The Tim Ferriss Show - #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist

Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. I've been asked this for years. The answer is invariably AG1 by Athletic Greens. I view it as all-in-one nutritional insurance, so you can cover your bases. If you're traveling, if you're just busy, if you're not sure if your meals are where they should be, it covers your bases. I've recommended it since the 4-Hour Body, which was, God, eons ago, 2010, and I did not get paid to do so. With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients, you'll be hard-pressed to find a more nutrient dense formula on the market. It has a multivitamin, multimineral greens complex,

Starting point is 00:00:41 probiotics and prebiotics for gut health and immunity formula, digestive enzymes, and adaptogens. You get the idea. It is very, very comprehensive. And I do my best, of course, to focus on nutrient-dense proper meals, but sometimes you're busy. Sometimes you're traveling. Sometimes you just want to make sure that you're getting what you need. AG1 makes it easy to get a lot of nutrition when whole foods aren't readily available. It's also NSF certified for sport, making it safe for competitive athletes as what's on the label is in the powder. It's the ultimate all-in-one nutritional supplement bundle in one easy scoop. Right now, Athletic Greens is giving my audience

Starting point is 00:01:22 a special offer on top of their all-in-one formula, which is a free vitamin D supplement and five free travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Many of us are deficient in vitamin D. I found that true for myself, which is usually produced in our bodies from sun exposure. So adding a vitamin D supplement to your daily routine is a great option for additional immune support. Support your immunity, gut health, and energy by visiting athleticgreens.com slash Tim. You'll receive up to a year's supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your subscription. Again, that's athleticgreens.com slash Tim. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify is one of my favorite companies out there, one of my favorite platforms ever. And let's get into it. Shopify is a platform, as I mentioned, designed for anyone to sell anything anywhere, giving entrepreneurs the

Starting point is 00:02:17 resources once reserved for big business. So what does that mean? That means in no time flat, you can have a great looking online store that brings your ideas, products, and so on to life. And you can have the tools to manage your day-to-day business and drive sales. This is all possible without any coding or design experience whatsoever. Shopify instantly lets you accept all major payment methods. Shopify has thousands of integrations and third-party apps from on-demand printing to accounting to advanced chatbots, anything you can imagine. They probably have a way to plug and play and make it happen. Shopify is what I wish I had had when I was venturing into e-commerce way back in the early 2000s. What they've done is pretty remarkable. I first met the founder, Toby, in 2008 when I

Starting point is 00:03:00 became an advisor, and it's been spectacular. I've loved watching Shopify go from roughly 10 to 15 employees at the time to 7,000 plus today, serving customers in 175 countries with total sales on the platform exceeding $400 billion. They power millions of entrepreneurs from their first sale all the way to full scale. And you would recognize a lot of large companies that also use them who started small. So get started by building and customizing your online store, again, with no coding or design experience required. Access powerful tools to help you find customers, drive sales, and manage your day-to-day. Gain knowledge and confidence with extensive resources to help you succeed. And I've actually been involved with some of that way back in the day, which was awesome. The build a business competition and other things. Plus with 24 seven

Starting point is 00:03:49 support, you're never alone. And let's face it, being an entrepreneur can be lonely, but you have support, you have resources. You don't need to feel alone in this case, more than a store Shopify grows with you. and they never stop innovating, providing more and more tools to make your business better and your life easier. Go to shopify.com slash Tim. That's S-H-O-P-I-F-Y dot com slash Tim, all lowercase for a free trial and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features. Start selling on Shopify today. Go to shopify.com slash Tim right now and check it out.

Starting point is 00:04:26 They have a lot to offer. Shopify.com slash Tim. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. My guest today is Todd McFarlane. Todd is an Emmy and Grammy-winning director, producer, and creator of one of the world's best-selling comic books, Spawn. He is best known to many comic book fans for his work as the artist on The Amazing Spider-Man, for which he co-created

Starting point is 00:05:15 Marvel's top villain, Venom. Todd is the CEO of Todd McFarlane Productions, McFarlane Toys, one of the U.S.'s top action figure manufacturers, and McFarlane Films. He is also a co-founder of Image Comics, which debuted Spawn in 1992, selling 1.7 million copies of the first issue. In 1997, Spawn was made into an Emmy award-winning animated series on HBO and a live action feature film that grossed more than $100 million. In 2019, Todd made history with Spawn number 301, earning the Guinness World Record for the longest-running creator-owned superhero comic book series. You can find him online, Instagram, at Todd McFarlane, Twitter, Todd underscore McFarlane, and Facebook,

Starting point is 00:05:57 like Todd McFarlane. Todd, it is nice to see you again. Yeah, thanks for having me back, Tim. Appreciate it. And I wanted to close the Marvel chapter, and I'll just explain for folks who are hearing this episode. First, we recorded a first episode, which laid a lot of the groundwork, your background, establish your personality, which I'm sure will come through in this episode as well. And early days in comics, many of the key decisions, negotiations, your magical capacity with your camel bladder to inflict negotiating superiority on your adversaries, and many other things.

Starting point is 00:06:34 And I thought we would put a pin in the Marvel chapter by talking about Stanley. And perhaps you could just explain who Stanley is and how you first developed a relationship with him. Probably most people have been paying attention to movies, already know who Stan is, but Stan is sort of the grandfather of being one of the co-creators of all the superhero characters that we all know by name. So if we go back when Marvel first began in the early 60s, he was a writer and he helped create characters like the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Hulk, Doctor Strange, Black Panther, and the X-Men, and on and on and on and on. And so, you know, to put it in perspective, really, when he passed away a few years back, and I think a lot of people sort of said the same thing, you put him in the same category

Starting point is 00:07:34 as somebody like Walt Disney in terms of the global impact that his characters had. Not necessarily him as a person, but that his characters had. Not necessarily him as a person, but that his characters had. Stan was a comic book guy for a lot of years and then eventually moved out to California in the 70s. And odd as it is, really sort of became a big time celebrity when the movies came around and he started making cameos in the Marvel movies. And he started that when he was 85. So most people don't begin a new career when they're 85. Stan did, and he did it. So my quick meeting with him, first time I meet him, I'm about 16, 17 years old.

Starting point is 00:08:20 Canadian kid in Florida, going to a baseball camp. And I happened to stay overnight before we're going to catch a plane, go back home and a holiday in. And there was a sign that said down the hall, there was a comic book convention. I go down the hall and Stan Lee, again, he's not the famous celebrity at this point. We're talking now about the mid-70s. And Stan Lee was there. And to me, he was like the Pope because anybody who's ever read any Marvel comic books at the top of every Marvel comic books at that time said, Stan Lee presents. He was in every book, Stan Lee presents, every comic book I got. So I'm like, wow, there's Stan Lee, the guy who presents

Starting point is 00:09:03 every Marvel comic book. I walked up to him. I wanted to break into comics. So I'm like, wow, there's Dan Lee, the guy who presents every Marvel comic book. I walked up to him. I wanted to break into comics. And I asked him, hey, Mr. Lee, is it okay if I ask you a couple of questions? And without hesitation, he pulled a chair right next to him and he said, sit down, son. Ask me what you want. And he let me sit next to him for about five hours peppering with questions. Now, again, he didn't have a big giant lineup because like I said, he hadn't hit his celebrity status that would come decades later.

Starting point is 00:09:30 But just that he just said, here, sit next to me, you got questions. And so when I went home to Canada, that was one of the moments where I went, yeah, I'm gonna really drive and do this. My next encounter with him, now fast forward, I actually do break into comics.

Starting point is 00:09:46 I climbed the rank and file that you and I talked about in our first interview. I even get to do Spider-Man, which is sort of the corporate icon of Marvel Comics. That puts me on the map and I set sales records with those books. And then a bunch of us quit and we start Image Comics. And I end up doing like a series of videos with Stan in 1992, 93 and sort of rekindling a professional relationship. What were those videos that you did with Stan? What was the content or the intention of those videos that you did with Stan around 92, 93? Most of them are up on YouTube. They were just Stan and I sitting there, and he did it with a couple of my other fellow artists, and you just sat at a table and you talked art or you drew and you were talking through your drawing,

Starting point is 00:10:38 like how do you create characters? Why does that guy look like that? And it was just sort of almost a how do you do it sort of videos that were there. Did he not view that as competitive since you guys had split off to be Image at that point? No, because Stan was very entrepreneurial himself. So at this point, he was doing, you know, he was almost an ambassador for Marvel at this point. And doing his own stuff. So the interviews and the videotapes were sort of under an umbrella that was part of his own camp.

Starting point is 00:11:14 Ah, I see. Got it. I think they were giving him a salary to be a good steward going around, but he wasn't writing any books at that point. Got it. Yeah, he was like the Professor Emeritus of Marvel. That's exactly what he was. And let me also say, he was very, very generous in terms of encouraging us, even though he knew that our books were going to be in direct competition with Marvel.

Starting point is 00:11:35 Because again, he was a creative guy. And having been around Stan as much as I have been, his superpower to me, besides he created all these characters that none of us will ever come close to. I mean, I got spawn. He's got like a hundred spawns. He, and I saw it over and over and over.

Starting point is 00:11:54 And all the times I was with him within 20 seconds, because you have, when you have a big lineup and people are coming for autographs, you literally have 20 seconds with each individual. And he would make people feel important, special, and unique in that 20 seconds. And then he would reset for the next person. And he would do it all over again for thousands of people, right? They felt like that was the best 20 seconds of Stan's day, even though he was giving it to every single person.

Starting point is 00:12:26 It was really a, and I saw this when I was 16, when I was sitting with him for the first time, but I just kept becoming more and more aware of this is how you treat the public. Because the public, without them, without the fans, we have no careers. We are basically self-indulging in our basements, right? You can have ideas, but if nobody is consuming them, I go to shows and people go, Todd, why do you say thank you to me? We should be thanking you. It's like, you give me money. Every product you buy, you give me money. You put food on my family's table. If you get something out of me, cool. But I must thank you too,

Starting point is 00:13:05 because I have a career because of your existence, which is why it's odd, Tim, that I've run into enough celebrities, whether it's sports, music, movies, TV, whatever it is. And some are a little off put by their fans. They are the reason we exist. And part of it was looking at people like Stanley. I've never been put off by people wanting to ask questions or whatever else. And I've had reporters ask me, especially during the whole, you know, before comic books were sort of a cool hip thing, you know, Todd, what's the dumbest question people ask? Is it like Trekkie conventions? Here's the answer. There is no dumb question. You know why? Because whoever is asking it, it's important to them. And if it's important to them, it's important for me

Starting point is 00:13:52 to answer it. So even if the question may seem silly to you, because they want to know who would win the Hulk or Thor in a fight, it's important to that individual. So I'm going to give them as good an answer as I can, and I'm not going to look down my nose at them like you are. Anyway, Stan is involved in a cameo when the first Iron Man movie comes out. And the studio of Paramount says, hey, we're going to give Stan his own movie premiere. And they did it in Vegas. Somebody phones me up and says, hey, Todd, can you come and be the emcee of that thing? There's going to be a dinner or whatever else. And I went, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. So I come, I get up there, I say all the gracious and true things about Stanley that I believe.

Starting point is 00:14:36 And everything goes cool. And at the end, Stan comes up to me and says, hey, thanks. Thanks, young man. That was quite wonderful. Now I'm like, oh, thanks. Appreciate you having me, Stan. The next day, and here's where it happens. The next day is I'm walking around the Vegas hotel and I see Stan and he goes, Todd, Todd, hold us up. Hold up. Hold up. And he comes running over and he goes, oh my God, you were wonderful last night. You were amazing last night. And I went, no, no, no, you said that. You said that to me, Stan. And he goes, no, I didn't. I can't hear anymore. I didn't hear a damn thing you said last night. But what they do is that they record it and then I go to my room and then I can actually put on the headphones and then I heard it. It was wonderful because he had just figured

Starting point is 00:15:26 out how to be in public with bad hearing and pull it off. So after he hears me, I guess, being kind and a little charismatic, he says, Todd, I go to conventions almost every weekend. Travel with me and come with me around the country and you and I, let's team up. Now, gracious offer, Stan, I've got a day job, right? So I can't, I mean, I understand Batman, you would like me to be your Robin and it's very complimentary, but I've got to do it. But I said, when I can, I will. So I did. From that point on, I did. I've probably been up on stage with Stan more than any human being on the planet. We had this little shtick, and part of it was at the beginning, because literally, Tim, he could not hear. He could not hear. So what he needed was somebody

Starting point is 00:16:16 who could hear and then turn and slightly give him the question or frame it in a way that made sense for a comic book guy, where a lot of times moderators didn't know the comic book sort of lingo we just sort of had this weird kabuki dance we were doing so that he could hear now it came to a crescendo one time where we were in san diego and he was up on stage and you know it was a big room with probably 5 000 people and you know they put up the big giant screen. So the people at the very back and at least look at the video, right? Video screen.

Starting point is 00:16:50 And Stan was in the middle and I usually sit next to him, but I go, no, Stan, this is your gig. I'm going to be over here on the podium. Just talking. We start doing our thing. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And next thing I know, I'm talking and I'm sort of not paying attention because I'm looking at the audience.

Starting point is 00:17:05 And then I turn and Stan is literally six inches on my flank. And then I look up at the screen because the screen wasn't mobile. The camera was fixed. The stage was empty because he had scooted so far over. So I look at him under my breath, go, Stan, you're off screen. You're not on TV.

Starting point is 00:17:24 All the people in the back you go todd i can't hear a damn thing i can't hear a damn thing so eventually he got let me tell you eventually he got a hearing aid and like all of a sudden the heavens opened up and he was like oh my god todd i should have done this years ago so even once he got the hearing, we still did our shtick doing it. And to the point where, and there's a photo that to me is one of the dearest photos that I have in my collection outside of my family. It was, we were in Phoenix, which is where I live, and we were doing our thing. It was a little small convention here. And we were up on stage. This is post his wife passing away. And so that mattered in his life because

Starting point is 00:18:08 I was there. I got to bring him up on stage when he, you know, got his Hollywood Walk of Fame star. And, you know, at the Chinese Man Theater, right, I was sort of like his guy to bring him up on stage. So I was there for a couple important moments of him. And I'd gone up on stage with him so many times. He had so much energy. And as we walked up the stairs at that one at Phoenix, he turned to me and said, Todd, you do most of the talking. I don't want to be here.

Starting point is 00:18:34 It was the first time ever that I didn't hear enthusiasm out of that man. And I mean, he was already old. And I saw it when he arrived that he looked as old as I ever saw him. Anyways, we did our interview. I always used to take these selfies. I got all these cool pictures of me and him taking selfies because he never understood what a selfie was. So he's always like right jammed, his face jammed into the lens. So I got these cool, awesome photos.

Starting point is 00:19:01 He also, in the green room before we went up, he used to take a nap because he was in his 90s. He used to pace himself. So I've got all these cool pictures of me making faces around him while he's napping. I'm going to put a whole book out. It's going to be nap time with Stan. I'm going to publish someday. But he walked up there and when he said those words, it was a dagger in my heart. And we did our interview. We took the selfie. We walked off stage. And that was the last time he was ever on stage. And he shortly passed away. And I kicked myself because you have a couple regrets. That was one that I wish we knew. That was going to be the last time that he was going to be on a stage in his lifetime because we would have sent him off with a better applause than we did

Starting point is 00:19:47 that day. But like I said, I was fortunate. Even after he stopped going to shows, I was one of the few people that was allowed to be in his house because there was infighting amongst some fiefdoms around him, especially, like I said, once his wife went away. But the last time I went and saw him, I go, hey, Stan, how are you doing, bud? And he said, Todd, I can't see, I can't hear, I can't go to shows. And Joni, which is his wife, and Joni's not here. I just want to be with Joni.

Starting point is 00:20:25 Because he only had, his two things was he had the love of his life, his wife, almost married 70 years, those two people, 70 years. And when she left, you can imagine, he lost his soulmate. And then the only thing he had left was the conventions. And once his hearing and his eyesight went completely, he couldn't go to that. Both the things that were sort of important to him left, and he sort of broke down at the end. It was happy. Here's the thing. We're talking about a guy who up to the age of 93 was doing cartwheels up on stage.

Starting point is 00:20:54 So we never allowed him to be old. Wait, do you mean literally doing cartwheels? No, you just mean energetically. Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm saying 93,

Starting point is 00:21:02 he'd got up there, you throw him a question and, I'm saying 93. He got up there. You throw him a question, and he just went. At 93, he was at the top of his game. 94, he passed away at 95. He was still at the top of his game on stage. And part of it was he was so immortal to us that we never acknowledged that he was in his 90s. We just thought he was like some 50-year-old guy with a lot of energy. But eventually, eventually, time came and he had to leave us.

