to, I wanted to listen, you know, and encourage risk-taking, crazy ideas, what have you. That's really cool. So your new book that's coming out in February, this is called Superhero Leadership Skills, is that, they get it right? It's called Superhero Leadership, the 28 Essentials for Superhero Leadership with Peter Cuneo.

Obviously, we don't have time to go through all 28, but if there's like one or two of those leadership principles you think are like the most essential and most important, what would those be, do you think? Tough question. Very tough question. I love them all. They're on my business. I'll give you. We just covered, you know, communications is I think number three or something on the list. But what I often get asked is what's the toughest one to achieve?

Because these are a list of philosophies, behaviors, you know, of principles and so on for good leadership. And the one that I always answer that question with is happens to be number 18, which basically says that you have to be comfortable as a leader being unpopular because change. always upset some people, even good change, because it's change. And there are people who will be upset, people who will not like it. And most human beings don't aspire to leadership because they know fundamentally that if they're in a leadership position, they're going to have to make change, and they're going to make some people unhappy.

And most human beings, we, you know, we all want to be liked by everybody. We really, we don't want to upset anybody else, not usually. And so people don't aspire to leadership positions for that reason. So you have to be mentally comfortable. It doesn't mean you like it. Don't get me wrong. And, you know, you don't want to hurt people on purpose. Of course not.

You know, you don't want to be abusive at all. Okay. But in the end, you have to be comfortable that you're going to be, you know, unpopular. and you may stay unpopular forever with some people. That's happened to me. I get called recently from someone I've known a long time. They said, Peter, do you know Mr. X, Y, Z? I said, yeah, we worked together about 10 years ago.

Peter, you know, I have to tell you, he doesn't like you very much. And I said, yeah, well, there's the reasons. and uh and so on and and so you know so there are people who will never give up saying this guy cuneo's a bum and that's okay i can live with it it's not not fun but to be an effective leader to make the change that's required you know you you have to be comfortable being unpopular yeah that's a tough one for sure it's yeah and you know most people i'll just leave you with this on this subject most human beings want to say oh um you know it's i had to make these changes it's someone else's fault or someone else suggested it or whatever and you know you have to own it you

have to own certain things and it's actually how you build trust when i've made mistakes i tell the organization i made a mistake wasn't someone else wasn't bad luck i made a mistake i made a mistake and, you know, we're going to fix it right away. Let's talk about it. It's obviously, I blew it. And week leaders never want to admit they made a mistake. So people will appreciate that. And I say to the organization, bring me your problems.

Everyone has problems. We're all human. I know you have problems. What keeps me up at night is not knowing about the problems that I should know about. Okay? And I feel we as a group, 99% can solve the problem together. You will not get in trouble with me for asking for help, bringing a problem. You will get in trouble with me if you don't.

All right. So I hope you guys enjoyed the interview with Peter and hopefully got some ideas about your character development, about startups, out turning around, about communication, about leadership, and all the amazing things. Like I said, he's got a great podcast. You should go check it out called Superhero Leadership. He's got a book coming out in February. about superhero leadership as well, because I think for all of us, no matter what area in life

you're at, if you're an employee of a company, you've got to learn leadership skills. If you are the CEO or the entrepreneur in a company, you got to learn leadership skills. If you're trying to be someone who's speaking externally to people, we've got to all master leadership skills in our home, in our family, work, and any place that we've got, any kind of stewardship. So I hope you have a chance to plug into his training and his leadership books. I'm excited to read him and go deep with them. And if that said, I appreciate you all. And I will see you guys all on the next episode. Thank you. Thank you.