Starting point is 00:21:47 You spent so much time with Stan, and you observed so many things, picked up on so many things firsthand. And then as an observer, for instance, the energy that he could summon, the focus that he could summon to be with each person for 20 seconds and then reset, which is really a skill and talent and very taxing. So that is extremely impressive in and of itself. Are there any other lessons or learnings that you took from Stan or things that still come up that lead you to sort of reminisce about the university of Stan, as it were, spending time with him? I'll comment on two things. Number one, the stand that was on stage was the same man off stage. It wasn't a put on. It wasn't a put on. I mean, I've got recording. He used to let me record him and he'd be in the taxi and pick me up at the airport and the whole

Starting point is 00:22:40 drive from the airport to the hotel, he'd be like, why is Todd here? I don't like it when the good looking guys are here. He's taking too much, and he would just do this whole thing where he was just like jabbing me the whole drive. Because we did a lot of it up on stage. So again, it was important. But I remember, and here's the last thing I'll say.

Starting point is 00:23:01 I remember dozens of times of him being in the green room as we're getting ready to go up on stage or something. And he would turn to me and it would just be him and I. And he would go, Todd, isn't this wonderful? Isn't this great? I'm having a great time this weekend. He goes, who would have thought? Guys like you and I, we're nobodies and look at

Starting point is 00:23:25 this. We're having the best time. And so what I'm saying is that the reason he was able to summon that energy is because he was getting as much out of the audience as they were getting out of him. It was chicken noodle for his soul when he went to the shows, which is why when his wife was sick, Joni, she said, don't stop going to the shows even after I'm gone. Don't. You need it, right? And he, to his credit, he did. He kept going. But he, yeah, he liked being there. And so it wasn't a put on. And like I said, I've been around a lot of celebrities. And I think, in all honesty, Tim, of all the celebrities I've been around, I haven't, you know, obviously, I haven't climbed the mountain of a lot of others, but of all the celebrity I've been around and all the time I spent,

Starting point is 00:24:08 if I was to pick one person to write the book, how to interact with your fans by far, Stan Lee's the guy who would do the, how to do it. Amazing. Stan. I mean, I remember as a collector,

Starting point is 00:24:21 seeing the masthead as a little kid. Right. And then even into my early teens. The Stan Lee Presents masthead. Oh, of course. Yes. Stan Lee. And then I also, correct me if I'm getting this wrong, but the voice that you actually

Starting point is 00:24:34 impersonated really well for people who don't know would come on some of the early cartoon adaptations. Yes. And his voice would come on and I would see that every morning, eating my cereal, getting ready to go to school. So Stan Lee, for me, also had this iconic Pope-like importance as a little kid in a childhood experience where that doesn't really exist. It's like, who's this mythic Stan Lee? I'll tell you another little silly story. We're in the trailer, again, the equivalent of a grain room, waiting to go up on stage. And I was sitting with Stan, and they were talking about him doing his cameos.

Starting point is 00:25:08 He'd done three or four cameos in a row. And I went, oh, yeah. And I don't really go to the Marvel movies. So the next one coming up was Thor, and the commercials were running. And I kept seeing the commercial, and he had short hair. Thor had short hair. And to me, I'm like, what? Thor's got long hair.

Starting point is 00:25:22 That's weird. And so anyways, I'm talking to Stan. We're in the trailer. And I go, oh, you got to do some more cameos. Oh, yeah. And Thor,, I'm like, what? Thor has got long hair. That's weird. And so anyways, I'm talking to Stan. We're in the trailer. And I go, oh, you got to do some more cameos. Oh, yeah. And the Thor, what did you do in the Thor one? And he goes, let me think. I'm trying to remember.

Starting point is 00:25:33 Oh, yeah, I think I was the barber. And I went, what? He goes, yeah, I do this thing where I'm the barber. And I go, so what do you do? He goes, I cut Thor's hair. Hold his extent. You're saying, I've been seeing this commercial. He's got short hair.

Starting point is 00:25:45 You cut his hair? And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I cut Thor's hair. Hold his extent. You're saying, I've been seeing this commercial. He's got short hair. You cut his hair? And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I cut his hair. It's like this weird thing where I've got this big blade and I've got bad eyesight and they're pinning him down. And I'm going, oh, my gosh, that's the coolest thing. And then I just went, oh, man, if we only had like a pair of scissors, we could reenact that. And he goes, I'll get a pair of scissors, Todd. And he actually went and like a pair of scissors, we could reenact that. And he goes, I'll get a pair of scissors, Todd. And he actually went and found a pair of scissors.

Starting point is 00:26:09 And then he literally reenacted. I videotaped it where I'm Thor and they're holding me down and he's saying his lines and he's like going, God, he's doing all of it. So he, I get, we're about to go on stage, but he's still just goofing around. Someday I'll release it. That is arguably the best piece of video I have from Stan, because he was a very kind, polite, gentle man in terms of his language, if you will, when he was up on stage. And I have the one where I record it, where he goes, Todd, can I tell you something?

Starting point is 00:26:43 Again, out of the blue. Can I tell you something? Yeah, out of the blue. Can I tell you something? Yeah, Stan, say whatever you want. Do you know what the most flexible word is in the English dictionary that has the most ways you can use it? And I went, no, Stan. Fuck. And I went, what?

Starting point is 00:27:00 Like, I had never, I don't even think I ever heard him even say damn up to this point. And I get around him a lot. And it sort of shocked me, right? And I went, pardon? Yeah, Todd, fuck. And then he went on a dissertation of how you can use that word as a noun, a pronoun, an adjective, and gave examples of all of them. It was like a school teacher sort of doing a classic masterclass

Starting point is 00:27:28 and how to use a word more than once. It just happened to be that word. So maybe someday that audio will come out. Well, it seems like in the, maybe the appendices of the how to interact with your fans book that he would author, you would have how to enjoy life and not complain as the supplemental materials.

Starting point is 00:27:49 He seems like he was very good at enjoying life, pausing, not getting swept up in all the superficial nonsense, but stopping you and saying, isn't this great? Let's look at this for a second. Isn't this amazing? It seems like he was able to really harness his appreciation in a way that maybe fed him and allowed him to get to his mid-90s still doing the metaphor cartwheels on stage. That's something that comes across in the stories. I think Stan, he comes from the school of those of us who believe our 15 minutes of fame is just about over every day we wake up.

Starting point is 00:28:33 We always think tomorrow is the day where they're going to understand that we're imposters and that there's way more important people that are more skilled, that have more to say. And all of a sudden you go to your next show or you go to your next, and there's another group of people and you go, wow, I guess it's going to last one more day. And you keep going and you're thankful for it, right? Again, at some point, once you know that you're fortunate, that's okay. I mean, at my end, I think there's a little bit of Canadiana in it. I was born in Canada. I saw people like Steve Nash and Wayne Gretzky, my big personal hero, act like gentlemen, even though they were superstars.

Starting point is 00:29:12 And I think part of it is, and I may be overstating it, but when you're from Canada, you know that the big brother is America. And that's where all the big action is. And if you can get any attention and you can even infiltrate down there, you always are sort of looking over your flank going, eventually you're going to see that they can just pick one of their own. They don't need us. And so you see that with a lot of comedians that come from Canada and actors come from Canada that we just, and so Stan sort of had a little bit of Canadian in him where he was just like, enjoy it while you can.

Starting point is 00:29:47 You don't know if it's going to be here tomorrow, like your health. It seems to me, or at least it seemed to me when I was younger and even now in some respects, like once a comic guy, always a comic guy. However, you have managed to branch out and infiltrate all of these different areas. And I don't even know how to put them in order.

Starting point is 00:30:09 So you've got McFarland Toys, right? So let's just generically lay it out. You got toys, music, directing, TV, film. What is the order of how you entered those various things? You're forging new paths, setting records, that image. When do these things start to pop up and in what order? In all honesty, Tim, they're a bit scattered. So let's see if we can go through them real fast, right?

Starting point is 00:30:37 Let's just talk first about how the toys come to be real quickly. We start Image Comics. We talked about that in the last show. Image Comics, the third largest comic book company in North America. Marvel, DC, and then Image Comics. If you ask who's three, that's us for 30 years in a row. And because of that, when we came out in 1992,

Starting point is 00:30:58 that was when we first came out, and Spawn came out in 1992. We're celebrating the 30th anniversary of both of those this year. Spawn went to the top of the charts, set sales records at the top of the charts. And I'm not saying for independent comic books. I'm saying top of the charts for comic books. It was ahead of every Marvel and every DC comic book.

Starting point is 00:31:15 And so you can imagine when you have something at the top of a chart, then people in other industries come around and they start knocking on your door. And so people were coming and knocking on my door going, Oh my God, spawn is at the top of the charts. You want to do pajamas and pillowcases and toothbrushes and all these ants, what they call ancillary merchandising. And so all those phone calls were coming. Now I gently said, no, no, no, no, no. I want, I understand you want to do pillowcases, but do you know, have you read a spawn comic book? It was like, well, no, no, no, no, no. I want, I understand you want to do pillowcases, but do you know,

Starting point is 00:31:45 have you read a Spawn comic book? It was like, well, no, but we see it's number one. So do you know? Wrong answer for Todd. Yeah. Do you, do you know he's from the pit of hell, right? Like, and you can just see there's a hesitation, right? They're going, so I go, why don't you take a couple of the issues from this characters from the pit of hell, go read a couple and then decide whether you want to do pillowcases for kids that are five years old right now a bunch of them didn't follow up with their phone calls after i sort of put their nose in the product all they saw was that spawn was ahead of spider-man and batman and superman so it must be super awesome right that was it that was all their homework was at that point. Here's what I had in the back of my mind

Starting point is 00:32:27 when we left Marvel Comic Books and we helped start Image Comics. I wanted to build a foundation because I feel that metaphorically, if you can build a strong foundation, just like in the real world, you can put a skyscraper on a strong foundation. How do we know?

Starting point is 00:32:44 Because they exist. So the foundation to me was, could I do movies, TV, video games, and toys? Those were the four. Those were the four cornerstones. Could you just repeat those four? I mean, just for me, just for me. Again. My foundations were going to be video games, TV, movies, and toys. Because I felt that if you could get your brand into those four corners, and again, because I was playing in the comic book world, then I could branch out into these areas and plant some corners and get people to go, oh, and it's worked because I know people who've since say, I know spawn from HBO, not because they've read the comics or bought the toys. It was,

Starting point is 00:33:30 they saw it on HBO or wherever. I don't really care. Let me just tell you, Tim, I don't really care. My attitude is building a business. You build a house, that's your business. And you put as many doors on your house as possible. And you make sure they're all unlocked all the time. I don't care how they get into the house. I don't care how they come to the party. It's party central inside the house, right? I don't care if they go, Todd, man, I saw you did that music video. I don't care. Doors open. Come on in. Come on in. Come on in. I don't care how you got here. I am not discriminating on a fan because the bigger your army is, the collective whole, the better chance you have of then sending out your message for the next thing that you're

Starting point is 00:34:13 about to do and it might work. So those were the four pillars. One of the pillars, and to go through them real quick, I made a deal with the video games. I made the deal with HBO. We'll get back to that on the TV. New Line Cinema, we made the deal with the video games. I made the deal with HBO. We'll get back to that on the TV. New Line Cinema, we made the deal with the movie. And then we got to the toys. And all the Fortra 500, the public companies, came to my door.

Starting point is 00:34:35 And they all gave their presentation. Some of them were pretty elaborate. They had prototypes and everything. And I just felt, at the end of it, I just go, I don't think they get it. What I heard was they're going to do traditional toys and put them in traditional places and market them in traditional ways, which basically meant they were going to put Spawn next to Teletubbies and all their Disney products. And I thought it was a recipe for failure. And oh, by the way, if I gave it to them and it failed, then when it didn't work, which I thought it wouldn't recipe for failure. And oh, by the way, if I gave it to them and it failed,

Starting point is 00:35:05 then when it didn't work, which I thought it wouldn't, they would hand me my brand back and it would be tainted. How do I then pick up those pieces when people go, ah, it failed last time, Todd. Why would we want now to dust it off and try it again? So I never felt like I could get what I wanted. And so you have to then ask the next question. How hard is it to make my own toys?

Starting point is 00:35:27 That's it, right? So, and sometimes it's out of anger. I've started companies just because I got pissed off. It's because people think that what they're doing is way, way more complicated than it is. Let me tell you something right now, Tim. We've got the Image Comics and we do our own comic books and we're doing, you know what making comic books is at its core? Ink on paper, period, period, period. Ink on paper. Toys are not that much different. It is plastic in a shape.

Starting point is 00:35:56 And if you have the right mold, you can make a shape. How do I know? Anybody who's kind of old that remembers this, when we were kids, remember, you used to get these little trays and they were in the shape of dinosaurs. And then you poured the jello into it and you put it in the fridge and then you flip it out. And all of a sudden your jello look like dinosaurs. You know why? Because that was what the mold looks like. So toys are plastic in jello molds, essentially a little bit more details I'm leaving out, but essentially that's sort of it. So when I asked the question, how do you make toys? How do you make comics? How do you make almost anything? It's not, let me tell you the people in that industry, the people that are the

Starting point is 00:36:37 leaders in that industry always want you to think that it's way more complicated. Always want you to think that it's basically undoable and will never, ever sidestep, no matter how good your idea is, to let you pass them. If anything, they will intentionally try and trip you as you're passing them and tell you, can't be done, can't do it, we'll hire people away from it. They'll tell you everything, stop rocking the boat, why don't you just get along? Everything that you can possibly imagine. Why? They don't want competition. They don't want competition. So at some point, you have to shut all that stuff down and go, I don't care. I don't care if I sell five. I'm good enough. It was my money. The whole thing, spend other people's money. I disagree 100%. Spend your own damn money. You know why? Because nobody gets to tell you what to do.

Starting point is 00:37:26 So if you want to go buy a car with polka dots on it and it's your money, do it and drive it with a smile on your face. And if somebody doesn't like it, tell them to buy their own damn car, right? But the moment you take somebody's money and they get to tell you whether they like the polka dots on the car or not. And so I just go, no. So I spent my own cash when I started the companies. And I was fortunate because the comic books were paying royalties. I wasn't getting paid a lot. Let me just tell you, I wasn't getting paid a lot per page. That's not what made me. Just so everybody knows, at the height of my career at Marvel, I was making $125 per page. That was the

Starting point is 00:38:02 max they were paying me. It was the royalties. I was getting a percentage of the sales. And that was the magic of it. It's what made us economically at Image Comics because we were getting 4% of the profits. And when we went and started our own company, guess what? We were getting 100%. So do the math. If you take 100 divided by four, if we were selling 125th, 125th, the amount of books that we were doing at Marvel, we would make the same money. And guess what, boys and girls, we sold the same. We sold the same, in some cases, more than we were selling at Marvel. So we were then all of a sudden instantly making 25 times

Starting point is 00:38:44 more than we were overnight. And that's a whole another conversation. And you could use that to bankroll the toy development. Correct. You're a piece of that. Correct. I wasn't spending it. I wasn't buying fancy cars. I wasn't doing anything. I'm kind of a tight ass when you get right down to it. I was just putting it in a corner for rainy days or when I was going to get angry. And I, cause I knew my personality. So we started the toy company and we came out with the first toys. Action figures at that point were 599 and I priced mine at 699.

Starting point is 00:39:15 And here's the thing. Here is the thing. If you're listening to my voice, all the big companies came to me and patted me on the back and went, little boy, you can't sell a $6.99 toy. They're $5.99. Here's the answer. Of course you can. Of course you can. Here's how you sell a $6.99 toy. Give them $6.99 of value, period. Oh, I'll even give you an upgrade. Give them $7.99 of value

Starting point is 00:39:42 and price it at $6.99. What they were thinking, because they're the big corporate guys, how do you sell a $5.99 toy for $6.99? I get that. You can't sell that because people will understand you're overpricing it. I'm saying build a Cadillac and sell it at Ford Motor prices. And you can sell that all day long because people understand value and they can do it because I didn't have any big brands. I didn't have Superman and Batman or Star Wars. I had Spawn.

Starting point is 00:40:10 And there was only one way I was going to be able to compete with those big names. Just give them better quality and give them more plastic. Never underestimate plastic. It's like saying, do you want the 15 ounceounce bar of chocolate for a dollar or the 10-ounce bar of chocolate? I'll take the 15. What are you talking about? Always take the bigger bar, right? For a buck, take more chocolate, right? Come on, man. So I was a guy who was just giving them more and more and more. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors, and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. These days, every new potential hire can feel

Starting point is 00:40:49 like a high stakes gamble for your small business. So you want to be 100% certain that you have access to the most qualified candidates. That's why you should check out LinkedIn Jobs. LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the right people for your team faster and for free. Add your job and the purple hashtag hiring frame to your LinkedIn profile to spread the word that you're hiring. Simple tools like screening questions make it easy to focus on candidates with just the right skills and experience so you can quickly prioritize who you'd like to interview and hire. It's why small businesses rate LinkedIn jobs number one in delivering quality hires versus leading competitors.

Starting point is 00:41:23 It's been a tough year for everyone, so finish it strong by hiring the right new team members to set yourself up for strong and successful 2023. LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to faster. So post your job for free at linkedin.com slash Tim. That's linkedin.com slash Tim to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. How did you learn about making toys and figure out the process for making quality products? How did you educate yourself on the bits and pieces and steps and right way to approach it? Slowly. I did it slowly. When I finally hung up my last meeting with somebody wanting to take the rights of Spawn to make them toys, and I said, no. I got on the phone. I knew a couple people. And I phoned somebody who was sort of entrepreneurial.

Starting point is 00:42:19 And I said, you know anybody that makes toys? And they're going, oh, yeah, yeah, I got a couple buddies. And we got on the phone with them. And that was it. And they're going, oh yeah, yeah, I got a couple of buddies. And we got on the phone with them and that was it. And they just went, yeah, I've been involved in making toys. And we, and that was it. And it was, you sculpt a toy out of clay back then. You can do it digitally now, but back then it was out of clay and you send it over to your factory. Most toys are manufactured in China. We found factories in China and they cut a steel mold and they go, how many do you want? And you're off to the races. It's more complicated than that, but at its core, it's not really. If you've got art, you can make art in any shape you want. And so for me, what helped me, Tim, more than anything else, and I've said this, I've never invented anything

Starting point is 00:43:02 original. I've never done anything new. What I've done is taken everything that I've seen with my eyes and just made it sexier and cooler, period. That's it. That's the recipe. Everybody who's out there is listening and wants to be an entrepreneur. Stop putting the pressure on yourself to think you have to come up with something new and original. You do not. You just have to add 3% sexy to it, and you will now be the genius. Let's give you an example. I'll give you an example. 10, 12 years ago, there was a guy named Steve Jobs. You may have heard of him. And he went up on stage one day, and he said, ladies and gentlemen, I remember the day. There was a bunch of people, and he goes, ladies and gentlemen, we are the day there was a bunch of people and he goes, ladies and gentlemen, we are Apple and we are, because they were doing iPods and he go,

Starting point is 00:43:49 we are going to come out with a phone. The people in the audience went, Steve, a little late to the game. Phones have been out for a while. Cell phones have been out for a while, a little late. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But get this, ours can dial people. Already been done, Steve. And we text, done. And photos, done. Download stuff, done. Email, done, done, done, done, done. There's nothing you're doing, Steve, that hasn't been done. And then the moment, and then the moment. He said, yes, but when you text, hi, mom, on their phone, you are touching a QWERTY with plastic buttons. And when you say hi mom on mine, you're not touching plastic, you're touching glass. Boom, boom. It did the exact same thing as every other phone on the marketplace except you touched glass.

Starting point is 00:44:46 That was the genius. He gave them the sexy. Glass instead of plastic, still have to put H-I-M-O-M. Hi, mom. It's still the exact same thing. He just figured out the 3%. If you can figure out the 3% on any idea, they'll make you a genius. So what's the genius they've given me, Tim? Oh my gosh, Todd. We've done sports figures for decades. Oh my gosh, I've won awards. Oh my gosh, Todd. Your toys are so detailed and so realistic. How do you do it?

Starting point is 00:45:18 You're asking the wrong question. The question should be, how did they not do it? I'll tell you how I do it. Easy. We use this high tech. If you don't understand the high tech go to google it's called a camera and if you take a camera and you push the button it gives you a photo and if you take the photo and you take your clay and you do not stop manipulating the clay until it looks like the photo, then it looks exactly like it. The question isn't, how did I make my toys look realistic? The question is, how did they not? Because the camera has been around for a hundred years, if not more. How did they not use

Starting point is 00:46:00 the tool? And so I use photo reference, and I'm a genius. Let me tell you, Tim, another rule of life. If you want to be smart, act and hang around dumb people. Because why is using photo reference get me awards? It shouldn't. It shouldn't. Those are for the athletes? Is that what you're talking about? The photographs? Yeah. Yeah. That was it. Making toys back then is just manipulating clay. Clay will go into any position and pose and shape you want it to. The question isn't, I wasn't doing anything original. I was just putting the clay in a different shape. They had clay too, and they'd been making toys for 50 years. Why they chose not to put it in those shapes, I don't know. Go ask them.

Starting point is 00:46:47 But some of it, Tim, became crystal clear to me as I broke into the business why they didn't do it. Because if they did the detail that I did, they would then have to paint it. Ah, and here's the magic. That every time you put paint on a toy, that's a penny. Oh, now we got to paint that. Oh, a penny. Oh, a penny. Oh, a penny. And eventually they go, that's seven, eight, 10, 12 extra cents. We can't do that. Why? Because we're making tens of millions of toys times 12 cents. It just becomes a number. They're in the business to maximize shareholder profits every 90 days. Their job

Starting point is 00:47:26 isn't to be great artists. It's to maximize margins and profits. So they go, we need to make 10 million. How do we make the toy? We got to manufacture it for 98 cents. I do the opposite, Tim. I go, make the product as good as you can, price it afterwards. And if it's a value, people will pay you the money. It's why people will pay $10,000 for one car and other people will give you $70,000 for another car. They believe there's a value in that price. They say that toys are us. They're going, you can't have a toy at $8 or $9. People won't give you $8 or $9 for a toy or whatever.

Starting point is 00:48:03 Of course, back then, of course they will, because they're walking in another aisle, giving you $200 for a PlayStation. If people think that there's value, they will give the money to you. Just make value, price it afterwards, but they don't. And so they were cheap. They were making cheap, ugly toys. God bless them. I was able to come in and make mediocre toys and I look like a genius. Two things real quick on that. The first is for people who don't have a lot of exposure to toys, and I'm not even sure, I mean, there's maybe a blur between toys and sculpture on some level, but I just came back from Japan where I went to a showroom where they have, in effect, toys. They don't have many movable joints or anything like that, that sell for thousands of dollars. I mean, they cost as much as a car and they're video

Starting point is 00:48:55 game characters that have been morphed into these beautiful three-dimensional, in effect, plastic sculptures. So there's always a market for high quality. At a price, at a price, high quality, at a price, right? At a price. How did you think about distribution? You didn't want to be right next to the teletubbies. So what did you do? Well, okay, here's where beggars and choosers come. Look, I've said to people before, if you're going to have any amount of success in your life, one of the people you have to hang around with is that guy named Dumb Luck. He has to come be a visitor every now and then.

Starting point is 00:49:31 So I'm going to give you my Dumb Luck moment. In comic books, I hate to say it, my Dumb Luck moment was that an artist on a book died, literally died, and there was an opening. Yeah, I remember that. Okay, so he's dead. Todd, break for you. Not good for him. Good for you. My big break in toys was, and do not do what I'm just about to say. Cause I don't think this lightning is going to strike in the same place a couple of times. I went to toy fair, toy fair in New York city comes once a year. And this is where everybody brings all their worldly goods. At that time, this is back in 1994, Hasbro, let's just take a big toy company or Mattel,

Starting point is 00:50:10 they had their own building, 10 stories high, filled with everything. And the buyers would go into that building, circle the floor one, go up to floor two, and go all the way up and down 10 floors. I, on my first toy fair, was in a building that only had five floors. I was on one floor, but on that floor, there was 20 rooms. I was in one room, and that room was cut into 40 pieces. My space was five feet by five feet. Okay. Now, I'm at toy fair, and I'm in that little corner here. And even dumber than that, Tim, I don't even have a prototype. This is how stupid I was. I didn't even bring a prototype. We didn't have time to get it done. Wait, so what'd you bring? Sorry, keep going. I don't want to interrupt, but I'm just like, what the hell are

Starting point is 00:50:54 you doing? I'll tell you what I brought. A drawing of Spawn on foam core, and I cut it out. So I go, it's going to look sort of like that drawing. That was it. That was my sell. That was my whole speech. And oh, by the way, I had made some Hot Wheel toys based on a funny card that I had bought and I'd hand them the Hot Wheel. Okay. And now the moment, now the moment. At this point, Toys R Us is number one toy buyer, not Walmart. And pretty soon Walmart's going to crush them probably within six months. But at that point, Toys R Us is the toy buying gods. And then we're in this room with 40 of us with our little, like a bad swap meet when I was a kid. And the door opens up and everybody stands up and snaps like they're in an army barracks and the sergeant has come in. And I'm like, huh, what's that about? Now, again, the room was so small that you had to come

Starting point is 00:51:45 down like a little bit of a walkway and then bend there was a jog and I was around the jog so I didn't know I just saw people stand up and and present themselves in front of their beds like and it's like okay and so I go around the corner to see and I go who is that and they're going oh my god that's the buyer from Toys R Us and it was like oh my god that's the buyer from toys r us and it was like oh my god so i was watching him come and as he's walking closer and closer down towards where i was standing if he walked by you he wasn't buying anything so it was really kind of cool visually i still have this moment where it's like as you walk by people you could just see them collapse physically because it's like oh shit he, he's not buying mine. And he'd keep walking

Starting point is 00:52:25 by and the jibber jibber guy, oh crap, oh crap, oh crap, oh crap, oh crap. And then I went, oh, I guess I better go stand by my barrack too in my bed. And so I stood in front of my little thing and they come around the corner and guess what? That Toys R Us buyer stopped at my place. Now, Tim, did this buyer care about Spawn? No. Did he even know who Spawn was? No. Did he know who I was? Of course he didn't. So why did he stand there? This is the moment. He had an assistant and the assistant looked like he was about 21 or 22. And then the magic words, hey boss, this is the guy I was talking to you about. Now remember at this point, Spawn, the comic book is number one in the nation, number one in the nation. So he's basically this

Starting point is 00:53:11 kid. I don't even remember his name. I owe my career to this dude. And when he said, this is the guy I'm talking to you about. And all's that Toys R Us buyer said, he just looked at it and just went, let me ask you a question. Can you get it to me at this price? Yes, sir. Did I know if I could, Tim? Of course I didn't. Always say yes to any opportunity. Always say yes to any opportunity. Figure out whether you can actually do it later. Can you give me at that price? Of course I can. Can you deliver it on this date? Of course I can. Fine. If you do that, I didn't know if I could either. I didn't even have factories at that point. And so he goes, if you can do that, I'll put you in all my stores. I'll go store wide. And just so you guys know,

Starting point is 00:53:57 usually if they take a sample, they don't usually put you store wide, but he said, I don't know who his assistant was. He must've been bending his ear. He goes, I'll put you store wide. But he said, I don't know who his assistant was. He must've been bending his ear. He goes, I'll put you store wide. I went, yes, sir. So he left. All of a sudden, all the other people in the room came around me because it was like, oh my God, like I just won the lotto, right? Oh my God. Oh my God. And then this is why those moments matter. I couldn't even get a meeting with Walmart and Kmart and Target and those people back then. And now all of a sudden I'm in Walmart's room and I get to now say, well, just to let you know, I've got this Spawn product and it will be going storewide in Toys R Us. Now,

Starting point is 00:54:41 does Walmart know anything about me or Spawn? Of course they don't. Of course they don't. But what they don't want to do is get beat by their competition. So they go, Toys R Us going storewide? Yeah. Okay, we'll take some. And then the Domino's. I go to Kmart and Target and all these other places. And then you just keep adding. Well, Toys R Us and Walmart are on board. And they're like, what? What are we missing? And it becomes this thing. And next thing you know, I'm in all these big stores. And I go, wow, without even having so much as a prototype. It doesn't usually work that way. Now, once you get into the store, you must now sell.

Starting point is 00:55:19 Because people go, wow, Todd, you got your product selling at Walmart or whatever. Hold on, we're skipping a few steps. What was the hardest part of figuring out how the hell to make that volume of toys? Because I'm just thinking about the upfront cost, right? So thinking about it from the standpoint of Toys R Us, they're like, okay, great. We'll give you net 90 terms. We have the ability to return all of them if they don't sell. Like it could just kill you financially, I would think.

Starting point is 00:55:46 No, they don't return them. Okay. No, they don't return them. Okay. All right. Tell me more. Because if it was like a home shopping network or something, I don't think this is absolutely accurate.

Starting point is 00:55:54 But with some retailers, they have all these terms that can just crush you if it's a lot of inventory. I've been fortunate enough that both toys and comic books are, if you order it, it's yours. Okay. All right. So you go, okay, what you want to do on in the toy side is to make sure that they're not overbuying. Both parties need to be realistic, right? And it's one of the reasons I think, Tim,

Starting point is 00:56:16 that I've survived as long as I have, because I've talked them down from orders, right? Which is actually the opposite of what they're used to, which I go, I know you want 75,000 units of that, but you know what? I think, why don't we start you at 40? I'll build some inventory. It'd be on my nickel. And if you need more, then we'll just supply you as you need. I think if you buy 75, because here's the math, just so everybody knows, if you buy 75 and you sell 60, they're going to go, ah, I got 15,000 in inventory. It's not a success. If you give them 40 and then they have to buy another 20 and they sell 60, they go, wow, we ordered 50 more than our original order. Yeah. So you're still at 60, but one, they're disappointed and one, they're not.

Starting point is 00:57:05 So you have to sort of, like you're still playing some weird mind games a little bit so that they feel good about whatever number was there. And so to me, again, and I'm not a public company and I don't have to maximize profits. My goal is to, I've told all my employees, get me to zero every year and we get to do it again for another year.

Starting point is 00:57:24 So as long as we're money in, money out, sort of about the same, let's keep doing it. I don't need to impress anybody. My kids, I've already paid for their college. You're off. The house is paid for. We're good. My wife and I are good. Is the paired directive just like, let's make the best stuff we possibly can. There's probably a couple of paired principles, I would imagine, that go with that. That was it. The company came from one simple question.

Starting point is 00:57:53 Why can't toys be cooler? Again, I was looking at it from an artistic point of view. I wasn't asking it from a business point of view. Again, you find out what that means when you ask that question. And so I go, why can't they make cooler toys? I found out, Tim, that the reason they weren't making cooler toys is because again, like I said, every time they put or did an extra joint or an extra movement or an extra paint job or something, it was pennies and it just added up. And so I ran into this thing where I was, I had my prototypes at Toy Fair because I started

Starting point is 00:58:27 actually making prototypes. And each year I would bring them and we would sculpt at twice the size of the final product. Why? Because the bigger you sculpt it, the more detail you can put in it. And when you shrink it down, it holds the detail. So I would bring these sculpts and I'd bring them to the showrooms and the buyers would go yeah Todd they look really really really nice I get it but what's the product going to look like it's never going to look like this and I went what are you talking about it's going to look exactly like this and they're like silly boy that's not how it works I found out because I spied on Hasbro and Mattel and all the big guys I was able to get into their showrooms that they were doing this thing where

Starting point is 00:59:03 they would bring these prototypes out that were awesome. Think of them as like the concept cars at an auto show. But you never will see those cool cars, right? They're just there, they're eye candy. And I remember seeing this one toy that was super awesome. And I went, wow, that's good. And then I saw it like months later, literally at the store, and it was blue plastic. They didn't put even a drop of paint on it.

Starting point is 00:59:27 So what I ended up having to do, because I was paying for the sins of these public companies, is that I then took my prototypes, and I showed the step from step one to step 10. And when the buyer got to step 10, guess what it was? It was the product in package manufactured. I go, that's the manufactured toy. That's what it's going to look like in your store. And they couldn't believe it, that it was like, whoa, that looks just like your prototype. Yes, that's what I've been saying. That's the point of a prototype. Right. But everybody else had been using a prototype just to-

Starting point is 01:00:03 Was doing it the other way. Yeah, to sucker them in. So eventually they got to the point that like, hey, if McFarland shows you something, that's actually what it's going to look like. And they started buying into that maybe there was a quality component to these products that were coming in. I didn't have any big brands, right? So I had to beat them with pricing and quality because how else am I going to survive next to Star Wars and Transformers and G.I. Joe and Marvel? I can't. And what year is this roughly, would you say? We started the toy company in 94. And so literally from the first time we hit the ground running. Here's the thing that's interesting, Tim, is that if you look at the first wave of toys, first two, three, four waves of toys I put out, they were winning awards and people were going, oh my God, Todd, look at you. You've upgraded the whole industry.

Starting point is 01:00:56 And if you look at those toys, they're laughable. Compared to my standards today, they are laughable. And even yet back then, just that upgrade put me on the map. And here's the other thing too. Nobody else was doing what I was doing in terms of quality, in terms of the pricing that went with it, and then in terms of brand selection. So here's the thing about big, big corporations. Their blessing and their curse is their size, right? They have more people,

Starting point is 01:01:26 more money, more everything. They can squish you at every moment. But because of that giant, enormous size, they don't move fast. And if you can just be quick and nimble with your business, I never once said, I'm going to slay the giant. That's never the question. Todd, you know, how do you take down Hasbro? No, no, no, no, no. You're asking the question in reverse, not how do I take down Hasbro or Mattel? They're billion dollar empires. The question is, how do billion dollar empires not squish me? I am a gnat. How can they not kill me? And the answer is because why would Hasbro, Mattel, or any other public company want me to have one foot of space in Walmart? That's their territory. That's their money.

Starting point is 01:02:12 And so the question is, why can't they kill me? And the answer is because when you're big and you're a giant and you're a sloth and I'm a mosquito and I'm biting you on your right arm, by the time you contemplate slapping that mosquito, you're so slow with your movement that by the time you slap your arm, I'm on the other side. I'm on the other side. They can't move quick enough, Tim. And that's their weakness. And once I exploit their weakness, and the weakness in toys was they will never do anything outside their comfort zone. What does that mean? They'll never make Freddy Krueger. They'll never make the Terminator toy. They'll never make the Matrix. They'll never make essentially R-rated toys. And I felt that there was a need that you could sell toys to adults. You just have to put it in

Starting point is 01:03:03 the right content. I can sell a toy to my mom. I just have to make it look like Tom Jones, and she'll buy it because she loves Tom Jones. So if you put it in the right brand, then there's an audience that's out there, and now we call it geekdom. And I was the only guy doing it, so everything I was doing was like,

Starting point is 01:03:23 oh my gosh, oh my gosh. There are now dozens of people and companies that do what I do. So I'm not nearly as unique anymore. But back then, I was the trailblazer. So let's talk about 1994. The reason I asked about that timing ties into where you were going a handful of minutes ago with respect to how do you sell these toys, right? How do you get the sell-through once you get toys placed store-wide in, say, Toys R Us? And 1994 is relevant because I was thinking, how would you have any direct fan outreach to drive sales? Because now you have social, you have email. Even email was really nascent

Starting point is 01:04:06 in terms of mainstream adoption in 1994. So a couple of questions, and you can tackle them in any order. One is how on earth do you actually ensure these toys sell once you get them in retail? The second is related to the comment you made about so-and-so huge toy company owning real estate in a given retail store or chain. And I know that it's fairly common at retail for people to pay

Starting point is 01:04:35 for placement. So they pay extra. They pay the retailer for end caps. They own the first, say, 20 feet of a store. I'm making up this example, but like Coca-Cola, boom, they own the first, say, 20 feet of a store. I'm making up this example, but like Coca-Cola, boom, they own the first 20 feet deep at A, B, and C retailers. You literally cannot invade that territory. It's just not possible. It's been paid for. This is true in publishing as well with books and so on. They might call them co-marketing fees.

Starting point is 01:05:02 They might call them placement fees. There are all sorts of crazy, crazy incentives that make it hard for a smaller company to break in. So one is, how on earth do you sell these toys when you have them placed at retail? But then maybe the precursor to that is, how do you even get the placement? Can you afford, maybe this doesn't exist in toys, but do you have to pay those placement fees? In which case, how do you pay for it? There are iterations of what you're talking about, but not quite what you're saying. I think this is closer to what the reality is, is the stores have, let's say they have a run of 100 feet. Let's say that, again, I'm in the boys' toy action figure

Starting point is 01:05:43 aisle. Let's just keep that. Aisle five, let's call it aisle five. Aisle five is a hundred feet long, right? They, I think the buyers for the most part go, I'm going to dedicate 80% of that, 85% of that to the big brands. And we all know what they are because we see foot upon foot upon foot of these brands and they rotate them out depending on what the movies are and what's hot and the zeitgeist but they go okay 85 that's going to be given to the thing that's going to be in every company's i don't care whether you're k-mart walmart amazon everybody's going to have it then there's the 15 left and the 15 is ah this is where just in case we're missing something, just to give us a little bit of diversity, just so that we can have sort of hedge our bet at the roulette table a

Starting point is 01:06:32 little bit. And that was the space that I needed to get into. I needed to figure out, could I rise and get into the sales that were worthy of that 15%. And so to your first question, how did I get people to know and buy the Spawn toys at the beginning? I didn't. In all honesty, the internet, and I know this seems foreign to people, was literally just in its infancy. And so that wasn't the gameplay.

Starting point is 01:07:01 The only play was value, quality, and put it together. And hopefully people would notice it because the upside of making toys and action figures is the packaging is see-through. So you actually get to see what you're buying. There's no fake photo and then you take it home and you go, man, that didn't look that good. What you see is what you get. And I think that my toys just quickly passed the eye test to a lot of people. And again, remember, I was coming off, you know, setting records with Spider-Man and then we quickly went to do the comic books with Spawn. So there was a big fan base that was there and they went, oh my gosh, Todd's going to do some toys. So they jumped on very quickly. And as you know, in any business, you're only as good as sort of your last set of sales. It doesn't matter what you have today. They just look at the data of your last

Starting point is 01:07:56 ones. And so once the first series came out and did really well, and then the second one continued because I got to put some characters in it. And then the internet started to become a little bit relevant. And we were getting traffic even on our own website that was phenomenal. I was getting pulled into Hollywood. People going, Todd, how are you getting that much traffic? I mean, big studios asking me how I was getting the traffic that they weren't getting as a studio. So at some point, the geeks just find you, Tim. And I would like to say that I knew what I was doing all this time, and that somehow I'm a savant. It's not true. You just, you try your darndest, and sometimes that 30-foot shot banks into the bucket, and you score the three points points and you go, wow, I can't say I can

Starting point is 01:08:45 replicate it. But what you do is once you have momentum, can you keep momentum? It's like a good disc jockey. The good disc jockey keep people on the floor dancing. The bad ones figure out how to put on a song that everybody walks off. I need to basically keep the momentum going and finding places. Here's where I kept the momentum. We started selling places like Virgin Records and Tower Records and KB Toys and Hot Topics. And we were going to what I said earlier, non-traditional places. And they were buying lots and lots of toys. You know why? Because I was making like crazy R-rated, times gory boys and then all they cared about was the one magic sentence Walmart's not buying this boom we'll take it because now they don't

Starting point is 01:09:32 have to compete because they don't have to compete because if you go into competition with the big boys everybody has the same product you're just going to get into a pricing war and they want a product that the big boys didn't have. And back then, I could make anything up in my head, put it in the plastic, and I had hundreds and hundreds of thousands of sales waiting for these guys who didn't want to compete with the big boys. Unfortunately, the world changes and Babbage's and Virgin Records and KB, all these companies don't even exist anymore. So there was a consolidation and some of the fun that we were having at the beginning is no longer sort of available to us. So Momentum, you strike me as someone who's a very good creative and

Starting point is 01:10:18 business DJ to push the metaphor, which I like. You mentioned the four pillars, games, TV, movies, toys. It seems like toys came in one of the earlier chapters in terms of setting that pillar of the foundation. Where did, whether it's music, TV, directing, any of those other elements come into the picture? Okay. So I'm going to get to that. Let me just go back to toys and tell one more quick story on the toy end. So there's another story that people to this day scratch their head on. And it was in 1998, Mark McGuire, if you're a baseball fan, Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa were going for the home run title. And at the end of the season, Mark McGuire had hit 70 home runs. The prior record was 61 home runs by Roger Maris.

Starting point is 01:11:10 Sammy Sosa hit 66 that year. Okay, why is that relevant? Because for a couple of years, I had been, I'd start my toy company in 1994 and I'm an athlete. And that's like, again, stick to what you know. I know sports. And I was trying to make sports toys and I couldn't athlete, and that's like, again, stick to what you know. I know sports. And I was trying to make sports toys, and I couldn't make sports toys. Why? I couldn't even get a meeting

Starting point is 01:11:30 because I'm a nobody who's taken the NHL, Major League Baseball, the NBA, NHL. Why would anybody let me in their front door? They wouldn't. And so you have to figure out back doors and alternatives. So here was the play. And again, from one perspective, it seems like the dumbest thing that a human being can do. I'll give you what I was doing during that play. Anyways, the 70 McGuire ball, the last ball he hit that was a record goes up for an auction in Madison Square Garden. I'm the anonymous bidder. Anyways, nobody's ever spent more than $300,000, $400,000 on any baseball paraphernalia. At the end of the auction, I end up winning the 70 ball and it cost me $3 million. 10 times what the previous record was.

Starting point is 01:12:12 $3 million, right? Now, you can say, and I understand this perspective, why would any human being with a brain spend $3 million for a $3 baseball. Why would they do that? Especially given a couple of years later, Barry Bonds broke the record. Oh, by the way, I had to go buy that ball too. But I bought the 70 ball. Here's what the 70 ball did. And it seems like the stupidest thing. $3 million for a baseball, it's stupid. You never can get your money back out of it. It depends on how you're looking at it. Here's how I was looking at it. I knew that spending and getting that ball would get me headlines. So instantly it was a national story. And I was on lots of talk radio shows and TV shows and everything. I mean, I canvassed the planet. And do you know how much

Starting point is 01:13:01 money it would cost to get that attention by buying ads in any of those areas? It would cost you way more than $3 million, but let's put that to the side. Here's what it did. Those headlines then got seen by all the sports leagues and the unions. And when I phoned the next time and said, hey, I'm Tom McFarland. I don't know, maybe you heard of me. I bought the McGuire ball, but I'd just like to talk to you. I'm also in the toy business.

Starting point is 01:13:26 They let me in the door and I got to have a conversation with them. In short order, I ended up having the license for baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. I did it for 13 years. I can tell you, ladies and gentlemen, I made more than $3 million in profits on those toys multiple times over those 13 years.

Starting point is 01:13:47 So at some point, you have to put up an ante on the table to play the big game with the big boys in poker. And my ante, unfortunately, was a $3 million baseball so that they took that as saying, which just so everybody knows, it was every red cent I had and then some. I had to beg, bore, and steal to pay for it. Then what ended up happening that people see those headlines and they go, oh, if he's got $3 million to wipe his ass on a baseball, he must be successful. He must have a lot of money. He bring the successful guy into the room and I got the four licenses and it was there. One last comment on it. Why do you care that I spent 3 million on a baseball?

Starting point is 01:14:33 Because for me, I've made it over multiple times. And anytime I do any interview, because I'm now the expert, just so everybody knows, guess how many interviews I did when Aaron Judge this year was going to do a ball. People were asking me how much a ball is worth. I'm now an expert because I spend an ungodly amount on one ball. I become an expert.

Starting point is 01:14:51 This is how silly all this is. But I get to amortize that $3 million once again that's sitting there. But if I don't spend that money and I don't get there, I don't get to the table, then my company never does any of it. So this is one of the reasons, Tim, I can't be public because you can't play that game. I can't go to the shareholders and to the board and the chairman of the board and say, hey, I've got this gut feeling that if I do this one thing, I think it will pay off. If you can't categorize it on a spreadsheet in rows and columns and tell them what it's going to equate to in terms of capital money and profit margins in 90 days, you're going to get shot down.

Starting point is 01:15:36 And this is why I can't go public. And let me tell you, when my toy companies were flying, did Wall Street come and knock on my door? Of course they did, Tim. Of course they did. But I horrified them to the point that I'd become a bit of a talking moment because I've run into them years later. They would come, and here's what I found with Wall Street. Todd, we're going to give you X amount of dollars, and we're going to buy your company.

Starting point is 01:16:03 Okay, that's cool, but I'm still in control. Well, no, no, no, no, no. At that amount of money, you're not to give you X amount of dollars and we're going to buy your company. Okay, that's cool. But I'm still in control. Well, no, no, no, no, no. At that amount of money, you're not in control. What? I got to give up control of my company? Uh-huh. For what? Your money?

Starting point is 01:16:13 Uh-huh. I already got money. I don't need any of your money. So they're like, okay. And then here's where Wall Street is literally a one trick pony. Okay, Todd, we won't give you X amount of money. We see that you're a little stubborn. We'll give you two X. No, no, no. Okay. So, but if you give me twice the money, do I have control? No. Whoa, that's a problem. Todd, last time we'll give you three X of money.

Starting point is 01:16:43 Guys, let me now define what money is to me. Here's the word, I'm Canadian, so maybe you guys in America do a little bit differently, right? So my dad taught me a word, it's called useless. And here's what useless is, is when you have something and you don't use it. So do you know that I have money in the bank right now? Which basically means I'm not using it, so it's kind of useless to me because I'm not using it because it's just sitting in a bank doing nothing, right? Do you know the reaction to people from Wall Street when you call their one product useless? Do you know how horrifying it is that they're just going, what did you just call? What did you just call money? Right? And eventually they stopped coming. And then I

Starting point is 01:17:24 remember I was at a party years later and I introduced myself. And then they went, Todd McFry, why do I know that name? And it was somebody I'd never met before. And I went, oh, you're the guy that doesn't like money. It was, and look at, let me tell you, and I've told everybody, look at guys,

Starting point is 01:17:40 I'm not a saint. I'm not a saint. I can be bought. We all have our price. The price though that I needed that day was that they would give me enough money that I would then give up control of the company, but have so much money I could then buy it back at a discount, fire all of them, and I'd still have a profit and I'd have my company back. But nobody's ever given me that deal. So I've just never sold the company and they've stopped saying, Todd, I'm just a madman. So anyways, over to Hollywood now. Well, before we get to Hollywood, I want to do a deep dive on

Starting point is 01:18:11 the madman part. You mentioned that this 3 million was basically all the money you had and then some. You strike me as a risk taker, but you strike me as a calculated risk taker. You don't give me the impression of being reckless. Some people could say, well, if you say yes to Toys R Us and you haven't even figured out manufacturing, that's reckless. But it's not reckless, because what's the downside? You can't figure it out and you're like, sorry, pal, I can't make it work. The downside's actually really, really limited for you. Three million bucks, different story. So given that the NHL and NBA and so on hadn't returned your phone calls up to that point, what gave you the confidence or how did you do the calculus? Did you have enough safety net that

Starting point is 01:18:52 you were like, ah, this could suck for a year or two if they don't actually open up to me? How did you think about this? What was the reasoning going into it? Okay. So there's two things that I thought were going, again, keeping the momentum going in my favor. One, I had the data of all the toys that I was doing with Spawn. And Spawn, at that point, it hit a point where consecutive series that were coming out, I think we got all the way up to 36, was the second longest running streak of series of toys other than, I think, Transformers. It was even longer than Star Wars. Star Wars had gone quiet and gone dark for a while, right? So again, there was a little bit of that. But I planted one small seed before I made the crazy play. And the small seed was,

Starting point is 01:19:38 I was able to get to the players union of the NHL. Because of the four major sports, most people will say, especially in terms of revenue, that the NHL is the fourth one, right? The stepchild, if you will. And so I didn't go to the league because I knew I couldn't get there. I went to the union. And just so you know, if you ever make any sports toys of any current players, you must have two license. You have to license the union so you can get the players and their likeness. And then you have to get a contract from the league so that you can get basically their uniforms

Starting point is 01:20:13 and their logos. And then you have to glue the two together and you have a double royalty that you have to pay. It's not the best model, but if you want to do it, that's how it works. So I went to the NHL players union, which was like, nobody ever gives us any money because they just sell jerseys and stuff with logos. Everything's logo, logo, logos on the hat. And I said, I'm going to make toys of your players, but unfortunately,

Starting point is 01:20:38 I can't put their uniforms on them because I don't have an NHL. I'm going to have to do generic uniforms. And they went, yeah, sure, we'll take money. So I had in my back pocket one small seed. I had the union of the NHL so that later, once I spent the money on the McGuire ball and I was hoping I would get a meeting, then I could go in there and say, one of the first meetings I took was with the NHL per se. And I just pulled out my toys and I go, guys, look at these toys. Aren't they cool? They look just like Pavel Bure and Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky. Look at them. These are super awesome, right? Here's the thing. Notice that I don't get to use your uniform. And at that point, I had sort of had a conversation

Starting point is 01:21:26 with them and they were threatening to sue me because they said that my generic uniforms were looking like theirs, right? I think I even done some McGuire, generic McGuires too. And I'd even at that point then went to the NFL union and I go, hey, I've got the baseball and I've now got the hockey. Like again, it all tumbles. And so I was then able to go, hey, I've got the baseball and I've now got the hockey. Again, it all tumbles. And so I was then able to go into rooms. I remember these odd conversations you have, Tim, that are just, I just want to hit my head against walls, but whatever. I'm in a room with the NHL and there's like six lawyers there, there's always lawyers, and they're threatening to sue me because I'm doing like a sort of a generic uniform on one of the players that I had there.

Starting point is 01:22:07 And they're going, we're going to sue you. You cannot do these toys. And I'm like, oh, yeah? You sue my ass. You sue my ass because here's how it works. Here's how it works. And you guys aren't even smart enough to know how this works. Number one, you're sitting here right now across this table telling me you own everything.

Starting point is 01:22:30 Good. Sue me. And if you win, you don't get a fucking ounce of upgrade. You say you got 100%. At the end, the best you can hope for is 100%. Go ahead and do it. But if you pay attention and you do a little bit of research on me, you're pulling the wrong tiger's tail, right? Because I'll do this. Because here's the thing. If we go to court and you find out that you don't have 100%, and I'm betting you don't, that not only do I get a piece of that 100%, it is going to basically be a story for every human being on this planet. They can now go against you. So you got two choices. You can either go to court and say that somehow you own reddish colors and bluish colors. If you want to make that argument, be my guest. Or what I'm saying, I've got a check for a half a million dollars here.

Starting point is 01:23:16 I'd like to shove down your throat to give me your fucking logos. I don't know. Sue me and potentially lose 100% or take a half a million dollars. This seems like my six-year-old could figure out what this thing is. Eventually, they took the half a million bucks, right? So what are you talking about? Like, of course they did. Of course they did, right?

Starting point is 01:23:37 Like, stop it. And sadly, I had to sort of play the same conversation with everybody when I had the NFL. And I'm like, I'm doing your players. The question is, do you want any of the cash? I mean, at some point, forget the art and forget anything else. Just get down to the core of it. Do you want any of this money I'm about to make? The answer is yes or no. And if you don't, fine. Oh, by the way, I thought you were in the commerce business because you're a public company, but you guys go ahead and do what you want to do. It is amazing how many times I've had to try and shove money down people's throats. But anyways, that's corporate America. They do their thing. I do mine. So doing your thing, let's hop across some

Starting point is 01:24:16 lily pads and touch on whichever you want to touch on next. The music, TV, movies, how do any of these other elements, I know you've mentioned games, but which of these elements enter the picture? Let's talk about TV first. So again, go back to the release of the Spawn comic book after we leave Marvel, the group of us leave Marvel. My character Spawn comes out, bam, shoots to the top of the charts. And for months and months, even maybe a couple of years, it was the number one selling book. So it was at the top of the chart. So like I said, phone calls were constantly coming. I get the phone call and on the other line is HBO. Legit at that point. I mean, what are you talking about? They're still legit, right? But they were one of

Starting point is 01:24:58 the big sort of companies out there. And I go, oh, cool. And they said, hey, we want to do some animation. And I knew like animation is like Saturday morning cartoons, right? And a couple of my partners at Image Comics had sold and we're going to get Saturday morning cartoons, which they did. But I didn't spawn again, the guy from the pit of hell, it just wasn't what I wanted. And so I remember, and I don't say this as a joke, I say this as, and I'll tell you why I asked this one question. I go, no, no, hey guys, it's cool. I appreciate your enthusiasm. Let me ask you just one question. I just have one question for you. Can I say fuck in my show? And it wasn't meant to be a joke. It was just, and they paused and then they said, yeah, probably. Like, why not? Right? And that was

Starting point is 01:25:42 all I needed to hear. Not that I wanted to use that word, Tim. Not that I wanted to do and show naked women or anything. I just thought that if they were willing to basically say yes to that, I had a wide lane of creativity. And the reason I needed a wide lane, because my character lives in a dark, serious world. And I'm going to have corrupt policemen. And I'm going to have mafia people. And I'm going to have corrupt policemen and I'm going to have mafia people

Starting point is 01:26:08 and I'm going to have criminals. I'm going to have drug addicts. And these people don't talk politely, right? When they get mad, you have to be able to go into like watching an R-rated movie. You have to be able to have a certain dialect for your characters that matches who they are. And so I just needed to, if the moment came, I needed to be able to have a certain dialect for your characters that matches who they are. And so I just needed to,

Starting point is 01:26:26 if the moment came, I needed to be able to do that and have the creative freedom to do it. So when they said, yeah, sure. Then I was like, cool. Then let's do it. Oh, one more thing. I know nothing about animation, never spent a second on it, but I got to be in charge. So you guys go and have that talk and do what you got to do. And they came back and said, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can be in charge, but we're going to put some good people on your flanks, which they did. And we went in there. And so I was working on HBO animation. At this time, Tim, HBO had started an animation division. I think there was five, maybe six shows going on, of which Spawn was one.

Starting point is 01:27:15 Very quickly, the other five failed, and I was sort of the lone wolf by the end of it. But when we first came out, I was in the room now with this group of people they had amassed to make an animated show. Who collectively probably had 600 years of experience. Which is cool. But there's also moments where I realize I'm in front of people at times who have been institutionalized. And here's the frustrating thing that I've run into over and over and over in my life. The bark being way better than the bite. And so artists would go, yeah, all these creative people,

Starting point is 01:28:00 all these people who've worked on animation, man, if we could only do it our way, man, these people, these executives, they don't know anything. Yeah. I've heard that over and over and over. And we finally get to a point where literally we can almost do anything. And guess what? A lot of them did. They just went back to status quo. And so being the dumbest guy in the room, I used to ask these questions, any question, there's a legitimate answer why you can't do it. It's usually time or money. Oh, you can do it, but it's going to cost more money. Oh, can't do that. I have a budget. No, it doesn't cost any more money, but it can take twice as long. Ah, we don't have the luxury of the deadline. So that's it. And I understand. So I would constantly be asking these questions. Can we do this? No. Why? Because of this. Okay. But every now and then, being the dumb guy in the room, I didn't know where the guardrails were. So I'd ask a question

Starting point is 01:28:51 and then you get the moment, Tim, which is you ask a question and you've got 50 people in a room and I go, if we do this, will it cost us any more time or money? I mean, a little bit of effort, maybe, but about the same. And then you get to me the golden moment, pregnant pause, silence. So there was nobody in the room with 600 years experience saying, no, we can't do that. No, we can't do that. And I went, so you're saying that it won't take more time? No. And it won't cost more money? No. So why don't we do it? Well, that's not how we do it here. No, no, I understand that's not how we do it. I'm not asking that question. I'm saying, well, it'll take more time or money. You're saying no. Why are we figuring

Starting point is 01:29:33 out how to self-edit ourselves, self-censor ourselves when nobody else is? This is a crime. Why are we putting guardrails on ourselves? We should be smashing up against the walls until the executives upstairs go, whoa, guys, whoa, whoa, whoa, pull it back, right? That's what we should be doing. But when you've had a dog that has been in a small backyard for so long, it gets comfortable that the moment you throw the doors open to the wild farmlands and you go run, Rover, go, it was amazing how many creative people sat down instead of running because that's all they knew. They knew one way to do animation and they knew one way to draw it and they knew

Starting point is 01:30:20 one way to storytell and they knew one way and one way and one way and one way. And here's the frustration. By the end of the three years, we were butting heads because they all thought I was the crazy guy, whatever else. We won Emmys on that show. And I remember being up on the stage holding and getting my Emmy. And behind me was 15 of these people. Most of them, I was constantly having to basically drag them into some of these decisions.

Starting point is 01:30:54 And they were all holding an Emmy in their hands too, with a big smile. And I was like going, oh my God, here you are so happy you got an Emmy in your hand and you were resistant to almost everything as to reason why we're up on this stage today, right? It bugged me that I was putting that award in their hands because they were not willing participants for the ride. But the reason we ended up getting canceled wasn't because people weren't watching it. It was because, and this is again, just the way of the world, right? Names Todd only rhymes with God. I don't get to control any of this. And it was that they had five shows. Remember I said they started an animation show? Right. And every time a show

Starting point is 01:31:37 got canceled, one of the animation got canceled, they just put all the costs on the existing shows. And eventually all of them failed, except for me. And I remember them calling me in saying, Todd, we got to stop the animation. I go, why? And he goes, it's getting too expensive. And I went, expensive? You haven't given me one red cent more than you did the first year. I'm working on the exact same budget. It's like, yeah, well, yeah. And then I found out I was covering all the other overhead that had basically failed. And so they put that on my budget and then they have to get so many eyeballs per dollar. And somehow they had put all that money that had accrued onto mine, and it fell under their thresholds, and whatever matrix they used, and they'd never go public with any of it, but it was like,

Starting point is 01:32:28 that was it. I was like, we were doing the exact same job, winning Emmys, doing exactly what we were doing, but now, all of a sudden, they had to let us go because somehow the math didn't work for them. So, question for you about that. It seems like, and I know this is simplifying, but you've had this incredible bull run with Spider-Man, Image, Toys, and then you have this television experience, which is super challenging, doesn't end the way you probably would have liked it to end. Well, we won Emmys, so I'll take that upgrade. Well, that leads into my question, which is, are you glad you had that experience or would you have removed it

Starting point is 01:33:09 and replaced it with something else? How did you contend with that yourself? Did you feel good about it at the end? Yeah, sure. Proud of it? Yeah. Okay. This is easy.

Starting point is 01:33:17 There's only one human being I have dominion over. Me, period. Yeah. My wife, I love her. I've been with her for over 40 years. I don't even control her. And she's the closest person that I have in the world. So, I mean, it can be exhausting at times trying to drag people to the water, but you can't make the horse drink at times. So at some point, I just go, guys, you do your thing. I do my thing and we'll just figure it out. I do not stand by water coolers and complain about bosses. I quit jobs and start my own companies. As a creative person, if I'm going to complain about how the business works, then I will then go and, to be bilingual. I have learned the language of business. I am first and foremost a fluent speaker in art. That is my native tongue. But I have learned business to the point where I can now go into a meeting with executives or bankers or government people or whatever and sound like a CEO who happens to be a pretty good artist.

Starting point is 01:34:29 I can convince them that I'm that guy, that they go, oh, okay. He just, the art is sort of like, he just does it on the side. I've got two choices. I either let people with experience do the business side of it and have full trust in them

Starting point is 01:34:44 and knowledge in what they're doing so I know that I can trust them, or I just figure it out myself. My personality didn't allow me to put it in the hands of others. If I'm going to fail, I want to fail on my own merits. And so I just learned business. Did it take away from the art? Of course it did. Every time I'm in one of these dumb meetings for an hour, I am acutely aware that I am not creating. And everything in my world, business-wise, is a byproduct of me doing some kind of creating. It's a fallout of me creating. And when I'm not creating, I don't think I'm bringing the most value to my company. I need to be an artist as much as possible, but I also need to be able to sing and tell the story of what we do for the company so that we can get past the no's. Because I can be very stubborn of going, well, before you say no, let me just download you with the reality of what you're walking away from. At the beginning, it was all

Starting point is 01:35:45 BS. Let me just tell you, it was, as the years have gone by, there's hardcore data now. Tim, let me just, again, go back a little bit. Last year, I don't even pay attention to it, but last year, there's the equivalent of the Nielsen ratings in toys. And they literally count when something gets scanned at the big super, super superstores all the way it goes into a database so we're not talking about you're the most popular you got the coolest toy todd those are different awards this is data based on sales last year our line of dc multiverse toys i don't even have the master license of dc multiverse I have a fraction of it. I have the collective little sliver of it. And our sliver of that outsold not only the master toy license of that, but it outsold everything Marvel and everything Star Wars. It was the

Starting point is 01:36:38 number one selling line in America and Canada. My company, literally, that is a handful of people sold more toys in action figure lines than Hasbro, Mattel, Playmates, Spin Master, all these public companies, right? And the question is either I'm and my people are geniuses or they're not getting full value for whatever infrastructure they did. I think the answer lies somewhere in between, right? How is it that I can take on Fortune 500 companies? Last year, I had the number one selling comic book.

Starting point is 01:37:18 The number one selling comic book. Marvel is owned by Disney. DC Comics is owned by Warner Brothers, AT&T, Warner Brothers, Discovery, whatever it is this week, that's there. Those are billion-dollar empires. And my comic book division is four people. How do four people take on billion-dollar empires and beat them at times at their own game? I don't know. I don't know. It's a curiosity. Why aren't they selling more? I don't know. Go ask them. I'm just doing my gig. But it's doable. And I'm hoping that the story of a guy like me should be, hopefully to some people, somewhat inspirational. Because every time I

Starting point is 01:37:58 write a story where David took on Goliath and didn't get killed, didn't slay the giant, just didn't get killed himself. Those should be encouraging of that, yes, you too can go against these guys and succeed. And here's the thing, as long as your company is the right size with the right overhead, you can make a profit. You can make $10,000 a month and make a profit as long as your overhead is less than 10,000. Or you can make a hundred million a year and lose money because your overhead is over a hundred million. You just have to right size your company and you can make money. Don't worry about being rich. Just go, I make 3030,000. As long as we spend $25,000, we're making $5,000 a month. It's a living. It's a living. Cool. And you're having fun doing it.

Starting point is 01:38:50 Two questions related to all of this. The first is, we're going to bounce around chronologically, but how do you protect or create the time for creativity and making, right? So if we think about it as making versus managing. So the making is the creative stuff. The managing is all the meetings, all of the CEO stuff. I would have to imagine there've been times where you've looked at your calendar after a hard week and you're like, for fuck's sake,

Starting point is 01:39:18 I've spent 90 plus, maybe 100% of my time this week managing stuff. How have you been able to block out or protect the time to create? How have you thought about that as someone who has all these different business ventures now? I think it's the eternal question we all struggle with. How do we balance our life? We all ask that, both on the personal and the work. We're always going, how does this work? I, through failures, Tim, found that I was a five-ball juggler. And here's what that means,

Starting point is 01:39:57 that I don't care who you are. I don't care if you're the best juggler in Vegas, and you're with Cirque du Soleil, and you can juggle 25 balls. Even that person, if you go one ball more than they're capable of, guess what happens? All the balls fall. Every ball you're juggling hits aware that I was doing a disservice to certain areas. And I learned that I was a five ball juggler. And here's what that means for me. It means that I'm always constantly juggling five balls. But if another opportunity comes along and I get excited about it and it makes sense both from an artistic and from a business CEO level, I must put one of the five balls I am currently juggling down or put it in the hands of others and give them full trust to do what they need to do before I pick up that new opportunity so that I'm constantly at five and don't extend myself. And so it was a lesson hard learned over the years.

Starting point is 01:41:13 And what that also meant was, Todd, you can't do all the artwork yourself. So you're going to have to become a good scout and you're going to have to find talent. And at some point on a good day, I feel that I am Phil Jackson when he was coaching the Chicago Bulls. I think, maybe not, his conversation went something like this. Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and I don't even know what the name is of the rest of you dudes. Could you guys just go over there? Your job is, could you put that ball in that bucket? Oh, by the way, if you have any questions to that in-depth analysis I just gave you,

Starting point is 01:41:55 I'll be over here in my three-piece suit with my clipboard and you just come over and ask me a question. And Phil Jackson was smart enough to find the proper talent and put it in the proper place so that the end of that run, not only did Michael Jordan have six championship rings, so did Phil. And you know how many buckets Phil made during that time? Zero. He was just smart enough to know to put Michael and the crew out there in the right iterations and so there are times where you have to just go todd you can't build this all yourself there are some things that make sense for me being the lead and or even isolating myself artistically there are plenty of other things we do making toys making comic book making movies

Starting point is 01:42:44 making video games all all of it. That's a collective team. And I actually sort of enjoy being with the collective team because if I can find my Michael Jordans and my Scotty Pippins, and I'm in a meeting and they show me their skill artistically or with ideas or how to promote or how to sell or market, whatever, in any field, in any sort of skill set. And I feel like I'm the dumbest guy in the room. Those are great days for me, Tim, because I sit there and go, oh, my gosh, I wouldn't have even thought of that. I can't even do it to that skill set. Thank God they work for me.

Starting point is 01:43:21 And I just sit there and go, hmm. And if I really want to make it look like that I'm sort of more important than I am, I'll say something like, interesting. I'll take it under advisement and get back to everybody tomorrow, right? Where inside I'm going, holy shit, this is awesome. I just hope they don't quit and start their own company and compete against me because they're super awesome. And so that's it. You just have to find talent and coach them along the way. I'm just a coach. I just, I feel like I'm a coach now. So hearkening back to what you said about last year

Starting point is 01:43:53 and toy sales. So the example you gave was DC. So we're not talking about Freddy Krueger. We're talking about DC. So it's not the R-rated advantage. Presumably these are at large retailers. Oh yeah. So you no longer have the hot topic advantage. Presumably these are at large retailers. So you no longer have the hot topic

Starting point is 01:44:07 advantage. How are you competing so effectively? And I would imagine also the people have emulated and tried to copy the style by adding more detail and trying to compete. I assume that maybe that's an incorrect assumption, but how are you guys still competing so effectively and selling, certainly as multiple of your headcounts, so much more than these other guys? Okay, well, let me just tell you, brand matters. So I'd been making toys for 25 years, and I said every day of my life, I can sell Star Wars, just give me the contract. What are you talking about? It's Star Wars, right? What are you talking about?

Starting point is 01:44:44 Star Wars. You know, come on, I don't sell a lot of Spider-Man because I don give me the contract. What are you talking about? It's Star Wars, right? What are you talking about? Star Wars. You know, come, I don't sell a lot of Spider-Man because I don't have the contract. And eventually I'd walk around Toy Fair and it seemed like everybody had a piece of Marvel. Everybody had a piece of Star Wars in the DC comics. And except for me, I don't know why I was the only guy, right? But somehow we ended up doing a deal. Warner Brothers walking away from Mattel, they had given Mattel both the Master Toy License and the Collective Sliver. What is the difference between the Master Toy and the Collective? I guess I'm not sure what the difference is between those two. Would you mind just explaining that? Those definitions are internal definitions for every corporation. They define them differently.

Starting point is 01:45:25 But essentially, a master toy license means that you basically not only get to do action figures, but you get to do the Nerf gun versions of them. And you get to do the Hot Wheels with the logos on it. Basically, you can do puzzles. You're in the entire store if you want to be. You've got all the aisles. I'm an aisle five boys action figure, right? I always said, no, I don't want to diversify. I want to just be the king of aisle five at times. If I could, that's it. Like just focus. Don't get lost in all the other aisles.

Starting point is 01:45:54 Just be good at one aisle. You know, I'd rather be a master of one than the jack of all trades. So eventually we ended up a couple of years back getting, after decades of trying, finally, we got the license for the DC Multiverse. Let me tell you really what the big piece of that was. I had the word Batman and Superman on my toys. It's like, what are you talking about? Those are global brands. So I've always told people, look it, and you and I have discussed it here.

Starting point is 01:46:21 If you do a quality product at a fair price and do a little bit of marketing and build a better mousetrap, you can survive. How do I know? I've done it for 25, 27 years prior, but I always had a butt to it. But if you ever give me a AAA brand on top of that mythology, shit, get out of the way. What are you talking about? Because now I'm going to give them price and quality and a name that everybody knows. I've been saying that for years. And guess what? They finally give me one of the big brands. And guess what? We outsold all of them. Boom. Right? Now, here's one of the things also that mattered. Big companies, and this is their job. I'm not saying it's good, bad. I'm just saying this is their job, is to maximize value for the shareholders every 90 days. How do you do that?

Starting point is 01:47:08 You just make as much money as you can. How do you make as much money as you can? You figure out how to cut corners. And so one of the ways you cut corners in our trade of toys is that you reuse the same pieces. Lego does the same thing. I mean, I don't care how ambitious, whatever it is you're buying, there are still certain blocks. I mean, I don't care how ambitious, whatever it is you're

Starting point is 01:47:25 buying, there are still certain blocks. I mean, the colors may be different, but there are still certain blocks that are universal in every one of their builds. And then they put the unique pieces that will make it into the shape they need. But there's still a portion of the reuse of blocks that have been used for decades because that's their formula. Cool. It works for them. Toys are sort of the same. That they go, oh, you know, we'll do a generic body and we won't make anything unique about it.

Starting point is 01:48:02 And then that way we can paint it with a bat symbol on it or an S or a flash. And it all sort of works. And we don't have to cut any more mold. We don't have to cut any more steel. Why? Because that's money. And we don't have to do all those things. So early on, when I was given the people, Warner Brothers, our lineups,

Starting point is 01:48:18 and we were talking to them, I go, I want to make this character. And they were talking about this. And then they go, well, we can't really make that character. And I go, why? And they go, well, you know, it doesn't really share the same look as any other character. And I went, no, no, I know that. We're good. I'll just, you know, we'll cut some new molds. And when they found out that I was willing to make new molds for specifically for one character, they were blown away by that because they'd been dealing with the big boys and they were going to hold it. So you're going to do five new characters and make five new sets of molds. Uh-huh. And that's okay with you. Yeah, that's how I've been doing it for

Starting point is 01:48:49 years. Wow. And here's why that mattered, Tim, because it allowed me now for the very first time to make characters that nobody had made prior to that. People have been making Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman toys for decades. Of course they had. But some of the other iterations of those characters and or B characters or C characters that look super cool. I don't care if you even know their name. In plastic, they look super cool on a shelf. I was able to make them. And then I think there was a big enough audience in Geekdom

Starting point is 01:49:19 that came by and went, oh my goodness, nobody's ever made that character or that character or that character or that character. And they were able to get literally the rookie cards using sort of trading card. They're getting the rookie cards of all these characters that nobody had ever made before. And I think it mattered. I think it mattered that I was doing something different than what the big boys did. Yeah, that makes sense. All right. I'm glad I asked. Thank you for answering. So where to from there? So, or I should say not really from there because these are all parallel lines in a sense, right? The comic books are going,

Starting point is 01:49:57 the toys are going. They each create an opportunity. So again, let's talk about music videos. You mentioned that. How do you get to music videos, right? I don't even read music. I can't read a lick of music and I've got a Grammy. How's that possible? Some dumb ass kid who doesn't know anything about music's got a Grammy. It bothers my wife. She's a very good pianist, right? And it bugs her. I've got one, so don't say it out loud if you come to dinner. So here's how you get there. You just find the back door. They're always going to block the front door. Status quo is going to always get put in you get there. You just find the back door. They're always going to block the front door. Status quo is going to always get put in front of you. You find the back door.

Starting point is 01:50:29 Here's the back door. Out of the blue, we're doing the HBO animation. It's doing pretty well. And again, winning a couple of Emmys. And then out of the blue, I don't know why, go ask him. Out of the blue, I get a phone call from Eddie Vedder. Eddie Vedder is the lead singer of Pearl Jam. And Eddie then says, hey, Todd, Eddie. Hey, Eddie,der is the lead singer of Pearl Jam. And Eddie then

Starting point is 01:50:45 says, hey, Todd, Eddie. Hey, Eddie, how you doing, bud? Here's what we want to do, Todd. The record label is bugging us to do a music video. We hate music videos, and we don't want to be in it, which is sort of a cool thing that it's like, pardon? You don't want to be in your own music video. No. And we've been putting them off and putting them off, but they keep bugging us. So now we're at the point where I figured it out, Todd. I've been watching this spawn animation on TV. We can do it animated. Let's just do it animated. And then we don't have to be in it. And I was like, okay, cool. And so he goes, you want to help us with it? And I'm like, yeah, sure. Cool. What's the gig? And then he sort of gave the song. It was called Do the Evolution. And I go, so what's it about? He goes, oh, it's about all time, space, and dimension, but you got to do it in three and a half minutes. I go, okay, I think

Starting point is 01:51:34 we can come up with some creative things on it. And then Eddie went away and he goes, here, I'll send you something here in a couple of days just to sort of give you the vibe. And so a couple of days later, I receive in the mail from Eddie this tape and I play it and he's taking a couple of episodes of Spawn and edited them to go with his music of the song that we were talking about, Dude, the Evolution. That must've been surreal. I wish I had that tape. I don't know what I did with this tape. And so I get on the phone, and it was really good. I got to tell you, Tim, it was really good. And I get on the phone, I go, hey, Eddie, I got it. I understand what you want to do. Okay, whatever. We'll come up with that. Who edited this thing? This is super cool. And he says, well, that was me. And I went,

Starting point is 01:52:18 you edited this video. Uh-huh. You have the big editing machine was called an Avid. You have an Avid at home? Yeah, I have an Avid. So, wow, Eddie, you're confusing me a bit. So rock and rollers, when they're done offstage, go home, relax by doing Avid editing. This is what, like, it doesn't make any sense to me, right? But he's like, yeah, I just sort of like it. And it's just sort of therapeutic. And I'm like, cool. So we ended up doing the video and doing the animation for it. It ends up getting nominated for a Grammy, which again, so it was my first foray into music. I went, what? You just, you're going to music and you get nominated for a Grammy? That was easy. Should have done this earlier. We lost to Madonna that year, but Eddie, we're going to edit. And Eddie says, hey, is there any way I can come to California and edit with you? Eddie, it's your video.

Starting point is 01:53:10 You can do whatever you want. Sure, heck, come. So he sat with us in the three days that we were there editing. And he's really smart. I mean, really, he had a lot of good stuff. Hey, what if you did this? What if you cut this down and you did this and whatever? And he's talking the language, right? So it was really good. The side story of

Starting point is 01:53:29 that three days was he came with a briefcase the first day and he's, you know, Eddie all dressed in black, but he had a briefcase, what I thought was like sort of formal. He put the briefcase down next to us and then we worked all day and we did the editing and then he left. And then the next day he came dressed just like, you know, grunge Eddie, cool. And he had his briefcase again and he put it right down next to us. Never touched it the whole day again and he left. And then on the third day he came, same thing. But at some point I just went, hey, Eddie, I don't mean to pry, but why do you keep bringing that briefcase with you every day?

Starting point is 01:54:08 It doesn't seem like you do anything with it. And then he goes, Oh my gosh, Todd, I'm glad you finally asked. Now I often wonder if I hadn't asked what would have happened when he had just gone home that day. But he goes,

Starting point is 01:54:19 Oh my gosh, Todd, I'm glad you finally asked. It was, it was a super, like a briefcase, like, you know,

Starting point is 01:54:24 just like, like you're a spy or something. And then he clicked it open. And you're waiting for the CIA folder, except for there wasn't no CIA folders. It was two baseball gloves and a ball. And one of the gloves was left-handed. And he turns to me and he goes,

Starting point is 01:54:40 I heard you're a pretty good baseball player, Todd. And I went, yeah, yeah, I played back then. And he goes, you want to play catch during lunch break? And I went, sure, I can play catch with Eddie better. That's cool. Because Eddie's a big baseball nut, right? And so he had done his homework and he knew it and he knew I was left-handed.

Starting point is 01:54:58 Like I said, if I'd never asked him about it, would he have ever opened it? But then it goes even further. We finally go outside and unfortunately, it's seasonably hot it's like about 105 106 that day in california but i'm from phoenix it doesn't matter i can deal but eddie has got black boots black pants black shirt black sunglasses and he's smoking have you ever seen that scene of John Candy in the movie Splash where he's trying to play handball and he's drinking and whatever

Starting point is 01:55:28 and he's having a heart attack while he's playing, we start going and at about minute eight, I could see he's starting to slow down and the throws are not quite with the authority and it gets slower and then he starts breathing heavier and then pretty soon I go, Eddie, let's just take a break. And he's like, yeah, okay, if you want to, if you want to. And then he sits down and he, and I mean, I thought, I go, I'm going to kill this man.

Starting point is 01:55:58 We keep playing. He literally is going to pass out with heat exhaustion. I'm going to have to rush him to the hospital. And it was like, but he wasn't going to give in. This is a dumb thing about boys and our testosterone. Neither one of us was going to give, but I'm a cockroach. I could have gone all day until I killed them. So I just pulled it back.

Starting point is 01:56:14 I didn't feel like being the guy that was the one that sent Eddie to the hospital and had to cancel his, because they were on tour at that point. So he just came in for a couple of days. So I didn't want to be the bad guy. But anyways, Eddie wasn't quite smart enough to go, dress appropriately and don't smoke when you're exerting yourself physically. So that video goes on to, I don't know how many views it has now on YouTube, like 50 plus a million views on YouTube.

Starting point is 01:56:41 So we'll link to that in the show notes. Where does all of this lead, right? So this is your first foray into music and you're animating, which means you're directing. But that comes from the HBO, right? So again, this is... Right, it comes from the HBO. Right. So again, you do Marvel that begats Image Comics. Image begats, right? I'm going to use biblical terms, right? Begats Spawn. Spawn begats HBO. HBO, because Eddie was watching it, begats, hey, you want to do a music video? Music video comes out successful, gets nominated for

Starting point is 01:57:13 a Grammy. That begats people phoning, hey, you want to do more music video? So it all just becomes this weird accident that just starts tumbling, and these doors of opportunity open up where you never knew they were ever going to open up before. So none of it's planned. It's just happy accidents along the way. And doing a good job on each piece of it so that those doors open or present themselves. So let's talk about that piece. What you just said is important. So sometimes I get people go, oh, Todd, you're just sort of getting rich and famous. And you know, you just want to, you got an ego, whatever else. And it's like, and probably that's true, but let me tell you why I like success.

Starting point is 01:57:54 Not because I want some more money. I've got it. Not because I need a bigger ego. I've got plenty of people who have said nice things about me for plenty of years. I'm over me, right? Nobody's more bored of Todd than me. So here's why success matters. Because you can't keep doing art, which is what I am, an artist. If I walk into the room and say, oh, get this. The last thing I did failed. You don't get the job. You have to have a certain level of success to get the next job. That's why I need to keep

Starting point is 01:58:29 the momentum. That's why I need to have success. Not for the fame or the fortune. That's just a byproduct. I need it so I can do art again tomorrow and the next day and the next day. And hopefully if I do it right, I'll die. And I'll have been doing art till the time I take my last breath. That's the success. So the art and the success has to be a component. You're not dealing with HBO and the NFL and Microsoft and all these companies we've dealt with if you're not able to show that you can do the job at a level that makes sense for them. So I'm not going to apologize for us doing our jobs right. Yeah, doesn't seem to be your style. All right, so we're talking about these multiple encounters with our very nice friend,

Starting point is 01:59:21 dumb luck, but it's not really, as somebody put it to me once, I can't remember exactly who it was. I wish I could get an attribution, but they talk about the surface area of luck. So by doing certain things, you can sort of increase the surface area that is available for luck to stick to. And I think you've done a very good job with that. So where do games or movies enter into this entire constellation of activities. Let's go back to the dumb luck just for a minute to just paint a metaphor. Again, I'm at half court and I got my back to the basket and I throw it backwards. And then I make the bucket and they're like, oh, Todd, you're a genius.

Starting point is 01:59:59 Some people will look at that and go, you're a genius. I'm going, eh, it's a little bit of dumb luck. But to your point, the reason that I was able to get that genius shot that some people think of, I was there for four days in a row and I took 10,000 shots and I missed every other one. But I didn't leave until I made the shot. So if you take 10,000 shots, sometimes one of them goes in. So there's the personality of going when they say no, which is basically a missed shot. Don't do it, Todd. Oh yeah, I'm going to shoot again. You can't do that. I'm going to shoot again. You can't, you can't shoot, shoot, shoot. And then bam, every now and then you sink one.

Starting point is 02:00:36 And then you go, how do I build off that? Because people saw that you put it up on TikTok and it's like, you don't show all of your misses on all those TikToks. You only show the one you made. You don't know how many years or hours or months they spent to have made that one shot. Business a little bit is like that. So again, it's a perceived skill because when you see the one shot on TikTok, you think they're super awesome because you didn't see the three days they didn't make it, right? So there's a little bit of that going on there. So back to your question, sorry. Well, actually, before we get to games and movies and how that sort of coalesced or entered the scene in some way,

Starting point is 02:01:14 let's talk about creating characters or fictional worlds that endure for decades. And in doing research for this, I found an interview of yours where you talked about going into Hollywood and pitching various ideas. And I might be misquoting, so I can't believe everything you read on the internet. But this section here that I'd love to hear you elaborate on is, so these people in the meeting go, what's the end of it? And my answer is, I don't give a shit. What's the end of Superman? What's the end of Batman? What's the end of Spider-Man? Why are you asking me for the end? Why aren't you asking, can this last for 30 years? And it goes on. But could you just speak to

Starting point is 02:01:58 building something that endures and how that informs maybe decisions you make or how you think about creativity. Well, that quote that you spoke is true. And I've had that conversation many, many times in Hollywood. It's weird that you're walking in presenting them the beginning of an idea. And one of their first questions is how does the idea end for a company, a studio, an conglomerate who's built on trying to make money. It's like, why would you want to kill anything in the crib? It's a weird conversation I'm having with them. Because again, what is the end of Batman? I don't know. Who cares? We hope it goes a thousand years. Like, why are we talking about this in the first meeting? I mean, I get it. Maybe in season three

Starting point is 02:02:42 and the ratings are lagging, we can maybe have this conversation, but not in the first one. So I think one of the ways to create a brand that does have some value is using another word and it's called attrition. And attrition is that over time, you're going to have both high points and low points, but you got to just keep going. You can't quit. You got to just keep going and going and going and going. And find yourself and put yourself in as many corners as possible during both the good and the bad time so that maybe people don't know who you are or don't know what you do. But then they go, you know what? Yeah, no, I've heard the character spawn. They don't have to have bought anything.

Starting point is 02:03:33 I'm going to use a big example. I know and have read nothing about the Kardashians, and yet I have information in my head about them. I've done nothing towards that, and still it's in my head. Why? Because I can't get away from them. And somehow, as I'm looking for an article, I read the headline, and so I've got info. That's just attrition. And so did the Spawn comic book have a lull at times?

Starting point is 02:04:03 Of course it did. Were the sales not very good? Of course it did. Were the sales were not very good? Of course it did. But I thought that the value of wasn't that, was I making money in the way that I needed to at that point? It was just to keep the machinery going because the value at some point isn't now any single issue or any single year.

Starting point is 02:04:22 It's now the sum total of all of it. So that all the people over 30 years who have passed through any of the characters I've created, let's use Spawn, he's my biggest guy. So maybe they came in for five years and then quit, but they're still there. They're still there. So if we ever do a movie, they're going to remember, oh yeah, yeah, 20 years ago, I collected. But maybe it was somebody who passed through it 15 years ago or 10 years ago or five years ago or just jumped on since we set the world's record that came in going huh you know what i've been a dc and marvel acolyte now i'm going to sort of try this out i don't care all you want to do is collectively keep building so that when you go to your next move, you can maybe peel off a piece of

Starting point is 02:05:05 that army off to the side. So to me, now it's just attrition of just going again, again, again. And so it will just get into your brain. I'll give you a bad, bad, bad example early on. I mentioned it before when I was at my first toy fair, I gave them a Hot Wheel. I bought a funny car. I don't know if people know what a funny car is, but a funny car is like a cut-down dragster, and they put this really cool fiberglass body, and they go down. Just Google what's a funny car look like.

Starting point is 02:05:34 They're super cool. We used to, when I grew up in Orange County, Orange County International Raceway, we used to go down there. Funny cars was the coolest thing in my life, way better than dragons and robots. Anyways, I bought a funny car when Spawn came out. And really because I wanted a funny car,

Starting point is 02:05:52 but I had to convince my wife and other people otherwise. So it was like, no, it's not that I need a funny car. It's just that if I take a funny car and I paint the word Spawn on it and I take it to shows, you know who has a funny car at comic book conventions? No one. You know who's ever had a funny car at comic book conventions? No one. If you bring something to a show that nobody's ever brought before, you'll be surprised. Like if you bring a elephant to a comic book convention and paint it purple, people will actually look at it. They'll come and look at

Starting point is 02:06:26 it because they'll be going, why you got a purple elephant here? So my purple elephant, my pink elephant literally was the funny car. Now here's what I did. One side, I did a two-tone paint job on it. One side was white with the word spawn on it. And it had like blood, like you hit a deer at a thousand miles an hour and it splattered over the white the other side was black with flames because it's super cool and then what i used to do tim is i used to have it sort of centered in my big giant booth and then i had this piece of paper and it said folks what side do you like better so i can finish this project and here's what people did and I saw it with my own eyes hundreds of times. They took their kid or it was one person and they went on the white side and

Starting point is 02:07:12 went, yeah, that's kind of cool with the blood. I like it. And I like the fade. And they went over to the flame black side and went, yeah, I like that. But you know, man, let me see. Let me go back over there. No, maybe I like that. And it went back and forth, back and forth. And then they marked the sheet. You know what I did with the sheet at the end of each show? I threw it in the garbage. I threw it in the garbage. I didn't give a shit. I was never going to repaint that car. What I needed them to do, Tim, was to spend five minutes looking at my logo. And if I had painted that car with one paint job, the same on both sides, they wouldn't have looked at it for five minutes. So I forced them to look at the word spawn thinking that they were helping me on some

Starting point is 02:07:52 polling survey. And it was just, I need to get the word spawn into their wormhole. And this is my trick. So if you just figure out iterations of that, how do you get people to do that, then eventually over time, time matters. Time does matter. Time becomes the biggest value you have on your brand. From a creative, let's just say writing standpoint, you've now published more than 300 editions of Spawn, right? How many books out, when you started Spawn, how many books out had you planned from a plot or character perspective?

Starting point is 02:08:34 And how much of it was setting conditions and making it cool and then assuming you're just going to figure it out later and see where it goes? How far in advance did you or do you plan with that kind of thing? Tim, I just finished what's going to be the biggest comic book in the country just last week, the Batman Spawn crossover. We touched upon it, right? I was winging it until they pried it out

Starting point is 02:09:00 of my hand on Tuesday. What are you talking about? It horrifies writers. The way that I do it is horrifying. Do I have it in my head? Of course not. I just figure it out on the fly. And luckily, I get it right more times than I get it wrong. So here's what the goal was when I started Spawn. There was two goals. One, we started the company Image image comics the third largest company as i mentioned i said to myself when we started that image comic books will exist for my lifetime and how do i know that because even if there was only one book called spawn i was never going to take that logo off so i knew it was going to exist because i'm just that militant. I'm putting it on issue number one, and it will never come off. So image comic books somehow, maybe in a small, tiny way, will exist. Obviously, we're flourishing, so I don't have to worry about there only being one book

Starting point is 02:09:55 because we do about 60 or 70 books a month. Number two, could I create a character that would outlive me? Period. The guy who created Superman is dead. The guy who created Mickey Mouse, dead. The guy who created the Fantastic Four, we talked about him earlier today, Stanley, dead. Their characters live on, right? I consider creations to be creative children. and every parent has the same wish. You always want your children to outlive you. Why? No parent gets up saying, I hope my children go

Starting point is 02:10:36 before I do. You always want to go. We've seen movies. I'll sacrifice my life, right? Women and children first. You'll sacrifice your life for your family. But you go first. If these are creative children, then the goal is, because I read about these people who created these characters that I know about, but their creators have long since passed away, including my good friend Stan. Could I create one or two characters? I don't need 100. I'm not Disney. I'm not Walt Disney. I'm not Stanley. I'm not that good. But could I create one or two

Starting point is 02:11:11 characters that when I die, people say, I still want to see the characters. That was the goal in the back of my head. And so did I have a plan of where it was going? No, not really. Did I have a plan of how it was going to end? Of course, I do actually have the end. I just never have given it to anybody. And I hope it never gets written because the only time you write the end is if nobody wants it. So you go, ah, I guess we better write the last story

Starting point is 02:11:34 and put it to bed or whatever else. No, to the point, Tim, I hate sort of saying this out loud, but Spawn's costume is alive. It's like a symbiote. It moves and the chains are like the tongue and the spikes are like the teeth and the cape is all alive.

Starting point is 02:11:50 Was his costume alive in issue number one? No, no. How did it become alive? You just hit these moments real quickly. People will write in, because I'm very lazy. I never did a lot of referencing. You know, there was no internet, but I still didn't go to the library and get reference. I had deadlines,

Starting point is 02:12:09 don't have time for it. I just fake everything. So I was drawing my pages of issue number one, and I guess this is how bad I am. I don't pay attention to my own drawings. And so people were writing in going, Todd, Todd, do you know you had the pouch on his left leg and now it's on his right leg? Do you know that you had six spikes on his arm and now it's like got eight spikes? These are easy moments, Tim, that you have two choices. You either admit you're a dumb shit or you go, that's because it's alive. The costume morphs and it can do anything at any time. It's a living being. And that's now part of the mythology.

Starting point is 02:12:52 And it was just because I screwed up. What are you talking about? You just, you make, you make lemonade out of your lemons and you just keep moving on and hope they don't, don't catch up to you. I've been in those rooms plenty of times where I said something I shouldn't have and they go, I'll give you an example. I was doing a movie pitch for something and I think it was for Doom or something. And I was given this pitch and they discover something underneath the Mojave Desert or whatever. I was on a rant and my buddy next to me slides a piece

Starting point is 02:13:23 of paper over to me. I'm right in the middle of it. I'm with the Warner Brothers people and the prior writers because they brought me in to see if they could help spark it. And he slides a piece of paper over to me as I'm standing up and on it, it says, Todd, it takes place on the moon or something like that. I'm going and they discover it in the Mojave Desert. I'm actually off a lot of miles. And I'm like, so I just blow the whole premise of this book. And I'd go, well, I'm this deep. I got to keep going.

Starting point is 02:13:55 And I sit down, and I remember the executive at Warner Brothers looks at me for a couple seconds, dead silence. And then he goes, slaps his hand, and goes, that's what I'm talking about. He's not afraid to take chances. He's not afraid. And the answer was, I just didn't do enough research, sadly. Otherwise, I would have put it on the moon.

Starting point is 02:14:19 So sometimes you just have to, if you say it with enough confidence, they'll go along for the ride with it. And it's like, he's not afraid to basically follow everything in the book. This is what I've been talking about. We've got to bend some of the rules, blah, blah, blah. So anyways, the Spawn, we're up to issue 336, went to the printers a couple of days ago. Do I know what 337 is?

Starting point is 02:14:43 I write a book called Gunslinger Spawn. Do I know what the next issue is? Nope. I know there's a guy, I just introduced a cliffhanger with a guy who runs fast. That's all I know, that I got to pick up with a guy who runs fast. So I'll figure it out when I've got to get the plot in two days. And 10 years from now you and i may be talking about our my speech to runner who's the most popular guy i had no idea the day before what i was doing with him so well todd where do you want to go next i'll leave it up to you i mean you've got so many stories you seemingly have so many lives that run in tandem you're an excellent five ball-ball juggler. Which ball, if any, would you like to talk about next? What if we get away from the businesses and talk about

Starting point is 02:15:31 personalities? Not mine, but other people, right? I think that what's of value to people who are thinking about doing ideas and or some entrepreneurship is to some extent recognizing your own personalities of whether you're actually built for war or not. Right. And to me, all of this is a war. I know my wife has said, it's sort of sad that you sort of see war, that your life is a war every day. And so I'm, I'm ready. And if I've got one regret that I've a few of them, but one of them is I wish I was born 3,000 years ago. Because back then, like in a movie like Braveheart, if you believed in something so strongly, you would go to the battlefield, you would face your enemy who basically was trying to deny you whatever it was that would give you personal happiness or what you thought would

Starting point is 02:16:23 be good for your family. And only two things were going to happen. You were either going to cut his head off or he was going to cut yours. That simple. And I've always been the guy willing to go, I'll die for what I believe. Now, unfortunately, Tim, killing your enemy and cutting their head off is illegal, right? And it's really frustrating to me because, man, there's a lot of heads I'd like to see on the ground. And I'm sure they'd like to see mine, but we can't do that. We have to be a law-abiding citizen. So now what we have to do in modern times is sue people and take away market shares and tell them you will never work in this town. And it's just not nearly as satisfying as if I could just cut their heads off. So if I get ready for the war, which means that every day, I'm going to give you a piece of

Starting point is 02:17:17 advice that don't tell your mom if you're listening to me, because moms will be horrified by this. Here it is. Lower the bar. Lower the bar. Don't raise the bar, lower it. Here's why. Way easier to get over low bars than it is high bars. Try it. Put a bar six feet high, try to jump over it. Put a bar six inches off the ground, you can get over it 20 times in a minute. It's easy. Lower the bar, ladies and gentlemen. So that means that I get up every day and I don't have high expectations of anything, not even with humanity. I'm not a religious person, but I do have sort of a personal prayer and it's sort of this simple every day. Today will not be perfect. And you know how many days in a row tim i've nailed that every

Starting point is 02:18:06 Single day of my life. I have now i'm on like even a longer streak than cal ripken jr with that What tortures people and some of you are listening are the people who have the bar higher than that Did you see this email this guy sent me that son of a bitch? Oh, you thought today was going to be perfect. Did you see that guy that guy sent me, that son of a bitch? Oh, you thought today was going to be perfect. Did you see that guy? That guy cut me off on the freeway, right? Oh, that guy cut me off here in line. I was waiting in line and they cut me off getting a ticket for the Black Panther movie

Starting point is 02:18:37 and now I can't get in or whatever. Oh, somebody said something about my haircut. Somebody said something about like what? So you thought that the world was going to be perfect and that everybody was going to wake up and that they were going to make your life better. You know who woke up in the planet today with 8 billion people and said, I'm going to make Todd's life better today. There was only one human being, one. And that was me. No other human being, not even my wife. That was their mission today. That was me. So if you're expecting others to make you happy and make it accommodating for you, you're going to get crushed. So here's

Starting point is 02:19:12 what I would say. Lower the bar. Go to your job interview, and before you walk in, give it your damnedest, but assume you're not getting the job. Give it your damnedest, but assume you're not getting it. So when they don't phone you back and when you don't get the job, you're okay with it because if anything, you actually take it as a pride that you actually called the shot. I knew it, I knew it. I went there, they didn't give it to me, dumb shit,

Starting point is 02:19:40 but I knew it. And pretty soon you don't get hired for 10, 20 jobs in a row. And you're on a hot streak now. You're actually feeling pretty good that you called it 20 times in a row. You're not getting the job. And then guess what happens? You go to the 21st interview and you give it your best and you walk away and they go, Todd, where are you going? I'm out of here because I know you're not going to hire me. And they go, no, we actually want to offer you a job. And here's why that's an awesome day. Because what sort of kind of cause I frustrate. First off, they broke my streak of 20 no's in a row. So I'm a little frustrated that my streak went away,

Starting point is 02:20:22 because I'm like, oh, damn it. They broke my streak. But by breaking my streak, I got the job. I got the job. It's a good day. Here's what most people do, Tim. And my family members do the same thing. And I can't help them. It's personality. They actually think they're going to get every job they go and apply for. And when they don't, they get crushed. It literally crushes their soul for two or three days. And they're just, they're a shell of a person. Why? Because they put the bar high. The bar was that we were going to get the job. No, put the bar where it says, I'm not getting the job and you will never be disappointed. Assume today's not going to be perfect and assume human beings are flawed and you will have a pretty damn good life. Because guess what happens

Starting point is 02:21:05 some days nobody cuts you off nobody cuts in line and nobody writes you a bad email and it's a pretty good day it's a pretty good day because sort of discomfort didn't come not that you won the lottery not that your team won the championship you just didn't have a lot of aggravation you didn't get sued today cool it's It's a good day. I don't know. I psych myself out. I psych myself out for little success. So when any of it comes, it's cool. We talked about it with selling the toys at 60,000. There's either way to get to 60,000 sales and it be a negative or it can be a positive. It depends on how you psych yourself out. I am a horrible golfer, horrible golfer. I don't do it much. Also, I've had people say, Todd, you're the worst golfer

Starting point is 02:21:52 who doesn't care. Here's why I don't care, because I don't golf. I don't assume I'm going to get better by not golfing every three years, any more than my Mandarin and my Spanish is going to get better by me not practicing either one of those languages either. You don't get better by not doing it. So when I go golf, the odd time I'm in Phoenix, I'm horrible. But every now and then I get lucky and all of a sudden I get on a par five, I get a six. I am dancing naked when I get a six on a par five. But it's interesting. I'm with another guy who must've had a different expectation. His bar was different than mine. He hits it. He hits it. He gets a six and he is so mad. He actually

Starting point is 02:22:31 breaks his club that costs more than my entire rental. And he breaks his club and I'm sitting there going, wow, he got a six. I got a six. It's the same number. I'm dancing naked and he's cursing up a storm. He must've had a different expectation than me. So that's it. I just keep my expectations low. It gets you through there. Number two, they're always going to say no to you. Always going to say no to you. There has never been a story written in which the person who had the new idea, the person in the lead said, oh, I will now slow down or get out of the way so you can pass me. Never, ever will happen. So if you're going to do something that's going to aggravate the system status quo, there's never been anybody in history that's ever changed anything on any level and was liked by everybody. Get over it.

Starting point is 02:23:27 Get over people liking you, right? Just figure out what your goal is. I'll give you my personality. I take my wife. We're going to go to the bar and we're going to go dance. Okay. Nine o'clock comes around. The band starts playing. Nobody wants to be the first one on a dance floor. Let me also say, if you've never been the first one on a dance floor, you're probably not built to be an entrepreneur. Let me just sort of put that there because that means you give a shit about the rest of the people in that room. I don't. And here's why. First off, I don't even know them. Why would I give any weight? Why would I give any power to a stranger in my life? Here's what my goal is.

Starting point is 02:24:08 My goal was to take my lovely wife out for an evening of dancing. There's a dance floor and there's music. I'm going to dance. If every other human being in that room doesn't want to dance, I don't care. If they all want to dance, I don't care. None of them are of importance to me. What's important is that I want to dance with my wife tonight and I'm doing it. I'm doing it. Do I care whether they think I'm a good dancer? Nope. Do I care if they think I look like a goof?

Starting point is 02:24:39 Nope. Nope. Not one second of power do I give to that person. If you're the person that's going to wait till the dance floor is full so that then you can get on and nobody will see you so you can hide in the middle of the pack, I'm just telling you, you're probably not built to be an entrepreneur, right? You have to just be at times, literally don't care.

Starting point is 02:25:03 And it's not a trait that I want to encourage. I don't want my kids to be like me. But you have to have it because if you're going to make change, if you're going to go up against competition, they're going to every day try and tell you you can't and try and embarrass you somehow. And you have to just push it and categorize it to a side and say, I don't care.

Starting point is 02:25:26 This was my goal and I'm going to do it anyways. Now, why would you not want your kids to have that trait? What's the downside? How do you think about that? Because I can be a cold fish at times. Cold fish, meaning too Spock-like or you'd come off as unemotional? Let's say you put me out tomorrow

Starting point is 02:25:44 and I could cut the heads of my enemies off. Let's say you put me out tomorrow and I could cut the heads of my enemies off. Let's go back to Braveheart. And I could cut the heads of my enemy, right? So I got my mortal enemy in front of me and I cut his head off. Do you know how much time I'm going to give to feeling guilty that I did it? Zero seconds. You know why, Tim? Because I'm in the middle of a battle. Remember, I keep thinking I'm at war. And if you watch something like Braveheart, I'm not the only one, and they're not the only one on the battlefield.

Starting point is 02:26:14 And if I sit there and give time to feel sorry for what I did to that man and think about his family and his children, somebody's coming up behind me and is going to cut my head off and I will be dead six seconds later. So I must learn to cut my head off and I will be dead six seconds later. So I must learn to cut and turn and forget about that dead victim because somebody's out to kill me five seconds later and I either survive or at least attempt to survive or I lament and get my head cut off in a second.

Starting point is 02:26:42 Here's how this works, Tim. Here's how this works in practical modern terms for a guy like Todd. And I don't necessarily want anybody to do it. I'm just telling you who I am. I usually phone lawyers that I don't like and I'm in a fight with on Friday about 4.30. This is actually a very good time. And here's why it's a good time.

Starting point is 02:27:04 Because I can get on the phone with them and very good time. And here's why it's a good time. Because I can get on the phone with them and they can argue. And then you start raising voices and you start sounding like Mussolini on the balcony and you start going. And then you usually end those conversations like, oh yeah, well, fuck you. Yeah, well, fuck you. Okay. I'll get on the phone with you Monday. We're going to sell this bullshit. And you go click. Now here's what I've told my wife. Cause she's heard me do this before. She goes, Todd, she's heard me before. Todd, you're going to have a heart attack. No, I'm not. Yes, you're going to have a heart attack. No, I'm not. And here's why my wife's named Wanda. No, Wanda, I'm not going to have a heart attack.

Starting point is 02:27:35 And she doesn't believe this until this one scary moment that I go, no. And she goes, why? I go, because I don't care. The moment I hang up that phone, click. I don't even care about that guy. That lawyer I just yelled at, click. He's like, dude, it's the weekend's coming. I worry about him on Monday. I worry about him on Monday. But because I can do that, here's what happens to the lawyer.

Starting point is 02:28:01 He gets off the phone. He goes to all of his people in the office. He goes, I just got off the phone with this son of a bitch. And here's what he said. And he's going to chew on it. And he's going to chew on it. Then he's going to go home and his wife's going to say, how was your day? Oh, fine. Except for at the end, this guy, and he's going to chew on it. And then they're going to go out and they're going to have a barbecue with their friends and go, how are you going? Oh, fine. But I got this one thing. He's going to chew on it and chew on it. And he's going to sit there and think about me the whole weekend. And by Monday, he's exhausted. And you know how much time I gave him during that same amount of time? Not one second of my emotions. Why? Because on Monday, click, I turn it back on and guess

Starting point is 02:28:37 between the two of us who's stronger to continue the conversation. The guy who was in the gym the whole time, bench pressing that weight, or the guy who put it down and let his muscles sort of relax so I can go back to the gym a couple of days later. I don't care. And here's how I know that's true. I know it's true. You can believe it or not. I proved it to my wife one day. She took out a life insurance policy or something, and the doctors have to come to the house and they have to do an exam on you to make sure that you're not dying or whatever. So they come and they got to do an examination on me and my wife. My wife is top fit. She's awesome. She is like a hiker runner. You know, she's like a model. She's awesome. Anyways, they came and I was in the middle of one of these Mussolini moments and the doctors came to go,

Starting point is 02:29:20 Todd, you got to examine you. And I go, tell them to do Wanda first. I'm on the phone. I'm on the phone. And so they go and do Wanda. And then they do my wife, whatever they had to do. And then they come upstairs. And she knows she can still hear me yelling. And she comes up with the doctors. There's a couple of them. And then they go, okay, Todd, it's you.

Starting point is 02:29:39 And I go, yeah, okay. And it's like, and fuck you. Click. I end my conversation. I go, what are we doing? Oh, we got to do this examination. Oh, yeah. Okay, cool. And this is like, and fuck you, click. I end my conversation. I go, what are we doing? Oh, we got to do this examination. Oh yeah, okay, cool. And this is my wife was waiting for it. And they do the blood pressure and they do all the testing and they go, oh, yours is the same as your wife's. And it horrified my wife. Let me just tell you, it horrified her because she goes,

Starting point is 02:30:01 I am married. A, she was happy that I'm not going to die of a heart attack because I literally can turn the switch off. Two, she was horrified she's married to a monster, that he literally doesn't care about another human being and can just turn it off. I turn it off, Tim, not out of pride, not because I think that's the way to go, not because I think that's it. It's because we all, if you're in war, and I think I'm in war, if you're at war, you have to find out ways of surviving that work for you. This is how I've learned to survive, to not let any, I've been sued. I've been screamed at. I've had people threatened the other day. What are you talking about? One of the big retailers threatened to take all my toys off their shelf. You just accept that this is just part of the world that you live in. And if at any time, Tim, I ever get aggravated, you know who I'm the

Starting point is 02:30:54 most aggravated with? Me. Because at the end, no matter what's happening, I have to ask the same question. Who put me in this position? It's uncomfortable. I don't want to be here. Why am I arguing with lawyers today? Oh, that was you, Todd. You started that company. You kept it going. You kept doing it. I don't get to pass the buck. And so I have to sit there and say, the guy who basically caused all this is the guy I shave with every day. And here's the problem with that. I actually like that dude. And even if I don't, I got to live with him for the rest of my natural life. So you know what? I'm stuck with it. And so I just figure out ways that work for me. I don't want you or any listener to replicate it. I would say no. What I do do when I go to business classes,

Starting point is 02:31:40 which is super awesome when I go talk to business classes at universities. First thing I say is I'm not going to tell you how to make money. 85% of them throw their pencil down in disgust because they thought I was going to give them the 10 lessons on how to make money. I go, here's what we're going to talk about for an hour, how to keep your humanity, how to actually be a reasonable human being. So here's what I'm going to tell you. I would rather you become a garbage collector and go become a good community person and go coach little league for free than to be the VP of a bank and be divorced four times and estranged from your family. Nobody wants to hang out with you. We somehow equate in North America money to success.

Starting point is 02:32:25 And to me, my definition of success is different. I just think that there's a way to just not care, even if you do have money and prestige and all of it. To me, it's all silly. It's all complicated. Our lives, my wife will tell you the same. It was easier when life was simpler. You guys are built, the guys that are doing their MBAs in these classes, they're just little baby sharks. And when I'm given that conversation, I know that they want to emulate the big sharks. So I'm only talking to four or five of them

Starting point is 02:32:56 that are out there. And at the end of it, after we sort of go with it, I sometimes sort of do this last little question there. I go, I'm just going to leave you with one thing because I know about making money. You got to make money. And the reason I don't want to tell you how to make money, because if I tell you how to make a million bucks,

Starting point is 02:33:10 you and your brain and your intellect and your personal experiences might've figured out how to make a hundred million. Why would I try to tell you how to make a million? You might've made a hundred million. You may be a thousand times smarter than me. I don't want to limit you. But let me just leave once we talked all of this sort of to see if we can't leave you

Starting point is 02:33:28 with one thought here. All of you just woke up tomorrow and you're not feeling very good. So you go to the doctors and doctors takes you in the back room and he does a bunch of blood tests and says, hey, I'm going to run the blood tests and you go sit out in the lobby. I'll get back to you. So you go out in the lobby and you look on your cell phone for a while. And then 25 minutes later, the doctor comes back. It doesn't look very good. It's got a serious look. And he says, hey,

Starting point is 02:33:51 I need you to come back to my office. Yeah, sure, doc. And you go sit down and go, we ran all the tests and we reran them and you have inoperable cancer, and there is nothing modern medicine can do, you will be dead in three weeks. You're dead. There's no hope. Now, I'm going to assume that everybody listening to my voice right now has at least one person they care about. At least one person. So think about the person that you care about the most. That person, I assume if you care for them that much, they care about you that much. And in three weeks, that person is going to be left without you. It will be trauma to their life. So here's the question. If you could only pick one human being to help that person you care about to transition after you're gone, to soft land them

Starting point is 02:34:47 as much as possible, to be by their side, to do anything that will be helpful in their grieving period. Who is that individual? I want you to pick just one individual. I'll give you 15 seconds to think of it. And then I stand there, Tim, in silence. And then I go, my last question before I leave, did you pick the richest person you know, or did you pick the best person? Why don't you want to be the second one? Why don't you want to be the best person instead of the richest? Because when it mattered and we just proved it, you didn't pick the rich person. Be the second person. And you can still make money and be that second person. Don't worry about it, but don't make the money the driver. Don't do it. But I'm only talking to three of you in this class.

Starting point is 02:35:46 The rest of you have already sold your soul. Well, Todd, I think that is the best place to maybe bring this conversation home and leave people with that to chew on without adding too much more. I have to say we could easily do around three at some point. But I do think that is an excellent place to stop and begin to at least land the plan.

Starting point is 02:36:10 Is there anything else that you would like to add, call people's attention to or anything else, any closing comments before we end this conversation, at least for now? Yeah. end this conversation, at least for now? Yeah, the only thing I'd like to do is encourage people who have a little bit of doubt. If you've got a lot of bit of doubt, it might not work. A little bit of doubt, I think we can get past that hurdle.

Starting point is 02:36:50 I don't consider myself to be smart or intelligent or, anything better than anybody else. And I was able through just a little bit of perseverance to sort of get there. I believe that if I can do it and I was dumb, I got nothing but D's, you know, in school and stuff like that. If I can do it, I just, I just think there are so many people up there and what I do at times,

Starting point is 02:37:02 it's frustrating to me. I'm up on stage sometimes at comic conventions. I don't even talk about comic books And what I do at times, it's frustrating to me. I'm up on stage sometimes at comic conventions. I don't even talk about comic books, but I go, I'm going to talk to you as your dad, as your uncle, and I'm going to tell you why I think you should try this. And I think we've spoken about some of those on your show in these two parts. Just try it. And if it doesn't work, it's like cutting your hair to grow back. You can always go back to the system wherever you're at. You can always go back. There's no harm. There's no dishonesty in trying and failing. That's okay. The person who never tries, I think, sort of has more regret. So I talked to him. I'd

Starting point is 02:37:34 stand on one side of the stage and I go, come on, man. Just try, try, try it once. I think everybody in all honesty, Tim, should try to be an entrepreneur once in their life. And then I walk to the other stage and I go, now I'm going to talk to you as Todd, the CEO. I hope, and here's what I'm going to tell you as Todd, the CEO, I hope you don't do it. I hope you sow those doubts and you never do it. And you know why?

Starting point is 02:38:00 Because that means I will never have to compete with you. And you may be smarter and better and more well-equipped and I'll never have to play the game against you. So make my life easy and don't compete. But I'm telling you, the dad side of me, take me down. Because the 25-year-old Todd, I'm telling you, I just know, would have listened to me, the 60-year-old man, and would have said, dude, I'm telling you, I just know, but if you listened to me, the 60-year-old man, and would have said, dude, I will gut you. I would never have let an old man on that stage go,

Starting point is 02:38:32 I hope you don't do it because you're not good enough. I would have gone and said, oh yeah, I've made it my personal mission. So even if I can just gin up a couple of people to just go, come on, man. Come on, man. You can do it. But if you keep coming up with reasons why you're not built for entrepreneurship, you have to think a little bit delusional at times to the point where you think you're better than you are. That's okay. That's okay. Confidence is half the battle. And now we got to figure out whether you got the skill set, which is the other half. But some of the skill can come along the way

Starting point is 02:39:12 because confidence and determination can take you pretty far until you learn those skills. So just go, go, go. That's all I've got. Well, Todd, I will say first that I can see why the people from the NHL or wherever would have said, yeah, I think we'll just take the 500 grand and not choose to have this guy jabbing us with a spear for the next 20 years. So let's just do that deal. I can definitely see that. And I find you to be extremely impressive as a creator, as an artist, fascinating as a CEO.

Starting point is 02:39:53 And I got to say, you're a hell of a good teacher. You're a really good teacher. So thank you for taking the time to have these conversations and to share your stories and your lessons and your beliefs. It's been a hell of a lot of fun. And to everybody listening, we will have links to everything we discussed, all the music videos, anything else that my team and I can possibly find as a reference to link to related to the show, we'll include in the show notes at tim.blog.com. As usual, you can find Todd on all the social networks. We'll link to those in the show notes as well at tim.blog slash podcast.

Starting point is 02:40:29 And until next time, get out there. Give it a shot. Take your shot. You'll miss all of the shots you don't take. So give it a go. You can always go back to the system and the status quo. And thanks for listening. Thank you for listening, everybody.

Starting point is 02:40:46 And huge thanks to Todd for coming on the show. I could do part three, part four, and part five with Todd. Maybe I will. Before you go, just one announcement. I've been up to all sorts of shenanigans and I have been stretching some creative muscles. My fiction writing is now live on a brand new podcast called Cockpunch. Yes, you heard that

Starting point is 02:41:06 right. As you think it's spelled, Cockpunch. It is based on a fictional world, a fantasy world that I've created. And the podcast launched last week with a very short and bizarre trailer. And it debuted at number one in the fiction category on Apple Podcasts and has been in the top 100 for all podcasts on Apple Podcasts in the US and many other countries all of last week. That was the case. It is the first podcast I've launched in many years. The first few episodes are super short, roughly five minutes each. And I would love if you check it out. Take a look. It's strange. You might enjoy it. You can find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, or simply go to cockpunch.com slash podcast for all the links. The entire podcast is intended to

Starting point is 02:41:50 add some laughter and levity to a world dominated by what we all do if we don't have anything better to distract us, doom scrolling, pessimism, nihilism. There's too much of that. So take a look. Find it all at cockpunch.com slash podcast. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off. And that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people

Starting point is 02:42:19 subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my

Starting point is 02:42:52 field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify is one of my favorite companies out there, one of my favorite platforms ever. And let's get into it. Shopify is a platform, as I mentioned, designed for anyone to sell anything anywhere, giving entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business. So what does that mean? That means in no time flat,

Starting point is 02:43:35 you can have a great looking online store that brings your ideas, products, and so on to life. And you can have the tools to manage your day-to-day business and drive sales. This is all possible without any coding or design experience whatsoever. Shopify instantly lets you accept all major payment methods. Shopify has thousands of integrations and third-party apps, from on-demand printing to accounting to advanced chatbots, anything you can imagine. They probably have a way to plug and play and make it happen. Shopify is what I wish

Starting point is 02:44:05 I had had when I was venturing into e-commerce way back in the early 2000s. What they've done is pretty remarkable. I first met the founder, Toby, in 2008 when I became an advisor, and it's been spectacular. I've loved watching Shopify go from roughly 10 to 15 employees at the time to 7,000 plus today, serving customers in 175 countries with total sales on the platform exceeding $400 billion. They power millions of entrepreneurs from their first sale all the way to full scale. And you would recognize a lot of large companies that also use them who started small. So get started by building and customizing your online store, again, with no coding or design experience required.

Starting point is 02:44:45 Access powerful tools to help you find customers, drive sales, and manage your day-to-day. Gain knowledge and confidence with extensive resources to help you succeed. And I've actually been involved with some of that way back in the day, which was awesome. The Build a Business competition and other things. Plus, with 24-7 support, you're never alone. And let's face it, being an entrepreneur can be lonely, but you have support, you have resources, you don't need to feel alone in this case. More than a store, Shopify grows with you and they never stop innovating, providing more and more tools to make your business better and your life easier. Go to shopify.com slash Tim. That's S-H-O-P-I-F-Y.com slash Tim,

Starting point is 02:45:28 all lowercase for a free trial and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features. Start selling on Shopify today. Go to shopify.com slash Tim right now and check it out. They have a lot to offer. Shopify.com slash Tim. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. I've been asked this for years. The answer is invariably AG1 by Athletic Greens. I view it as all-in-one nutritional insurance so you can cover your bases. If you're traveling, if you're just busy, you're not sure if your meals are where they should be, it covers your bases. If you're traveling, if you're just busy, you're not sure if your meals are where they should be, it covers your bases. I've recommended it since the 4-Hour Body, which

Starting point is 02:46:11 was, God, eons ago, 2010, and I did not get paid to do so. With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food source ingredients, you'll be hard-pressed to find a more nutrient-dense formula on the market. It has a multivitamin, multimineral greens complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, an immunity formula, digestive enzymes, and adaptogens. You get the idea. It is very, very comprehensive. And I do my best, of course,

Starting point is 02:46:37 to focus on nutrient-dense proper meals, but sometimes you're busy. Sometimes you're traveling. Sometimes you just want to make sure that you are getting what you need. AG1 makes it easy to get a lot of nutrition when whole foods aren't readily available. It's also NSF certified for sport, making it safe for competitive athletes as what's on the label is in the powder. It's the ultimate all-in-one nutritional supplement bundle in one easy scoop. Right now, Athletic

Starting point is 02:47:05 Greens is giving my audience a special offer on top of their all-in-one formula, which is a free vitamin D supplement and five free travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Many of us are deficient in vitamin D. I found that true for myself, which is usually produced in our bodies from sun exposure. So adding a vitamin D supplement to your daily routine is a great option for additional immune support. Support your immunity, gut health, and energy by visiting athleticgreens.com slash Tim. You'll receive up to a year's supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your subscription. Again, that's athleticgreens.com slash Tim.

The Tim Ferriss Show - #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.